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Foxtrot Gameplay Video


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So after mentioning this a couple times, I finally found a few minutes to set up and do a quick video of some air combat gameplay with my 100% Foxtrot style. This was done in a single, continuous session just trying to record a variety of encounters over a few minutes (and includes a few where I screwed up). There's no audio because I did this with a baby in my lap, and no cursor shown because I am bad and didn't realize Bandicam defaults to hiding it.

My initial purpose for doing this was to demonstrate how overpowered Foxtrots are, but in the course of thinking about this I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't Foxtrots, it's just that torpedos are so much better than sidewinders they probably should become an outright upgrade after Alenium Explosives or Corvette Data Core and/or use a manufactured launcher (possibly in conjunction with an outright removal of Foxtrots), which would make both Condors and Corsairs (and sidewinders in general) useful again. Currently I build Foxtrots in the first two months, and can use them safely against anything other than battleships and interceptors (I'm assuming. Never played/fast forwarded enough to reach them).

Anyway, here's the link.

[video=youtube;7U706x0lTAM]

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I've been thinking about this myself since the weekend. Having tried and failed to get some good use out of Condores in the more difficult air battles (i.e. when there's escorts), I'm basically just relying on Foxtrot missile waves, which makes the air game both dull and frustrating.

I'm thinking of playing around with some changes to see if Condores and their equivalent can't be buffed. Reducing the cooldown on evasion might help, not only to give the Condore et al. a boost but also to make it easier for alien fighters to avoid long-range torpedo strikes from the Foxtrot. Giving the Condore et al more missile slots might also work, since it should give them more firepower to make them useful against multiple (light) targets.

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Reducing the roll CD would be a buff to Condors/Corsairs, but it wouldn't actually do anything to Foxtrots as it would just require a bit more tight of timing with torpedoes, unless it was taken to the extreme of a Foxtrot being unable to kill a single fighter. But even at that extreme, you would still do the exact same thing, only doubling up on Foxtrots. Even Foxtrots vs triple fighter groups could (in theory) pick one off, disengage, immediately re-engage, pick off another, etc. You'd still be doing the exact same thing, just a bit more futzy (with the possible exception of Heavy Fighters and Interceptors, which I think are too fast to safely do that against), which would need a single Corsair to engage.

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You're quite possibly right. The point, though, would be to make it inefficient to do that - you could either use a squad of three Foxtrots to repeatedly attack the same group 2-3 times, or use three Condors/Corsairs once. I'm not sure you'll ever be able to stop the long-range missile strike tactic so long as you have long-range missiles, but you can try and make it more costly than the alternatives.

Is my thinking, anyway. I'm not saying it definitely will work, but I think it's worth trying. Other ideas are welcome, in any case!

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It wouldn't really be more costly (I can normally get 4 sorties per wave out of my Foxtrots so I could probably get 5-6 with just disengage/re-engage), just more annoying.

Yeah, it's definitely worth discussing. Right now I'm pretty sure I could skip from Foxtrots straight to Furies without any real problems.

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Well, having played around with it, I've managed to make the game work such that I can't kill 3 Heavy Fighters with 3 Foxtrots, but I can take (there abouts!) 3 Heavy Fighters with 2 Condors (losing one and the other being heavily damaged).

It's very difficult to make the torpedoes not be able to kill anything, even with rapid dodging. Reducing the cooldown on evade to 1 second isn't enough - it's just possible to get the timing right to score a hit with two torpedoes as before. So, I increased the distance and speed of the dodge very slightly as well, in addition to nerfing the speed and turning of the torpedo as well. Making these changes, I had a hard time getting hits in a three-on-three fight: once I managed to score a hit, but still got wiped, while otherwise I just get wiped. I'm not discounting the possibility that with greater skill you might be able to pull it off, but if you're that good you deserve to win regardless.

The only problem I have with the changes I made are aesthetic - fighting with Condors will almost certainly turn into a cannon duel which can look a bit silly with the rapid rate of dodging. I'm ok with it as a representation of a dog-fight, though.

I'm probably going to play around with it more, and have a proper test on a new game (since it's going to make air combat harder and therefore make the geoscape harder too). But it looks like it's possible to reduce the dominance of torpedoes while retaining their range and power for attacking larger UFOs.

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Another option with more minimal changes, would be changing the always -head on aspect of air battles. It might help to have alien ships (and your fighters) sometimes enter into battle from varying clock positions.

With all enemies in one place, it's easy to just use foxtrots. If you're having to turn them all different ways= then it's a bit more challenging.

Hmm, thinking that there would still need to be some tweaks to fighters and torpedos regardless.

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That already happens Josip. You can engage (or be engaged) at any angle potentially. In that video, I take several fights at 90 degree angles, which it trickier than head on. If you mean that for air superiority groups, I'm not sure how you would go about that without decoupling the vectors on the Geoscape from what shows up in combat.

