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[Chiefwaffles]

...what? That's a terrible policy!
Direct replacements are good when whatever they're replacing is no longer as effective as it needs to be.

Two notes:
1.) The Raven is outclassed. It can sometimes beat their weakest UFO one-on-one and it is very inferior to their new fighter.
2.) If we make the Thunderbird and it turns out to be something like 3 VP, then that means we can still use the Raven as a cheaper fighter to be an escort for thunderbirds/to go against their starter UFOs. If it's 2 VP, then even better and we have an all-around better interceptor.

We spent all our VP on Ravens this turn and still had a severe loss. We accomplished exactly nothing in the air and spent everything we could on Ravens. This is bad. We do not want air engagements to be an autoloss, and we do not want to have to spend all our VP on Ravens, preventing us from getting more than one squad on the ground.

[Strongpoint]

...what? That's a terrible policy!

It is what people do.. If they have a working howitzer in 1914, they may keep it to the end of the game even if enemy present better howitzer in 1930s. Possible improvement doesn't worth opportunity cost of not designing something else.

Direct replacements are good when whatever they're replacing is no longer as effective as it needs to be.

And I am debating that it is not as effective as it needs to be. We don't have to be ahead in everything. We don't need to be far behind. Also, I am debating our ability to design something that will be noticeably better in this role. It is not like we are replacing a 1915 tank with a 1935 tank.

1.) The Raven is outclassed. It can sometimes beat their weakest UFO one-on-one and it is very inferior to their new fighter.

Raven is definitely better than their weakest UFO (not 100% victory but it is better) as for their new fighter we don't know its VP (in% of their total) cost to really say. It is probably behind, but how far behind?

2.) If we make the Thunderbird and it turns out to be something like 3 VP, then that means we can still use the Raven as a cheaper fighter to be an escort for thunderbirds/to go against their starter UFOs. If it's 2 VP, then even better and we have an all-around better interceptor.

What if it costs 3VP but only 25% better? Opportunity cost of doing nothing else with design is too high. I am afraid that we will get either a marginal increase in one field or no noticeable increase at all. Limitations of jet engine aren't going anywhere.

We spent all our VP on Ravens this turn and still had a severe loss. We accomplished exactly nothing in the air and spent everything we could on Ravens. This is bad.

We got quite unlucky in that battle in the air. It is clear from the GMs post. Also, both of my proposals try to improve our performance in the air just but in a different way. I am happy with any way. New missile, railgun for raven hardpoints, surface to air missiles, new radars, pilot training. Anything but new fighter. I believe that it is too early.

We do not want air engagements to be an autoloss, and we do not want to have to spend all our VP on Ravens, preventing us from getting more than one squad on the ground.

Note that if we went for 2 ravens\2 skyrangers we would likely win. Do not overvalue importance of battles in the air. Do not underestimate our chances, we still have battles on different attitude and rolls may fall in our favor.

[Happerry]

I don't like direct replacement of Raven yet. I think it is not that obsolete and we can delay such action for few turns, preferably to moment when we'll have suitable tokens. Weapon for it or craft that fights in a different way look more optimal. This is why I offer a drone that is very different to Raven in fighting style and works well with it. What if it isn't much better? What if it costs more VP and no more cost effective? I think an interceptor is premature

Personally, I'd kinda prefer to wait till we spend an alien tech token on the alien drone engines for some basic anti-grav (probably used more for inertial buffering then thrust if I rewrite this later after we do that), but since people were talking about needing a better interceptor I wrote this up. At this point in time, I don't consider your drone idea worth it though, because it's lack of endurance combined with few shots and the current fragility of our aircraft make me doubt it'd be effective enough to replace half of our Raven's missiles with one.

Do we have enough E for this? I am not sure. We can take E as our bonus for this turn. Also, I prefer flying things to tracked(?) things

Again, we don't have anti-grav yet and there's no way we can make a worthwhile flying tank with only earthtech. Personally I consider this probably worth it because it'll combine firepower with something that should actually be able to survive being shot a few times, but I don't consider this urgent right now. Our normal railguns seem to be working fine in ground combat, and it was lack of numbers that really screwed us over. A HWP of this design or three probably would have been helpful with rockets and a stronger cover penetrating railgun, but so would have been more dudes to do flanking maneuvers with. But I was writing up designs anyway and wanted to get this one out here for consideration.

I still like my idea of converting a regular airbase more. With much of infrastructure already in place design will be easier and we were told that bases aren't easy to get. Enemy may detect our activity, but so what? Will they spend an action to design base attack mission? Will they design necessary UFOs soon enough? Will they get enough from their investment? Will we be unable to intercept their mission? Attack on a secondary base doesn't worry me too much.
Also, I am skeptical about keeping bases stealthy. If they'll decide to detect them, they'll detect them in one way or another.

