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[Madman198237]

I might cry if we managed to make a human-piloted fighter like the Thunderbird.

Modern fighters can't get faster to turn because they'd kill the pilot/black them out with g-strain. Just make it a DRONE FIGHTER. Control system at base, or on a Skyranger. Either way, drones can turn faster, are lighter, cheaper, and harder to detect, while still being capable of packing a huge punch.

Oh, and they can't be psionically screwed with, either.

[Happerry]

Honestly what I'd like to do with the Thunderbird would be to rewrite it so it uses Anti-Gravity plating/gear/whatever from the alien drones to buffer the G-Forces on the pilot, and use the alien equipment token on that, but when i first wrote that up we didn't have any alien equipment tokens nor had we killed of the enemy drones.

Given the aliens are already playing with electronic warfare, not sure we want to go for a potentially hackable/jammable drone fighter though.

[Chiefwaffles]

It's been confirmed that alien gravity tech is its own token, so any design built using antigrav would essentially us inventing anti-gravity technology from scratch without any help from alien tech.

[Happerry]

That's unfortunate. Wonder what we need to do to get some then? We've already taken both drones and ufos down.

[Strongpoint]

I am not sure that remote controlled drone is better than a piloted fighter. Psionic screwing is a problem but so is signal jamming and satellite destruction. AI drone is better but it looks hard to do.

We have equipment token from a battle where enemy had pistols, grenades, sectoids and mimics. It doesn't look like grav plating material.

[Blood_Librarian]

Alien alloys with absurd temperature, durability and wear resistance would be far more effective in an engine than in a set of armor. Yeah, some grunt can survive a bolt of plasma easier, but we could also build an aircraft jet-engine that could out accelerate an equivalent engine by a fair margin and take down a UFO with the same amount of alloys.

[Strongpoint]

we kinda can import that kind of alloys from XH-2. Aluen alloys in XH-2 were used for exactly that - temperature resistance

We can use alien alloys to further advance that knowledge or gain shock\plasma resistant alloys(armor) or lightweight alloys (aircrafts)

[Strongpoint]

HARD (equipment, alloy, experience tokens)
HARD (Heavy assault, something, something) is an elite X-COM unit. created to engage enemy in close quarters combat up to using melee weapons. Additionally, those soldiers learned everything we learned from alien autopsies and know how to kill or disable enemy aliens. Even before additional training those soldiers were special, one could be a master sword user and knife thrower, another a linguist that can communicate with civilians in every part of world, third is practicing shamanism who claims that he counters alien "evil magic", etc. Their equipment is special, too. First of all their is armor focused on something that no modern army expected to focus ever again - protection against melee attacks. But there are more. Everything carried by a member of HARD is special, fine-tuned and possibly using alien inspired tech. If its a kevlar vest, its armor plates have alien elements strengthening it and improving performance against plasma weapons, if it is a pistol it uses bullets hardened with alien alloys, if it is a flashbang it is adapted to hurt alien eyes more, if it is a hand grenade it has elerium additives for a more powerful punch, even their combat knifes are unlike any other. Even standard X-COM equipment like XH-2 or TAV2 come in slightly improved versions.


I expect this to cost 2UP and it may be a good thing because less units = less EP to spend on equipping them and less VP spent transporting them.

[Blood_Librarian]

HARD (equipment, alloy, experience tokens)
HARD (Heavy assault, something, something) is an elite X-COM unit. created to engage enemy in close quarters combat up to using melee weapons. Additionally, those soldiers learned everything we learned from alien autopsies and know how to kill or disable enemy aliens. Even before additional training those soldiers were special, one could be a master sword user and knife thrower, another a linguist that can communicate with civilians in every part of world, third is practicing shamanism who claims that he counters alien "evil magic", etc. Their equipment is special, too. First of all their is armor focused on something that no modern army expected to focus ever again - protection against melee attacks. But there are more. Everything carried by a member of HARD is special, fine-tuned and possibly using alien inspired tech. If its a kevlar vest, its armor plates have alien elements strengthening it and improving performance against plasma weapons, if it is a pistol it uses bullets hardened with alien alloys, if it is a flashbang it is adapted to hurt alien eyes more, if it is a hand grenade it has elerium additives for a more powerful punch, even their combat knifes are unlike any other. Even standard X-COM equipment like XH-2 or TAV2 come in slightly improved versions.


