XCOM EU Interceptor Squadrons

[Gator55]

One thing I think is rather silly about deploying interceptors in XCOM EU and EW is that when there is a bogey on the radar, you only send a single interceptor against an enemy craft. In real life, you would send a squadron to take down the bogey because then you have guys covering each other. It is risky and dangerous, and not to mention unrealistic that there is no option about how many interceptors you can send after a UFO.

 

Problem:

• You can fill a hangar with interceptors, yet you can only send one at a time. Why?
• Later in the game when you get the firestorm, there is virtually no point in filling up the hangar since you only ever need to send one at a time to beat a UFO if you have a fusion lance, thereby defeating the purpose of limited hangar capacity.
• Interceptors are insanely pathetic against UFOs and die easier than the firestorm. Why not compensate for this with numbers?
• This is a military operation, yet they don't follow military procedure. Odd...

Solution:

• Create a menu option that allows one to deploy more than one interceptor (or firestorm) at a time. This could potentially be achieved with a multiple-selection tool. Meaning, you can highlight several interceptors and then click a button that says "deploy interceptors" or something.
• Enable several interceptor silhouettes to appear on the holo-globe display when engaging an enemy UFO, each with individual animations.
• Interceptors take damage like normal. There could even be an option for a one-shot kill thing for extra realism since fighters generally don't survive more than one hit by a missile.
• Improved numbers in battle could improve the odds of success as well as decrease the chance of a particular interceptor being hit since the UFO now has to deal with several hostiles instead of just one.

Additional Ideas:

• There could be an option for more than one UFO sighting at a time, so that you can scramble interceptors to fight off as many UFOs as you want, but that you can only send your team to one crash site.