As I wrote before, you can use multiple birds to beat cult MiG's.
MiG-31 doesn't really solve the problem.
It has even less HP than little birds, 20 against 26.
It can use missiles, but the missiles don't outrange cult MiGs.
Technically they do. Stingray is range 30, cultist MiGs are range 25. But hunter-killers don't really care about range.
Multiple birds can work, but they're unreliable, tend to take casualties and are short-range (on the globe). And can't kite the MiGs.
MiG-31
is sort of an upgrade, but not a very good one and next-gen interceptors are just around the corner.
Although do note that you'll be spending a lot of scientist hours on those
and their weapons, even if you've got all the requirements covered. Having a few previous-gen craft to tide you over while the eggheads do their stuff is not a bad idea.
Realistically, swarming cult MiGs with helicopter shouldn't be possible, is it?
+1
Suicide little bird into manor guards, wait until guards come inside the manor. They won't spawn again for 2 weeks. Then attack with dragonfly (you should have osprey at this point though).
Here you go, 1000 points.
Ignoring the little matter of killing 60-odd maniacs armed with heavy weapons, local reinforcements, alien servants, no cover, etc, sure.
That's not really practical, you'd need at least 3 hangars in every base.
I've seen people build a
fourth hangar right off the bat.
I do have three in all my strike bases (well, I play with half-hangars, so actually 2 hangars and 3-4 craft).
And it's partly player's fault for allowing cult manors to grow in first place anyway.
Umm... You allow the manor to grow to level 3 and claim it's not your fault?
Manors grow in tiers over time and need at least 10 months game time before spawning MiGs.
Not necessarily, although I generally share the sentiment. Tier 3 manors can start appearing already in... September '99, I think? Not really a poor performance if you're still gearing up to take out your first cult HQ then. I
think most of the manors that kill games are (well, were) from monthly scripts, not upgrades.
The 10 months are on top of the 10 months before any manors start showing up at all, and the chances of upgrading aren't that great. Again, at least before the recent change that made higher-tier manors spawning right off the bat rarer, my impression was that the hordes of manors were from monthly scripts and not really upgrades.
Until I read about manors here in the forums, I didn't even know they spawned the crafts. I thought they were protecting the mission.
Is that even explained somewhere?
Yeah, the "What, there are manors spawning hunter-killers?!" thing might also need a pedia article or something.
The explanation, not really. You're
supposed to connect the dots yourself, especially after monthly spies spot you your first manors and you notice they're located in cities and when you try to approach one, the same 'UFOs' come after you.
I mean this is the first time I hear about growing manors...
I don't think the growing part really matters all that much to a player facing the manorpocalypse. They also passively eat your points over time and generate extra missions themselves but, again, you'll generally be fine if you go by "A lingering mission point is bad and should be taken care of ASAP unless I really know what I'm doing."
Because Promo III should be hard to get. It's part of the general design.
(Honestly, with MiGs at your disposal, you could just sweep most cult activities on the globe.)
Probably in many ways, as the mods was written with this limitation in mind.
I can appreciate the idea, but in practice it doesn't seem to work as neatly as you envision it. Maybe there needs to be a fourth promotion where you get MiGs, Skyraiders, MG and explosive licenses, etc, but not the really heavy stuff like mortars, F-22s, high-end BO products and so on? Not sure implementing that won't be a nightmare, though.
Excuse me, but what the heck am I supposed to do with this? Rename each instance of "UFO" in the mod to something else?
Well, you
could write a short pedia article which says that either X-Com itself or the USG or UN of this timeline use 'UFO' in the same sense as Mathel did, anything without an immediate ID. Probably easier and faster than arguing about it, if you don't
enjoy that.
I'm worried it would make the gap between the MiG and other interceptors even smaller.
I recognise your point, but I think it should be overhauled in a more complex way... somehow. I mean the entire air game. (Which I've already done at least twice...)
Well, X-Com craft are about halfway defined by their weapons loadout, so you could give heavy missiles to Interceptors and maybe both light and heavy to Ravens. That'd make the MiG-31 "baby's first interceptor" and Interceptors a meaningful upgrade.
I've been playing with such changes for a while now and all the craft felt like actual upgrades, and Thunderstorms are still preferable to any of them. And I can't really fight HK UFOs or big bad ones even with those.
Unless you want Interceptors and Ravens to still be rather vulnerable to cultist craft, that seemed okay to me.
You could also start putting more shields, armour, evasion and other crazy stuff on both UFOs and X-Com craft.
Okay thanks a lot for your elaborate replys. I'm definitely going to rebalance that in my game.
Just curious, how? Are you going to just deprive yourself of manor assaults, which are some of the more fun tactical missions (at least the first few times)? Kill the hunter-killers so they won't tank your air game? Nerf them into the ground?
Yes, it's a matter of experience. The game's name is "UFO: Enemy Unknown" after all.
Good point! I mean, I get the frustration, but you're supposed to live and learn.
