Planes vs Ships - can they sink them?

[Spaced Cowboy]

I think that It should be limited to lethality for figthers only on ships. Bombers should not even be able to effectively attack ships and should be used for softening up the ground troop or destroying infastucture.

A fighter's usefulness in wounding ground troops should be limited as well.

[aracuan_76]

GUYS,GUYS,

quote:
Originally posted by aracuan_76
*british attack on taranto(3 battleships almost sunk,did not participate again in war)
*loss of battleship PRINCE OF WALES,REPULSE in the coast of singapoore,
*loss of the mightiest battleship ever,the japanese YAMATO.



"These are all Pacific examples; look too at Atlantic and North/Barents sea: loss of Tirpitz, any number of Atlantic convoy raids, etc etc"

u need a lot of research to do my friend
what did u say on the british attack on TARANTO?
pacific assualt?unless if u have nothing to do with geography.

the loss of PRINCE WALES,REPULSE was not in entirely open sea.even the yamato was near the japanese islands when it sank,cause it had specific orders to stay close to the harbor and to be used as gun platform to inflict as much as damage as it could do to the amrican invasion.

regarding tirpitz,u sould know that the place was stationed was close to forest whch covered her.it was an extrememly difficult spot to attack,even with vertical dive bombers.thats why the british deploy the mini subs there.

in atlantic convoys no major bomber participate any in any battle.only the fw200 to destroy the merchant ships.
in the battle of crete,u know how many heavy cruisers(3)and destroyers(6) the british have lost because of the unstoppable action of the luftwaffe???LEARN HISTORY.

I m 29 years old and i m studying history from my 9.and i m mad when i m seeing someone with no valid talikng points.sorry if i m too agressive,but a saying sais"to know something half,is worst instead of not knowing it at all".therefore u re knowledge in history in comparison to your examples is very poor.unefortynately the advent of planes that makes the battleships obsolete its not my opinion,is a fact.after the ww2 nations stop to build battleships-because they all witness the power of the aircraft carriers.HMS VANGUARD was the last.after pearl harbor both japanese and US began converting ships to carriers.they also pay attention to carriers instead of battleships.

i m not an airplane lover,i m a lover of ww1.when aircraft did not(couldnt intervene)in naval battles.but facts are facts and we have to see them.the truth threfore is simple and clear.

"quote:
Originally posted by terje439
well if you look at todays military actions, would you not say that control of the skies is fatal to the one not in control?"

"Realism is the worst argument for unbalancing gameplay."

wow,everybody look an answer from a gyu that claims to be a strategy guide.if we all have guides like u my friend,soon we all will lost in the dark.
cuase civilization is a GAME BASED ON REALISM!!!!!
UNLESS IF BY DISCOVERING HISTORIAN TECHS AND U ACQUIRE BENEFITS IS IN SID MEIERS IMAGINATION!!!!
WHAT IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF REALISM BY THE GAME'S PROGRESS AND EVOLUTION SINCE CIV 1???!!!!
TO BE MORE REALISTIC!!!

and who can claim by making the bombers sink the galley that they will drop down the gameplay level???!!
do you realise what u are saying?

i respect everyone's opinion.but,
when i m seeing bull...s of that sort from firaxis programmers i wonder with kind of logic then they want the programmers for the players to build bombers....these exaclty things making me want to play civ 2 or civ 1...i think that the best AI was there...

to my friend,SALDRIN:

u claim that u ve made the bombers to have lethal bombardment?how did u do this?
can u assist me of how u have done it???

[]LoL[Harm]

"cuase civilization is a GAME BASED ON REALISM!!!!!"

I'm afraid you've put your own perception of the game in place of what the game really is based off of. It's not based off of realism, it's "based" off of the history of civilizations and how they changed over time. It is not based on warfare, and it is definitely not based on realistic warfare.

None of the Civlization games have ever been based on realism.

[Fried-Psitalon]

I yield to your staggering wit, amazing logical deduction, and of course, excellent use of syntax and grammar.

So armed, no one could possibly hope to make a claim contrary to yours and be vindicated.

[Saldrin]

aracuan_76,

I only made my jets have lethal bombing, but its the same keyword for both jets and bombers.

Open up civ4unitinfos.xml and scroll down to the bomber section. Change "aircombatlimit" from 50 to 100.

Bombs away!

