Should planes be able to sink Ships?

[Deathwalker]

I think planes should be able to destroy ships and that planes can be shot down with out needing planes to be located near by. In the gulf war Iraq had no airforce left yet it still shot down planes.
I think the best way to implement this to everyones opinoon would be to add a unit option that it can or can not be destroyed by planes. Also another one giving selected units to chance of shotting down planes. This way you could make the units you want and still keep game balance.

[Rust]

Apparently, 70% of Civ3 players are severely handicapped.

[Pingu:]

Yes, I definately say yes.

For game balance reasons, a fighter/bomber needs to be able sink ships, if that's what happens to the hit points.

You say the navy is underpowered, well at least that's editable, what about the Air force.

Modern ships should be able to shoot back (destroyer upwards), and fighters on an aircraft carrier should also have an intercept ability.

In CivIII the battleship still rules the modern waves.

In the real world the Aircraft carrier is king.
(although I don't think full bombers should be allowed on aircraft carriers, need an in-between fighter/bomber aircaft aswell as an interceptor and stealth capabilities)


Pingu:

[notyoueither]

korn. Your right about merchant shipping. Most was lost to subs (I thought I indicated that, although I stated it poorly).

Not for naval vessels though. The sinking of capital ships by sub was uncommon. The air plane was far more common as the instrument of destruction for the IJN.

BTW. The success of the UBoat says nothing about the lethal abilities of air planes. In the Atlantic, for the Germans, the UBoat was the right weapon. Air craft weren't practical. Except of course for the damage done to the Murmansk convoys by the Luftwaffe (which was considerable).

Salve

[korn469]

notyoueither

the 60% figure was for all japanese shipping sunk, warships and merchants...i don't have the actual break down, but i will look for it

also the largest Japanese Carrier in the war was sunk by a submarine, i'll also look for more information about that as well

i'm just saying that history isn't quite so conclusive on the airpower sinks everything idea

plus how many capital warships (cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers) have actually been sunk by airpower since 1945 in a time of war?
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but what i want all of the pro airpower sinks seapower people to prove to me why this is the #1 requirement to make civ3 balanced and also why it is the #1 requirement for making civ3 more "realistic"

in normal civ3, the the best ship is most likely the battleship, but it moves at a speed of five, while ground units on railroads and air units can move much much faster, it has a bombard range of two (and the actual ability to successfully bombard is less in 1.17f), airpower can knock it down to 1 hp, and even a small force of destroyers should be enough to keep your sea lanes open...so i don't see what the problem is here

it seems like this is more of a, "naval units are useless and i don't want to build them so just bump up airpower a little and then i can basically completely ignore the navy while the AI waste shields on it" convience issue or a "hey this isn't like civ2 so this ins't realistic!" issue

right now in civ3, we have the following situation
air power is weak
naval power is weaker than airpower

if you change it so that airpower could sink ships
air power would still be weak
but then naval power would be very weak

in civ3 the jet fighter has a bombard strength of 2, a Rate of Fire of 1, and a range of 6...so to sink a regular battleship with 12 defense in a single turn with jet fighters (aka F/A-18s) you would need about 20 fighters to accomplish this, that certainly doesn't sound realistic to me, nor does it explain how this will balance the game

also since the maximum amount of hitpoints a unit has in civ3 is 5, that means the lowest point a unit can goto is 20%

more hitpoints would make being at 1hp much worse, and it would better balance all combat results

so as of yet i haven't seen a good gameplay argument (which is the most important argument anyways) for airpower being able to sink shipping as the best way to improve balance

[Andrew Cory]

Originally posted by korn469
notyoueither

the 60% figure was for all japanese shipping sunk, warships and merchants...i don't have the actual break down, but i will look for it

also the largest Japanese Carrier in the war was sunk by a submarine, i'll also look for more information about that as well

i'm just saying that history isn't quite so conclusive on the airpower sinks everything idea

plus how many capital warships (cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers) have actually been sunk by airpower since 1945 in a time of war?

The problem here is that WWII was the last great naval war. All the data that we have on aircraft vs. waterborn is about 60yrs out of date. The only real data that we have on navys is the fact that Both the Americans and the Soviets built Carriers durring the cold war.
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Originally posted by korn469
but what i want all of the pro airpower sinks seapower people to prove to me why this is the #1 requirement to make civ3 balanced and also why it is the #1 requirement for making civ3 more "realistic"

Never claimed that it was #1, but it would be nice, and as long as the topic has come up...

Originally posted by korn469
in normal civ3, the the best ship is most likely the battleship, but it moves at a speed of five, while ground units on railroads and air units can move much much faster, it has a bombard range of two (and the actual ability to successfully bombard is less in 1.17f), airpower can knock it down to 1 hp, and even a small force of destroyers should be enough to keep your sea lanes open...so i don't see what the problem is here

it seems like this is more of a, "naval units are useless and i don't want to build them so just bump up airpower a little and then i can basically completely ignore the navy while the AI waste shields on it" convience issue or a "hey this isn't like civ2 so this ins't realistic!" issue

Well, no. To be honest, I didn't use air units in Civ2 either. They didn't seem worth the cost. But navel warfare seems stuck at 1939 in Civ3, and then makes a tentative step to the mid-1980s with the Aegis. Idealy, I would see the following:
Second Generation (between "Bomber" and "Stealth bomber" air units that could take out naval units.
More ships that can carry missles in the late game.

Originally posted by korn469
right now in civ3, we have the following situation
air power is weak
naval power is weaker than airpower

if you change it so that airpower could sink ships
air power would still be weak
but then naval power would be very weak

in civ3 the jet fighter has a bombard strength of 2, a Rate of Fire of 1, and a range of 6...so to sink a regular battleship with 12 defense in a single turn with jet fighters (aka F/A-18s) you would need about 20 fighters to accomplish this, that certainly doesn't sound realistic to me, nor does it explain how this will balance the game

also since the maximum amount of hitpoints a unit has in civ3 is 5, that means the lowest point a unit can goto is 20%

more hitpoints would make being at 1hp much worse, and it would better balance all combat results

so as of yet i haven't seen a good gameplay argument (which is the most important argument anyways) for airpower being able to sink shipping as the best way to improve balance

Well, to make my Sea units more relevent, I did two things: Gave them _massive_ increases in spead. (Battleship=25, Destroyer=20 etc) Then I gave them the blitz ability. This lets them attack as many times as they can move. I want to tone that down a bit, but don't know how. But as of now, Sea power is awesome! I can compleatly isolate any coastal city. In my current war with France, I seperated them from their only source of horses, utterly devestating their cavalry rush. Given that I am using tanks...

None of that, however, changes the fact that Air units are almost pointless on sea.

[fezick31]

Originally posted by korn469
also note that each turn in civ3 is at least one year long, and that ww2 would have only taken four turns to fight, so the battleships would have been back ready to fight after resting a single turn

I think World War 2 is poor example of this. During ww2, the US managed to put out ships at a rate that would require cheat codes for civ 3 - between 1942 and 1944, the US put to sea 23 carriers. Battle ships were probably comprable in number. So i don't think was a matter of the ships resting so much as it was disbanding wounded ships into your production que and rush building new ships.

As far as the sub debate, check this out:
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/...campaigns.html
turns out that subs sank 8 aircraft carriers!

[Deathwalker]

Has there been any mention of fixing this in any patches, or a fraxis not commented on it

[johncmcleod]

I think after artillery units inflict damage on a unit, then the next bombardment should be on a non-wounded unit in that square. But when all the units are wounded, they should be able to be destroyed.