This mod alters aircraft weapons and adds a few, making the choice of aircraft weapons less decided and more strategic. Every weapon is useful, and no weapon is an I-WIN button. UFO attack ranges are also increased, so you'll be getting shot at more often during interceptions.
This mod is compatible with all other Reaver's X mods.
Version 1.1See post #2 for details and download.
Mod portal page:
https://www.openxcom.com/mod/reaver-039-s-air-weaponsvideo showing laser beam and pulse cannon
AIRCRAFT WEAPONSCannon: I increased its accuracy and damage, so it has decent DPS and can deal many times more damage than stingrays or avalanches before it runs out of ammo, yet it's still weak enough per-hit to safely crash land small scouts. Still probably won't be a popular weapon but it's not as terrible, and it's more of a backup just in case weapon. Ammo is now half price as it comes in units of 25 instead of 50.
Stingray: now more accurate than avalanche, making it a reliable weapon as well as giving it significantly higher average DPS than avalanche. These only outrange medium scouts.
Avalanche: made slightly less accurate to make them more erratic. This gives more reason to use stingrays. These still outrange everything but battleships.
Pulse Cannon: laser tech weapon, short range, high accuracy, and fast firing. It can crash land small scouts but has a low chance of destroying them. It has the same range as a medium scout.
Laser Beam: laser tech weapon, long range, high accuracy, and slow firing. It can outrange the medium scout, abductor, and harvester.
Plasma Autocannon: plasma tech weapon, short range, rapid firing, high damage. It can only outrange the medium scout and abductor but it can take a terror ship out of the air fairly quickly. You must manufacture ammo for this weapon.
Plasma Beam: plasma tech weapon, long range, slow firing, high damage. I decreased its fire rate and increased its damage to make the weapon more erratic. It will sometimes destroy medium or large scouts. I also reduced its ammo capacity to 10, so it's powerful but won't always have enough ammo to destroy the largest ships. Terror ships and battleships outrange the plasma beam. You must manufacture ammo for this weapon.
The plasma beam is now called "plasma beam" instead of "plasma cannon" in the research list.Light Fusion Ball: fusion tech weapon, long range, very powerful. This missile launcher has the same range as a terror ship, carries 5 missiles, and deals 350 damage with 100% accuracy. It will generally destroy any small craft and can take out mediums easily, though it has a chance of destroying even those.
Heavy Fusion Ball: fusion tech weapon, long range, extremely powerful, expensive. This missile launcher has the same range as a battleship, outranging all other craft. It carries two missiles which deal 900 damage apiece, and cost 16 elerium to manufacture. They will easily destroy medium craft and can even destroy terror ships.
So essentially there are four tech levels of weapons at two different ranges. Long range weapons are more erratic and often weaker than short range weapons. They may deal more damage per hit, but the short range weapons tend to fire rapidly and destroy craft quickly.
Conventional weapons are weak, but you have cannons in case you're desperate to take out something big in the early game.
Laser weapons are powerful and reliable, and can stay with you to the end of the game. They cost no special materials and they don't cost anything to fire.
Plasma weapons are very powerful and are a reasonably efficient way to spend elerium on taking out alien craft.
Fusion weapons are devastating but expensive to fire, and will burn through your elerium reserves almost as quickly as they burn through alien armor. With all other weapons, you strive for maximum power, but with fusion weapons it's about restraint. The aliens can manipulate containment fields which they can use to propel plasma or fusion charges and also control powerful explosions. The original blaster launcher demonstrates this, and I demonstrate it further in this mod as well as my Ground Weapons mod. We could have shot full scale nukes at the aliens from the get go, but that would have caused tremendous damage to the Earth's biosphere.
ALIEN CRAFT CHANGESI increased the accuracy of most alien craft, especially the supply ship. It now outranges stingrays and even the laser beam. Plasma beams will outrange it but even two of them may run out of ammo before downing a supply ship. It will be a bit harder to take supply ships out now.
I decreased medium scout HP from 200 to 180 to separate it more from the 250 HP large scout. Avalanches will occasionally destroy medium scouts.
I increased harvester HP from 500 to 600 to set it apart from the 500 HP abductor. The harvester is bigger than the abductor and carries more aliens.
FUSION DEFENSETo go along with the huge fusion ball buff, I altered the fusion defense a lot. I wasn't able to make it cost ammo, so I changed it into Fusion Beam Defense, a brand new technology created by X-Com and adapted from alien fusion and plasma technology. It requires enormous power and must be a ground-based weapon but it is devastatingly powerful. Even one of these facilities may be enough to defend your base, or at least you won't need much more than it. It has a hit ratio of 100 and a defense value of 4000 so, if my math is right, it has a 75% chance of destroying the incoming battleship in one hit. At best, the battleship will have a third of its HP remaining. But this fusion defense is extremely expensive to build and run, and it takes a long time to research.
The missile and laser defenses have much higher hit ratios, effectively buffing them to usable levels. Plasma defense is still your bread and butter defense though it is less accurate than they are, and more expensive.
Plasma defense: I increased the defense value slightly and the maintenance cost a lot. It's not super expensive, but with a bunch of them it can add up. If you can spare the space, missile or laser defenses are the cheapest option. But if you can spare the money, fusion defenses are the most compact option. And plasma defenses are sort of in the middle, fairly efficient overall but erratic.
