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[Blood_Librarian]

hey sometimes inactive players hit the voting button and I usually change my vote depending on if it will spite madman/waffles  or not.

[Madman198237]

hey sometimes inactive players hit the voting button and I usually change my vote depending on if it will spite madman/waffles  or not.

You see, you complain at me for not liking Strongpoint much. And that's wrong, because I disagree with the positions (when I disagree with him), not the person.

This right here? This, so far as I can tell, is what you accuse me and (somewhat less, I HOPE) Waffles of doing.

[Strongpoint]

Anyway, what is our plan? I think it can be a good turn for the first time ever use of SMART missiles.

We also need to decide should we send 2xtalon+2xskyrangers or talon + raven + 3x skyrangers. Both are ankward due to the different reasons. There are no setup I really like.

[Chiefwaffles]

Ugh.
The Very Hard is annoying (and in my opinion unfitting but whatever), but we'll get through. Especially since one Talon without any missiles (and keep in mind regular missiles are still somewhat effective against their countermeasures) is still an extremely dangerous craft. One Phoenix gunpod on a Raven is already rather effective. The Talon has two upgraded railguns in addition with extreme (relative to the raven) amounts of armor and vastly increased manueverability/speed - two things important for dogfighting with railguns.
So I'm not worried.


Anyways, the VP token is super useful here since it lets us field two Talons without stunting our land combat capabilities.

Operation Soaring Fall
Production/Logistics
Spend 1 VP Token on Talon.
2 Talons (₃₊₂₌5 VP), w/ 1 Phoenix (1 EP)
2 Skyrangers w/ Phoenix (₁₊₀₌1 VP; using extra 2 Phoenix from Talon)
2 NOTSOFTER Squads w/ XH-2 Rifles & TAV2s (2 UP; 4 EP)

Combined Arms: Bogeys 022 - 024 (Australia, Landed)
2 Talons w/ 1 Phoenix
2 Skyrangers w/ Phoenix
2 NOTSOFTER w/ XH-2 Rifles & TAV2s

Talons (unfortunately) may not see aerial combat but they should still be effective in clearing the air (namely of their fighter) and providing air support; in fact, if the Talons can (and they should considering how they can go backwards or sideways) hover then they can act as gunships with their railguns. And if the aliens do land, they have a nasty surprise.
They even gave us an advantage - not that we'd need it; we can focus on eliminating the fighter first so if they do retreat we'll only have to fight their landers.

With luck, we should be able to eliminate their Mortar-thing using Skyranger (or Talon) air support. In terms of pure infantry combat, I'm not worried at all. The SCOPE we have equipped on our railguns counters their drones, the TAV2 makes their Mimics unable to just delete our squads again, and in the past when deprived of their unique advantages (Mimic ambushes, drone ambushes [wow they like stealth]) we've been able to easily dispatch them.
Our infantry is better equipped and better trained, and the aliens no longer have their GGNORE advantages. Better yet, they'll have some degree of combat weariness/damage from fighting with EXALT. I bet we could easily do this even if we couldn't take out their Mortar.


Also Ebbor, does the Rockbreaker's flaw include the potential of detonating in its mount? If it does, what kind of damage would the Talon (armor and whatnot) suffer if an equipped Rockbreaker exploded while mounted?
Oh yeah and Ebbor, considering how it can go backwards/sideways, can the Talon hover in place effectively?


I've also made an alternate operation in case people want to use Rockbreaker missiles, though I plan on more directly addressing it once I get an answer from Ebbor regarding just how dangerous Rockbreakers are.

Spoiler: Operation Twisted Serpent (click to show/hide)

Operation Twisted Serpent
Production/Logistics
Spend 1 VP Token on Talon.
2 Talons (₃₊₂₌5 VP), w/ 1 Phoenix & 8 Rockbreakers (2EP)
2 Skyrangers w/ Phoenix (₁₊₀₌1 VP; using extra 2 Phoenix from Talon)
2 NOTSOFTER Squads w/ 2 XH-2 Rifles & 1 TAV2 (2 UP; 3EP)

Combined Arms: Bogeys 022 - 024 (Australia, Landed)
2 Talons w/ 1 Phoenix and 8 Rockbreakers
2 Skyrangers w/ Phoenix
2 NOTSOFTER w/ XH-2 Rifles & TAV2s

A summary of the changes Twisted Serpent has over Soaring Fall:
- Only 1 squad is equipped with TAV2 (honestly not a big deal at all; the TAV2 gets most of its benefit from us having any deployed at all);
- The non-phoenix Talon is equipped with 8 Rockbreakers.

