Interception Only Play-through.

[Belmakor]

I have been playing V20E9 with the intention of not performing any ground combats and with the aim to highlight the following issues.

1. That the relationship bonus being tied exclusively to shooting down aircraft is to the detriment of the game.

First thing I did was sell all my soldiers and fire my scientists (after researching Mig's).

I have bought hangars at every opportunity to fill all available space and bought aircraft at a ratio of 1 foxtrot for every 2 condors.

The first two months, saw me shoot down mainly l.scouts, scouts and the occasional corvette. I would air-strike every downed aircraft. I didn't lose a single aircraft by virtue of the fact that I was able to send 3 aircraft in every wave, and if needed send out two waves to destroy each enemy squadron.

This is what my base looks like at the end of 3 months.

I also have a Central America base with 2 foxtrots (in progress) and 4 condors (available).

My profit each month is $400,000 from funding and I gained a net increase in funding of $120,000 this month. (-$45,000 and -$90,000 in months 1 and 2). I reckon I am making about $400,000 from shooting down aircraft in month 1 and 2 and this is now up to $600,000 in month 3. That is a net profit of $1,000,000 despite doing no missions.

A enemy base has showed up and obviously I can't do anything about it. But that's ok because its giving me a steady stream of landing ships to shoot down with a very lucrative $70,000 per strike without any risk to myself.

Now I know I am only 3 months in but I wager that at this rate I am going to have complete dominance of the skies by the end of month 5. Probably by then I will have around 4 bases. At this point I will be able to buy some soldiers to do a couple of missions and quickly gain technology and research through sheer numbers.

Obviously I haven't come across anything larger than a corvette with 2 heavy fighter escorts but again this isn't an issue. One wave of condors to take out the fighters and then one wave of foxtrots to take out the corvette. I'd imagine any larger aircraft might take 3 waves, but I have enough aircraft for this.

more to follow

Edited December 17, 2013 by Belmakor

[Aaron]

This is a neat experiment - I'd be particularly curious to see if alien bases and terror sites eventually ruin your relations with nations.

[Mooton]

This is a neat experiment - I'd be particularly curious to see if alien bases and terror sites eventually ruin your relations with nations.

I've had alien bases sitting in my game for many months simply because I really hate alien bases in Xenonauts. As long as it's in an area where you shoot down many craft you can keep steady relations.

[llunak]

This is a neat experiment - I'd be particularly curious to see if alien bases and terror sites eventually ruin your relations with nations.

Do those have any effect on regions besides the one where they take place? If not (which I'd guess is the case), then I seriously doubt they'll make any difference. Already with 3 well-placed bases it's possible to have a reasonable coverage for more than half of the regions, where these terror sites of course will not take place with sufficient air superiority, and these regions should make up for the rest of regions. Especially given that uncovered regions will probably be lost one way or another - in my veteran game, by November, all my undefended regions are about to drop their funding below 100k$, making them next to irrelevant even in a normally played game. Belmakor, out of curiosity, could you please list your funding per region after November?

Edited December 17, 2013 by llunak

[Skitso]

Sorry a bit of off topic, but I just have to ask: how are you guys finding these alien bases? What events should trigger them? Will ufos build them? (Will air superiority affect number of alien bases built?) If you read my 20.8 experiences, http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8404-skitso-s-feelings-on-20-8 you can understand my frustration: not a single alien base until march...

Edited December 17, 2013 by Skitso

[vaultdweller]

Will ufos build them? (Will air superiority affect number of alien bases built?)

Yes, UFO's build them. If your air superiority is so great that they can never successfully land to complete their base-building mission, then you'll never see an alien base.

[Belmakor]

Belmakor, out of curiosity, could you please list your funding per region after November?

Funding as of 2nd December as follows;

N.A = $153,571

C.A = $183,333

S.A = $210,000

EU = $260,000 (1 terror strike this month causing -$120,000 at month end)

N. Af = $412,500

S. Af = $300,000

M.E = $375,000

Sov = $255,537

Indo = $8,333 (2 terror strikes)

Aus = $220,000

[StellarRat]

I think you'll be dead by summer unless GH has failed to ramp up the invasion enough overall. But, no matter how this turns, you can't win the game with current strategy and will be in a neverending war with the aliens, hardly a desirable outcome. I don't see how this shows any flaws in the current Geoscape scheme.

