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The Second Flying Circus (UFO AC mod)


Max_Caine

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Hi Guys. I'm mostly trying out TD's latest XNT and trying my hand at syncing animations atm, but there's always room for another Flying Circus update! First off, the Interceptor. All I did with the Interceptor was fit it to the description in the Xenopedia. Didn't need to change the airframe, just up-gunned it.

[video=youtube;0SLQac1YtYY]

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Secondly, here's the Carrier. Once again, the weapons have been stripped out, and replaced with something different. The Carrier now sports 4 missile ports, and shoots a lot of low-damage missiles. This particular design was inspired by the Itano Circus, an outrageous torrent of missiles all trying to hit their target.

[video=youtube;k1oU1GKA4qg]

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The Battleship is, simply put, unfair. This is supposed to be the ultimate in UFO construction and I decided to make it so. I originaly wanted it to have a dozen gun turrets, but I've learnt that UFOs are restricted to 4 weapons just as aircraft are so I've had to get creative. This UFO actually has less weapon types than the previous UFOs but each weapon is capable of targetting an entire squadron. You can't take it on with Foxtrots - you have to have Corsairs or Marauders. A Fury is a real option verses a Battleship. Take a look for yourself...

[video=youtube;WorSfwPcwCc]

I've done all the UFOs. I may continue to tweak them but for now, the Flying Circus is complete. I will probably go back and look at the human aircraft but I want to spend more time with other people's mods and fiddle with the wording for Lore+ which means cutting down on development of my own. I'll add this to the active mod list, and if you fancy something more challenging, please download and comment! (d/l link in the OP)

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A third plane in that example would make a big difference, too. It could even be a Foxtrot, using the Marauders to draw fire away from it.

Quick question: I've been doing some playing around with air combat myself and was getting problems with missile defences which seem to be causing CTDs. Are you using missile defences in this mod still, and if so have you encountered any issues with them?

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Yes, plenty. I found that the best way to make a PD turret of any description was to modify and clone an existing weapon. The PD turrets on the corvette and the cruiser are existing weapons which have had the "can shoot missiles" switched to "Yes" and their radius/fire rate altered. Antimissiles don't seem to work (don't know why) and you can never have more than 1 PD turret per ship - if AC detects more than one PD turret about to fire, it falls over.

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and you can never have more than 1 PD turret per ship - if AC detects more than one PD turret about to fire, it falls over.

Ah, this might explain it. I've not had multiple turrets, but I have had a RoF sufficiently small that it could have been trying to fire again while the first projectile was still in flight, or something, which might have been the cause. No missile shields, then! Thanks.

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This mod looks glorious! > : D I'll certainly be trying this out in the next week! I wonder though, how much has this barrel-roll-inducing dog fighting increased fuel consumption? I know rolling in AC does take extra fuel, so does this mod noticeably decrease the effective fuel range of the fighters?

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From what I can tell, it doesn't affect the fight in any noticable way. That is to say in all the AC fights I've been in to test all the UFOs, I haven't seen an effect. However, I will say that I don't chain intercepts, so I haven't taken that into account.

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Not sure if this is intentional, but starting-level Foxtrots can't solo a Scout in this mod. Might be by design, but thought I'd mention it in case you missed it when updating for - no, wait, it's supposed to be for v22.10.

Well, it works fine with final release anyway, but if you intend to update it the reminder about this might be useful!

EDIT: Oh, and airstrike values haven't been nerfed.

Edited by kabill
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EDIT: Ugh, just went and looked back at the post on landing ships above, and you more or less say all of this! I'd still make a case for making landing ships more of a threat on their own, though).

Some quick feedback:

I've found Corvettes tougher than Landing Ships.

The missile defences on the corvette completely throw me. Part of that was because I wasn't sure what angle they're protected from (is it the little cone in the middle?) so I've been unsure what direction to attack from. I actually found a Foxtrot/Condor pair to work reasonably well, (ideally) kiting the corvette with the condor to get the torpedoes in, then charging the 'vette with the condor, overshooting it and quickly turning to unload missiles from behind. (Although I've not been able to master this yet; on one attempt my Condor just got shot up and died and overall I've had three-four planes downed by 'vettes in my current game).

In contrast, with the single Landing Ship I've fought, it played out almost exactly as in vanilla: two foxtrots fly in to attack, unload torpedoes, and turn to escape. They take fire as the torpedoes are coming in, but if you fly fast and at an angle to the landing ship, the shots will miss and you'll down the UFO without damage. It's plausible that this requires some skill to do, but I wasn't especially trying to do that when it happened and it was my first shot at the new Landing Ship. So my money would be on them being a bit easy rather than me being especially apt!

That said, I can imagine Landing Ships possibly being more difficult with escorts, since their field of fire will make it difficult to engage the escorts without taking hits. So I guess, in that sense, the landing ship is playing a different role to the corvette. But given the propensity for landing ship UFOs in the mid game (between December and January they pretty much make up every single UFO spawn), there's going to be a lot of unescorted landing ships and I'm not sure at the moment the mod buffs them enough with that in mind.

(Not sure I have any ideas about what to do, mind. I do like the point-defence weapons: giving landing ships a fairly wide arch point-defence but a very low turning speed would require planes to fly past and probably though the Landing Ship's field of fire to get behind for a shot. Maybe something like that? I don't know.)