OPERATION
Soaring Fall (1): Chiefwaffles
Twisted Serpent (0):

So to summarize the plans:
SOARING FALL - Send 2 Talons & 2 Skyrangers; fully-equip infantry, do not deploy Rockbreakers, and give 2 Phoenixes to Skyrangers & 1 Phoenix to a Talon. Spend VP Token on a Talon.
TWISTED SERPENT - Same as above, but only 1 squad equipped with TAV2 instead of both, and a Talon is equipped with 8 Rockbreakers.

[10ebbor10]

and in my opinion unfitting but whatever

1. Alien tech without token (and not tech that you already knew)
2. Integration of other known alien tech at the same time
3. Ping Pong Revision mitigation

Also Ebbor, does the Rockbreaker's flaw include the potential of detonating in its mount? If it does, what kind of damage would the Talon (armor and whatnot) suffer if an equipped Rockbreaker exploded while mounted?

A hit or near-miss from a plasma cannon (or, for that matter a regular cannon) is likely to detonate the warhead. On it's own, such a detonation would punch a hole through the outer armor and damage the ceramic, but not inflict any lethal damage. However, sympathetic detonations among all the remaining missiles are extremely likely, and can be expected to render the craft combat ineffective.

Oh yeah and Ebbor, considering how it can go backwards/sideways, can the Talon hover in place effectively?

It's capable of VTOL, but it's not particularly stable or happy hovering in place.

[Happerry]

While I consider trying for the missile upgrade worth it, in afterthought we might have wanted to wait till we had another elerium token before we tried to get an elerium warhead upgrade. Oh well. Still, it's a step in the right direction, because armored missiles are the way we'll want to go if they keep going for point defense, and even if it involves a stubbed toe we did get our foot in the 'alien explosives' door.

Plan wise, Operation Soaring Fall looks good to me. They've put all their ships into one basket, so seems like a fine time to hit that basket with our new aerial hammer and then mop up the remains. They've been throwing enough new air combat designs at us to cause us trouble, now it's our turn to cause them trouble.

Operation Soaring Fall (1): Happerry

[Chiefwaffles]

Yeah. In hindsight, it probably would have been a good idea to incorporate an alien equipment token. Though it personally feels like our existing experience with power supplies - emphasized by my wording of it as "unstable power supply" and not "elerium warhead" - should have covered it. But yes, alien equipment token would have been a good idea.
I also think that the best form of ping-pong revision mitigation would be stopping it at its source - instead of preventing easy undoing of hard counters, one should try to prevent easy hard counters in the first place.

But it's not that big of a deal. We got a pretty good result for a Buggy Mess and I'm choosing to see this revision as a step towards a really-awesome missile rather than a failed good missile. As I've said before, the Talon should be amazing. I've said this numerous times before, but I feel like I should point it out again. A single raven with a single Phoenix gunpod was still effective. Now we have an aircraft which is much faster and more agile meaning it can easily keep up and track alien craft with fixed weapon mounts; it can spend less time closing to engage; and in the rare occasions where it does get hit - which would normally disable/destroy a Raven - the armor just gets damaged.
Our ravens could also close in and engage with a railgun to do some damage without getting hit. The Talon has twice the railguns, each railgun is better, it gets hit way less, and when it does get hit it doesn't go down.

That and missiles are still effective and 2 Talons have as many missiles as 3 Ravens in addition to each Talon's two upgraded railguns.


You also somehow wiped my own vote, Happerry.
_{grumble grumble grumble}

Operation Soaring Fall (2): Chiefwaffles, Happerry

[Madman198237]

Operation Soaring Fall (3): Chiefwaffles, Happerry, Madman

I think that we should consider spending that token on a Skyranger instead, since we're probably (hopefully) never going to replace the Skyranger, and can't break up the 3-point Talon into multiple pieces (like we could, say, three Ravens), even if we need to.

