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[Strongpoint]

Hmmmm.... Just a thought. Alternative "completely original" idea:

Gravity pulse drive: 1 Propulsion Token, 1 Powercore Token
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.

First versions of Gravity pulse drive come with a built-in power source and created to replace ramjets on Ravens and Skyrangers but technology is easily adaptable for any future aircrafts including ones that will be purposely designed for this kind of propulsion and have their own power units.


Why not focus on the drive itself if we are going for Talon, that looks like a bloated superrevision of Raven? It increases our chance of success on that one key technology instead of spreading the effort on airframe, new alloys, new electronics and other stuff. If we make a drive that works largely as our old ones... Why not use it on our existing aircraft? We can even combine it with a following Raven revision.

[Blood_Librarian]

It is not a super revision of the Raven. We are recreating our aircraft with latest generation technology. Its like the difference between propeller planes and jets.

[Chiefwaffles]

If you want to build a craft relying on Phoenix gunpods, the craft is going to have to spend greatly increased time in proximity of alien weapons, and is going to have to be able to consistently maneuver to keep its guns pointing at alien craft plus to dodge said weapons.
A missile aircraft is what you want if you’re only going for speed. Get in, fire missiles, get out.

And there is no good way to make flight armor this early. We’d be reverse engineering an extremely heavy alien aircraft gravity technology to put on infantry armor. And “gravity reduction” isn’t exactly a huge infantry advantage. And turning a glorified infantry jumpjet into an extreme-speed aircraft in a revision seems like a worse idea.


And the Talon is a perfectly conventional design. New aircraft based on new components, making use of our technology to be better.
You’re misrepresenting how designs work. It’s not “each feature adds +x points; design must be under y points.” We’re making a new aircraft. It includes features that we can reasonably include. It uses tokens to achieve those features.


A dedicated GPD design seems like an awful idea. There’s no benefits or reason to doing it in its own design and we have to spend two designs to get the same thing. It’s just doing what Tokens already explicitly exist to be used for.


By the way, people should probably start voting soon.

[Strongpoint]

It is not a super revision of the Raven. We are recreating our aircraft with latest generation technology. Its like the difference between propeller planes and jets.

Propeller planes and jets are different because of two key reasons : propeller pulls\jet pushes and aerodynamics at mach+ are different.

That drive is much close to jets than jets to propellers and Ravens should be quite easy to adapt. Yes, designing aircraft to match the engine is beneficial but I think that focusing our "design power" on the engine is more beneficial and slight unsuitedness of Raven for new Engine is more than compensated by a better engine we'll get.

[Strongpoint]

A dedicated GPD design seems like an awful idea. There’s no benefits or reason to doing it in its own design and we have to spend two designs to get the same thing. It’s just doing what Tokens already explicitly exist to be used for. 

Tokens exist to buff designs depending on how much they fit it. If you really want to say that aircraft with pulse drive benefits from propulsion token as much as the drive itself....

As for "spend two designs to get the same thing". It is an absurd statement. I have faith that GM will assign quite different quality of design that went design everything at once than design one thing, than design everything else.

You say there are no benefits or reason to go for the drive first because you don't want to look at reasons or benefits. They are obvious. You may say that they don't outweigh benefits of going for a new aircrafts but that it is a very different thing.

[Chiefwaffles]

That's...
really stupid.

That's like saying "THE RAILGUN IS A BAD IDEA; IF IT ISN'T COMPLETE COPYING OF AN EXISTING PIECE OF ALIEN EQUIPMENT THEN IT WON'T GET THE FULL BENEFITS OF THE TOKEN"
Or "THE ALIENS NEVER USED ALIEN ALLOYS AS PARTS IN RAILGUNS SO WHY THE HELL ARE WE USING AN ALIEN ALLOY TOKEN ON A RAILGUN?!?!?!?!"


