Weak UFOs

[psavola]

Now, in the work-in-progress 3.2 tree, hybrid convoys move. However, they do not appear to land, but rather just despawn eventually. And the convoys are so weak (e.g. medium convoy takes 50 damage) that almost any weapon one-shots and often destroys them utterly (for example, Kitsune with either a missile or gauss cannon).

Either the convoys should "land" and the mission could be undertaken that way and/or their damage capacity should be rebalanced. Or is it really intended that you preserve a really weak craft with puny weapons to deal with such things that start occurring only in the middle game?

Essentially the same thing, by the way, with syndicate retaliation missions. For example, medium 'Scarab' can apparently transport almost a dozen minotaurs and 40 human troops, yet only takes 80 damage and you one-shot destroy it with essentially any weapon except the puny useless early-game ones (e.g. regular craft cannon)..

[Solarius Scorch]

Seriously, 50 points of damage is too little for the target to survive? What are you shooting them with, tactical nukes?

I get it that a plasma beam will vaporise such a target. Use appropriate weapons for a task.

[psavola]

Seriously, 50 points of damage is too little for the target to survive? What are you shooting them with, tactical nukes?

I get it that a plasma beam will vaporise such a target. Use appropriate weapons for a task.

Stringray or avalanche launcher, essentially the two first craft weapons you can get that, will also vaporize them. As does craft gauss/mass driver cannon, the first cannot worth getting.

So, the only craft weapons that don't vaporize the targets are 1) craft cannon (10 damage, otherwise useless) and 2) craft tritanium cannon (15 damage, useless damage and waste of alloys). Maybe in addition to that Humvee's and Little Bird's (4x) guns. But I can't find any information on the damage it makes. I doubt anyone actually gets any of those in any case.

So the bottom line is that you can't shoot it with any weapon that's actually worth getting at the point when the convoys start appearing (usually mid-1998 or so, when you have researched Hybrid Network - essentially by terminating the Exalt or capturing the envoy from Red Dawn HQ).

[krautbernd]

I agree with psavola here that "use appropriate weapons" is an inadequate solution and in my oppinion moving convoys don't add anything meaningful to the game on top of being counterintuitive.

It is a convoy, not a single vehicle. Using real-world examples, you usually disable the first vehicle in a convoy to present an obstacle and slow-down the following vehicles. You don't have to precisely target the engine block or the tires of all the vehicles in a convoy to get it to stop.

Solarius, how does the equivalent of a Sidewinder or a Phoenix (if we assume that they can somehow target ground based vehicles) obliterate a whole convoy of multiple vehicles? Even a single Hellfire missile is not going to utterly delete all vehicles of a convoy. Please stick with stationary convoy targets. Parking an assault craft with a heavy combat team in the path of a couple of vans should honestly be enough to get the hybrids to stop and defend themselves, given their lore background, them not being panic immune and being able to surrender normally. Their vans are obviously not bullet proof and they are (supposedly) carrying valuable cargo.

X-Com has access to fast transport vehicles. Just chuck a couple of these in front of the convoy, no shooting or strafing needed:

[Solarius Scorch]

So how should this work? Should ground convoys have more HP?

[krautbernd]

I don't see anything wrong with having them remain stationary mission sites tbh, given how easy they would be to intercept even for normal law enforcement, unless hybrids are literally rolling around in tanks or are using anti-grav technology, which would defeat the whole point of clandestine convoys.

My personal headcanon for how these used to work was that X-Com acquires advanced knowledge of the convoy and the planned route and intercepts the vans along the way, with the mission site on the globe representing a convenient ambush point.

Why is X-Com so hell-bent on attracting attention that they would need to attack a simple van convoy with jets or helicopters when normal methods would be more than sufficient to get the convoy to stop without any risk of blowing it to smithereens?

[Alex_D]

I think I saw in Piratez some UFO can be intercepted with certain types of crafts. No need to send a fleet of Tormentors after a few vans.
This means, the convoy can be intercepted with maybe an armed helicopter, or Humvee, or something along these lines.

[Solarius Scorch]

Why is X-Com so hell-bent on attracting attention that they would need to attack a simple van convoy with jets or helicopters when normal methods would be more than sufficient to get the convoy to stop without any risk of blowing it to smithereens?

...it is a compelling argument...

I think I saw in Piratez some UFO can be intercepted with certain types of crafts. No need to send a fleet of Tormentors after a few vans.
This means, the convoy can be intercepted with maybe an armed helicopter, or Humvee, or something along these lines.

That's how I imagined this. Maybe didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

[krautbernd]

I think the change is well intentioned, I just don't see why it should be necessary to intercept and strafe simple ground convoys, as per the aforementioned "issues". An ideal solution (in my oppinion) would be if there was an option that automatically forced a landing site if intercepted by transports. No shots, no damage, basically just an ambush/road block.

[zombieguy223]

I think the change is well intentioned, I just don't see why it should be necessary to intercept and strafe simple ground convoys, as per the aforementioned "issues". An ideal solution (in my oppinion) would be if there was an option that automatically forced a landing site if intercepted by transports. No shots, no damage, basically just an ambush/road block.

