I don't get Furies

I've finished the game 3-4 times now, and have never bothered to build a Fury. Am I the only one? The simple fact that the game can be successfully completed, and air supremacy achieved, without Furies seems to call their utility into question. To me, there seems to be three issues with a Fury:

1. Cost. At $600K, 30 alloys, 187 man-days, and 50 alenium, their price is prohibitive. Not to mention the need for an alien singularity core only available from battleships. Taking on a battleship, with its crew of elite warriors and a praetor, is always a dicey proposition. And on top of that, the first core you obtain is not available for a Fury. Assuming that you assaulted your first battleship to stun a praetor, and were successful, or had already captured a praetor from an alien base, this means you're going after future battleships more-or-less just for the core, which makes the risk/reward assessment, to me, considerably less than favorable. Especially given the fact that your Marauders are already controlling the skies and you already made a heavy cash/alloy/alenium investment in their production, and resources can be more easily farmed for less inherent risk from carriers.

2. Destruction. An X-120 obliterates its target. No goodies or experience from crash sites. Which is somewhat self-defeating, as a singularity torpedo vaporizes a battleship and the core that it contains. Which means you can't use a Fury to get more Furies. It's back to using your Marauders. This appears to set up a situation where it seems the devs didn't want you to have more than one Fury, since its use negates the possibility of getting more cores and more alenium. If so, then ok, but this simultaneously compromises an X-120's overall usefulness. Why not just stick with Marauders?

3. Timing. As noted, by the time a Fury becomes available, I already have control of the skies, have spent most of my resources on Marauders and final troop equipment, and have captured a praetor either via base or first battleship assault. I'm on the verge of launching the final mission, and will soon not give a hoot about air superiority. The X-120 appears so late that it's intended role is all but over.

To me, these issues preclude building a/any Furies. Which begs the question if something doesn't need to be changed. Singularity cores could, for example, be present on carriers (the other massive ship, necessitating their use) so a Fury could be built before the extreme end game. Their alenium cost could be adjusted to make them a valid alternative, possibly, to two Marauders. And to balance these nerfs their torpedo could inflict heavy, but not absolute, damage, so they would need backup to finish off a battleship and still have the crash site available. In other words, they would be super-Marauders (or maybe super-Foxtrots) but not flying machines of total doom.

I'm sure the devs thought through all of this at length, and I'm sure they had solid reasons for making the X-120 the way that it is. Clearly it can be overpowered, so the general thrust is to severely limit your capacity to produce them. However, the way it stands now I don't build and don't need ANY, which seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Anybody else agree? Are there obvious points that I'm missing...?

Edit: This thread was made with X:CE in mind. So Gaudd, if you post "this is all completely irrelevant, as it's too late for the devs to make any changes" I'm gonna strangle you

Hm, I just finished the game, and I didn't even know that these existed.

So I must agree that they do come way too late.

Hm, I just finished the game, and I didn't even know that these existed.

I rest my case

Nice sensible arguments, well-constructed case, but this is all completely irrelevant, as it's too late for the devs to make any changes.

Ah, wait...

This is all completely irrelevant, as it's too late for the devs to make any changes.

I had to say it, you made me do it

However I agree completely

I have never built a Fury either, never seen the need.

I built a Fury once, it crashed my game so I sold it. Never bothered again.

I built a Fury once, it crashed my game so I sold it. Never bothered again.

The Fury is so awesomely powerful it destroys the game, clearly.

I've never actually gotten far enough in the game to build a Fury, but what's been written above seems pretty solid. I imagine it might be useful if you were teetering on the edge right at the end of the game and needed a boost to hold back the alien invasion. But the odds of you getting that far through without already having near total air supremacy seems pretty small.

The scenario kabill describes would make a refreshing gameplay change but it's highly unlikely to ever reach such a situation. The vanilla game tends to flow in the same general direction every time, at least for me, and unless I somehow manage to mess up badly early game I can't see how I'll get in that position. It would have been nice if the game still preserved that on the edge feel regardless of how good you are doing.

Air Combat progression balance has always felt wonky to me ever since the Saracen interceptor and two larger UFO types were struck from the planning.

The Fury feels like the answer to a question the game no longer poses.

I agree with all of the above. Never seen the need to build a fury.

Can someone tell the moron in the room what X:CE is?

Does anyone have plans to reintroduce the two larger UFO types?

Also does anyone remember what they were supposed to be?

X:CE stands for Xenonauts: Community Edition, the patch Solver is producing with the source code to grant additional modding opportunities and fix some minor bugs. It's a sticky in the modding forum, you can check it out. It also shows how many kills each soldier got at the mission debrief screen

I agree with all of the above. Never seen the need to build a fury.

Can someone tell the moron in the room what X:CE is?

Xenonauts: Community Edition (aka "Solver is our puppet now" edition)

Ok, so there seems to be a consensus that Furies are orphans. What if we tried to adopt them?

I'm not a modder by any stretch of the imagination. But it looks like you can:

1. Go into researchesxml and change the prereq from a singularity core to, say, an alien carrier datacore (and maybe advanced MAG too?)

2. Go into maunufacturesxml and change the prereq to, say, 35 alenium and 1xItemsAlienCarrierDatacore ($ and alloys stay the same)

3. Go into aircraftweaponsxml and change the damage from 10,000 to, say, 4000. A battleship has 7000 HP. So a 4000-damage hit would leave it with 3000 HP, which a Marauder (either travelling in the same squadron, or following behind) could deliver with both its fusion torps and some cannon time. I'm not sure how the singularity-torp-leads-to-anninhilation works, but I'm guessing it's similar to the human chance-of-death mechanic, where -20% of your HP guarantees death. If so a battleship's utter destruction threshold would be 8400, so two singularity torps would knock it out of the sky but not totally vaporize it. Likewise a carrier's HP is 4000.

