Intercepts impossibly hard

[issssk]

Can anyone tell me how to actually shoot these things down? I'm having major problems even against the weakest ones.

The Charun all now have these acid spit attacks, which almost never miss even though I use afterburner every time. How the f do you counter that? With a lot of luck I can get one down barely before my Manticores weapons get destroyed.

I tried a Berith once, and that's completely impossible. No matter what combination of ship/ modules / weapons I use, I'm not getting any better.

I currently use manticores with Synedrion laser cannons for the range and afterburners.

Am I doing something wrong or does the difficulty on this DLC simply suck so much?

[Tasi]

The air-combat is poorly designed. It relies on your ability to memorize pictograms of enemy weapons and equip adequate protections and/or disengage when your aircraft gets any DoT (Damage Over Time) effect and engage the combat again.

[Tasi]

BTW, if it is your first gameplay I suggest restarting the game and disabling Festering Skies, Corrupted Horizons and Legacy of the Ancients DLCs. Those are better played after you already know the game quite well (in the case of Festering Skies I doubt it is worth playing at all).

[Sheesh]

If you don't want to memorise the icons, you can look them up
http://wiki.phoenixpoint.com/Aircrafts

[Bobucles]

Enemy flyers remember damage between fights. From what I've seen, the standard play is to use long range weapons, fire a few shots and disengage before the enemy can attack. Retreat, fly back in, and repeat.

[DaBo81]

If you have afterburners then the acid spitters shouldn't be a problem - just make sure you have activated them before the projectile hits the manticore - it will automatically evade the shot. The nasty panda weapons are 'tick' and 'void chamber'. The other 4 weapons are easily countered with the afterburner or disengage - for 'spikes' and 'acid spitter' use afterburner, for 'ram' and 'napalm breath' disengage before they're in range and then re-engage.
The best early weapon for panda aircraft is the incendiary missile and the best for the mechanical craft is the EMP missile.
Once you figure out the air battles, you'll find them very straightforward

[LeftPaw]

Do you think that these two DLC will be ever worth playing? I bought them both and now it feels like a waste of money.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by WetNose:

Do you think that these two DLC will be ever worth playing? I bought them both and now it feels like a waste of money.

Festering Skies is a pain in the ass, but in long term it's worth it as it provides access to +100 raw aircraft speed upgrade (which means approx +40% for tiamat, +25% for thunderbird, +20% for manticore and +15% for helios) and in late game you gain access to the best aircraft in the game - by which i mean a reskinned manticore upgraded to carry 8 soldiers instead of 6.
Once the behemoth is dead you can straight up just dismantle everything air combat related and only keep the speed upgrades (provided you are not at war with other factions) and have your cursed manticores roam the lands, operatively bringing superior fire power wherever it is needed and steamrolling operations.

Corrupted Horizons though... The artificial soldiers are not that good, the new enemy type is annoying and the "corruption" mechanic is infuriating. Screw that one and i doubt it'll ever be worth it.
Achirons provide for unique encounter experience, effectively acting as a pure support unit capable of doing anything by dealing damage, but sometimes i'd rather just take my extra arthrons, thank you.

[Saboera]

The DLC balance is just crap overall and they generally feel very half-assed. Last tier of pandoran aircrafts (Abaddon) are like 100 times worse than Beriths and Charuns. There's a few ways to take out Berith and Charuns but if you use the Synedrion Lasers, you should disengage before you take too much damage and re-engage.

Abaddon on the other hand are just impossible without cheesing them by taking like 2-4 shots and disengaging immediately about 20 times in a row. Myrmidons are dumb, way too tanky for the mobility they have and annoying with their on death effects. Corrupted Horizons is also an exercise in frustration more than anything.

Overall they dropped the ball really hard with the last 3 DLCs, hell even Kaos Engines is badly balanced overall, everything is just way overpriced and not really worth it.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Saboera:

Myrmidons are dumb, way too tanky for the mobility they have and annoying with their on death effects

Amen to that. I don't understand why a glorified grasshoper has more health than a fat arhtron 3 times it's size. The default 180 HP ones are not here not there - they are annoying little bastards, but at least their bite is not actually a problem unless it gets a chance to do multiple bites in a row.

