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Air Combat Guide (LWR)

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Air combat was always difficult, unclear and even unenjoyable part of the game for some Long War players. To fix these issues, LWR has changed air combat significantly and with enough knowledge and experience player can implement different strategies, beat dreaded RNG and enjoy success. The goal of this guide is to introduce and explain how to deal with air game and air combat in LWR and turn this part of the game into enjoyable experience.

Starting steps

First priority of XCOM and player is to take the control of its starting continent and build enough interceptors to control airspace. XCOM starts with 3 interceptors, unless you choose one of starting bonuses that grants extra interceptors. Interceptors are expensive and take long time to build so it is advisable to start building 4th one already early in March. By the end end of the March you should usually start building 5th interceptor, and in the April 6th one. With that done, XCOM will have fully protected starting continent during second month in the game. Money to build air force should not be issue as XCOM has very few things to build in the beginning. If played well you will never lose these starting interceptors and they will turn out to be excellent long term investment. You can already have fleet below in the first month even on highest difficulty. In newest patch XCOM can have up to 10 interceptors on the continent giving players more flexibility or power if needed to guarantee beating RNG.

Fighting first UFOs

Your starting interceptors will by default be armed with Avalanche missiles, which are excellent choice for first two months of the game. First UFOs that alien will be sending are light Scout class ships, that XCOM can shoot down and generate UFO tactical missions on the ground. It is important to shoot down these Scouts as they are vital source of the materials needed to build items and research technology. You can (usually) expect 2 Scouts during March and 2 more during April so be prepared to have your interceptors ready for fight.

Unlike in vanilla game, in LWR player can send multiple interceptors to attack UFOs at the same time. Exact numbers depend on pilot's rank, and at the start that would be two. By sending two interceptors at default Mid stance, you will likely be able to crash first Scout quickly. The game has certain dose of RNG built into combat, so if unlucky, you may fail. In that case you can send new interceptors to fight UFO and finish the job. For that reason it is important to build extra interceptors early to make sure that first alien Scouts will be shot down. It is ok to fail to kill UFOs occasionally, but repeated failures will likely lead to resource starvation and may lead to losing the game.

After fights your interceptors may be damaged, in which case they will slowly be repaired on its own. But in case of heavy damage, which would be usually more than 10 days of repair time, you should probably repair them manually by investing extra money. Doing this will cut down repair time by half. This is important to make sure that your interceptors are ready to fight if aliens send new UFOs. Damaged interceptors can fight, but are at disadvantage. Still, if you have to send them damaged to guarantee kills, its probably worth it.

This is all you need to know for first two months of the game which is at least couple of hours of playing time.

Understanding aircrafts stats

Armor and HP - both XCOM aircrafts and alien UFOS have hit points (HP) and armor (or lack one). Notably, both XCOM interceptors and Scouts are unarmored, but interceptors starts with much more hit points than Scouts. Aliens will be upgrading their aircraft each alien level so fights will become tougher. XCOM has also access to upgrades, but these are not so easily acquired. Armor is very important as it reduces damage received significantly - more on that later. HP represents health and if aircraft loses all its HP it will be destroyed. Repair time also depends on amount of damage taken.

Weapons - both XCOM and aliens have different kind of weapons. For the most part aliens keep the same weapons - they eventually do upgrades, while XCOM has quite a few choices during the game. Knowing which weapon to use against specific alien UFO will make big difference and it is essential to winning air game.

Speed - notably influences duration of fights, which is important since that is the time you have to shoot down the UFO, before it escapes. You usually have chance to send at least another batch of interceptors to shoot down UFO if first one fails. Alien Scouts and Fighters are small UFOs and have higher speed than rest of larger alien aircrafts. They are harder to hit and you have less time before they escape, but they are at the same time more fragile. Note that damaged interceptors have reduced aim and stay shorter in fights so they have even less time to defeat the UFO.

Understanding starting weapons (Avalanche vs Stingray)

If you compare Avalanche Missiles to Stingray Missiles, you can notice that Avalanche deals 80 DPS against Stingray 65 DPS in current patch. Numbers may change, but notice that Stingray has Tier 2 armor penetration, while Avalanche has none. The way damage is calculated in air combat that means that first armored UFO - Fighter with Tier 3 armor, will resist 75% of Avalanche damage, but only 25% of Stingray damage. That is serious cutoff of Avalanche damage and they are very ineffective against armored UFOs. UFO Scouts are always Unarmored.

