V19 SC2: are Foxtrots now totally useless?

[henri5]

Have the latest changes made Foxrots totally useless? Now the alien scouts and fighters can dodge both torpedoes due to the 1-second dodge cooldown. I can't find any use for Foxtrots except as decoys to pull alien ships away while the Condors try to flank them, but this makes it totally impossible to win a battle against 3 alien fighters. In the latter case, going into battle is suicide because the fighters are faster, so it is best to just stay home.

As for the Condors, I find it almost impossible to time the two torpedoes and both usually miss. Fortunately this is compensated to some amount by the longer range of the Condor guns.

As a result most of my air battles consist of using one plane to decoy the aliens while the other one hopes to flank one and use his gun to down him. This is rather repetitive and dull.

[Ishantil]

The Foxtrot is not useful against smaller UFOs. Later, it'll be the early delivery option for torpedoes against Corvettes and Landing Ships.

I've considered ordering a third Condor for each of my bases to take on groups of fighters.

[EchoFourDelta]

They're not useless; the interceptor and the "missile truck" just have defined roles, finally. You can't get by with just the Foxtrot anymore.

[lemm]

Foxtrots are also useful for drawing missile fire from alien fighters. Boost through the alien fighter's missile arc with afterburners perpendicular to the vector of the alien ship. All of their missiles will fall behind the Foxtrot. You should be able to clean up the remaining fighters with two Condors (two kills by missile and one by cannon).

I keep 2 Condors and 2 Foxtrots at each base.

[Xintrosi]

... Condors try to flank them, but this makes it totally impossible to win a battle against 3 alien fighters. In the latter case, going into battle is suicide because the fighters are faster, so it is best to just stay home.

I got lucky and manged to take out 3 fighters with a single Condor (before the cannon range was upgraded). This was a huge fluke because the two I didn't kill with missiles rolled into the same profile, so both were in the cannon envelope at the same. This taught me the valuable lesson that condors are not as completely useless as I once thought they were. In order to get your missiles to hit, you should fire in the middle of their roll right about the time you roll to avoid their missiles. 2 Condors should be able to take out 3 fighters. Unfortunately, you will usually have to repair the planes afterwards.

Foxtrots are useless on smaller ships unless you want to nearly ram an unescorted light scout. It's unfortunate that we can't rely on them like we used to. Repetitive/tedious air battles do tend to occur more often now.

[Josip Broz Tito]

Huh? Being able to only use foxtrots was repetitive : ) I find the air battles to be much better now that I have to use condors and corsairs against smaller ships. Being forced to make choices makes the game better.

[GizmoGomez]

How is that unfortunate? The game is actually working as designed now; you have dogfighters for evade-enabled UFOs like light scouts, escorts, and the like, and you have missile trucks for taking on large capital ships and anything that can't roll.

Once the air combat auto resolve is fixed up you'll be able to skip all the tedious missions you want.

[Xintrosi]

How is that unfortunate?

Poor word choice. "Less convenient" would be better, as I tend to be one of those relatively inflexible people that doesn't adapt to change well. In fact that's why I play these kinds of games, so I can learn to be a bit more flexible in changing situations. I got so comfortable using Foxtrots in all circumstances that I became a bit stagnant in my thinking.

My biggest annoyance is actually early game with Scouts and Light Scouts both being detected as "small". I send 1 Foxtrot and 1 Condor to each contact just in case, so the foxtrot gets its time wasted on light scout encounters. Not saying it needs to be changed or anything, just that I am sad when all my aircraft are on missions when more contacts are detected.

[kabill]

My biggest annoyance is actually early game with Scouts and Light Scouts both being detected as "small". I send 1 Foxtrot and 1 Condor to each contact just in case, so the foxtrot gets its time wasted on light scout encounters. Not saying it needs to be changed or anything, just that I am sad when all my aircraft are on missions when more contacts are detected.