Edited December 17, 2013 by StellarRat

[ventuswings]

@ StellarRat

At this point I will be able to buy some soldiers to do a couple of missions and quickly gain technology and research through sheer numbers.

I think he can just choose to do one mission for each of the UFO then do the final mission, without incentive to repeat the mission twice if successful. Perhaps do easy light scout & scout missions if some material grinding is required. That would barely scratch the 40 mission per game threshold developers desire.

Edited December 17, 2013 by ventuswings

[Belmakor]

Ok so the first thing I have established is that it is a mistake to have so many Condors around in December. By now its only worth having 3, just enough to take out the escorts of larger ships.

It would be far better to have 2 sets of 3 foxtrots to enable the taking out of Cruisers.

As it stands I am being overloaded by Large alien vessels every wave and 6 Avalanches are simply not enough. This might be an issue with balancing in general (have others encountered such vessels in December?) or simply because the invasion ticker has advanced to high due to that Alien base.

In terms of funding, it is still at a net profit even at the end of December but I can see that at this point I have lost the war. SORRY!!!

Caption: Both aircraft actually survived this encounter!

My intermediate conclusion is that I really ought to have completed 2 missions before sacking my soldiers. One scout and one corvette. This would have allowed me to research Alenium missiles and allowed my game to continue well into the new year.

Regarding the initial hypothesis; this requires further testing.

p.s this was Veteran Iron Mode.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Belmakor

[StellarRat]

@ StellarRat

I think he can just choose to do one mission for each of the UFO then do the final mission, without incentive to repeat the mission twice if successful. Perhaps do easy light scout & scout missions if some material grinding is required.

OK, if he can get total air superority and play the final mission there might be a problem with the game. Although, one could argue that this a valid strategy too. Remember, he still has to run a bunch of ground combats to get the final mission. That's how I won a game of Apocalypse once. Maybe there needs to be a "final" stage by the aliens where they begin landing troops and you lose automatically. I'd hate to change the current system too much because it's actually pretty fun from my perspective. I really have no desire to play a game where I need to run literally hundreds of ground combat to win. A few dozen is fine, but after that it gets very tedious.

[StellarRat]

My intermediate conclusion is that I really ought to have completed 2 missions before sacking my soldiers. One scout and one corvette. This would have allowed me to research Alenium missiles and allowed my game to continue well into the new year.

Regarding the initial hypothesis; this requires further testing.

p.s this was Veteran Iron Mode.

You would also need probably 15 or 20 scientists too. That's a fairly big expensive.

[Belmakor]

You would also need probably 15 or 20 scientists too. That's a fairly big expensive.

Possibly, or possibly not. I would have 3.5 months to get to Alenium missiles. How many projects do I need to complete to get that? Its around 4 right?

Would need to check the xml's to find out how many man hours total.

[StellarRat]

Possibly, or possibly not. I would have 3.5 months to get to Alenium missiles. How many projects do I need to complete to get that? Its around 4 right?

Would need to check the xml's to find out how many man hours total.

Yeah, if you wanted to get an exact number.

[Aaron]

Aliens attacking an undefended Xenonaut base instantly destroy it - that might also prove somewhat arresting to this strategy, unless you can stop them every time.

[Ol' Stinky]

Aliens attacking an undefended Xenonaut base instantly destroy it - that might also prove somewhat arresting to this strategy, unless you can stop them every time.

Do they still only head for the oldest existing base? Rehiring a squad of soldiers to arrive in time for Nov would sort that out.

I'm with StellarRat - being able to skip lightscout mission #227 is a godsend, and I'm really enjoying the geoscape game at the moment. Simply cutting down on the number of UFOs that can appear would be a real buzzkill: that first time you get 6+ UFOs appearing on the radar is a "whoa!" moment.