[PrinceBimz]

I think this keeps the game more balanced, by not being able to completely destroy ships or ground units with airpower alone. Plus it makes it more challenging and I bet the AI fights better this way. I doubt every last soldier in a battalion can be destroyed by only aircraft. Alot of them will seek shelter in buildings or elsewhere and be waiting for the enemy when they arrive. Ships, sure they can be sank by aircraft alone but the game don't allow it right now. Maybe an expansion will have it so you can change those things as how C3C was.

[MierinUDL]

Personally, I think its fine that bombers do not do lethal damage against targets. It's kinda of funny to think of a b-52 bombing a destroyer, and since cruise missiles haven't made a reappearence we can just ignore the possibility of a bomber shooting Exocets from 500 miles away. Similarly, its virtually impossible for even a modern airforce (fighters included) to eradicate an enemy ground force- ya always need to send in ground troops to take territory- basic military tactics. However, I am suprised that fighters can't "eventually" sink ships. Now of course too much realism would just break the game- anytime you add another variable you take a risk at breaking the model. Yet, it seems odd that as far as navies go, progression ends about a 100 years before the game does.

My suggestion would be to give fighters lethal damage against naval units but under these conditions:

They do the bombard, single shot method- no duking it out until one guy dies. But give an intercepting ship the chance to kill even a fully healthy aircraft.

Provide all ships from the transport onward with the ability to intercept and scale their interception/damage rate based on the type (except maybe subs, which have the ability to hide)

Give pre-industrial boats a good chance of evading without damage- (small, low profile). This gives the AI their Tanks invading via Galley option

Keep the fighter damage done something in the range of what it is now- IE it takes several fighters to knock out a battleship in one turn.


In the end this gives cites and aircraft carriers extra defence but with a large caveat attached.

[Saldrin]

Originally posted by MierinUDL

-snip-

They do the bombard, single shot method- no duking it out until one guy dies. But give an intercepting ship the chance to kill even a fully healthy aircraft.

-snip-

Actually, that is how it works now (with the setting I posted above). It takes several passes to destroy one ship, and if there is a fleet with a carrier.... yikes! To take out a typical AI fleet of say 4 ships ( not including intercepted flights) already takes about 10 passes.

Seriously, its not at all overpowering. Problem is with the system in place now, we can't differentiate between land or sea units. But its the same principle with the land units. If attacking a stack, you will get the same minimal effects, in other words you will need a huge airforce to completely wipe out a small stack and maintain air intercept missions.

The cost to maintain an airforce of that size is going to limit other factors such as units for city defense, anti-pillaging, and naval fleet. It clear to me that people who advocate against lethal air bombard did not think this through.

[aracuan_76]

i want ask how...!

hello,

first of all i would like to thank my friend saldrin for his advice regarding lethal bombardment.
i m agreeing in all of you(if u have seen my previous posts on this subject)about the bombardment.its reasonable the aircraft not to destroy the enemy infantry but to make it very weak,but it also its reasonable and a"must" to sink naval units.ships in seas have no place to hide.they are much more vulnerable.imagine this...bombers cannot sink caravels and galleys...and some say that by this makes the AI fights better... jesus...
anyway the reason for talking again is cause i want to aks something:

*i have seen the(bad)phenomenon also that a fighter or a bomber never gets killed(being shot down).i think this isn right,so i would like now if anyone of you knows the opposite:can u make the ground units or naval units to shot down bombers fighters etc???lethal killing to air units.

[Saldrin]

That is odd.

Make sure you didn't change iEvasionProbability in the aircraft's properties. This should be 0, except for the stealth bomber.

Also, the only units that are able to shoot down aircraft other than other aircraft, are Mech Inf, SAMs and destroyers. Make sure those each have a value for iInterceptionProbability. SAMs are usually higher, IIRC around 60, destroyers have 30 and mech inf has 20.

Mine get shot down with regularity, especially by SAMs. If you want to increase the chance of them shooting down the aircraft, just increase any of the iInterceptionProbability values.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

eh it is understandeable that there were more important aspects of the game to be balanced first but it would be nice if the air/navy balance would be addressed in a future expansion pack or patch even ...

Realistic or not, this is dull

[Bluefusion]

I believe bombers should be lethal. However, there needs to be some early counter in the tech tree before bombers arrive.

Perhaps some SAM site building improvement as that in Civ 3, as long as it had a decent radius?

Perhaps a promotion for certain units that gives a chance to intercept aircraft?