So when fighting Scouts, best choice of weapons is Avalanche, while Stingray is a bit weaker. The best course of action is to use Avalanche weapons during AL1 and AL2. On AL3 you can expect first Fighters to appear and at that point is advisable to use several Stingray interceptors (3-4 should be ok), or use better Phoenix weapons. Phoenix weapons have armor penetration properties as Stingray, but higher overall DPS.

First challenge - handling alien Fighter

Usually, during May you may expect aliens to send their first armored Fighter, easily recognized as threating flashing UFO on the globe map. Fighter flying high will try to shoot down your Satellite, while the one flying low will bomb your population increasing panic. It is imperative to try to damage or kill high flying Fighter, since losing a Satellite is quite a setback. It is not a game over, just keep always one Satellite as backup for worst cases and redeploy it if needed. Low flying Fighter will increase panic somewhat in your countries, but this one is much more easily ignored. If you are not ready, you can just not engage against it and eat the panic increase.

Fighter in May will probably be upgraded, so it will have double or triple starting HP. The tough part is that Fighter has T3 armor. For every level of tier difference between weapon and armor damage will be reduced by 25%.

  • This means that Avalanche Missiles will do only 25% of its original damage. This makes them highly ineffective - they will deal only about 10-15% damage of Fighter HP on average during whole engagement.
  • Stringrays are T2 level, meaning they will deal 75% of their damage. That is respectable amount, and depending on damage randomization and Fighter level you may need several Stingray hits to hurt the Fighter. Ideally, you would want to have couple of Phoenix Cannons before first Fighter, they should make the job more manageable. Primary goal is to damage Fighter to 50% - do not try to destroy it unless fight is going surprisingly well. Don't be late with upgrades to Phoenix, aliens will upgrade UFOs.

Few observation from graph: Stingray is 3x better than Avalanche. Phoenix is 30% upgrade on Stingray. Upgraded Phoenix (Coilgun) is again 30% upgrade on Phoenix. Laser Cannon is worse than Stingray, but Upgraded Laser Cannon (Pulse tier) is super good and almost equal to Upgraded Phoenix Cannon. EMP Cannon is 35% upgrade on Upgraded Phoenix and Plasma is 50% better than EMP. The number may change over the patches but roughly weapons are balanced in this way for long time now.

Upgrading your weapons (Laser and Phoenix Cannons)

After first Fighter fight you will probably be attacked by more Scouts, that now have more HP, and you will feel the difficulty in shooting them down. Time to upgrade your weapons. If you do upgrade them earlier before Fighter, even better.

  • Laser Cannons are more expensive, but they are extremely efficient at killing Scouts. Two Laser Cannons will on average shoot down Scout up to AL5 on their own, and by that point you can send in some extra help and job will be done. Unfortunately, they still heavily struggle vs Fighters and they just can't do the damage. Send them if you really must, but best to keep them grounded in this case. Killing Scouts (and Raiders are soon to come) is vital, so every air force should have a few of these.
  • Phoenix Cannons are Stingray upgrade, with T2 penetration and improved damage they are often able to hurt Fighter up to 50% health. If you have 4 Phoenix interceptors, you may shoot it down and will pretty much guarantee hurting it to at least 50%. They are roughly 30% damage upgrade over Stingrays. Phoenix are not as good as Lasers vs Scouts, but they do decent job. Sending them together with some Laser Cannon interceptors to fight, makes much more sense, than sending Laser Cannons to fight Fighters.

When all this is taken into account, it is probably wise to have good mix of Laser and Phoenix Cannons, perhaps 3 of each. You can experiment, there are positives and negatives when leaning to either side.

Satellites

Once you are able to protect your sky it is good idea to cover whole continent to get continent bonus and extra money. You likely want your weapons upgraded before doing this. Always try to keep 1 extra satellite ready, in case alien Fighter shoot down one. Your air force with Laser and Phoenix cannons will be able to keep them safe for time being. To be able to launch extra satellites you need to build Satellite Uplinks or Nexuses in base layout. Nexus is more expensive, but supports adding 1 extra satellite, which you may or may not want, depending on your expansion plans. It is good to have more capacity, to be able to do later Alien Base Assault (ABA), so if in doubt just build Satellite Nexus next to your existing Satellite Uplink.

First medium UFOs - Raiders

Raiders are not very scary to deal with. Their offensive power is that of Scouts and Fighters, but they come with heftier amount of HP. Luckily they are unarmored UFO. If you see medium UFO and it is not flashing - you are dealing with Raider. If Raider is flying (NOE) - nap of earth - it will land. Ans if you covered whole continent with satellites you don't have to engage it with interceptors. Let it land and do the mission, success will net you large amount of resources. But, when the continent is not fully covered with satellites, you are risking to miss raider mission - so it is advisable to shoot it down if possible. If Raider is flying low, then by all means try to shoot it down to generate tactical mission.

