Air units - copter finds

[Mart]

I recently played with copter adjustements in alphax.txt and have some interesting finds on how they work.

1) After inserting copter fuel more than 1, they no longer receive 30% damage when ending turn in field

2) After they use all their fuel and are in field copters fell the same as needlejets.

3) When having fuel more than 1, Copters no longer have unlimmited number of attacks, they have now only 1 !!! And they loose all move points for the current turn plus 1 move point additionally. e.g
9 moves 2 fuel - 8/18 after attack
12 moves 4 fuel - 35/48 after attack

4) When copter chassis is given 0 fuel, it can remain indefinitely in the air, and even without air superiority attack other units in the air!

[Senethro]

So the fuel tab hardcodes the chassis to behave like a noodlejet/copter/gravship?

[Mart]

There is a bit more to it. See 3) --> loosing points with additional 1.

I try to make some use of it. I like the idea of copters having only 1 attack. So far my favourite change was giving copters 4 fuel with shorter flight distances than needlejets

[Chaos Theory]

If you'll notice, needlejets show the same phenomenon of losing 1 extra fuel after moving, but start the next turn with the correct amount. I suspect you'll find that your copters, on the turn after moving, have 9/18 and 36/48 fuel, respectively.

[Mart]

And that skipped my mind so far, I will see it.
Then Copters, if you think about it, are really something else and have their benefits with quite disadvantages. Although they can attack multiple times, though when encountering some mighty opponent, they rarely can attack more than twice. For some time I start to think, that copters are not that much overpowered. Still for air cover I use for example needlejet tacticals - they do not get damage in the field. Overpowering copters can be visible only when attacking a bunch of weak units, like scouts or formers.

[GeoModder]

Think of the wisdom of those 'old' programmers... they figured that players would need a unit to eliminate player-made barrages of cheap units to chop a path towards that enemy stronghold quickly.

[Darsnan]

Re: Air units - copter finds

Originally posted by mart7x5
I recently played with copter adjustements in alphax.txt and have some interesting finds on how they work.

Hi mart7X5,

have you tried changing the "AI Plans for Units" number to 1 (Combat)? Reason I am asking is that one of my pet peeves has been continually seeing the AI's have massive amounts of A/C on my border, flying the units around haphazardly while not attacking anything (including bases with 1/1/1 "Token Defenders" in them ), then flying the units away even when its obvious I am building up for an invasion!?! If your experimenting on the units still, I'd appreciate you looking into this parameter as well (or somehow finding a way to get AI's aircraft to do more damage to a human.....).


D

[Mart]

It's a good point, Darsnan. There are like various possible plans for fighting:
-1 autocalculate = whatever AI calculates here, it could do fighting.

0 offensive = does it mean any-1-any is like that? Though Battle Ogre's have it too, as well as unity mining laser, 2-1-1

1 combat = any-any-any? good for attack as well as defense?

2 defense = 0/1-any-any only defense?
...
4 air superiority = should attack other units in air

I will try to play with these. Combat plan (1) have for example mindworms.

[Mart]

Just more on this. I took closer look as to how game describes existing creations. Some are called assault, combat and so on.
For example a needlejet is "assault".
13/<4>/1 (*2) is combat
1^/<5>/2 (*2) is assault!!!
1/6+t/1 (*2) is defense

Recently in my game with a friend an AI, that was lucky enough to take over my assault copter 8/1/10, used it to kill 2 formers on a tile. Copter made 2 attacks.
I will look into it more thoroughly soon.

[binTravkin]

1^/<5>/2 (*2) is assault!!!

Sure it is! "^" should explain everything to you.

From it we can deduce:

Assault = take empty bases, do other offensive actions not involving attacking enemy units
Combat = attack enemy units
Defense = sit in base or bunker and don't move/attack

[Mart]

so why "bomber" - needlejet - is assault? It cannot take over a base. The definition must be more described

Combat looks like a unit that can both attack and defend

[binTravkin]

Well then probably there are 2 "types" of attack:

1.The usual "hit them hard frontally"
2.The smart "bomb it, then drop in"