Author Topic: Intercepting UFOs ?!  (Read 4423 times)

Offline Arthanor

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Intercepting UFOs ?!
« on: February 18, 2015, 10:55:11 pm »
I have to admit, I don't remember how it used to work in XCom, but intercepting small UFOs after the "one timer to rule them all" nightly has become nigh impossible.

Sending just one interceptor on a very small UFO, the best result I have had was a few cannon shots at it. Most of the time, the window pops up, I click aggressive, disable missiles (I want it to crash) and the UFO doesn't even come close to cannon range.

Does waiting at full range with the window minimized count as "intercepting"? I have had even less success getting two interceptors on a UFO than one. When I have attempted that, by the time I get my 2nd interceptor on a UFO, click aggressive, maximize my first interceptor and click aggressive, the UFO disengages within seconds. Interestingly, it disengages from both crafts at the same time, even though the first interceptor's interception window has been up for longer.

If you try to call the attack as soon as a window pops, to kind of send interceptors in waves, it's impossible to get more than one interception because you can't minimize the interception window so "geoscape time" doesn't tick so the 2nd interceptor can't catch up.

As I said, I don't remember vanilla XCom, but the behavior changed rather radically with that commit.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2015, 01:33:46 am »
Well i am glad that they now actually try to run away :) Was so boring shooting them down.

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2015, 02:31:19 am »
you can only minimize an interception at standoff range, and the breakoff timer doesn't wait for you to pick an attack mode. small scouts are skittish.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2015, 02:33:01 am by Warboy1982 »

Offline Arthanor

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2015, 02:40:08 am »
Does the timer also tick down while minimized?

This is a whole new (interception) game!

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2015, 02:41:17 am »
no.

Offline Arthanor

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2015, 02:49:09 am »
Alright, so:
1- get 1st window
2- minimize asap
3- get 2nd window
4- pick stance asap
5- maximize 1st window
6- pick stance asap

That's a lot of asap..! I'll have to figure out a new way to get small scouts to crash too!

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2015, 03:09:18 am »
swarmer missiles. think mid-to-long ranged cannon with slightly higher damage, slightly slower refire, slightly faster moving projectiles (yes, that's a thing), and maybe 10 (or fewer) to the clip. they'd be great against smaller UFOs but little more than an annoyance against bigger ones, unless you double stack them and send 2+ interceptors at once (hence swarmers) and they'd almost never DESTROY a ufo outright, unless double stacked and firing synchronously against a weaker target.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2015, 03:22:37 am by Warboy1982 »

Offline Arthanor

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Re: Intercepting UFOs ?!
« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2015, 03:21:56 am »
hum.. Interesting suggestion. I shall look into this! To wiki I go, off looking up yet another kind of weapon for OpenXCom!