Air Combat Guide (LWR)

• • Work in progress

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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.