[Aaron]

They randomly pick a base, but it is biased towards bases that have existed for longer e.g. a base that has existed for 2 months is twice as likely to be attacked as one that has existed for 1 month.

[Solver]

Aaron, have you checked if the base-attack bias formula realistically allows a possibility of a newer base being attacked? I still have never had any base other than my first attacked, including 2nd bases that I found within a month of the game's start.

[Skitso]

I have never had a base attack myself... Kinda even hope to have those to break the monotony. I dont have alien bases either... only crash/landing sites and terror sites. It's strange.

[StellarRat]

I have never had a base attack myself... Kinda even hope to have those to break the monotony. I dont have alien bases either... only crash/landing sites and terror sites. It's strange.

If you're doing a good job with AC you're probably shooting down the base attackers and builders. That's why you haven't seen those two missions yet. I ALWAYS shoot down ships headed towards my bases. You do not want a base attack, trust me.

[Dranak]

I've taken the OP's model and modified it slightly, allowing for one mission on each type of UFO and keeping one lab worth of scientists with good results so far. Three months in I have three bases, each running triple radar and 5+ runways. I'm at about 7 Condors and 8 Foxtrots with positive cash flow, and the majority of my infrastructure is in place. I'm researching Corsairs now, and debating if it will be worth it to produce them, (I will probably only be able to produce a couple before Carriers show up, if I even have the resources to build them) or if I should start ramping up manufacturing and start working on ground combat equipment. I've got the feeling I may need to start running more ground combat on landing ships/cruisers to farm alloy/alenium, but I'll find out soon.

[Belmakor]

You do not want a base attack, trust me.

I love it how around 8 Androns can come through a hangar door on the same turn and lob 3 or 4 grenades onto the exact squares my guys are standing on... Not!

It might just be Murphys Law but I swear my grenades never land where they are supposed to and more often that not don't even make it over those bloody sandbags.

[Dranak]

Some followup. Spent two months setting up two full air bases (2-3 Condors, 3 Foxes each, which gave me basically full coverage over all regions except for Australia and the eastern bits of China/Russia. I ran one lab, and assaulted 1 of each UFO Landing Ship and smaller. The third month I added a second workshop and then built full lasers and (almost full) Wolf armor, then starting to build my 3rd base for radar coverage of the remaining area.

I've upgraded to a Shrike, and could probably finish the game from here if I started grinding crash sites to get more Alenium/Alloys. It would probably be optimal to farm enough Alenium to replace your Condors with Marauders, probably starting with Cruiser sites.

Once my 3rd was established, I added a second lab and tried to catch up a bit on research. Heavy Fighters seemed like they would be my downfall, but despite taking regular losses I was able to maintain near-total air dominance. Basically you can outfly Heavy Fighters (or more accurately, their missiles) and just snipe the craft they're escorting.

Even knowing the tech tree and struggling a bit with Heavy Fighters, Corsairs never really felt that appealing because by the time I was able to start building them, I would have only produced a couple of them before starting Marauder production (if I had enough Alenium), and since Marauders are flat out superior to Corsairs why build the inferior plane? It feels like if Corsairs are intended to be needed for Heavy Fighters, they come too late to produce in numbers, and if they aren't needed for Heavy Fighters (and while nice, they aren't really needed currently) they don't really serve a purpose.

Anyway, through mid Feb my pure Condor/Fox air force with Plasma weapons was finally sliding down from pure dominance to struggling but managing to still largely clear the skies. Overall I missed a total of 3 terror missions, and no bases or base attacks so far. Carriers and Strike Cruisers are manageable, and every month I had positive cash flow and after my 3rd base was built I consistently floated $1M+.

I'm really not sure what conclusions to draw from this beyond that it is indeed possible to get through the game running very few ground combat missions on normal difficulty, but it's probably okay that a player that is very good at the game can get through Normal without a great deal of challenge. The buffs to UFO HP on higher difficulty levels would probably change things and make this much less viable, but I haven't done the math to verify that.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Dranak