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I have finally begun to master the air combat.

The trick with escorted Medium/Large ships is to have two Condors and one Fox. Immediately fly the Condors to either side of the larger ship, the escorts will target them. Make sure you have all missiles locked, you want to have full control of when they are launched. Also make sure to right-click the Foxtrot to the main ship, to make sure it doesn't fire it's torpedoes at a stray fighter. I have lost a couple of engagements that way, and it is rage-inducingly annoying. Also make sure the Fox is not hurtling forward at top speed. Save the afterburner fuel in case it needs to make a run for it.

As your planes get close to the enemy firing arcs, pause the game and start double-tapping the space bar to quickly unpause and pause the game. Make sure you are zoomed in for this. As soon as the fighters start firing, identify which plane is under fire and dodge immediately. Make a course correction shortly after dodging to make sure your planes are facing the fighters, or you might lose your bead on them and lose valuable milliseconds (I am not kidding).

Don't fire your missiles at the escorts, you can take them down with your nose guns (get laser gatling guns as soon as possible btw, or you won't be able to take out heavy fighters this way). Save your missiles for the main ship.

Keep doing this, double-tapping space bar and watching carefully for enemy fire, until your Condors are within gun range, and let them take out the fighters using the same pause and unpause technique.

By now the Fox should be in range to fire it's torpedoes. What does the Fox say? Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-CHOW!

As soon as the Fox has launched it's torpedoes, afterburner it out of there or it is toast. Let the Condors close with the ship, launch missiles and take it out with the nose guns.

The most important thing is to never let the game run for more than an instant when anything is within firing range of anything else, dodge liberally, manage your missiles and give move orders to your planes to keep them flying straight towardds their target.

Using this technique my Condors almost never take damage, and I rarely lose a plane. And when I do, I scream at the monitor. Because nothing makes me angrier than failing at something I know how to do, because I didn't do it well enough.

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Why is it sometimes my jets refuse to fire their missiles? The aliens are well in range, missiles are active/green but no fireworks. Clicking on the missiles merely disable them. I had to resort to frontal assault cannon fire on multiple occasions because of dud missiles which invariably leads to damaged fighters. Is this a game "feature" or a bug?

Another question, what's the red diamond symbol I see next to missile icons? Sometimes it's there but other times it shows "1.0s" which I assume is the lock-on time. i don't think the diamond is a "missile locked" symbol as sometimes it's there right at the start of combat when nothing's in range.

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Well in that case, I can sometimes fire missiles at a "non-target" and other times cannot fire at a valid target within my firing arc. I have noticed though that I'd have no issues if I simply leave them to fire at will, the missiles will work regardless of whether the red diamond icon comes on. But that just means alien fighters dodge ALL my missiles and I'm back to using cannons. Do missiles only work in a frontal attack, unable to lock-on the sides or rear of alien craft?

No one else having this problem? I don't use any mods, all default key bindings, and I've verified local game files on Steam. I'm stumped.

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Missiles will lock from out of range if any enemy is in an area that's roughly an infinite extension of their aiming cone. The red diamond means the missile is being prevented from firing (either due to range, or being set to not fire). The text/missile icon will turn red if the missile is sat to not fire.

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So you're saying:

1) Red diamond, green missile icon: Missile ready to fire, but out of range

2) Red diamond, red missile icon: Missile disabled, out of range

3) No diamond, green missile icon: Missile ready to fire

But sometimes (randomly) my missiles show a "1.0s", no red diamond, and will just flat-out refuse to lock-on & launch at targets within their firing cone. In other words, the "1.0s" never counts down and clicking the missile icon simply disables it.

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I don't particularly pay attention to all that, but, I tend to start off by preventing any of my missiles from firing, just because sometimes, aliens dodge outside of my firing range, (especially if I'm not going at full speed,) which is rather annoying, since it gives them a chance to dodge the second missile. I just manually launch both missiles.

But sometimes (randomly) my missiles show a "1.0s", no red diamond, and will just flat-out refuse to lock-on & launch at targets within their firing cone. In other words, the "1.0s" never counts down and clicking the missile icon simply disables it.

The problem you are experiencing may be related to your planes trying to target/get a lock on the wrong ship, or something.

How do you go into combat? What do you do trying to target them?

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How do you go into combat? What do you do trying to target them?

Uh, now that you've mentioned it, I don't actually tell individual planes which ufo to target. I simply try to get a single ufo into each plane's firing cone, and since each plane is specifically maneouvred to engage only one target, I assume (wrongly?) they'll launch missiles at the only thing in their firing cone. This problem has also occured when 2 condors + 1 kite engage a single corvette. One of the flankers (sometimes both) will refuse to use their missiles.

I don't suppose there's a blind fire button...it's not like the missile lock actually does anything anyway. Might as well fire unguided rockets.

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Why is it sometimes my jets refuse to fire their missiles? The aliens are well in range, missiles are active/green but no fireworks. Clicking on the missiles merely disable them. I had to resort to frontal assault cannon fire on multiple occasions because of dud missiles which invariably leads to damaged fighters. Is this a game "feature" or a bug?

Another question, what's the red diamond symbol I see next to missile icons? Sometimes it's there but other times it shows "1.0s" which I assume is the lock-on time. i don't think the diamond is a "missile locked" symbol as sometimes it's there right at the start of combat when nothing's in range.

I find this happens when your jet is actually targeting a different alien craft than the one in front of it. Make sure to right click on the ship you want your fighter to target.

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But of course, click on target first, then click to fire. Now if only someone would make a naval combat mod with ships vs UFOs or USOs, I think the current air combat interface makes for a delightful naval warfare sim. At least then torpedoes would be where they belong, in the water & not gliding slowly through the air.

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But of course, click on target first, then click to fire. Now if only someone would make a naval combat mod with ships vs UFOs or USOs, I think the current air combat interface makes for a delightful naval warfare sim. At least then torpedoes would be where they belong, in the water & not gliding slowly through the air.

Meh, I think it is a suitably simplified representation of dogfighting. It is tactically deep enough to be challenging to master, and simple enough tha we all know what is going on without having to deal with movement in three dimensions and real world physics. I like it.

I would, however, absolutely adore a Terror From the Deep mod/expansion to this game. Most likely not going to happen, but I would buy the shit out of it.

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So you're saying:

1) Red diamond, green missile icon: Missile ready to fire, but out of range

2) Red diamond, red missile icon: Missile disabled, out of range

3) No diamond, green missile icon: Missile ready to fire

But sometimes (randomly) my missiles show a "1.0s", no red diamond, and will just flat-out refuse to lock-on & launch at targets within their firing cone. In other words, the "1.0s" never counts down and clicking the missile icon simply disables it.

Cannons will fire at anything that flies into their cone of fire, missiles will not and will only fire at what you have targeted for that plane.

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