Is the firestorm and lighting elerium design flaw bug fixed?

[doctor medic]

There was a bug with the firestorm and lighting that made them resuply everytime their fuel supply was at 50%.Was it fixed in OpenXcom?

[Hobbes]

If you you mean this bug, then the answer is yes, it has been fixed.

Elerium-fueled Craft Bug[edit]
A Skyranger or Interceptor, once dispatched, will return to base when its fuel supply has dropped to a level that it will only have just enough fuel to return to base. Craft fueled by Elerium-115, however, will always report the "Low Fuel" message as soon at the fuel supply is 50% depleted, no matter where they are on the globe. This significantly shortens the already minute time that a Firestorm, Lightning, or Avenger can be dispatched to patrol.

[doctor medic]

Ok thanks.

[KORfan]

I never use Elerium-fueled ships for patrolling, they're combat only.  I think Elerium is too rare to use for that.

[Arthanor]

It's not just about patrolling. Intercept courses in XCom are woefully inefficient. By aiming at where the enemy craft is instead of where it is going, you can spend well above 50% of your fuel on the way to an UFO, while still having enough fuel to make it back to base.

A better trajectory calculation would be quite an improvement to better Elerium efficiency. Of course, just fixing the bug also made a big difference.

[KORfan]

Yes, that's why it's important to have a human in the loop.  I get to use my brain, it keeps things more game like. 

[Arthanor]

I guess so.. To me it breaks the immersion of the strategic simulation that my pilot/flight controller can't do better than: "There's a UFO there!! Fly to it quickly!!" *2 seconds go by* "Oh, it's there now! Correct course!" and so on..

Whereas a simple "find intercept point between UFO at current speed and heading and interceptor at max speed" would be much more sensible and isn't hard to implement either.

[Ascadix]

In French, we call this "la courbe du chien" (~"the curve of the dog", sorry i can't find any good translation) .

The nose of the dog/fighter/rocket always pointing to the target instead of the future position.

To me, it's seems to be a too big modification from vanilla to give such a sophisticated capacity to XCom interceptors, but what could be really cool and maybe not a too big work would be to allow launching interceptors with multi-point orders (like the blaster trajectory) so we could give at least one fixed point to the fighter before heading for the ufo.

[Solarius Scorch]

To me, it's seems to be a too big modification from vanilla to give such a sophisticated capacity to XCom interceptors, but what could be really cool and maybe not a too big work would be to allow launching interceptors with multi-point orders (like the blaster trajectory) so we could give at least one fixed point to the fighter before heading for the ufo.

Oooohhhh yessssss. That would make patrolling so much easier.

[Arthanor]

I had never heard of "La courbe du chien", even though french is my native language..! It makes sense for a dog, but for planes and missiles? We have much more refined guiding/interception systems and I bet they had them in 1999.

Multiple waypoints would work. I have started launching interceptors at my "predicted UFO location" instead of going straight for an UFO. Once you get the Hyperwave decoder, it helps a lot too since you know where it is headed. Having multiple waypoints like in RTS games would work reasonably well too indeed.

[pkrcel]

Multiple waypoints woudl be a real bonus, in the vanilla state of the art, patrolling is a chore but is also part fo the game at higher difficulties....

[Ascadix]

I had never heard of "La courbe du chien", even though french is my native language..!

On the mathematical side, it was a beloved subject for one of my professor in "Math Spe",  I'm probably unable to recalculate one now, but this leaves some memories ...:-p

On the "military" side, it is probably more used in submarines for long torpedo trajectory path than for the much shorter and faster missiles shoot.
It is a matter of optimizing the interception time and consumes less fuel (ie autonomy and practical range of the weapon).

[Hobbes]

A better trajectory calculation would be quite an improvement to better Elerium efficiency. Of course, just fixing the bug also made a big difference.

Actually there is already a better trajectory calculation implemented on OXC: the great circle route.

[Arthanor]

Yeah... The route a skyranger uses to get to a terror site is much improved, indeed. But that's not much of an issue.

The route an interceptor uses to get to a moving UFO? A Great circle is better than whatever way they used to take before, but going towards the UFO's current location is still a very bad interception mechanism. Using the heading and speed of an UFO, which are already provided by radars, to guide it would be much better.

[Solarius Scorch]

As I said before, having multiple waypoints would be very useful.

But following a UFO manually is not such a big problem to me. It's exciting enough.