I expect this to cost 2UP and it may be a good thing because less units = less EP to spend on equipping them and less VP spent transporting them.

+1 for the stereotypical Jamacian Shaman. I don't like the blanket "uses special custom made alien improved equipment" though.

[Strongpoint]

Why not? There are millions of small improvements that can be done. Using design on a "bunch of small stuff usually use" isn't wise, rolling one into the unit looks fine.

[Madman198237]

Why not? There are millions of small improvements that can be done. Using design on a "bunch of small stuff usually use" isn't wise, rolling one into the unit looks fine.

You are positively suiciding that roll. It'd be VH or worse for sure, you're doing probably a dozen POORLY DEFINED revisions all in one design AND creating a new, specific, and difficult (On account of the rarity of the special snowflakes you're trying to recruit) unit type to boot.

[Strongpoint]

You see dozens of revisions, I see fluff and justification for using tokens. Most of the stuff there aren't meant real revisions. Those are small improvements. I probably need to rephrase that for clarity.

I'll probably edit out armor part out of that in a real submission should I decide to go this route. It doesn't seem as a rational use of alloys and actually may improve complexity a bit. On other hand if design is intended to use for a long time, then, IMO, all available tokens should be poured into it.

[10ebbor10]

Target: Brazil
Vehicle: 1x Medium UFO?, 1x Alien Fighter
Units present : Sectoids?, Scout Droids?, Skin crawlers?
Altitude : Departing

OPERATION : FORGOTTEN JESTER
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION : X-1

With a thundering roar, Talon Flight's 3 Raven fighters set out from their underground hangars towards the alien ships terrorizing Brazil. A grim mood hangs over the pilots. Though they're flying humanities finest aircraft, armed with the finest missiles and even alien technology itself, they know they're going up against long odds. XCOM's air component has had it's victories, but it has also faced significant losses. And now, they'll go up against the aliens newest fighting machines.

Even so, none among them think for a moment to shirk their duty. They are humanities finest. They're XCOM.
They will fight, and if needed die, to protect humanity.
They will destroy those UFO's, condemning hundreds to a fiery death to safe them from alien depredations.

Interception occurs high above Brazil, the alien vessels already well on their way back to orbit. Flaring afterburners, the Raven interceptors pile on speed as they move to cut of the vessels escape. The two alien vessels react rapidly, breaking of their flight, turning instead to face the approaching threat.

The smaller UFO, a dangerous fighter design previously encountered, turns sharply and speeds ahead. The larger UFO, nearly thrice the size, follows closely, showing a nimbleness unexpected of its size. A few small plasma bursts erupt from guns mounted around it's rim, soon outdone by a familiar overwhelming barrage from the fighter design. Talon squad's fighters dodge and weave through the experimental bursts, before each unleashing their full 8 missile Rockslide barrages.

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.

Phoenix cannons firing, Talon 1 and 3 bear down upon the larger UFO. Shells tear through it's hull, tearing holes into the armor and spilling goods into the thin outer air. Despite the growing damage to it's outer sectors, the performance of the craft appears unimpeded. The guns along it's rim continue their fire unabated, forcing Talon 1 to dodge desperately until it becomes easy prey for the fighter. Doing so renders it's vulnerable for Talon 3 however, and the Raven destroys the fighter with a well aimed rail gun shot.

Lone survivor, and low on both fuel and ammunition, Talon 3 dives in for one last past. Overloading capacitor safeties, he aims straight for the more resistant and as of yet unharmed central section. The projectile explodes through the air, smashing straight into and then through the armor plating. For a moment, the large UFO appears to stumble, unstable in the air, but then it recovers.

Out of ammunition, and rapidly approaching the end of the his Raven's endurance, Talon-3 is forced to break of pursuit.

Result : Interception Failed : Medium Fighter Destroyed, Large UFO escaped (Heavily Damaged)

Tactical notes : The enemy has introduced a new missile defense system. Current analysis indicates that it is very effective though not perfect at destroying missile weaponry at close distance to the ship by emitting a shield of plasma from their cannons. It appears that the cannons are incapable of firing at our planes for the short period the shield is active, something we'll consider in future operations.

The new enemy UFO is clearly larger and tougher than designs we've seen before. It's not that heavily armed, with 3 plasma turrets around it's rim, but it does appear to have a though armored central core.