And no, two designs is not just automatically better than one.
Let me apply the same approach to your most recent design.
Design: Gravity Reverse Engineering (1 Propulsion Token)

Since it's so clearly a great idea to be as careful as we humanly can, we obviously need to spend some more time preparing before jumping headfirst into making an entire gravity engine design. The entire point of XCOM is to be "slow and methodical and to public peer-reviewed studies on alien technology", after all. "Preparing our forces to fight the alien menace"? Please.
The point of this design is to take apart the alien gravity propulsion, study it, and maybe even see if we can make a neat little impractical prototype in the lab! Science is fun.

I mean, look at the proposal to make an entire gravity engine. Impractical. It tries to do so many things in one design. It tries to reverse engineer alien tech, it tries to make a multi-array system, it tries to adds components from terrestrial flight systems, and it tries to incorporate its own power source!
That sounds like a superrevision to me. Trying to do so many things in one design. Just irresponsible. So let's do this instead.

Or to another one of our designs.
Design: Railgun Theory (1 Alien Equipment Token)
Railguns are complicated. It'd be silly to try and jump right into it. So let's spend an entire design just preparing for the railgun. Sure, we'll have to spend two designs to get a gun, but hey. Some of our engineers tell us that it never hurts to be more careful. Never. Hurts.

Also, it'd be pretty stupid to try and make a railgun at once. We'd be incorporating an alien power supply, miniaturizing existing railgun technologies, making the proper ammunition loader, then making it usable by our soldiers! What is that, some kind of "superrevision" maybe? Sounds like a bad idea to me.

[Madman198237]

It is not a super revision of the Raven. We are recreating our aircraft with latest generation technology. Its like the difference between propeller planes and jets.

Propeller planes and jets are different because of two key reasons : propeller pulls\jet pushes and aerodynamics at mach+ are different.

That drive is much close to jets than jets to propellers and Ravens should be quite easy to adapt. Yes, designing aircraft to match the engine is beneficial but I think that focusing our "design power" on the engine is more beneficial and slight unsuitedness of Raven for new Engine is more than compensated by a better engine we'll get.

1. No, no that is NOT the difference. Propellers can push (the FIRST POWERED AIRCRAFT EVER used a pusher prop), and if you mount a jet engine in front of the aircraft it will pull. The only real difference is that jets have dangerously hot exhaust, and that jets don't suffer from as many issues with moving past the speed of sound (i.e., making the propeller go faster than the speed of sound is basically necessary for a supersonic prop plane, yet has lots of issues, mostly structural. Oh, and the sound is literally deafening.)
2. Flying at supersonic speeds and flying at hypersonic speeds is also VASTLY different, and now we're facing the actual possibility of reaching such ludicrous speeds. Also, that difference has nothing to do with the differences between a prop plane and a jet plane, except in the case that one actually reaches and surpasses the speed of sound, but that is NOT a native difference to jet vs. prop. Early jets didn't go past the speed of sound either.
3. The Raven isn't just "slightly unsuited" for a new engine. We can do so much to make the thing smaller, faster, stronger, yet lighter, all with less difficulty than we'd have attempting to keep the Raven alive past its expiration date.

[Blood_Librarian]

Unga dunga. Me use spear to kill people. me have stone blade, but oh no, me being killed by copper spear.

When I said "the difference between propeller planes and jets", I meant more of the technological base required to build such craft. I am not comparing the actual crafts themselves, but the technology and know how on how to build them. Just as jet engines are compared to the propeller blade, our net, modern craft, will be the next generation of propulsion in aircraft power.

@ChiefWaffles  @Madman198237 I am honestly a little disappointed at both your passive aggression towards @strongpoint, mainly because it's dangerously close to becoming toxic enough for me to lose interest in the game.

[Happerry]

To be fair, they're not the only ones whom often find strongpoint's plans aggravating, though we should still all try to be polite to each other no matter how much we think the other guy is wrong.