Edited by kabill
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The Battleship is, simply put, unfair. This is supposed to be the ultimate in UFO construction and I decided to make it so. I originaly wanted it to have a dozen gun turrets, but I've learnt that UFOs are restricted to 4 weapons just as aircraft are so I've had to get creative. This UFO actually has less weapon types than the previous UFOs but each weapon is capable of targetting an entire squadron. You can't take it on with Foxtrots - you have to have Corsairs or Marauders. A Fury is a real option verses a Battleship. Take a look for yourself...

[video=youtube;WorSfwPcwCc]

I've done all the UFOs. I may continue to tweak them but for now, the Flying Circus is complete. I will probably go back and look at the human aircraft but I want to spend more time with other people's mods and fiddle with the wording for Lore+ which means cutting down on development of my own. I'll add this to the active mod list, and if you fancy something more challenging, please download and comment! (d/l link in the OP)

As I have watched this video - amazingly massive enemy counter-fire - it reminded me that I always miss to see some current UFO damage state info in the fighter control panel at the right side.

I know you see that when you zoom in on the UFO.

Your jets are turn red from top to bottom with accumulating damage.

The red UFO sign does not change. I think it would be helpful to see the damge there too.

Maybe like this:

xeno_ac_ufo icon.jpg

I don't know if this is moddable, I can't do it.

xeno_ac_ufo icon.jpg

577e7cee310bf_xeno_ac_ufoicon.jpg.ae9d1e

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  • 4 weeks later...

Do you have any plans to update this mod to CE .24?

I tried looking at the two files you modded (aircrafts.xml and aircraftweapons.xml) but only aircrafts.xml loads up in Excel while aircraftweapons.xml gives me an error while loading (something to do with "Worksheet Settings").

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I make lot of test of "2thFC" and I need to point some interesting stuff here:

- I really enjoy the capital city mechanics, take much more sense for me that a huge alien aircraft has quick firing stations all around. masterwork!

- The degree of differentiation of Corsair/Marauder give much protagonist to the Melee Fighter in comparison with Shock trooper. Is wonderful!

- Alien Fighters and interceptors are original and very diverse, in tactics and wepondry.

- The most wonderful piece of this mod is the AMS (Anti missiles system) incorporated in the Cruiser.

Some suggestions (IMO):

- Part of the flip roll is a simulation or interpretation of evasion make by real fighters in the Y or X axis, without changing Z orientations (In other words your evading missiles but still facing the enemy directly), thing that is not easy and very rare in real aircraft combat. The most common evasion method is keep incoming projectiles 90° of the changing Z orientation, reducing the chance of hit using the forward speed and the momentum of the aircrafts. If you check XNT Aircombat system you can found some examples, maybe you can incorporate some kind of tactic to enter in huge AoE of alien capital ships.

- Speed and lock time, maybe you can work with this ones :D!

- Make conventional aircraft very vulnerable (Or maybe all!)

Congrats this mod is pure gold, I don't have other word to describe it.

Edit: I forgot to say that .... I get stressed a lot with the Battle ships D:!

Edited by TacticalDragon
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TD, thanks for the feedback. I apologise for not responding. To answer your comments.

  • I'm not quite certain what you want me to do here - do you want me to try and introduce a Z axis? I'm not a coder, only a modder.
  • To whom do you refer re. speed and lock times? UFOs or human aircraft?
  • I don't want to modify existing aircraft at this time. If I was to modify human aircraft, then I have to start all over again with the UFOs, and I currently don't have the time to do that.

TD, in your previous posts and this one, it seems that you'd really like me to modify human aircraft as well. Ehhhhh... I'm super not keen on doing that for a variety of reasons. Some of them are: 1) I don't think that re-wiring the entire AC system is worth it, because there are modders (including yourself) who have already done that. 2) I see lots of new human aircraft, but I appear to be the only one who's interested in alien UFOs, and dpelectric and myself were really and truly the only people interested in reintroducing the Destroyer and the Dreadnaught. 3) I am interested in the novel and the exotic. Human aircraft are neither. 4) Secret. TD, if you want me to branch out, then persaude me.

BuzuBuzu, ugh, I need the time. I just don't have the time at the moment.

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I see lots of new human aircraft, but I appear to be the only one who's interested in alien UFOs, and dpelectric and myself were really and truly the only people interested in reintroducing the Destroyer and the Dreadnaught.

That's not entirely true. My air combat mod deals with UFOs too (just not as an individual package). Also, I was totally on board with the Destroyer and Dreadnaught plan. I just didn't have the time to contribute anything useful when it was happening and it seemed like you and Dpeletric were on top of it. If anyone wants to res the idea, I should be able to be a bit more useful now. In fact...

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Your so talented modding UFO ships that I strongly believe that you and Theon are me most suited persons to remake Human Aircrafts.

We remake both Human and Alien ships. Im really surprised when I test most of the UFO ins this mod, capital ships bring a interesting and changeling opportunity.

I hope you continue your work on this mod, you touch most of the UFO Ship, why not make more interesting the system rebuilding human aircrafts?. Really nice job Max!

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