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Hmmm. The main issue in what I've watched is you've engaging with Foxtrots, killing the escorts, backing off and re-arming and then almost immediately sending the same planes out to shoot down the main craft (I think there was also a bug where one of the fighters magically came back to life, wasn't there?)

Anyway, you're not meant to be able to do that. What would happen to your playstyle if the re-arm time on aircraft was set to 6 hours or something?

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We'd build more fightercraft.

+1

I'm not sure the problem is that you can send out the same planes multiple times per wave; it's that Foxtrots (with torpedoes) are just better than Condors and their later equivalents. Adding a rearm time wouldn't change that, it would just mean that you'd need more planes or need to choose your targets more selectively. If the time to reload for a Condor/whatever else was shorter than for a Foxtrot, that might make a difference, but Condors seem to have a habit of getting damaged even when they can secure a kill, which takes them out of action for a long time anyway.

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Why would it take six hours to re-arm a fighter carrying two missiles. That would take literally inside of 5 minutes.

Preflight check. Damage control. Pilots resting.

You don't want to have 5-minutes rearming with the addition of random crashes due to internal reasons, do you?

Aircraft maintenance is hard, fighter aircraft maintenance is even harder.

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Indeed. You could refuel and rearm a fighter in not very long. Minutes, really.

I can understand the safety and maintenance check, but having a second set of pilots would be worth the cost to get the planes back in the air.

And if you were desperate, I'd think that getting your torpedo boat back into the air might be kind of important. As we are talking about the future of mankind.

Edited by Ishantil
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It all boils down to that there's nothing better than torpedoes. Absolutely nothing. So you go for the aircraft with the most of the best weapon. I hesitate to make any suggestions, but by increasing the range of light missiles to the same range as torpedoes, and increasing the range of alien missiles to the same range as torpedoes, Foxtrots would no longer be the go-to solution. It's a levelling of the playing field that's needed, not a battering with the nerf bat.

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I agree, the current balance encourages as much torpedo spam as you can manage. I would rather the alien craft be buffed a little and the Condor line of planes be buffed a bit more in order to make them a more attractive and interesting option. Rather than hit the torpedo with the nerf bat.

I think that this would reduce some of the wild swing in the air combat and reduce the amount of torpedo spam.

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Chris, look at this way. It doesn't matter how many speedbumps you put in the way of an Ultimate Solution. We only will stop when the road is too risky to drive over. Rearm/refuel speedbumps are not particularly risky. Making Foxtrots more vulnerable is a "think twice" situation, because recovery time+repair time+refuel/rearm time generally carries over to the next wave as well.

TL;DR: Players can stand a rough ride (and bitch about it), but they they're unlikely to risk a blown tire.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Just let's hope they will not cut off the torpedoes completely.

I assume combat rolling enemies should be the counterbalance against the torpedoes, but currently they are not very great at it.

Several things can be tweaked here, including

- passive evasion chance against the torpedoes,

- longer lock on mobile tagets,

- forced re-lock on launching one torpedo (to prevent launch-wait-launch tactic against evasive roll)

and i'm pretty sure that's not all.

Besides, am i wrong or lock on timer should start only when you're in range?

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Hmmm. The main issue in what I've watched is you've engaging with Foxtrots, killing the escorts, backing off and re-arming and then almost immediately sending the same planes out to shoot down the main craft (I think there was also a bug where one of the fighters magically came back to life, wasn't there?)

Anyway, you're not meant to be able to do that. What would happen to your playstyle if the re-arm time on aircraft was set to 6 hours or something?

Yeah, that's a known bug that Giovanni said should be fixed in the next build (hopefully). That ghost fighter causes CTD if not dealt with properly.

I'd build more Foxtrots, because they're still vastly superior to Condors and torpedoes are still vastly superior to sidewinders. Even if you changed it to only have a long re-arm time for torpedoes, the number of sorties per wave would probably still be comparable between Foxes and Condors (higher speed and % based refueling means Foxtrots can run way more missions per wave than Condors, and more reliably intercept targets), but I could reliably use my Foxtrots all game long (6 plasma torpedoes kills a Carrier). If a major rearm time was accompanied by a buff to sidewinders, I might at least test using them. Currently I rapidly decommission my starting Condors to free up space.

I would probably expand more slowly, run on one base until I hit 5-6 Foxes (or whatever my minimum needed is) instead of building a second base on day 1 like I currently do, which would make the Geoscape harder because of less coverage.

The problem seems to be that torpedoes are just flat out superior to sidewinders, and massively more cost-efficient/safe than cannons.

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Preflight check. Damage control. Pilots resting.