Shooting Raider requires lots of DPS so having multiple Laser Cannon (or Phoenix) interceptor is desirable. In general Lasers do more damage to Raiders than Phoenix so get a healthy mix of both to be able to kill both Raiders and Fighters. Combination of Laser and Phoenix can shoot down Raiders as well, medium UFOs are slower so you will have some extra time.

Fun fact: Raider (AL1) can appear even in first month of the game and it is possible to shoot it down with 4-6 Avalanche interceptors, use LEAD stance if you have to.

Expanding to second continent - doing Alien Base Assault (ABA)

At some point, when you are stable at your game on all fronts, you will want to expand to second continent. For that you need to build up Satellite capacity, so build extra Nexus or Uplink and you should also order new interceptors and weapons for them. This is generally done in second half of the year, perhaps August - September, but it is up to you to decide. At some point it is advisable to do Alien Base Assault (ABA), in which case you have to launch Satellite over the country aliens have taken over. Since you will have that Satellite, you may want to protect it with Interceptors and cover that continent fully for the bonus. That is one way to deal with expansion, but if you just want to do ABA and have no plans to cover the continent, after activating the mission, dismantle the Satellite. Otherwise aliens will destroy it quickly causing larger panic increase in the country. Once you decide on continent, you can transfer your planes to other continent, and shortly accept that you have 3-4 per continent. This is risky of course. In any case build up new interceptors and weapons for them to fully populate both continents as soon as possible. Expanding to 3rd continent is also possible, although generally you don't have to do that to win the game. It is significant investment, so probably best to just hold two.

Handling Destroyers - using advanced air weapons

Usually during AL5, near the end of the year, aliens will start sending Destroyers. These are medium flashing UFOs, highly resistant to damage, fatter than Fighters. Fighters at this point are upgraded and already hard to deal with, so when Destroyers come, it is probably that you may not be able to damage them more than 50%. Luckily their weapons are not super strong when they appear, but at AL7 they will be getting massive upgrades.

Destroyers have Tier 4 armor so Laser Cannons will be dealing 5% of its damage only. Phoenix is Tier 2 weapons and it will be dealing only 50% of the damage to fighters. You will have experienced pilots with improved accuracy by this point, as well as some interceptor upgrades, so with some luck and 4 Phoenix Cannons you may have chance to save your Satellite. Luckily, destroyers are rare, so even if you have to lose Satellite, it should no be end of the world. If the destroyer is flying "low" and bombing populace, you are "lucky", so just leave it be until you upgrade your weapons. "High" flying one try to damage to save your Satellite.

  • Upgraded Phoenix Cannon (Gauss tier) - If you went on with "classic" research path, Thinmen Autopsy to Gauss weapons, you may have Phoenix Coilguns upgrade, which upgrades Phoenix Cannons to Tier 3 armor penetration. This is serious damage upgrade for Phoenix against Destroyers, as they will now be doing 75% of its original damage. Upgraded Phoenix Cannons have higher chance to damage Destroyers and make them fail their mission.
  • Upgraded Laser Cannons (Pulse tier) - These are harder to research, after ABA is done, and it is more Elerium heavy research path, Laser Cannons are upgraded by researching Supercapacitors. Despite huge dps increase, these are still No Penetration weapons so they just tickle Destroyers. Don't use them vs Destroyers. Pulse tier Laser Cannons are excellent against Raiders and UFOs and it is advisable to have at least couple of them to handle these type of UFOs. Surprisingly, they are quite efficient at killing Fighters.
  • EMP Cannon - Now we are talking, these are Destroyer counters! EMP Cannon pierces Destroyer armor doing large amounts of damage to it. For that reason you should highly prioritize researching and building these weapons. You may replace Phoenix Cannon interceptor with EMP Cannon, unless you have more than 3 Laser Cannons, in which case you are probably better to replace Laser. One EMP Cannon can not handle Destroyer on its own, but with some Phoenix help, you should be able to get it to 50%. Cover your continents with 1-2 of these asap, later on you likely want 3 per continent. Do not expect to destroy Destroyers, primary objective is to damage them to 50%.


From graph it can be seen that only Upgraded Phoenix Cannon has decent enough DPS to hurt Destroyers. Using lower weapons is last resort. EMP is first real weapon vs them, and Plasma is good upgrade. Fusion is great and will handle lategame Destroyers.