[Chiefwaffles]

Eeh.
I personally feel the Skyranger will be obsolete before the Talon would be. It wouldn’t ever be useless but just not potentially as useful.

The Talon is a very competently done platform for future improvement. It’s many mounts including two nose cannon mounts, heavy armor, size, and propulsion all are great for future improvement. It firmly uses nearly all alien tech meaning that we won’t have to worry in most possible cases about designing anything new to fit in new alien tech.


On the other hand, the Skyranger, while not bad in any way, is still conventional tech. It may have heavy armor for a pre-war human aircraft, but it could be vulnerable if they start focusing on shooting down our Skyrangers. It uses human propulsion, with human power supplies. It only fits one squad.
More importantly, I doubt the aliens put their base somewhere easily accessible. It could be underwater, underground, in space, or on another planet. The Skyranger can’t reach any of those places and revising the capability for it do so would be some degree of impractical.

In the original X-COM, there are three Transport craft - the Skyranger, Lightning, and Avenger. The latter two are fighter-transports using alien tech. Since we don’t suffer any long-term consequences from losing squads or aircraft, a fighter-transport could be a pretty viable idea. There are also plenty of other things we could do with new transports - TAV network integration, better air support, doing things like drop pods, and more.

In fact:

Spoiler: Future Design: Avenger-L (placeholder name) (click to show/hide)

Future Design: Avenger (placeholder name)
(The "-L" suffix is for "Light" - this version is meant to be more of an air combat support craft, rather than the "ultimate aircraft" that UFO Defense has for its Avenger.)
The Avenger does to the Skyranger what the Talon did to the Raven.

First are the obvious improvements: armor, propulsion, and power. All three using the standard alien-inspired technology similar to the Talon. However, all three things are tuned to the level expected for a transport craft. We don't need as tanky armor or as much power or as fast propulsion as a Talon. The Avenger should be able to tank some serious combat damage compared to standard human aircraft, but we're mostly going to go with the proven strategy of "not getting shot at in the first place" for this one.
Gravity propulsion is similar to that of the Talon, but with some conditions changed for the Avenger. In case of the Avenger being shot out of the sky, we intend for the gravity propulsion to be able to keep everyone inside alive by negating the "fall" inside. Of course, if an Avenger is shot down it'll most likely be essentially completely destroyed. But the passengers and crew should still be alive and combat-ready.
The Avenger does have one minor improvement over the Talon in these areas: It can hover in place in a stable and proper fashion. This is mostly just a matter of pilot training, some tweaks to the automatic flight portions, and some minor refinements to the thrust vectoring.


No missile mounts of course, but a dual-railgun turret linked to the power core is placed on the bottom of the craft. Using standard Rockslide/TAV-based heuristics, it would be effective against aerial or ground targets. The Avenger's many sensors network with devices on the ground, such as TAV2s. The Avenger can see what our ground troops see and our ground troops can see what the Avenger sees. Almost literally "eyes in the sky". This makes air support a very useful tool, as the Avenger's turret can easily target any enemies being tracked by TAV2 devices instead of just blind-firing like a Phoenix-equipped Skyranger.

Thanks to the thinner & lighter hull (alien alloys sure do work wonders when we're not trying to make a literal flying tank) as well as the greater capabilities of the gravity propulsion, the Avenger is expected to be able to hold two squadrons worth of troops.
Troops can disembark or embark via gravlifts "floating" them from the ground into the cabin through an opening bottom/vice versa, or just through the standard Skyranger-style bay door.

Finally, the Avenger is equipped with a basic atmospherics system, is air-sealed, and the alloy is certified to be able to withstand great pressures. This should allow for it to venture anywhere we can imagine - into the seas, or even into space.

I predict that something like this would likely cost 2 VP (3 possible but in my opinion unlikely since the Skyranger costs 1 VP already compared to the Raven's 2 VP for whatever reason) on a 5+ roll unless we spent some effort at any point - before, during, or after the design - at improving our ability to do stuff like alloy fabrication. I also have some ideas for something more akin to X-COM UFO Defense's Avenger - more of a "ultimate aircraft" able to basically just solo things by itself. But that's ambitious enough that I'll only write it out if I feel it's possible and practical with the tech at the time.