4. Rewrite the appropriate Xenopedia sections

The main side effect that I can think of from this would be that singularity cores would now only give you singularity cannons, which would make assaulting battleships even less appealing (the only reason to really do so right now is to get a praetor, since you can farm carriers a lot more easily). So perhaps the alloy and alenium yields from a battleship should be significantly increased as an incentive.

With these changes (are there some I'm overlooking?) a Fury would still be expensive but not prohibitively so. And by being built with a carrier datacore, they'd be available before the game was over. Their range would put them anywhere on the planet in a minute or two, and they'd still be essentially invulnerable to enemy missiles due to their standoff capability and speed. However they would not be omnipotent, and would still need Marauder backup against battleships if soloing (and their total cost would still be such that I can't imagine most players building more than two of them).

Sorry for all the thinking out loud, but I can't see the purpose of having an aircraft in the game that few people are using, or even seeing, and think it'd be a good idea to change this.....

Couple of things:

- It's possible that the way in which Fury's works is tied to the Singularity Torpedo being a "super heavy" weapon (in aircraftweapons.xml). It might be necessary to change that (and change the Fury's hardpoints) accordingly, as I can't think what else would flag the weapon as special.

- You'd need to make the carrier datacore not automatically destroyed at mission end (in items.xml) if you wanted to use that as a manufacturing requirement.

As an aside, I'm not certain how much of a difference this change would make by itself. Part of the problem seems to be that Marauders are good enough by themselves, so I'm not certain there's any real imperative to upgrade to Furies even if they were made more accessible. But then you're starting to look at an overhaul of the entire air combat game.

Yes, I already suspected I'd have to change the superheavy to heavy like the Marauder. Didn't think about the datacore being auto destroyed, but that could be fairly easily changed too.

However, I think you're right. I'm not sensing much interest from people. Seems like, as Big Z said, "the Fury feels like the answer to a question the game no longer poses". I was thinking of doubling a strike cruiser's HP (currently 4200) to give the X-120 a dedicated purpose (even three Marauders would have a hard time taking it down) for example, but given the ambivalent response, I guess I'll just leave the Fury in the orphanage

In principle, I really like the idea of trying to make the Fury more useful in light of your analysis. I just think that it might require some more radical changes to make work.

Part of me wonders whether the Fury wouldn't work better as a mid-game aircraft rather than a late game one. Mid-game, it would give you the chance for total air supremacy at the cost of destroying UFOs entirely. The more you rely on it, the less stuff you'll be getting. And you'd still need Marauders (or enough Corsairs and skill) to be able to take down Carriers and Battleships which you need to get the final tiers of tech.

kabill perhaps if the other two high-tier UFOs were reintroduced it would also add more need to build the Fury?

Which higher tier UFOs?

I don't think the files and sprites exist for them anymore, if they ever did, Kevin. At least I couldn't find anything in the game files.

Again, though, this could be approached by hugely increasing the HPs of, say, bombers and strike cruisers. Those are two UFOs that you don't get crash sites from anyhow, so their utter destruction by a singularity torp wouldn't deny you goodies. But the funding damage that they wreak, and the difficulty of even Marauders bringing them down due to their sheer HP (again, roughly doubling them) would drive you to building Furies.

I don't know. Maybe I will play around with this after all...

UFOs

[table=width: 730, class: grid, align: left]

[tr]

[td] [/td]

[td] Destroyer [/td]

[td] As with the Saracen and the Colossus armour, this UFO was removed to balance the later stages of the game. [/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td] [/td]

[td] Dreadnaught [/td]

[td] As with the Saracen and the Colossus armour, this UFO was removed to balance the later stages of the game. [/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

If anyone can reintroduce them having so much experience with UFOs, it's kabill.

Never knew those existed. As dpelectric says, I don't think there's any image files left for them sadly (otherwise I would have thought I would have noticed).

EDIT: It actually wouldn't be that difficult (in the grand scheme of things). The main issue is the artwork (which is utterly beyond me). It would also be necessary to add them on to maps/make new maps for them.

I am, of course, assuming that the game would accept new UFO types and spawn them for missions. I don't see why not, but if anyone was going to do this it would be wise to test that before putting any effort it.

Check out xenopediaimages folder, UFOdreadnought is there. Will that work for you?

EDIT: It actually wouldn't be that difficult (in the grand scheme of things). The main issue is the artwork (which is utterly beyond me). It would also be necessary to add them on to maps/make new maps for them.

I am, of course, assuming that the game would accept new UFO types and spawn them for missions. I don't see why not, but if anyone was going to do this it would be wise to test that before putting any effort it.

So you will do it? Hooray for kabill!

Oh, ok, I overlooked the destroyer (looks like a scout at a quick glance) and took the dreadnaught to be the final mission alien mothership. My bad.

Since both these were purposefully removed by GH, though, and I assume after community feedback and testing, I'd be concerned about re-opening a whole can of worms by going that route. I rather prefer the concept of jacking up the HPs on bombers and strike cruisers instead, which would be simple to do, to give the Fury relevance. In fact, I really can't think of any downside or glaring balance issues to doing so.