Just because something is possible doesn't mean that we should make it easy for the other side. Even if they don't do it yet, they'll do it sometime and then we'd be at risk of having them just snap up all our low hanging fruit. Also if they blow up a national airbase and one of our bases at the same time, that risks letting them get more panic and our base simultaneously, and I don't want to risk that.

Bonus from Argentinian outpost will surely not be as insane as double VP, it really up to 10ebbor10, I don't think that base will give something as mundane as VP for additional aircraft(s)

Even 2 more VP would make it worth it in my eyes, much less the chance for more EP and UP. Also, why wouldn't a base give more points? Having more stuff is what bases in XCOM are for, and its not like this is some special super secret psionic training base or something.

Anyway, I"m voting for my base because I'd like an alien tech token so I can add inertial buffering to the Thunderbird's description before we design it, so it can make max use of its higher speed and maneuverability instead of risking being limited by its pilots, and more vehicle points are never bad to get and will always be useful later on no matter what interceptor we're using.

X-R drone (1): strongpoint
Argentina Outpost (2): roseheart, Happerry
Thunderbird Alloy Interceptor (1): Chiefwaffles
X-Com base South (1) :strongpoint

Also, what kind of free point do people want to get? Personally I'd like to get another VP and spend it on a second Skyranger, but I could see arguments for saving it for later or even using it for a UP and spending it on NOTSOFTER

[stabbymcstabstab]

X-R drone (1): strongpoint
Argentina Outpost (2): roseheart, Happerry
Thunderbird Alloy Interceptor (2): Chiefwaffles, Stabby
X-Com base South (1) :strongpoint

[Strongpoint]

I don't consider your drone idea worth it though, because it's lack of endurance combined with few shots and the current fragility of our aircraft make me doubt it'd be effective enough to replace half of our Raven's missiles with one.

Half of the missiles?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Taking one of those not replacing half of the missiles.

Just because something is possible doesn't mean that we should make it easy for the other side. Even if they don't do it yet, they'll do it sometime and then we'd be at risk of having them just snap up all our low hanging fruit.

We need impact now. We can handle problems later if they'll arise. I am sure They'll be unable to use the vulnerability immediately, we will be able to use benefits of such base immediately. It is a simple bargain for me. Besides it is not that easy to detect. There are many military airbases in the world.

Even 2 more VP would make it worth it in my eyes

I seriously doubt that variant of the base you are voting for can give 2 VP. It has nothing industrial in it description. It is literally - "make a well hidden and safe place to deliver outdated equipment to". What you ask, that you get.

[Happerry]

I don't consider your drone idea worth it though, because it's lack of endurance combined with few shots and the current fragility of our aircraft make me doubt it'd be effective enough to replace half of our Raven's missiles with one.

Half of the missiles?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Taking one of those not replacing half of the missiles.

Fine, a third of them. Assuming that we can fit an anti-UFO scale railcannon into something that small at least, which I personally doubt.

Just because something is possible doesn't mean that we should make it easy for the other side. Even if they don't do it yet, they'll do it sometime and then we'd be at risk of having them just snap up all our low hanging fruit.

We need impact now. We can handle problems later if they'll arise. I am sure They'll be unable to use the vulnerability immediately, we will be able to use benefits of such base immediately. It is a simple bargain for me. Besides it is not that easy to detect. There are many military airbases in the world.

Call this a difference in willingness to risk then?

Even 2 more VP would make it worth it in my eyes

I seriously doubt that variant of the base you are voting for can give 2 VP. It has nothing industrial in it description. It is literally - "make a well hidden and safe place to deliver outdated equipment to". What you ask, that you get.

Er, what? This forces me to ask if you even bothered to read my base design, because that isn't anywhere in the description at all. Are you sure you aren't getting your design and mine confused? My base design has shiny air workshops to make shiny new ravens in the shiny hangers that support said aircraft. It's all about deploying and supporting and making aircraft, with some soldiers to put on the Skyrangers too. I mean, did you miss the part where it said that "the majority of its space is dedicated towards hangers for XCOM craft, workshops to maintain and build more craft, and a few barracks so the Skyrangers will have soldiers to deliver"?

It should give far more VP then yours if you think workshops are the only thing that gives more VP, given it'll have a far more building power then some tiny cramped workshop built secretly underground an already existing military base.

X-R drone (1): strongpoint
roseheart's Argentina Outpost (1): roseheart
Happerry's Argentina Outpost (1): Happerry
Thunderbird Alloy Interceptor (2): Chiefwaffles, Stabby
X-Com base South (1) :strongpoint

[Strongpoint]

Are you sure you aren't getting your design and mine confused?

