UFO
Alien L Rank
Contents
Description
The UFO is the playable vehicle in the 2019 April Fool's Day event Earth Thunder. It was added in Update 1.87 "Locked On".
UFO is an extremely powerful craft, which excels at laser warfare. It can fly, swim, and even hover over ground with stunning speed. It's general purpose seems to be similar to human's fighter VTOL planes, but more universal.
General info
Flight Performance
UFO can move in any direction effortlessly. The only drawback is, it cannot move directly up or down without shutting down it's weapons, so it's only done when situation is hopeless, or when stuck in some debris near to ground.
For this reason, dropping down to ground or attempting to emerge from underwater are often done via activation of "hover mode".
Whenever near to ground or in Hover mode, UFO latches onto nearest objects and can easily throw itself over, or get stuck onto buildings, or even inside of them. It is also slower in hover mode.
Survivability and armour
UFO seems to be able to crash into ground at maximum speed and take no damage.
UFO is extremely angled and flat, and it's computer immediately turns the craft towards targeting reticle, minimizing vulnerable surface.
The only real weak spot UFO has is the dome in middle of it. It's also believed, that the pilot resides inside of it. This area can only take about 1 second of laser fire or 1 railgun hit.
Whenever facing overwhelming odds, UFO can activate hover mode, to also activate active shielding. Shields can take punishment of any energy weapons for substantial amount of time, and prevents UFO from using it's own. However, when attacked by more than 3 UFO's shield can still be overwhelmed over time. Shield also cannot stop railgun shells.
Armaments
Offensive armament
Primary
- Frontal laser beam: Seemingly unlimited range. Seemingly unlimited ammunition. Effective attack range ~3 KM. Cannot damage targets under water. Ceases fire whenever UFO is moving straight up or down.
Alternative
- Main rail gun: Whenever UFO activates shields, it's firing railgun instead of laser beam. Railgun has tendency to fire lower, than targeting reticle says. It's not very precise, but one good hit to a weakspot can destroy it's target. If target is in 1km range from UFO, it can lock on it (using middle and right mouse buttons to select and lock) to make rail gun aim and fire on it's own with great accuracy.
- Backup rail guns: Whenever UFO submerges is uses shotgun-like railgun battery to attack opponents. These shells can even leave water and damage other UFO's, that hover above water with shields up. Even one hit from this weapon is usually fatal.
- Torpedo: Whenever UFO is under water, it can also launch camera controlled torpedos. They are not very maneuverable and reliable, but they help UFO to take out opponents, that try to deny water access from much safer distance.
Usage in battles
Laser warfare forces pilots to rely on teamwork a lot. Since UFO automatically aligns towards target, and pilot can dodge in every direction possible, it becomes rather hard to hit your opponent into weakspot.
However, whenever UFO turns towards passing-by opponent, or tracks someone in general, it briefly exposes itself to fire from other directions. This can be easily abused, either by "snipers", or "wings" of 2-3 UFO's. As example, it's easy for UFO to get destroyed in middle of a duel by a beam, that came from ground or space.
For this reason, if UFO is being chased by multiple opponents, they usually choose to retreat underwater, practice roll-less turns, or simply try to activate hover mode and try to lose their interest that way.
Pros and cons
Summarize and briefly evaluate the vehicle in terms of its characteristics and combat effectiveness. Mark its pros and cons in the bulleted list. Try not to use more than 6 points for each of the characteristics. Avoid using categorical definitions such as "bad", "good" and the like - use substitutions with softer forms such as "inadequate" and "effective".
Pros:
Cons:
History
Describe the history of the creation and combat usage of the aircraft in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too big, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Vehicle-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article. This section may also include the vehicle's dev blog entry (if applicable) and the in-game encyclopedia description (under === Encyclopedia Info ===, also if applicable).
Media
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See also
Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:
- reference to the series of the aircraft;
- links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.
External links
Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:
- topic on the official game forum;
- encyclopedia page on the aircraft;
- other literature.