There's a trick here - Light Scouts have a speed of 1400km/hour (or whatever unit of measurement the game uses) while Scouts have a speed of 1200km/hour. I'm not sure I've ever seen a UFO moving at a speed lower than it's maximum (unless it's grounded), so you can use this to work out whether a small UFO is a Scout or Light Scout.

[henri5]

I may be a minority, but I would not waste time on the air war, and make Xenonaut automatic air victory an option. The interest of this game is the ground combat, and that is where the effort should concentrate. After all, no one is going to buy this game for the air war.

[GizmoGomez]

I did.

<looks around>

What? It was a selling point.

[SalsaDoom]

I like the air minigame now it has some balance to it... but again, there is auto-resolve so I'm not seeing a problem here.

[Josip Broz Tito]

I like the air mini-game too. Why settle to be an x-com clone when you can expand upon the original too.

[Gromitek]

I think that air combat in xenonauts is beter then in original xcom.

[EchoFourDelta]

Oh yeah, geoscape layer/air combat absolutely curbstomps the original.

[Hairyscreech]

Personally I think the air war is as much of a critical part of the game as the ground war, in this situation it would be imperative to attempt to gain air superiority and the side that wins the air war will probably be on top in terms of the ground war.

[Dranak]

No, they aren't completely useless. They just have been relegated to one very specific role, at which they are questionably better than "dogfighters" currently.

[Saskali]

The problems with air comba in v19 for me is that they changed too much things.

they increased the prices of ships they lowered missile range they increased the dodge ability of ships. And on top of that they made foxtrots able to cary only 2 missile which have to be torpedos.

This is an overkill in my point of view. Yesterday i couldnt even kill a scout (which cant dodge) with my foxtrot two torpedos so i had to use the two remaining condors to finish the job. (they had previously defeated the 2 fighters that were defending the scout)

So what is the purpose of bringing a foxtrot and not 3 condors now in early game ? None for me. They should rename Foxtrot from high speed inerceptor into High speed bait.

Don't see any purpose they fulfill better than condors appart from baiting early on.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Saskali

[kabill]

Foxtrots are effective against larger UFOs which can't dodge. This means that they don't have much of a purpose early on (at least, before Scouts appear, which can happen as early as mid-September). After that, they're really useful (or so I have found).

(This said, Dranak has raised the question of whether the present firepower of the Condor relative to the Foxtrot doesn't just make them better. There's definately a good case to me made regarding that - on paper at least.)

[Amaror]

I think Foxtrots should be able to carry multiple torpedos. They are meant to kill heavy ufos, but the torpedos are pretty damn weak against big ships too. They don't do so much damage, as i would expect as the only possible weapon of a way more expensive ship.

When you count the gun that the interceptors can carry too, they are way better against big targets too.

[GizmoGomez]

Double the damage of the torps, and double the HP of the larger ships. Simple fix.

This way the foxtrot is significantly better at destroying the larger ships than the dogfighters without nerfing anything.

[Snarks]

Honestly, part of the problem is the fact that you get the Foxtrot so early in the game. For someone who doesn't know the metagame, they'll build a Foxtrot or two and then find out that for the next 3 months that its function isn't necessary and that it's outperformed by the Condors when it comes to shooting down scouts and fighters.

[StellarRat]

Honestly, part of the problem is the fact that you get the Foxtrot so early in the game. For someone who doesn't know the metagame, they'll build a Foxtrot or two and then find out that for the next 3 months that its function isn't necessary and that it's outperformed by the Condors when it comes to shooting down scouts and fighters.

Good point. Another problem is that the Foxtrot isn't fast enough to not carry a gun or secondary IR missiles. It can't escape quickly enough after firing it's missiles to get away with running it solo.

[ventuswings]

I assume the value of long-ranged missiles will increase once proper alien UFO AI is implemented, increasing the value of foxtrot on early stages of the game.

[GizmoGomez]

Maybe as well as buffing torp damage and large UFO HP, we should also buff the foxtrot speed and the corsair speed. That way, if you try flying with condors you're kinda stuck going rather slowly, but if you've upgraded to corsairs you can go really fast.