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[Strongpoint]

Nope.

Contrary to the two other missions, the UFO in Nigeria has already been on the ground.

We do not have to shoot down UFOs to capture them.

Ok. I stand corrected. We do can try to wait till they land (I don't like an idea of storming a landed not crashed UFO but it is irrelevant)

It changes little. Instead of Raven being unable to get to UFO in time\have no enough enough range. We'll have the same problem with Skyranger not being able to get there in time. Better fuel helps with that.

Most likely they will send UFOs to other parts of the world, it will make harder for us to intercept them in time. Also, likely, they will upgrade either speed or stealth or ability to fight back of their UFOs. I want to balance what will happen by improving our airforce in a way that will benefit us for many turns if not forever (As I said we'll need to have all-ellerium airforce to abandon jets, unlikely to happen anytime soon)

[Chiefwaffles]

If our Skyranger is at all based off of any XCOM's Skyranger, then speed of transit is not a problem.

In X-COM: UFO Defense, the Skyranger, while having a range limit (which we do not have), could intercept any alien activity in its range with time to spare.
In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the Skyranger did not have a range limit and could intercept any alien activity across the globe.

Getting there in time will not be a problem.


Also, sidenote:

deep in the Nigerean interior.

Oh, ebbor.

[Cnidaros]

Strongpoint, I do in principle agree with your view of "only addressing our weaknesses will lose us the game". This is because we will only be reacting to advances the other side makes, and barring good rolls that give us more than what we asked for, we will eventually fall behind as the enemy wins battles in that short period before we address a new weakness.

However, in the case of ground combat, I feel that it is essential that we win, in order to get alien tech. From the first two missions, what I gather is that air combat alone will not gain us any significant amount of alien tech. Either the craft is completely destroyed in the air, vaporising the tech, or we shoot it down, fail to capture then the surviving aliens fix it and get back up to space. We absolutely need alien tech in order to get ahead.

Happerry, are you sure a design that aims to get us more production points is allowable in this game? From what I recall, Arms Race generally doesn't allow designs that focus only on "get us more resources". But the logistics of this AR is somewhat abstracted, with no territory to capture or any way that I can see to get more points from battle, so if you can confirm that such a design is allowed, I'll vote for it.

Chiefwaffles, I like your design, but I think the focus should be more on "battlefield management system" rather than individual HUDs. Perhaps consider adding a line about how these visors can display targets identified by other visors, enhancing effectiveness the more soldiers and points of views we have? Could lead into a revision to spam quadcopter scout drones of our own over the battlefield.

[Strongpoint]

Either the craft is completely destroyed in the air, vaporising the tech, or we shoot it down, fail to capture then the surviving aliens fix it and get back up to space.

We simply need Skyranger to go for such downed vessels. We may not get three targets next turn and that means we will be able to send more than one aircraft.

I am sure that we need to ensure that we can produce such downed UFOs and we need to spend this turn design on improving airforce. I am afraid that if we'll fail to improve our airfoce we may have no target to use Skyranger on.

[Madman198237]

Alright, so we need to do something to nullify that ridiculous scout drone. And we desperately need to revise NOTSOFT, the troopers should've been better than that. A design for advanced armor, perhaps? If they're using plasma and tranquilizers, a ceramic-based armor set will nullify both of those (Ceramics won't readily melt, and obviously a needle can't poke through them).

Frankly I'm extremely surprised that we actually lost soldiers to tranqs of any kind, seeing as how they should be fully kitted out in modern combat gear...regardless, we can tailor our equipment to our own particular threat.

I'll propose a set of advanced infantry armor tomorrow, unless somebody wants to propose one in the meantime. Basically, we need to nullify the plasma, as well as the tranquilizers and whatnot the drones use.

[Strongpoint]

Ceramic armor is a DEAD END in the tech tree. Alloys is the easiest tech to capture and we'll use that for our armor.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Ceramic armor is a DEAD END in the tech tree. Alloys is the easiest tech to capture and we'll use that for our armor.

How about Alloys coated in Ceramic? But think about deploying our troops what's the opinion on a transport that can carry multiple squads so that rookie units can be used to support elite units, In operations like breaching landed UFOs who we know are going to be filed with unhurt nasty shit.

