how to load units into an air plane?

[Locutus]

Put your units to sleep in a city or airbase and then move your plane/space ship in and out again. Your units should be on board now.

[ETB]

Yes, but that only works for space planes, right? Bombers and Stealth Bombers can only carry nuclear missiles (nukes). I remember trying to get a couple of my units on to a Stealth Bomber until I finally gave up on the idea. Then I read (somewhere) that they can't carry "regular military units."

[Barry]

how to load units into an air plane?

can any one tell me?

[Locutus]

You're right ETB, (Stealth) Bomber aren't transport-planes so they can't carry military units. But they can carry rockets, nukes and others. This goes for the submarine as well, and maybe even more units I can't come up with right now.

[Barry]

if an air plane can't carry military units,
how the hell do we use paratroops then?

[Locutus]

Well, there's a special transport-aircraft for the paratroopers. You can't build it yourself though. It's only available to transport paratroopers.

[Rowick Hepan]

RE: Paratroopers

So how do you load para's up? And how do you drop them off again??

[Dreamer]

Simply get your paratrooper selected and click on the paradrop icon then click on a land tile within 20 tiles square from the city where your paratrooper is.

Note :
Paradrop can only be done once per turn in every city or airbase.

[Terrator]

Can the paratrooper be dropped near an enemy unit (city, etc) rather than directly to an enemy city?

So far when I've tried to drop a paratrooper onto an enemy city, it has been shot down by a war walker.

[pchang65]

Paratroopers are just like aircraft when they are paradropping. This means they are vulnerable to any unit which has active air defense capability (Sams, interceptors, war walkers, leviathons, etc.).

[ETB]

War Walkers can be pretty tough. I think the AIs like making War Walkers because they are quite a versatile military unit. Paratroopers have one movement point left after making a paradrop (in the same turn), but you still can't paradrop next to a War Walker because it will shoot the plane down before you can make the drop. I guess you could drop a couple tiles away from the target city and move in on your next turn. Or, you could sacrifice an air unit, which will draw fire from all War Walkers in an enemy city, then safely land your Paratroops next to the target city and invade in one turn. But you should remember that War Walkers have greater attack strength and range than Paratroopers, so you would need a good number of them to take the city.

Frankly, I like War Walkers too. I prefer to bombard a city with them. Once the city is empty of enemy units, you can drop right into the city and take it with a Paratrooper. I've done that a few times. I generally use Paratroops to fortify my cities and occasionally take a city that has been bombarded but I don't have another unit to send in and take it.

[Terrator]

Thanks guys for the response.

Last night I tried the suggestion of dropping 2 paratroopers near the city I wanted to take, so I guess the answer is, yes you can drop paratroopers on any tile, not just on a enemy city.

I'm still to experience droppring a paratrooper on a enemy city which is not being defended by a war walker. It seems the paratrooper has the odds against him since unless you know there is only one defender, then the paratrooper has a chance to succeed.

It would be nice if one can stack paratroopers together and drop them on the target city; so far I haven't been able to do so; I even don't know if this is possible.

[Dreamer]

Terrator,

I have tried that sometime ago by locking 4 paratroopers and click the paradrop icon. When I saw the transport plane starting to fly towards the destination, I tho I suceeded, but later when I check back the city that launch the troopers there is 3 more troopers there and 1 in the destination.

So that explain every city can only paradrop one unit each turn.

[Rowick Hepan]

Just launch them from a number of nearby cities, drop them onto the same tile, stack them and then go from there. I would have thought that was easier because your distributing your production costs that way to.

[Terrator]

Dreamer,

Yes, I tried the same last night and only one paratrooper got to its destination, the others stayed behind; bummer.

I wish one could stack paratroopers and drop them against the enemy so their effectiveness would be real good. The way they are right now, I don't find them very useful except to quickly move a paratrooper to a destination. It would also be nice if they could have some stealth capability so the enemy would only be aware of their presence once the battle begins.