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[Lt. Razak]

I luv war

Anyway, some possible solutions to the Diablo problem:
- bribe them (if still possible)
- build lots of security stations around the base entrances and watch diablo-soldiers die a very very horrible and pointless, yet entertaining death
- send them a formal message: "Ok, get some" ... engrave it on a bomb and drop it over one of their buildings just to get their attention. Then you either go for the scorched earth strategy which involves random destruction of city blocks where anything diablolike is present, which might ... annoy the senate. Alternatively you can go for plastic surgery, selectively removing Diablo's buildings from the cityscape. The Senate still won't be too pleased but, hey... good fun isn't always for free...


Fleet:
How on earth did you produce so many high-tech craft so quickly. It took me ages to manufacture even one wing for trans-dimensional excursions (I.e. murder and mayhem)
My configuration (one wing):
One Annihilator (Gunboat):
- Weapons: Heavy Disruptor, 2 Medium Disruptors
- Equipment: Shields, X-Com and heavy target computers
- Mode: 2nd-aggressive as Annihilators can take a punch and since disruptors are easily evaded...

One Retaliator (Missileboat):
- Weapons: Dis. Inversion bomb, Multibomb, Stasis bomb
- Equipment: Light shields, 2 x-com targeting scanners
- Mode: 2nd-cautious as they rets are too fragile and since alien missiles are very very very effective no matter what range you're at. Also I control the stasis bombs manually, i.e. only one wing is allowed to deploy its stasis launcher at any given time so I don't run out in midbattle having wasted most of the missiles.

One Explorer (Decoy, Reinforcements, Artillery)
- Weapons: Medium Disruptor, 2 big missiles
- Equipment: light shield and all the targeting scanners you can cram in there
- Mode: 2nd-cautious as explorers are made of rice-paper. The sole reason I ever built an Explorer was to see whether I could fit the stasis-launchers on there. The big missiles ™ are those big human missile launchers with a single shot (I can't remember their name). I usually have them turned off as well to save them for motherships and the likes, should any turn up. Even then the missiles are only deployed if the battle is going badly or the shields of the target have been..eh deactivated. Also, the Explorer can be send in to close combat just to distract the UFOs while a more expensive / important craft retreats.

And possibly:
Biotrans 1 (the one and only)
- Weapons: Light disruptor, 24 underpaid, overequipped soldiers with a distinct lack of sanity
- Equipment: light shields, plenty of extra seats, some cargo holds and a containment unit
- Mode: Veeeery cautious, veeery low. Spends most of its in-flight time during battles either in manual-control mode or on a high-burn high-gee escape trajectory, meaning it flies in the direction with zero UFOs or a very promising opportunity for escape (a launch site or a dimension gate (provided it leads home, otherwise I'll take my chances with one measly invasion force...pff). The launch site-escape may have lasting consequences, though... the record holder is when the building where I landed including its only launch site were trashed; the biotrans was stuck for a day or two and the agents had to walk home due to the fact that the building in question belonged to transtellar and I couldn't be bothered to bribe them into happiness again)


That is the composition of my fleet, or at least it was at the height of the last game. It consisted of two wings and I still had my pre-dimensonal-fleet, i.e. 6 phoenixes, 2 hoverbikes, 2 valkyries and 8 hawks just to spice the home-matches up a wee bit.

And I don't mean to brag, but my fleet as described above had real problems shooting down motherships and battleships... they usually just were vaporised :bye:


Oh yes, one more thing about craft-equipment: I had to build a third base and specialise it on item-manufacture. Alltogether I had 2 small workshops mass-producing Toxi-clips / other small usefuls and three or four large ones continuously producing missiles and disruptor beams (med and heavy) and - when my ammo-supplies allowed it - a new craft. And I still had shortages! (Especially since I apparently reached the max. amount of engineers in the whole bloody city.) So maintaining a murderous high-tech fleet might be difficult at times unless you use a lot more disruptors than I did (lets face it, they're not THAT good after all... unless it comes to creaming X-com craft...now that's something they're good at) or just deal with them in the old-fashioned way [UFO spotted, what do we do now, sir? - Uhmm... first, fire an avalanche right into the engines and then... hmmm (*studying-the-menue-tone-of-voice*) ... oh yeah, melt them with some plasma... - Very well, sir.]