[Strongpoint]

what's the opinion on a transport that can carry multiple squads so that rookie units can be used to support elite units

We can make Skyrangers cheaper\producing more of them can achieve this like Happery offers. Problem is that we can't deploy both NOTSOFT an rookies with our UP shortage. So getting more transports is pointless.

We can try to go for deploying rookies and try to do something to reduce NOTSOFT cost\get more UP, but I doubt that we can get much this way.


Or we can forget about NOTSOFT for some time and go for three rookies squads strategy with something like this:
SkyHawk
SkyHawk is an alternative to SkyRanger. It is way more simpler than SkyRanger. It is slower. It has less armor. It has no complex vertical landing forcing operatives to use parachutes. But it can carry 3 squads and far cheaper to produce and maintain.

Not an offer, just a concept.

[Chiefwaffles]

Chiefwaffles, I like your design, but I think the focus should be more on "battlefield management system" rather than individual HUDs. Perhaps consider adding a line about how these visors can display targets identified by other visors, enhancing effectiveness the more soldiers and points of views we have? Could lead into a revision to spam quadcopter scout drones of our own over the battlefield.

Sure; I just edited it in. Shouldn't really add any difficulty.

[Blood_Librarian]

Ceramics is not a dead end.

Ceramics -> Xeno Ceramics -> alien alloy.

BSR Fuel (1): Strongpoint
Enhanced Mass Production Lines (2): Happerry, Blood_Librarian
Tactical Awareness Visor (1): Chiefwaffles

[stabbymcstabstab]

Ceramics is not a dead end.

Ceramics -> Xeno Ceramics -> alien alloy.

BSR Fuel (1): Strongpoint
Enhanced Mass Production Lines (3): Happerry, Blood_Librarian, Stabby
Tactical Awareness Visor (1): Chiefwaffles

That and ceramics would let us have something relatively super cheap compared to what ever alien armour we reverse-engineer.

[Madman198237]

Ceramic armor is a DEAD END in the tech tree. Alloys is the easiest tech to capture and we'll use that for our armor.

Ceramics is the fastest and best way we have of nullifying plasma weaponry, yes? It isn't a dead end either, if we want we can go ahead and make ourselves more and more advanced ceramics as we learn tech from the aliens or whatever. However, the first step is to stop losing soldiers to one-hit-kill weaponry.

Alien Combat Equipment
Made of an improved polymeric fiber (Better Kevlar) that's highly resistant to heat, and with a set of small scale-like plates covering the vitals and head, made of ceramics similar to those used on the Space Shuttle (The not-fragile ones used on later flights), this armor promises to be much, much better at keeping our soldiers alive. The helmet covers a lot of the head and has a thin Plexiglas faceplate, and has two small cameras and a powerful light. The smaller camera is a simple visual-wavelength camera, above which is mounted the light. The other camera is mounted on the opposite side of the helmet, and operates in infrared. It comes with an integrated Land Warrior HUD (projected onto the faceplate) and battlefield-control system uplink package. The LW system is reprogrammed to accept data from the soldier's camera systems, as well as drone feeds and feeds from the rest of his squad. The radio broadcasts are retransmitted by the transport craft, allowing Command to show objectives on the HUD overlay.

I think that should be everything, really. Basically it uses the modern Land Warrior system to do exactly what the TAV does, except with more armor.

BSR Fuel (1): Strongpoint
Enhanced Mass Production Lines (3): Happerry, Blood_Librarian, Stabby
Tactical Awareness Visor (1): Chiefwaffles
Alien Combat Equipment: (1) Madman

[Chiefwaffles]

...what?

The Land Warrior system is nothing like the TAV. At most the Land Warrior helmet interface thing just shows a video feed of the soldier's scope or a local satellite feed. Nothing else. That actually shares a striking 0% similarity to the TAV.

[Madman198237]

Actually yes, it is. The Land Warrior system is a HUD with an uplink to a battlefield command-and-control system, which displays any sort of requisite data on said HUD. The TAV is a HUD that displays data from other sources. Sounding similar enough?

If anything I should mention "expanded functionality" or whatnot, but Land Warrior covers a LOT of the same material.

[Blood_Librarian]

I think we should revise the TAV, but design something unique.