Interceptor immortality, what a great idea!

Person012345, glad you enjoyed it

I was finding the loss of aircraft to be catastrophic prior to this change.

I think the idea of free replacement condors and foxtrots is quite good, except for your advanced weapons. Then the recovery of advanced craft for repair is not bad either. Perhaps use of workshop space would be required? And your weapons would be recovered on those? But this is all very complicated.

The immortal aircraft solution is simple, and if you change the wording to say they are replaced by whatever means, maybe people would not be so upset?

I find this system less jarring than the current repair and refuel stuff anyway. It takes about half an hour to gas up an aircraft. Sometimes waiting for the tanker to turn up is the longest part. And it would take weeks or months to repair damaged aircraft. The current repair/refuel system could be seen as ok, if you are taking into account all of the servicings the a/c need (2 hrs maintenance for one hours flying on a blackhawk for example. I have never worked on blackhawks, but talked to aussies who have).

Anyway, my main point is that to have a pair of condors available for service at any time, you would actually need to have at least four actual airframes. One would almost always be on phase servicing (not the same one but them all cycling through) two would be flight line ready, and one a spare for one of the other two going unserviceable.

So the 72 hour delay to generate a replacement airframe for your flight line is not an unbelievable situation. You are just operating like a real air force with serious numbers of spares.

That's what this Aircraft Tech SGT reckons anyway.

The actual problem was how the loss of the aircraft impacted so negatively on ground combat and how reducing the cost (financial and production time) of a whole high tech aircraft down far enough so that losing it didn't mean you were unable to compete ON THE GROUND meant they were comparable in price to a single rifle which he felt was completely wrong.

I agree that it seems a bit off at first, but to be honest so does spending 120k per year per soldier, and not having advanced aircraft cost tens of millions of dollars. At a certain point internal consistency becomes more important than equivalency to real world comparisons, and the inability of aliens to destroy aircraft is inconsistent with the rest of the setting (after all, if a F-16 can be freely repaired and recovered with the crew presumably surviving, then why don't the world's nations just throw walls of them at the aliens every few days).

Let's look at the elements that go into making these advanced craft. You have labor, fabrication, and materials as the three main categories of expenses. Labor is already covered by your engineering team that you are already paying for. Fabrication, you already have the means to fabricate alien alloys and upgrade aircraft avionics and such (demonstrated by Foxtrot/Condor conversions), so there would presumably be limited additional expenses. That leaves you with materials, which the bulk/rarest of is provided from your own stock of alenium/alloys, leaving you only having to pay for the remainder of earth materials/components needed; which it would be reasonable to say you get at reduced rates/free similar to ballistic weapons and F-16s/Migs. Overall, that leaves us with few true expenses and a need to just invest your alloys/alenium/time, and provides the basis for an internally consistent explanation for why aircraft that would in RL be massively expensive are much less so in the Xenonauts world.

If there are concerns about spamming too many hangars/aircraft with cheaper planes, there are ways to deal with that concern. The most obvious is to look at why players would feel the need to do so (too many fighters/contacts at once) and adjust it so there's less pressure felt to have huge air fleet. Additional factors such as hangar costs, aircraft maintenance costs, and weapon costs, and base sizes could also be used to encourage players to have a smaller, more frequently updated air force as opposed to a huge swarm of planes.

I was finding the loss of aircraft to be catastrophic prior to this change.

I think the idea of free replacement condors and foxtrots is quite good, except for your advanced weapons. Then the recovery of advanced craft for repair is not bad either. Perhaps use of workshop space would be required? And your weapons would be recovered on those? But this is all very complicated.

The immortal aircraft solution is simple, and if you change the wording to say they are replaced by whatever means, maybe people would not be so upset?

I find this system less jarring than the current repair and refuel stuff anyway. It takes about half an hour to gas up an aircraft. Sometimes waiting for the tanker to turn up is the longest part. And it would take weeks or months to repair damaged aircraft. The current repair/refuel system could be seen as ok, if you are taking into account all of the servicings the a/c need (2 hrs maintenance for one hours flying on a blackhawk for example. I have never worked on blackhawks, but talked to aussies who have).

Anyway, my main point is that to have a pair of condors available for service at any time, you would actually need to have at least four actual airframes. One would almost always be on phase servicing (not the same one but them all cycling through) two would be flight line ready, and one a spare for one of the other two going unserviceable.

So the 72 hour delay to generate a replacement airframe for your flight line is not an unbelievable situation. You are just operating like a real air force with serious numbers of spares.

That's what this Aircraft Tech SGT reckons anyway.

The fact that we're fighting for our very existence against aliens might mean that we don't have quite such stringent safety standards as a modern at-peace military force, in a pinch.

2 hrs maintenance for one hours flying on a blackhawk for example. I have never worked on blackhawks, but talked to aussies who have.

...

So the 72 hour delay to generate a replacement airframe for your flight line is not an unbelievable situation. You are just operating like a real air force with serious numbers of spares.

First thing - 2 hours maintenance per flight hour is a really weird number. Dunno about helicopters but aircrafts require a way more attention for sure. For example F-14 needs 24 man-hour maintenance per flight hour (mmh/fh), F-16A needs 15 mmh/fh, F-15C/D needs 22 mmh/fh, F/A-18C needs 19 mmh/fh, Eurofighter needs 10 mmh/fh. For state of art airplanes like B-2 Spirit or F-117 Nighthawk this numbers are insane: 124 mmh/fh and 45 mmh/fh (150 mmh/fh pre 1989). Yes, that's modern at-peace numbers but you still can figure that with repair and refuel system close to real one you will need a vast air fleet just to be able to intercept something.

Second thing Xenonauts aren't "real air force" or something. According to story they are a group of noname guy basically without everything (with a bit of know hows) and that how pathetic Earth first and last line of defence looks like actually. Unrealistic? Yes. But still according to story there is no magical source that toss airplanes with price tag of $34 millions in your face every 72 hours (on demand). Because if it's not some kind of magic i don't see a point why someone will give it to you in a first place instead of just using it.

And in my opinion guys talking about some balance issues have more points than this immortal airplanes idea. Especially would like to point to DNK's ideas.