How does Air to Air work?

[Skipeemcgee]

Hey, I want to start out by saying Solarious Scorch and the xcom files team you guys are awesome keep up the food work.

But I did have a question, in my most recent playthrough, I had a fully loaded Dragonfly on the way to a mission and the damn cult of dagon or some other group scrambled a fucking fighter jet and shot down my dragonfly! I do believe that theres a fun sort of minigame to the logistics of actually getting your troops to battle, but when the consequences are potentially losing all of your best guys, I dont know what to do.

I guess I dont really understand air combat at all in xcf, i had the helicopter sitting in a hanger with 4 lmgs attached for months and it never did anything. Are you supposed to send combat craft escorts to engage enemies that might come kill your transports, if so how are you supposed to defend dragonflys from fighter jets? Idk maybe im overthinking it but I dont want to be sending troops on magma lab and cyberweb missions in a van! Could someone explain like i’m five, What is the Air combat meta?

[Dreams_Of_Cheese]

So at this stage of the game, enemy air will only every spawn out of a cult manor. You can detect these by noting where the aircraft appeared at, and then moving your vans (which are undetectable) to different cities in the area and patrolling them there a couple hours. Once you do that, a radar range will appear, and then it's just a matter of not flying into it to protect your transports.

You certainly could send out escort aircraft, but I found that the helicopters are really only good for destroying cult convoys. Your opinion might be different, though. If you want to take down a fighter jet sent after you, you're going to need to research a jet for yourself.

It's a worrying sign that you're at the stage of the game where you're using a dragonfly and cult manors are sending jets. That could be a sign you're falling behind on your tech progression, so hopefully this is the only manor at that level. Manors have three levels, where the first has car defense craft, the second has helicopters, and the third is jets.

[Juku121]

I don't know about a meta, but what I'd do:

• Get my own fighter jets AND good enough air-to-air weapons to kill cultist aircraft. There are worse things to come, so you need them anyway. Note that your own MiGs are kinda crap and in a strange place in the tech tree (mainly need Promo III, so Interceptors are likely researchable almost immediately afterwards).
  
• Get either a moderately speedy craft (doesn't need to be an interceptor) or a crap craft like a Little Bird with a sacrificial rookie to distract the defending jets, then strike with your alpha team when they've drifted off. I think manor air defences still take a week to regen?
  
• Kill the manors off before they start spawning MiGs. Optionally, kill their parent cult so manors can't spawn any more.
  
• Escort your transports, or use fighter-transports like the Kitsune or Lightning. More of an anti-UFO tactic, though, since you probably don't have the aircraft to do that against manors.
  
• Use undetectable civilian craft if all else fails.
  

[Stone Lake]

Another idea is to send "bait" craft first to make sure that the path is clear, then send the transport.
You can send multiple crafts when shift-clicking in the interception screen. Four little birds with good pilots, armed with four hmgs pretty much decimate any early cult heli/jet. But you can sometime lose some birds.
Also, your craft being destroyed doesn't necessarily mean that all pilots/crew are dead. If you're defending, not attacking, they have a very high chance to survive. If the pilots/crew didn't instantly appear in memorial, that means they'll get transferred to the base after a while.

[krautbernd]

Could someone explain like i’m five, What is the Air combat meta?

Removing fighters from cult manors via editing because really, the only thing even more silly than a hooded Dagon cultist in the cockpit of a jet fighter is taking down said jet fighter with a helicopter sporting LMGs.

At least that's my meta takeaway.

[Xylon666Darkstar]

My meta is to destroy the manors.

[Cynus_X]

It's a worrying sign that you're at the stage of the game where you're using a dragonfly and cult manors are sending jets. That could be a sign you're falling behind on your tech progression, so hopefully this is the only manor at that level. Manors have three levels, where the first has car defense craft, the second has helicopters, and the third is jets.

OK, but im at a stage where I want to take down my first HQ but it is defended by jets so I cannot get to it. And to get jets of my own I have to take down a HQ first...

[Solarius Scorch]

OK, but im at a stage where I want to take down my first HQ but it is defended by jets so I cannot get to it. And to get jets of my own I have to take down a HQ first...

One possible tactic, if desperate, is to bait the enemy fighters with some decoy craft. Once they do their attack run (either successful or not) and return to the base (or get shot down, doesn't matter), they can't take off again for some time. This gives you a window to launch a ground assault.

[Stone Lake]

OK, but im at a stage where I want to take down my first HQ but it is defended by jets so I cannot get to it. And to get jets of my own I have to take down a HQ first...

Are you talking about HQ protected by manor or something? Just for clarity's sake, no HQ is protected by jets by itself, manors are. And manors are somewhat optional and don't progress the game like HQ would, so it may be better to not waste time on them.