DESIGN
Talon Interceptor-A (2): Chiefwaffles, Happerry
Talon Intercepter-B (2):Blood_Librarian, Happerry

Anyway, voted for the new generation fighter, instead of just trying to make a new engine or the overly-specialized flying gun of the Colibri because I think the Talon will be useful longer into the game as described and be a better platform for later refits as we get more stuff.

[Madman198237]

DESIGN
Talon Interceptor-A (2): Chiefwaffles, Happerry
Talon Intercepter-B (3):Blood_Librarian, Happerry, Madman198237

[10ebbor10]

1 Alien Alloy Token, 1 Powercore Token, 1 Propulsion Token

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 Gravity Pulse Drive.
The entire crafts outer hull is made up of ceramic plates held in place by an interior and exterior hull plates of Alien-Alloy, this structure armor emplacement 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.

Hard 2 + 4 - 1 = 5 (3 tokens used)

The Talon Interceptor is XCOM's pride. The culmination of a tremendous amount of research and a significant amount of alien technology, it far exceeds the performance of any human plane ever build before.

More than twice as large as the Raven that is technically it's predecessor, the Talon is a very impressive and imposing craft. Covered in gleaming alien armor and with it's sleek narrow delta wing, it's seems the chosen name was surprisingly apt. Even more so when one considers it's armament, which consists of 18 missile hard points (half again more than Raven) as well as a dual nose mount, which by default is equipped with 2 uprated XH2 railguns.

Most of the space within the Talon's double alloy hull is taken up by it's powerful alien power reactor, and the modified grav drive array. The pilot sits safely in front of this powerful array, taking in their surroundings through a modified TAV-2 suite. Additional software systems gather data from the crafts many sensors, helping ensure that the pilot is aware of his surroundings and his enemies.

All in all, it's a spectacular aircraft. Challenging to fly, certainly. The interface can be overwhelming, the grav bleedthrough disorienting, and the whole experience somewhat overpowering. The crafts significant mass combined with the grav drives peculiarities result in a very peculiar flying pattern, with significant inertia causing the craft to possibly fly sideways or backwards if the pilot is overly aggressive with the controls. In the hands of a skilled pilot however, it's deadly, enduring and nimble.

Also, very expensive.

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

Talon (Interceptor) : Integrating copious amounts of Alien Technology, the Talon is grav-wave propelled, heavily armored interceptor. Has 18 hard points for missiles and 2 nose mounts, fitted with a railgun by default.  Cost :   3  VP

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 VP 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
[/quote]

[Happerry]

So revise alien alloy missiles for anti-plasma bath use, and spend the Vehicle Token on the Talon?

[Strongpoint]

So revise alien alloy missiles for anti-plasma bath use, and spend the Vehicle Token on the Talon?

I think you mean 1\3 of Talon, right?

3VP is very cheap for this kind of craft, I expected 4... We should spend vp on skyranger and our default will be 2Skyrangers + 2 Talons, alternative is 3 skyrangers, 1 talon, 1 Raven but that looks very suboptimal


I don't think that we need to spend a revision on missiles, Talon is a huge leap already.  If we want to use two Talons (and we want) we need to be content with using 2 Skyrangers

Upgrade Inter Agency Cooperation teams: 1 unit experience token
Student became teachers, X-COM sends combat veterans to teach anti-alien tactics to special forces all over the world with the intent to have more allies in fight with the extraterrestrial enemy (first goal of the revision is worldwide a coverage, second goal is a lower U cost)



Our current optimal setup is > two talons, 2 skyrangers, 3 pods, 2xrifles, 2xTAVs and that spends everything but a U. My revision above is aimed at using that U.

Talon (Interceptor) : Integrating copious amounts of Alien Technology, the Talon is grav-wave propelled, heavily armored interceptor. Has 18 hard points for missiles and 2 nose mounts, fitted with a railgun by default. Cost :   3  VP

10ebbor10, does it mean that those railguns have no EP cost? Also, can we add even more railguns by spending E and reducing amount of missiles?