Would a solution be some kind of weapon to force the convoy to "land" so you can do a ground mission against it? I'm thinking something like authorisation to demand an inspection of the convoy or a searchlight/loudspeaker combination that is mechanically a very weak tractor beam.
Since the convoys move so slowly you'd only need a very low power tractor beam power that would be useless against anything flying, but would be useful for this niche circumstance.

[krautbernd]

Would a solution be some kind of weapon to force the convoy to "land" so you can do a ground mission against it? I'm thinking something like authorisation to demand an inspection of the convoy or a searchlight/loudspeaker combination that is mechanically a very weak tractor beam.
Since the convoys move so slowly you'd only need a very low power tractor beam power that would be useless against anything flying, but would be useful for this niche circumstance.

I don't think introducing another niche mechanic is the answer to this, and it further complicates something that does not need or benefit from additional complexity. It also does not solve the underlaying problem of how a single missile ends up annihilating a whole convoy.

X-Com already hands off and delegates other tasks to specialized agencies, and they cooperate with law enforcement in other cases. Why do they need to have helicopters on stand-by just for stopping and inspecting suspect van convoys when that task is perfectly suited for police/FBI/other national law enforcement agencies?

And again, why can't X-Com just drop tire spikes in front of the convoy?

[zombieguy223]

I don't think introducing another niche mechanic is the answer to this, and it further complicates something that does not need or benefit from additional complexity. It also does not solve the underlaying problem of how a single missile ends up annihilating a whole convoy.

X-Com already hands off and delegates other tasks to specialized agencies, and they cooperate with law enforcement in other cases. Why do they need to have helicopters on stand-by just for stopping and inspecting suspect van convoys when that task is perfectly suited for police/FBI/other national law enforcement agencies?

And again, why can't X-Com just drop tire spikes in front of the convoy?

You make a good point there with extraneous niche mechanics.

An alternative, which I think you suggested earlier, could be to use the same process that terror missions use in UFO Defense, where the convoy spawns a mission site when it reaches a certain point. That could be treated as local authorities stopping the convoy on your/the council's instruction and your forces going to assist.

[krautbernd]

An alternative, which I think you suggested earlier, could be to use the same process that terror missions use in UFO Defense, where the convoy spawns a mission site when it reaches a certain point. That could be treated as local authorities stopping the convoy on your/the council's instruction and your forces going to assist.

That is neither what I suggested nor does it address the underlaying issues. My suggestion concerned OXCE mechanics which would force a ground mission upon interception, something that to my knowledge does not currently exist.

[psavola]

I think that one of my ideas how to address this. If the convoys move, you could go vaporize them if you wish to obliterate them, or research and obtain a very weak craft and/or weapons for the specific purpose of "shooting" them down. The main benefit of the former would be getting rid of the mission if you don't want to bother with it (and some bonus points), and the benefit of the latter would be being able to better choose the time you deal with the mission (depending on the crashed UFO despawn timer). But if you don't shoot it down, the convoy should eventually spawn a mission site, and you could deal with the mission that way (instead of convoy despawning). Which approach is the best would naturally also depend at least somewhat on what kind of timers are set on each case.

IMHO, the simplest fix would be to just restore the original behaviour (i.e. the convoys don't move). But if SS really wants the convoys to move, there would be multiple ways to deal with it in a way that is better than the current one.

[Juku121]

I generally agree that rolling back to 'immobile' convoys seems the most reasonable solution right now.

Spoiler" Nits being picked":

However...

...further complicates something that does not need or benefit from additional complexity.

Disagree. A more involved air game with mission-spawning convoys is both more 'realistic' and more interesting.

And I'm not the minority in this. When nuCom went with the "choose on of three" terror site strategy, everyone was pissed about not getting to intercept the terror UFOs. Same concept here.

There have been (kinda rare) manor-spawned cultist convoys that do exactly this for quite a while now, which suffer from the same problem of X-Com blowing up a bunch of punk cars with long-range air-to-air missiles. A solution for both would be preferable to rolling back the convoys and either leaving the rest inconsistent, or moving to invisible convoys for everyone.

Why do they need to have helicopters on stand-by just for stopping and inspecting suspect van convoys when that task is perfectly suited for police/FBI/other national law enforcement agencies?

My headcanon is that all reports that reach the Commander's Chief Agent's desk have already been confirmed. Either the FBI already inspected the convoy, and they are now making a run for it, leaving two dead feds behind. Or it's a limited-time opportunity, and the hybrids will disperse if someone spooks them too soon. You need to hit them hard and fast, which is the entire MO of X-Com. YMMV.

And again, why can't X-Com just drop tire spikes in front of the convoy?

Hard to do with a moving convoy and not guaranteed to stop it in its tracks right then and there. Spikes are small and difficult to target from a moving vehicle with enough accuracy, and cars can go some distance even with broken tires. Never mind that they might have some sort of run-flat tires for the more important vehicles.

Just shoot (at) them, like all guerillas/army patrols do IRL.

It does seem to me that the simplest solution from the modder side would be to ask OXCE devs for an 'always lands when intercepted, even by faster unarmed transports' UFO flag. Maybe also a "give a 'destroy/force landing' prompt if the interceptor is armed and faster" flag. Don't know if there are technical/design problems with that.