Disagree. The "more involved air game" also gave me 6-8 hover cars spawning from hybrid bases which fruitlessly try to attack interceptors, waste my time and have given me an ingrained hatred for the interception music.
That's mostly the aircars being too spammy and overstaying their proper time in the limelight, i.e. a balancing issue.
I'd welcome a "less involved air game" with focus on more (and more coherent) lore to be honest.
You want a narrative, I want an emergent strategy game. Can't please everyone, I guess. I'd say Piratez has shown that you
can have an at least somewhat interesting air game even with the limitations of OXCE. Granted, all the big mods tend to overstay their welcome, but that's not really limited to any one aspect of the game. Any significant part of the mod has its problems.
I don't really believe the air game is going to get a razor-sharp makeover, since Solarius hasn't really shown too much interest in that. So I guess your stance is pretty reasonable, all things considered.
The former only further illustrates why law enforcement agencies are the guys to handle this, given that they have the expertise with exactely this kind of situation, and the latter is not all reflected in-game where you can intercept and break-off from UFOs with basically no consequence. You can literally spook the hybrids to your hearts content.
Well, the cases the FBI handles for us are the ones that come in the mail. The hybrids actively running around are ours to deal with. Or not. Whacking moles on a global scale is exactly our business. Investigating mole holes, not so much.
As to the spooking, as long as you keep spooking them, they can't go to ground, on account of there being helicopter gunships chasing them, or similar. Although this does break down when you can just go away and chill for an hour and then resume the routine.
Edit: My original headcanon was more like "FBI is looking at us, better do this another day" vs "the guys in the black helicopters are chasing us, run!". X-Com spooks them so hard subtlety is no longer an option. Hybrids might deceive the FBI, they are not going to fool an X-Com squad out for blood. /edit
I'll admit that hybrid convoys with no target aren't contributing much besides lighting up the globe with colourful markers. Convoys with a
target, like those of the cultists, now that's another matter.
No need to drop them from a moving vehicle, just set them up a sufficient distance ahead. Whether you are using caltrops or spike strips, you really don't want to "stop them right then and there", i.e. crash - you want them to run out. And sure, the hybrids could have run-flat tires, use tanks or anti-grav tech to enable any scenario of your chosing tbh. But that is quite beside the point. We have a clandestine convoy with normal vans, not some supered up vehicles that X-Com needs minguns or missiles to stop. A simple police roadblock should be sufficient for what is portrayed in-game, period.
The problem with roadblocks is that you need time and continuous intel to set these up. And resources X-Com is probably not carrying around with them on global
manhybridhunts. Machine gunning the convoy is at least as effective and much simpler, unless you want it more or less intact.
I don't disagree that helicopter gunships and air strikes on road vans are overkill. But just essentially doing an air assault on a bunch of cars and basically beginning the tactical mission straight away seems much easier and less risky (in the sense of not setting up in the wrong place and losing the convoy) than the elaborate police procedure you're proposing. Sure, if you're the cops you might want it that way. But we're not the cops.