But the upgraded variants are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. 280 HP?! Are you serious?! Those things have more HP than average B-grade arthron and triton variants. What on earth.
They have no limbs besides wings, so they are boring as ♥♥♥♥ to shoot at and on top of that the death explosion is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The range on it, that is. It's like 4 tiles or something - i manually have to count at least 5 tiles to make sure i can shoot the damn thing safely.
Pretty sure Fury rockets have less of a range than those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Originally posted by Saboera:

hell even Kaos Engines is badly balanced overall, everything is just way overpriced and not really worth it.

Eh, kinda disagree there. 400 materials per weapon upgrade is not THAT bad... Some of them are really powerful. Scarab turns into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ monster with improved rocket launcher and extra armor.

But 800 for research is BS, because all it does is allows you to craft the very same upgrades... For very same 400 materials. Well, 15 tech and 380 materials.
Now that's very poor balance. I don't see how paying three times the price for the ability to create them on demand is justified.
I mean, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! The scarab itself costs 420 to produce! Are you SERIOUSLY telling me the improved rocket launcher costs almost as much as the whole vehicle itself?!
Manually manufactured upgrades should cost 200 mats tops.

[Muton]

What difficulty level are you playing? If youre playing normal I dont see why air combat is so difficult... Instead of synedrion laser cannons have 1 or 2 NJ railguns. Disengage earlier or as soon as their weapons come in range or start taking serial damage from bio/fire efects

I like the DLC corrupted horizones and festerign skies.. Adds more stuff to do and more difficulty when your best soldiers are stuck with 2 WP, LOL

[Saboera]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Eh, kinda disagree there. 400 materials per weapon upgrade is not THAT bad... Some of them are really powerful. Scarab turns into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ monster with improved rocket launcher and extra armor.

But 800 for research is BS, because all it does is allows you to craft the very same upgrades... For very same 400 materials. Well, 15 tech and 380 materials.
Now that's very poor balance. I don't see how paying three times the price for the ability to create them on demand is justified.
I mean, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! The scarab itself costs 420 to produce! Are you SERIOUSLY telling me the improved rocket launcher costs almost as much as the whole vehicle itself?!
Manually manufactured upgrades should cost 200 mats tops.

Keep in mind that the values you are quoting are probably AFTER you do all the missions and yes, that seems somewhat okayish once you've done all the missions but initially? You're looking at a pistol for like 1400 materials, which is absurd and totally pointless. It's not that much better either after 1 or 2 missions.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Saboera:

Keep in mind that the values you are quoting are probably AFTER you do all the missions and yes, that seems somewhat okayish once you've done all the missions but initially? You're looking at a pistol for like 1400 materials, which is absurd and totally pointless. It's not that much better either after 1 or 2 missions.

Yeah, that's the "Discount" price you get after beating the 4 special missions.
The makeshift weapons cost around 125 after that.

IMHO this is the price you were always intended to pay, but i do not see the reasoning why do they even allow you to buy those items for such outrageous prices. Some poor bastard might actually do it.

It's the same ♥♥♥♥ they pulled with Legacy of the Ancients, where you are supposed to build multiple artifact facilities to minimize the price of crafting the probes.

What they should've done is simply make Market unlock new goods after each mission, not try to sell them to you at unreasonable prices. But PP devs are a special breed.

[Muton]

this thread is about air intercepts

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Muton:

this thread is about air intercepts

It was. Always room for more discussion.
The interception discussion is pretty much settled.
Double-stack the most powerful long range weaponry you can, try to memorise pandoran weapon icons and what they do, bring appropriate counter. If no counter available - hin'n'run disengament cycle is unbeatable.

[Muton]

and always take out the longest range enemy weapon, then disengage