As it is, there is little benefit in using aircraft to bomb naval forces. The whole % damage thing is very distasteful imo. Why doesn't it just bombard with unit damage like every bombardment unit?

Plus, if someone stacks a few destroyers together, or even uses one or two carriers, the strength of bombers/fighters is practically negated. In my experience, every time I tried to bomb a naval unit it was either shot down or damaged, which causes them to not bombard anyway. Very discouraging.

Lethal bombardment makes it worthwhile to build aircraft.

[swat-spas2]

Bombers should not be lethal. Not only is it potentially game-busting (you would be repeating the civ3 build mostly one unit strategy). But its also not realistic. Strategic bombers seem to be what bombers and stealths represent in the game. These have never been used with great effect to annihilate a ground force or even a navy. Level bombers in WW2 were somewhat used at Pearl (and these more or less lighter-carrier variety), and the greatest effect in the breakout from Normandy. But the primary use was to flatten factories and rear area transportation, etc. Being able to damage any unit to 50% is realistic, anything will take a pounding from thousands of pounds of HE. And the lessened effect against naval units makes sense as well, they aren't supposed to be used at sea all that much anyway.

If you want to take out a specific target (like a ship) you get a fighter-bomber type craft. Attack craft like that are less loaded but can get in and hit quickly (and up til smart bombs directly) when the enemy doesn't have time to react to it. Fighters therefore would be the lethal bombers. This would seem to be fair since they are slightly weaker in strength and range and have other uses; like shooting down bombers and other fighters. Additionally since the principal worry is killing naval units, hey you don't fly B-52s or B-2s or almost any other bombers off any carriers (Doolittle aside). You use a F/A-18 or some such fighter type for that.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by swat-spas2
[...] Strategic bombers seem to be what bombers and stealths represent in the game. [...] the lessened effect against naval units makes sense as well, they aren't supposed to be used at sea all that much anyway.

[...] fighter-bomber type craft. Attack craft like that are less loaded but can get in and hit quickly (and up til smart bombs directly) when the enemy doesn't have time to react to it.

Totally agreed, although I'd prefer a specific unit (point strike?) rather than adapting what we have here. Mosquitos in WW2 turned out to be effective fighter-bombers (in the sense you're describing), as did one of the Heinkels (?IIRC). I've not much knowledge of US/Jap aircraft of that era, but I'm sure you (plural) can come up with similar examples.

My main concern is that there seems to be a gap in the tech tree here. As well as not allowing for pre-SAM AA units (or installations - bunkers don't count) we seem to have no air power that can perform 'surgical' strikes against particular target(s), whether they be land or sea, unit or installation. There is the promotion - actually, no there isn't according to my manual, it's a task - but this /shouldn't/ be a promotion or task; airstrike units, whether for naval or land offensives, are designed completely differently from the ground up for the task in hand & have been since just after the end of WW1 (or just before). Only just lately have we seen multi-role aircraft become the norm rather than the exception, & even then the crews tend to focus on a specific role even if the aircraft remains nominally the same.

For good or ill Soren (or some other designer) has decreed that a 'bomber' unit should indicate a high-altitude strategic 'carpet-bomber', & that is reflected in the way it does damage & how it can be used in the game. B17/29 for softening up (although the pic is of a Lancaster which was rarely used for such missions - they tended toward medium-altitude night raids to achieve better accuracy); or B2 stealth once we reach jets. The AA units of the (prop-driven) time were rarely capable of throwing shells so high to achieve an effective defense - they relied on interceptor fighters to do the job. The fighters again show discrepancies: the pics are of a spitfire & I *think* an F104 'Widowmaker' (or it could be an F16 Falcon - difficult to tell with tiny pictures - although upon looking again at the payload I'd tend towards the latter) but both are designed for interception & air support, /not/ ground/sea attack, which is what they seem to have been lumbered with (as there is no other option)

It's interesting to note that going through the promotions list (in the manual - doesn't seem to be in the civilopaedia, or maybe the link is broken from the promotions section) there are /no/ air promotions. There are a few that apply to 'helicopter' as well as other units, but nothing that applies to air units (fighters/bombers or their modern versions) at all. Air units can't even get the lowest promotion (combat1 etc), which I'd expect of 'veteran' units, having won a battle or two (especially against other air units). Actually, upon looking again, there is no category for air units at all!

[khearn]

Air units don't seem to get experience at all.