Actually, out of curiosity, Ebbor: while there aren’t certainly tokens we haven’t seen yet, but do you plan on potentially creating new token types of the aliens do anything particularly novel?
Doesn’t affect any planning really, but it’s just something that I think would be interesting to know.

[Madman198237]

Good points. I did forget about the aliens base being in SPACE and all, so, oops.

By the way, it's in SPACE. Certainly. And we're going to need some fancy detection techs to find it. Probably starting with a SSTO spaceplane using gravitic tech, and/or a revision to the Talon that makes it airtight, which is all it should need to go orbital for short periods. Satellite-based detection system...and then missiles in space?

[Strongpoint]

While I consider trying for the missile upgrade worth it, in afterthought we might have wanted to wait till we had another elerium token before we tried to get an elerium warhead upgrade.

Using alien equipment token that we got from capturing Elerium grenades would help

[Thanatos Russ]

what's wrong with just using the new Talon with the reasonably effective missiles? it's probably two times better than the previous fighter/gunship.

2 of those Talons will utterly smash what the enemy has.

[Chiefwaffles]

Rockbreaker missiles aren't "reasonably effective". They're a crippling weakpoint. They mean that if an alien gun gets even a near miss or better against a Talon, then they effectively destroy the entire aircraft. Its armor and agility don't matter - if a single missile explodes (which is dangerously easy for them to do) then the whole Talon explodes.
It'd be like if we decided that the best way of defending our island base was to put really obvious red barrels filled with super-volatile explosives then tell our troops to take cover behind them. Sure, it's technically cover, but it hurts muuuuuch more than it helps.

Talons are fine by themselves. They can rely on their 2x upgraded railguns with some support from Rockslide missiles. Equipping them with Rockbreakers would drastically hurt their durability for a damage bonus we honestly don't really need.

[Thanatos Russ]

Rockbreaker missiles aren't "reasonably effective". They're a crippling weakpoint. They mean that if an alien gun gets even a near miss or better against a Talon, then they effectively destroy the entire aircraft. Its armor and agility don't matter - if a single missile explodes (which is dangerously easy for them to do) then the whole Talon explodes.
It'd be like if we decided that the best way of defending our island base was to put really obvious red barrels filled with super-volatile explosives then tell our troops to take cover behind them. Sure, it's technically cover, but it hurts muuuuuch more than it helps.

Talons are fine by themselves. They can rely on their 2x upgraded railguns with some support from Rockslide missiles. Equipping them with Rockbreakers would drastically hurt their durability for a damage bonus we honestly don't really need.

That's why I said the reasonably effective missiles that we already had. Just don't use upgraded rock breakers. You can use the old ones.

[Chiefwaffles]

We are using Rockslide missiles - they're the default.

But they're not "reasonably effective." Here's a quote from the last interception we had:

Twentyfour missiles pierce through the sky, eight towards the fighter, sixteen towards the larger UFO. Piercing straight through the alien ECM, the missiles fly straight towards their desperately dodging quarries. A few missiles fail to hold onto the nimble craft, but many more continue their deadly trajectory. The moment of impact comes, and both vessels are completely engulfed in flame. Talon Flight, still alive and unhurt, sheers.

Their celebration is short lived however, cut short as the UFO's burst from the big plasma clouds, unhurt save for a few scars in their armor. Plasma barrages from the fighter and the transport's turrets bear down upon Talon squad as they dive in closer to finish of the job. An unlucky hit clips Talon 2's wing, and her fighter plummets back to Earth, lacking a wing.

That's not reasonably effective.

We should actually have more missiles this time around. With one phoenix pod (-4 missiles) and 16 missiles per Talon, that's 32 missiles overall. A nice amount, but nowhere near enough to be relied upon or be considered - again - "reasonably effective." They should help, and that's why they're already included.


Ebbor: I just checked through the thread and it looks like my report on Mimics is the only one.
And yes, they're Mimics. Shut up. I don't care if the you/aliens gave them some stupid name like "Skin Crawlers". I refuse to believe otherwise. _{I did include an Alias section in the report now though.}

Edit: Also made some finishing touches to the report. Namely censoring of certain things. Adds to the "official classified report" feel, I think.