[Happerry]

So revise alien alloy missiles for anti-plasma bath use, and spend the Vehicle Token on the Talon?

I think you mean 1\3 of Talon, right?

Um, basically? Spend it on the Talon, decrease the cost of our first one by one VP like a token always does?

3VP is very cheap for this kind of craft, I expected 4... We should spend vp on skyranger and our default will be 2Skyrangers + 2 Talons, alternative is 3 skyrangers, 1 talon, 1 Raven but that looks very suboptimal

I was thinking spend it on the Talon and then we'd keep our current deployment lineup, but replacing one of the ravens with a Talon. Because as long as we're deploying them against the smaller UFOs, the Ravens still seem to have good odds to win. I guess a 'free' skyranger is never a bad thing though.

I don't think that we need to spend a revision on missiles, Talon is a huge leap already.  If we want to use two Talons (and we want) we need to be content with using 2 Skyrangers

Upgrade Inter Agency Cooperation teams: 1 unit experience token
Student became teachers, X-COM sends combat veterans to teach anti-alien tactics to special forces all over the world with the intent to have more allies in fight with the extraterrestrial enemy (first goal of the revision is worldwide a coverage, second goal is a lower U cost)

The reason I want to spend it on Missiles is that they just did two anti-missile upgrades. Well, one anti-missile upgrade and one new craft with heavier armor, but that still amounts to making our current missiles a lot worse. Maybe we should do something else with our revision this turn, but we need to at least come up with an anti-point defense upgrade sometime soon or else our missiles are just never going to hit, and with the enemy now deploying newer heavier UFOs, it seemed like a time to start researching elerium explosives by way of a bigger warhead.

Honestly not so hot on the idea of the inter-agency Cooperation teams, they won't have railguns and I suspect they'll be more like rookies then notsofter troops, so I'm not sure how useful they'll be. They're also already cheap, in that they only cost one point, so how would we make them cheaper? I really doubt we'll get a two for one deal on them.

Our current optimal setup is > two talons, 2 skyrangers, 3 pods, 2xrifles, 2xTAVs and that spends everything but a U. My revision above is aimed at using that U.

Or the 3 skyrangers, 1 talon, 1 Raven combo, which deploys all our NotSofter and has railguns for everyone, which I don't think we should discount when the enemy seems that they may be moving to fewer but heavier UFOs.

Maybe we could use the Revision to add an alien containment unit to our base? Or taking the TAV-2 and removing the 'fragile and decidly unergonomic' bits.

[Chiefwaffles]

Revision: Rockbreaker Missile
The new Rockbreaker missile is just a general improvement of its prior version. The same size as an old Rockslide, it uses an unstable small elerium power core (kind of like the XH2's) to replace the payload, allowing for greater damage against airborne craft. Thin alien alloy "armoring" on the missile doesn't and shouldn't allow it to survive any directed attempts at destruction of the missile, but should allow the missile to withstand conditions such as the anti-missile plasma shield for the times needed to hit its target.

It should be able to survive their plasma shielding (and we hope but not expect that the alloy coating allows for very limited armor penetration before detonation). And while we can't spend much time making a proper elerium warhead, even an unstable power core should do notably more damage than the prior conventional explosives.

TL;DR: Put an unstable alien power core as the warhead and super-thin alloy coating around our missiles to survive plasma shielding. Counters their missile counter while being some degree better at doing damage when they hit.

((to proactively stem doubts about the ease of an unstable elerium power core being easy enough to do in a revision: In XCOM2012 and XCOM2, the UFO power cores found in alien craft explode really easily if touched the wrong way; it won't be too amazing of a difference, but that means we can effectively weaponize elerium just by not trying as hard to keep it stable.
It's a good idea to invest more in proper elerium explosives in the future but this should still be a notable and very easy upgrade.))

REVISION
Upgrade IAC Teams (0):
Rockbreaker Missile (1): Chiefwaffles