You don't want to have 5-minutes rearming with the addition of random crashes due to internal reasons, do you?

Aircraft maintenance is hard, fighter aircraft maintenance is even harder.

Yeah, but you can turn and burn an aircraft running immediate, required sorties inside of 15 minutes.

That aside, maybe it shouldn't be a matter of making everything weaker every time it appears useful; make other options more attractive. Or perhaps make the torpedo carriers shorter-range, so you're restricting the scope of their massively powered engagement capabilities. You can either bring a big, heavy lumbering thing stacked with avalanche missiles to bear on capital ships and tougher craft that get too close to your base, but extending your reach leaves you to the more nimble craft with a larger footprint.

That would fit right in with what the flavor of the craft are supposed to be in-game, eh? The Foxtrot's not supposed to be a pursuit fighter. Send your big, glass-jawed guys in, let him drop some massive punches, pull them back, and let the lighter craft finish up.

I've thought on this a while myself; maybe if different aircraft had their own refuel/re-arm/repair times. Like, not just as a percentage ratio, but different rates for each craft. That would allow a much more fine-grained honing of this sort of thing, and would naturally incline people to use certain aircraft for certain situations.

Edited by EchoFourDelta
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Just let's hope they will not cut off the torpedoes completely.

I assume combat rolling enemies should be the counterbalance against the torpedoes, but currently they are not very great at it.

Several things can be tweaked here, including

- passive evasion chance against the torpedoes,

- longer lock on mobile tagets,

- forced re-lock on launching one torpedo (to prevent launch-wait-launch tactic against evasive roll)

and i'm pretty sure that's not all.

Besides, am i wrong or lock on timer should start only when you're in range?

That would only force more micro, and using of multiple re-engages. It would look something like this (literally my first attempt at this sort of engagement, simulating being unable to fire a second torpedo at a rolling craft from a single Foxtrot). This would probably not be possible versus Heavy Fighters.

[video=youtube_share;RJEghY4IzcI]

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That would only force more micro, and using of multiple re-engages. It would look something like this (literally my first attempt at this sort of engagement, simulating being unable to fire a second torpedo at a rolling craft from a single Foxtrot). This would probably not be possible versus Heavy Fighters.

Forced re-lock, if implemented, should be balanced so you will not be able to fire second torpedo in time. Regardless of your micro, the fighter will get to you and fire the missile, which (in case of foxtrot) will have bad consequences. So you will have to make tough choices or bring condor-class with you.

Let's say, lock of 5-8 seconds and necessity of having enemy in your fire cone all this time.

Overall my point was to bring a bunch of interesting alternatives. It's obvious that most of them are flawed.

Here's some more:

- teach fighters to be able to shoot down torpedoes. Distract them with condors before firing your main salvo.

- make heavy crafts vulnerable from behind, rendering flanking maneuvers being on par with the direct torpedo assaults in terms of damage.

Edited by a333
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So I have a kinda...extreme idea.

1. Have two kinds of aircraft hangers, one 1x2 for Dropships (1) and one 2x2 that holds three fighters. Starting base has one Fighter Hanger and one Dropship hanger.

2. Make all the aircraft cheaper to buy or build (but maintain the man-hours)

3. Encourage multiple multiple engagements to simulate the superiority of the enemy craft, but the high availability of replacement aircraft for the Earth forces.

4. Adjust the weaponry and aircraft so that their roles are well defined, but still have enough leeway to work in a pinch.

This will give the player a greater force to use. So you can encourage the player to attack with three Condors to first strip the escorts off and and retreat, then launch an attack with MiG-32s to down the aircraft.

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Hmm, never had a 90 degree encounter ever. Guess it's my luck- always been head on.

Regardless, someone had the idea of longer roll distance coupled with a lower recharge. That might be a good way to go. Fighters could reliably counter fighters, but would still be weak vs capital ships, but torpedos would be the opposite..

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The point is that you're not meant to use torpedoes on everything. You shouldn't be using them on the fighters. Because the fighters take two missiles to bring down, a long re-arm time (unrealistic or otherwise) would prevent players from using torpedoes against fighters.

The advantage of the Condor is meant to be that it has a cannon, which will make short work of the fighters. Therefore it doesn't need to use missiles against them. Thus a Foxtrot and two Condors should have 2 x Torpedoes, 4 x Light Missiles and a load of cannon rounds left to deal with the main ship once the escorts have been shot down. Three Foxtrots would only have 2 x Torpedoes left after shooting down both escorts.

Would that not work? I've not played the mid-game air combat for a while so I'm not completely up-to-date on what's happening there.

In any case, you're not meant to be able to use the same planes to shoot down all the UFOs in a wave, so we'll have to nerf the re-arm times so players actually have to make decisions about where to send their planes rather than just using the same squadron to get them all.

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