Upgrading your airforce

During mid game there are a number of very strong Foundry project upgrades to Interceptors and Firestorm. You should treat them with priority, possibly quick research some of them. There are things there like extra 30% HP to your aircraft, 30% faster fire rate, more aim, dodge etc. Check the Aerospace Improvements and make sure not to sell required resources as they often require specific alien materials to be researched.

Combat stances, Boosters and Active aircraft

Another important way to fight efficiently is the proper use of combat stances and combat boosters. In mid game you will have access to Aim, Dodge and Tracking booster, while combat stances (Read, Mid, Lead) can be used from the beginning of the game. Boosters become available during middle game and are cheap money wise, but require alien corpses to be built. This makes them a limited resource. Build Boosters, but try to use them smartly, they are not meant to be spammed.

  • Mid stance and Tracking booster - Mid stance is default one and neither XCOM or alien gets bonuses so it is default choice. You will likely use this stance for first part of the game. Tracking booster comes a bit later and it will give you extra time to shoot down the UFO if you need it. Build a few, keep them for when you need to finish of important target. Tracking booster can be used only when active aircraft is in mid stance.
  • Rear stance - This stance is used a lot in mid and late game. Your aim is reduced by 10, which is significant (cca 30%) reduction, but so is the aim of alien UFOs. Since XCOM can field multiple interceptors you may have enough dps and overwhelm UFOs while risking little in Rear stance. Experienced pilots will help reduce impact of aim loss as will aim Foundry upgrade. Dodge booster is available for use in Rear stance. Use it when you fight tough UFOs like Destroyer and Overseer to minimize damage received.
  • Lead stance - This stance grants you 10 aim, but in return aliens get 50% chance to hit your interceptors. This is something that you in general want to avoid using, unless you have to guarantee to shoot down UFO. If you keep sending interceptors on lead you can expect hefty repair bills. There are situation where using LEAD is the only way to kill UFOs so this stance has its place. Even when using LEAD XCOM can fail to kill UFOs as there is a dose of RNG in fights. Sometimes those 1% accidents happen.

Remember, Boosters are working only on your active aircraft, NOT on all the aircraft in the fight.

Concept of Active aircraft is a bit of advanced topic. If you send all aircraft on same stance then active aircraft will be randomly chosen. This naturally means that you can then manipulate system to choose your active aircraft, by giving one of your interceptors more advanced stance. For example, you may put Firestorm Mid to tank, while other Interceptors are in Rear. If you plan to use certain type of Boosters, then you should use stances in such a way that active aircraft supports the use of the Booster you want.

Handling upgraded alien UFOs

To keep your aircraft healthy you should utilize your weapons properly and keep killing UFOs in efficient manner.

  • Scouts will upgrade their HP slowly - they are easiest target so if you upgrade your weapons you will not have issues. Lasers are super effective vs them so rely on them mostly.
  • Fighters - they will remain a threat, at AL6 they double their firepower and they keep getting more HP. Good thing is that Upgraded Phoenix and even Lasers (Pulse tier) deal well with them. EMP Cannons pierce their armor and can crit against them so they should not be issue.
  • Raiders - they will not upgrade their weapon, but HP pool is going to be rather large. Upgraded Laser Cannons are the best choice, but even EMPs and Upgraded Pheonix Cannons will add a lot of damage since these weapons will be scoring critical hits against unarmored target.
  • Destroyers - these become even harder to deal with. At AL7 they will upgrade everything, HP, T5 armor and even their guns to Double Plasma. T5 armor for the most part renders Phoenix Cannons ineffective, they are back to 25-50% of their damage. Here you really want to have 2 EMP Cannons per continent to handle Destroyers, and Phoenix can help just a bit to turn the tide. Double Plasma is serious T4 penetration, 1 sec cooldown weapon, and Destroyer will be hitting critical hits often (40% chance). Be prepared to retreat your interceptors.


Upgraded destroyers are so armored that most starting weapons do minimal 5% damage against them. Graph shows that Phoenix becomes obsolete at this point and endgame weapons are pretty much necessary.

Firestorms

Near the end of the year and before some of the endgame air weapons you will unlock Firestorms. Firestorms represent the best XCOM has to offer, tier 4 armored aircraft with 50% more HP. They do cost more, including 4 UFO Flight Computers, and maintenance cost is 2$ daily (double that of interceptors) so massing them is a bit of challenge. Luckily, you don't need to field many Firestorms, one per continent will probably be enough, but if you can get couple more they will help a lot. Firestorm can tank UFOs fire much better than Interceptors. They receive only half the damage from Single Plasma weapons that are used by everything mentioned so far, except Destroyers which field Double Plasma. Double Plasma will pierce Firestorm armors, but it can't critically hit it, and thanks to higher HP, Firestorm can handle some amount of fire before retreating. Upgraded Fighters are also a bit of threat, but not as much.