Well, you voted for roseheart's first. Yours is still very straightforward but clear and logical. I don't think that it will get a better result than a design we did on turn 2 that gave us 1VP (unless 7+ will be rolled)

Call this a difference in willingness to risk then?

Well, your risk is just different. I consider building that kind of base harder than converting an air base even with additional problem of negotiating cooperation. We were told that bases are hard to get

It should give far more VP then yours if you think workshops are the only thing that gives more VP, given it'll have a far more building power then some tiny cramped workshop built secretly underground an already existing military base.

True, My suggestion isn't focused on VP at all. It is focused on better use of already existing aircrafts and cooperation with local airforce. It is meant to be a real small X-COM base within regular military base not a huge partly undeground complex built from scratch

[Happerry]

Are you sure you aren't getting your design and mine confused?

Well, you voted for roseheart's first. Yours is still very straightforward but clear and logical. I don't think that it will get a better result than a design we did on turn 2 that gave us 1VP (unless 7+ will be rolled)

Fair enough, I admittedly got mixed up a bit when I gave my first vote. Personally I think it'll do better then 1VP, but that's because I think having local airbases spread across the world also effects our VP supply, because VP is basically how many vehicles we can manage to throw at something so local airbases should make it easier to throw planes around and more buildy bases should also help. But I guess we'll see if one of the base vote wins. Either way, it'll be good to get more data on how bases work.

[Chiefwaffles]

Two revisions that I think could be useful as our revision later this turn:

Future Revision: Cheaper Ravens
It turns out that using alien alloy components in just the right places can eliminate a decent amount of complexity and extra components that would otherwise come with regular human-originating materials. The Raven's engines are the perfect case example here; by just implementing a tiny amount of alloys in the right spots (kind of like we did with the XH-2), we can drastically reduce the amount of time and resources needed to build individual Ravens.
TL;DR: Add a tiny bit of alloys in the right spots in Ravens in order to reduce overall material costs to the point where a Raven hopefully becomes 1 VP to field.


Future Revision: Personal Alloy Plating
It turns out that stuff we used on our railguns makes for great armor. Who knew.

By placing plates of alien alloy over important parts of our soldiers body, we hope to drastically increase survivability. We're not aiming for anywhere near complete body coverage, but mostly want to make it so getting hit by plasma shots (and explosions) isn't a complete death sentence for our troops.



I'd probably be willing to vote for an airbase if we were to do Cheaper Ravens, at least.

[Strongpoint]

I am ready to vote for most Raven revisions be it cost reduction, improvement of engines, improvement of avalanches or addition of a railgun. Unlike new interceptors I expect it to be useful almost always

[Happerry]

Future Revision: Personal Alloy Plating
It turns out that stuff we used on our railguns makes for great armor. Who knew.

By placing plates of alien alloy over important parts of our soldiers body, we hope to drastically increase survivability. We're not aiming for anywhere near complete body coverage, but mostly want to make it so getting hit by plasma shots (and explosions) isn't a complete death sentence for our troops.

Maybe try a mixture of Ceramics reinforced with alien alloy to make it cheaper? But alloy armor would be nice to have, yah. I'd just prefer to spend a design on it to make sure it's done right.

[Strongpoint]

Hm... Just an idea, We can also go for something like this

Elite pilot training program
Like X-com needed assistance of the best special forces of the world to create its own elite infantry, it required help from world's best airforces to develop new ways of fighting against new threats. With assistance of the best aerospace specialists of the world X-COM constructed complex training simulators that mimic performance of known UFOs and even allows to program new possible bogies with hypothetical "impossible maneuverability" taking inspiration from everything from scientific theories to popular sci-fi shows. This allows pilots to train to fight against targets that move in a very bizarre ways and develop tactic different to ones used against other jet aircrafts. Hopefully such training will make pilots ready for everything.

Thoughts? It worked with NOTSOFT, it may work with pilots.

[Happerry]

Honestly I'm less worried about our pilots skill, they've been doing ok, as I am worried about the bit where something blocked our missiles' sensors. If we want an air upgrade, the biggest argument for the Thunderbird right now might be it's built in Railcannon, and if we don't do the Thunderbird we might want to see if we can revise up a Railcannon for our Ravens, so we can bypass whatever ECM thing or cloak or whatever that kept our missiles from hitting.

Is definitely something to consider for the future though.

[Strongpoint]

If we want railguns for ravens we may design an external one to be mounted on hardpoints... But I am not sure that railgun is the best way to hit supersonic targets.

[Happerry]

If we want railguns for ravens we may design an external one to be mounted on hardpoints... But I am not sure that railgun is the best way to hit supersonic targets.

It's still a better way then any terrestrial autocannon though, and if they are jamming our missiles we need some sort of gun.