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.

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 (2000 HP vs 400 HP). 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.

Understanding starting weapons (Avalanche vs Stingray)

If you compare Avalanche Missiles to Stingray Missiles, you can notice that Avalanche deals 160 damage, Stingray 800, while average DPS is about the same (cca 80 dps). Major difference is in firing cooldown, which is 2 vs 11 seconds. Hit chance is presented as 30% / 40% / 50% depending on chosen aircraft stance (rear, mid, lead). Additionally, Avalanche has no penetration, while Stingray is level 2 pen weapons. What does all this mean?

Presume we fight vs alien Scout, unarmored 400 HP, fight will last about 13 seconds.

Avalanche Missiles will shoot every 2 seconds and will deal about 1/3 of Scouts HP per hit, killing it in 3-4 hits. Damage is somewhat randomized, check exact formula for details. You probably can send two interceptors at a time so that is double number of shots, accuracy is only 40%, but it is pretty sure that Scout will be shot down inside 5 to 10 seconds.

In that time Scout will fight back, it has Single Plasma weapon, 40% accuracy, tier 2 penetration for 350 damage on cooldown of 1 second. In theory if it shoots 6-7 times and hit every time it could actually kill one interceptor, but that is highly unlikely. Also what you need to know is that weapons can hit critical hits for 150% damage. Scout has T2 penetration while interceptor is Unarmored which means scout has 20% critical hit chance. Summed up, while Avalanche Missiles will reliable strip down UFO of HP, they will likely suffer some amount of damage back.

Using Stingray Missiles, at start interceptors will launch two highly damaging missiles, and if they hit at 40% chance (mid) the fight is practically over, Scout destroyed. Interceptors are likely completely healthy, perfect fight. BUT, if they fail, cooldown steps in and for next 10 seconds you will be enjoying looking at Scout shooting and interceptors trying to dodge plasma. You will get another volley of missiles at the very end of the engagement, but likelihood that you actually do zero damage to UFO is much higher than using Avalanche missiles. Summed up, Stingrays are much more about RNG, risking to completely miss, but if hit is achieved, reward is great: quick win - healthy air force. It is up to player to decide on the strategy.

Take note that Scouts will upgrade their HP by 125%, which will already at alien level 2 move them out of 1-hit kill shots zone. But Stingray can crit at 20% chance (they are T2 pen weapons), so it is still possible to achieve these 1-shots. You could also fire a salvo of Stingrays, retreat and send new interceptors with new or different weapons, but the risk of failing to shoot down UFOs if unlucky would be greater.

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 is still small UFO, so it starts with 600 HP only, but in May it will be 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 2-4 of Stingray hits to hurt the Fighter. The issue is that Stingray has long cooldown and low accuracy, so Fighters will remain serious threat and are likely to escape from fights. Two Stingrays will not destroy Fighter, they will struggle to hurt it to 50%. So ideally you would want to have 3-4, but then you may have trouble shooting down the Scouts. Ideally, you would want to have Phoenix Cannons before first Fighter, they should make the job more manageable. If not, with some luck 2-4 Stingray might do the trick. But don't be late with upgrades, aliens will upgrade UFOs.

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, but most importantly they fire much faster so RNG is reduced and you have more chance to retreat with less damage taken. Phoenix are not as good 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.