Interceptor attack mode

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I was thinking what to make of interceptor attack mode. Cautious attack makes sense only when it is outside of UFO range. With aggressive retaliation it does not work anymore. Aggressive attack also does not provide any benefit by itself. I am not counting the shooting rate as this is controlled by mod designer and could be anything. Modders can explain their players how shooting rate depends on the attack mode but it is not intuitive why attack mode should at all influence shooting rate at all since it is controlled by the interceptor itself.

My idea is to make hit chance dependent on distance, which is very much intuitive.
This way all attack modes make sense. One can either stay far delivering and receiving less damage or move up close to maximize delivered damage and risk proportionally. Since the specific distance cannot be selected, the difference in precision should not be that big. Say 50% - 150% at extremities.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

In the same vein it probably makes sense to redo craft armament accuracy modifier based on UFO size.
As you can see, it is quite small ranging from 0.8 for very small to 1.25 for large and then it skyrocket to 2.0 for a very large one. In conjunction with missile high accuracy it makes it hit 100% accuracy even on large UFO and then no improvement for very large.

I think the simple linear scale of 0.8-0.9-1.0-1.1-1.2 is absolutely sufficient.

[Juku121]

I am not counting the shooting rate as this is controlled by mod designer and could be anything. Modders can explain their players how shooting rate depends on the attack mode but it is not intuitive why attack mode should at all influence shooting rate at all since it is controlled by the interceptor itself.

How many mods change firing rates vs attack mode to any significant degree?

And modders do not need to explain anything since this is vanilla behaviour. The 'intuitive' explanation is that aggressive attack reduces the distance and munitions cover a shorter distance faster and more accurately than a longer distance. Doesn't exactly match the in-game mechanics, but it's not too far either.

My idea is to make hit chance dependent on distance, which is very much intuitive.

Not for guided missiles.

This way all attack modes make sense. One can either stay far delivering and receiving less damage or move up close to maximize delivered damage and risk proportionally.

This is efffectively the same tradeoff we have now, just with different fiddly bits. I mean, if it makes you happy, go for it, but I don't see much of a game design benefit here.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

First of all, thank you for reply. Everybody needs sanity check from time to time.
Second, I am not saying it is something revolutionary that wasn't implied in some way in vanilla. It was but the implementation is not working too well IMHO.

How many mods change firing rates vs attack mode to any significant degree?

I saw some mods equalizing fire rate for all attack modes. Other than that - not much. That is why I propose not to expose another ruleset but just to modify engine. Because you are right - that is not something people eager to mod one way or another but could be more smooth experience if they use this improvement in the engine.

And modders do not need to explain anything since this is vanilla behaviour. The 'intuitive' explanation is that aggressive attack reduces the distance and munitions cover a shorter distance faster and more accurately than a longer distance. Doesn't exactly match the in-game mechanics, but it's not too far either.

Well, exactly my point. This intuition is not well implemented, though. Fire rate increases as soon as player hits the button. One can get higher rate at farther distance. That is a known exploit: interchange aggressive and normal attacks keeping distance around the reach of your weapon, not getting too close but the average fire rate is higher than of just normal attack.

Not for guided missiles.

I don't plan to make it realistic. Just more interesting to play.

Why these "guided" missiles have less than 100% accuracy? What makes them miss? If not distance then what? Never mind, just side question. 😉

This is efffectively the same tradeoff we have now, just with different fiddly bits. I mean, if it makes you happy, go for it, but I don't see much of a game design benefit here.

About correct. Same expected mechanics but implemented in more concise manner to avoid exploits and make it more coherent.

[Abyss]

Why these "guided" missiles have less than 100% accuracy? What makes them miss? If not distance then what? Never mind, just side question. 😉

Roleplay of evasion maneuvers.

[Xilmi]

I think you are mixing up "Aggressive retaliation" and "Enhanced dogfight-behavior".

When you have faster craft, the buttons do work as intended again. They only don't work because the UFO is faster and doesn't let you keep distance.

I wouldn't put too much effort into this minigame. I originally intended to implement some AI for the UFOs in air-combat, where an algorithm would control whether they retreat or engage. I actually had already implemented that but it made air-combat completely pointless as the weaker UFOs would always just run and all you could do was to tail them.

So I went for the compromise that is the current implementation of "Enhanced dogfight-behavior".

I'd say this part of the game is not important enough to make it overly convoluted with even more additional options.