Air Combat (Long War)

This page may be outdated. It is up-to-date for version b13. The latest version is 1.0.

UFOs are tougher, faster, and much more deadly in the Long War. Along with that, your crafts and armaments are significantly less potent, at least at first. You'll be needing to cycle your craft regularly (like your soldiers), as kills now grant a sort of XP to accuracy, as if your pilots learn UFO flight patterns and movements, and learn to fire with increasing accuracy with their experience. Interceptor experience provides +3% to hit per kill (up to + 30%) and +1% damage per kill (with no top limit). Also, you will find that both your craft and UFOs may sometimes get 'critical hits', with UFOs being downed in a few hits, or your undamaged Interceptor immediately going into near-full red.

For starters, the Avalanche Missiles, on your fresh pilots, now have an abysmal 40% accuracy. While it is possible to still down the first Scout with one Interceptor, this is incredibly unlikely, and most likely it will take two, or even three interceptions to bring down these upgraded craft.

Of course, with the vastly greater number of UFOs you will encounter being a factor, repair times may cripple you: for example, since you will lose at least 1 country in the first month, that continent will most likely be the one to be focused on for Terror missions and UFO flights, which will damage your craft-- which will then raise panic, and in turn, cause more alien attacks to occur on that continent, to which you cannot intercept in flight.

Air-to-air weapons now have two damage statistics - Damage and Armor Penetration. UFOs have different armor levels, which reduces the damage done by a weapon if its armor penetration isn't high enough. For example, you start with a choice between Avalanche missiles (medium damage, low armor penetration) and Stingray missiles (low damage, medium armor penetration). Avalanches will be better against unarmored and very lightly armored UFOs, while Stingrays will be better against more armored UFOs.

When launching you can set a combat stance for your interceptors as they launch on a mission. Aggressive gives +15% to hit for both you and the UFO, Balanced plays out like normal, and Defensive gives -15% to hit for both you and the UFO. You may not use the dodge consumable when aggressive and you may not use the auto-hit consumable when defensive.

UFOs can fly at three altitudes: "High", "Low" and "NOE" ("Nap of the Earth,"). The altitude is a clue of what mission the UFO is going on - UFOs flying at NOE altitude are most likely to land, are performing bombing runs, or will generate an Abduction or Terror mission immediately upon arriving at their destination. UFOs at high altitude are most likely to be hunting satellites.

The LW mod brings back a mechanic from previous generations of XCOM: UFOs can now have full DOA crashes (with minimal Alloy recovery, and no corpses or other artifacts), so in some cases you may want to pull your punches. To compensate, the Council will give cash rewards for UFOs obliterated in flight. This will most commonly be the case for high altitude UFOs, as the fall from sub-orbital flight will demolish almost all other material of use from a crash.

Satellite-hunting UFOs can be dissuaded by damaging them, even if you can't shoot them down. A satellite hunting UFO has a chance to shoot down your satellite at the completion of its mission based on its damage level, 100% chance at 100% HP down to 0% chance at 50% HP (further modified by the Stealth Satellites upgrade), so any damage you can do to a satellite hunter could save your satellite.

Once you successfully raid a UFO type, either landed or crash landed, you can research that craft for a damage bonus against it in future.

Lastly, there are Research and Engineering projects that will assist in aerial sorties. There are multiple foundry projects to improve your interceptors. The three consumables remain, but with Aim being built from Floater corpses (so you may want to keep a good number on hand, at least to help your less experienced pilots), the Boost device from Drone wrecks, and the useful Dodge module being limited by how many Cyberdiscs you can encounter and destroy.

As you progress, each type of UFO's statistics also increase, from general 'health' to firing rates, as to keep you on your toes; so don't expect to ever truly dominate the skies. Plus with the added variables to air-interception, there is no clear-cut "UFO X can be brought down by Interceptor Y" table. As such, the Long War's UFO page will be your general guide for how--- or if-- to attempt to engage these potent UFOs.