Target: Australia
Vehicle: 1x Medium UFO?
Altitude : Reentry

Operation Soaring Dream

The operation in Australia turns out to be yet another small lander operating as a decoy. But their subterfuge turned out to be their downfall. With a clear signal, we anticipated their intended destination and managed to get a Skyranger on them the moment they landed. After that, it was a simple manner of shooting Sectoids coming out of a barrel. There was barely as many of them as there were of us, no drones, no tricks, and we had railguns and TAV's.

We're eager to report complete elimination of the enemy, capture of their UFO and no friendly casualties.
 
Gain : 1 VP Token, 1 Propulsion Token, 1 Powercore Token

Spoiler: Technology (click to show/hide)

Vehicles

Raven (Interceptor) : Way beyond the bleeding edge of technology, the Raven is far beyond any other jet fighter ever build on Earth. With upgraded avionics, adjusted tracking, and advanced pulse detonation engines, the Raven is capable of pursuing even high speed alien craft. If needed, it can use it's avalanche missiles to shoot down any intruders.   Cost :   2  VP
      - Rockslide Missiles : An upgraded targeting system, that increases missile effectiveness.
      - Ground Combat Package : Replaces half of the Raven's Avalanche missiles with high tech air-to-ground SMART missiles

Skyranger (Troop Transport) : World's first supersonic troop transport. The Skyranger is high speed, heavily armored troop transport, capable of deploying and retrieving a single squad of soldiers in various situations. Cost : 1 VP    [1 Free Skyranger available]
 
Equipment

Basic XCOM Rifle : XCOM's standard rifle. Cutting edge, custom designed, yet still affordable. Part of standard equipment.
Cost : 0

XH-2 Railgun Rifle : An effective semi-automatic rifle. Fires a powerful railgun round with tremendous velocity and penetrative power. In addition, it's equipped with a smart SCOPE to allow it to identify enemy drone targets.
Cost : 1

Basic XCOM Grenade : A simple grenade. Activate, throw, explode. Part of standard equipment.
Cost : 0

BASIC XCOM PISTOL : A simple, highpower pistol. It packs a pretty heavy punch, making it an effective if chalkenging sidearm Part of standard equipment.
Cost : 0

Phoenix railgun pod : A modular gun pod containing a light railgun. Relatively low firerate, but decent armor penetrating capability. Can be attached to Skyrangers and Ravens, though the latter looses 4 of it's missiles to make room. Cost: 1 EP for 3

TAV-2: A cobbled together combat visor that can identify and highlight aliens, including disguised ones. Fragile, cobbled together and decidly unergonomic.
Cost : 1 EP

Training Program

Rookie Training Program : A basic introduction to the entire Xcom project. The absolute minimum that any soldier needs to know to operate successfully at XCOM. Cost : 1 Unit Points.

NOTSOFTER training regimen : A hard, effective international training regime, that gives our soldiers the tools and capacity to deal with aliens. Trains forces to a standard marginally higher than that attained by most special force units Cost : 1 Unit Points.

Inter Agency Cooperation teams : As part of ties developed through the NOTSOFTER training regime, we now have the capability of drawing upon special force teams. They're not as well suited to fight aliens as we're however, and nations will object if we keep losing them. Cost 1 Unit Point    [SPECIAL : Can't use XCOM GEAR, No vehicle needed for deployment when used in North America or Europe]

Mission Profiles

Interception : A simple mission profile that focuses on intercepting an alien vessel as soon as it's detected, destroying it before it can do any damage to any innocent people.

Down and Capture : A more complicated mission profile that focuses on downing an alien vessel (or waiting for it to land), and then storming it with ground forces.

Combined Arms : A mission profile that integrates air and ground forces to storm UFO's, using aerial bombing, reconnaissance and strafing runs when available to take out enemy strongpoints or UFO armor.

XCOM Resources

Island Mountain HQ [An isolated, hidden underground base on a remote island in the Aegean]
       - UFO Power Core
       - Railgun Defenses
       - Heuristic radar
       - Improved production
Aereal reconnaissance program : A simple program that allows us to requisition drone reconnaissance on suspected UFO sites.