Firestorms are well used as active aircraft to tank more of alien fire. They are also the only aircraft capable of arming Fusion weapons. Recent buff to them was higher fire rate as well.

Overseers

Alien Overseer is late game medium ship that will start appearing once you build Hyperwave Relay. They are easily recognized by purple contours on globe. These ships always field Ethereals and Sectopods and are well protected. They are focused on offensive with a bit stronger weapon than Destroyers! Best to attack them when you have at least one Firestorm to avoid losing ships, although you can take them down with regular interceptors. They have tier 3 armor and not too much HP, so combination of Phoenix, Pulse Lasers and EMPs should suffice. Being medium size UFO they will be easier to hit for your interceptors. They will keep appearing so you don't have to attack an Overseer until you are ready. And then you can keep shooting them down and do the missions as they are good source of resources even if the missions are a bit hard. Unlike Destroyers, Overseer do not scale hard and they just only slightly increase their HP.

Endgame weapons (Plasma Cannon and Fusion Lance)

  • Plasma Cannon is true endgame weapon that you can field on multiple Interceptors or Firestorms. It is designed with huge DPS, but tier 4 penetration, lower accuracy and slightly longer fire rate. This is to stop them from blowing up alien UFOs too easily (balance). Plasma Cannons have low accuracy and benefit greatly from any aim bonuses you can get, fire rate bonuses are also of great use here. Use the best pilots and keep your plains healthy. Damaged planes lose 10 aim which is a big no for Plasma weapons.
  • Fusion Lance is highest damaging weapon in the game with whooping damage and tier 6 penetration. Restriction is that it can only be armed on Firestorms and it requires Fusion Cores to be built. Fusion Cores are very rare resource - you can get one from council Gangplank mission, and one from ABA mission. And likely you want to build 2 MEC-3 suits and Blaster Launcher (Fusion rocket launcher) so you already require 3 there. Extra Fusion Cores can be gotten from raiding landed Assault Ships, which will rarely appear during 2031 year in the game. Large UFOs will still be out of XCOM reach unless you have multiple Fusion Lance Firestorms. If you play long enough you can equip several Firestorms with Fusion Lances, but that is not necessary to win the game.

Large endgame UFOs

There are several large UFOs, like Abductors, Battleships, Terror Ships and they are all heavily armored and have huge amount of hit points. As such they are not worth the effort of shooting them down, but it is possible if you employ Fusion Lances. Some are bit easier to take down then others, you may check stat for details, but in any case it is unwise to risk attacking them. You can even stop Terror missions this way by killing Terror ship. Best to check UFO stats in detail before attempting such feat.

  • Harvesters - There is one exception and that is unarmored large Harvester ship. Offensively it is equivalent to Destroyer but it will have much more HP. If you spot one, hit it with Plasma weapons, Laser (Pulse) Cannons and Fusion if you have those and it should drop, do the mission and enjoy the resources.

Word on Battleships

Lategame, depending on alien level and resources (had them appear in January 2031), aliens will start sending very large flashing UFOs. These are Battleships and you pretty much can do nothing against them. The best you can do is research Stealth Satellites Foundry technology which will give your Satellites 50% chance to remain hidden. If Battleship shoots down the Satellite take the loss and launch a new one. Same goes for Battleship bombing runs. If you ever build fleet of Fusion Lances you may try to shoot down this bad boy. Battleships are armed with Fusion Lances and they will quickly annihilate XCOM ships.


Collection of useful tips

  • Pilots get 0.5 aim per kill, which may seem little, but they do get to 10-20 kills eventually which is significant aim bonus. Weapons have aim in range of 20-45, or less if you use Rear stance so this bonus is significant dps increase. Keep your pilots alive, don't risk losing Interceptors. Rank also allows them to field and lead more than 2 interceptors simultaneously against UFOs. Each plane in fight will get +1 kill and aim bonus.
  • Combat patrols should be used to stop countries from surrendering when panic > 80%. Cost increases with alien level and with every usage, but also decreases every new month. So in first months, while cost is still low, you may use combat patrol to manage panic even at lower levels. Do not go overboard with it.
  • If you are still having trouble with air game, try picking one of starting bonuses that boost air game. There are several and they are impactful.
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