6 VP
3 UP
4+1 EP

2 Alien Equipment Token, 1 Unit experience Token, 1 Alien alloy token, 1 VP Token, 1 Propulsion Token, 1 Powercore Token

Spoiler: PANIC METER (click to show/hide)

Africa
---> Egypt
---> South Africa
---> Nigeria

Asia
--->Australia
--->China
--->India
--->Japan

Europe
--->France
--->Germany
--->Russia
--->United Kingdom

North America
--->Canada
--->Mexico
--->United States

South America
--->Argentina
--->Brazil   X

Design Phase

Turn 7

Challenge: Command has decided to catalogue our enemies equipment. The side which manages to make the best description/analysis of a piece of enemy equipment may win a price.

AABBCCDD

[Madman198237]

Hm. It might be a good time to reinvent our fighters using our knowledge and tokens. A simple revision, however, will be more than enough to nullify their new defensive system---a ceramic layer will stop the heat from melting the missiles in time to kill them. We could also include some sort of "go even faster" improve. Are we using a phebotinum elerium rocket-fuel equivalent yet?

[Chiefwaffles]

AAAAAAAAAH POWER CORE AND PROPULSION TOKENS


(Name stolen inspired by ebbor's squadron's name)
Design: Talon Interceptor
1 Alien Alloy Token, 1 Powercore Token, 1 Propulsion Token
Oh, aliens.
Giving us the technology to build a new fighter in a gift-wrapped golden handbasket. Truly, their generosity knows no bounds.


The Talon Interceptor is something else entirely. A culmination of everything we've done so far.

Its trademark feature are the gravity pulse drives. The aliens' craft are inelegant. Inefficient. They brute force flight. On the other hand, humans have over a century of flight on Earth and in her atmosphere. So instead of blindly using their clumsy technology, let's truly use it. Show the aliens why we won't be phased by a couple thousand-year headstart.
The Gravity Pulse Drive is admittedly, largely alien tech. Namely, the tech just recently pried from their small UFO that they gave to us. We haven't completely reverse engineered it yet to perserve complexity of this design, and we don't need to. Instead of having a complicated multi-array system capable of shifting the gravity in any direction, the Gravity Pulse Drive takes more notes from terrestrial flight systems. It (in extreme layman's terms) essentially "throws" gravitons backwards to give immense speeds. It's not as 360-degree manueverable as alien craft, but it's still vastly more agile and manuverable than anything earthborne.

The Talon still employs copious use of wings (though theoretically losing them would be less awful, just somewhat crippling) in order to allow the GPD to focus on non-vertical propulsion. Some intentional "leakthrough" of the gravity effect cancels out some of the G-forces in the cockpit, allowing the pilot to not become a pile of blood and bones when accelerating the craft.


An alien power core - drawing from our experience in XH2 guns' power sources, the base's power supply, and some tricks/tips in optimizing it for aircraft use thanks to the gifted UFO power core - powers the craft, satisfying the immense power draws of the Gravityt Pulse Drive.
Alien alloy armoring - very thick for an aircraft (though not too thick by itself) - combined with ceramics allows the craft to tank numerous hits from alien weapons.

The Talon is equipped with two hardpoints on the front for autocannons and other non-missiles. Numerous hardpoints on the wings and elsewhere (number is >= to #raven hardpoints) can be fit with missiles. Or Phoenix gunpods, but they aren't as facilitated. The two front (Phoenix) hardpoints are given a direct line to the power core, meaning any Phoenix gunpods loaded there should be notably more lethal.
An integrated Rockslide system, based on experience from the TAV2 and integration of Rockslide in our base, combined with an advanced (TAV-like) hud allows for extremely easy targetting of foes. The craft, using our computing experience, does a remarkable amount of tasks on its own. Hostile targets are immediately and continously analyzed by the Talon, and all information harnessed about the targets are fed to the pilot and automated targetting systems.

Ultimately, it's amazing. Faster, more agile, more armored, and more deadly than any nation on Earth could have ever dreamed of. It's even mostly based on our own tech. The only really new things are the alloy armoring and Gravity Pulse Drive; where we already have experience (and some more alien alloys to toy with) with the armor, and a propulsion system gifted to us by the aliens to use.
TL;DR: Our next-generation interceptor. Gravity engines, alloy-composite armor, better power, better hardpoints, better targetting, just better. Should be a gamechanger, and is surprisingly obtainable. Thanks to our heavy experience and use of tokens in applicable areas.

DESIGN
Talon Interceptor (1): Chiefwaffles