DESIGN: Air Combat

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KHOMAR
could it be exploitable in game (micromanagement question) different type of bombing like napalm,conventionnal bombs,Fuel-Air-Explosives,with the associated units and each with a specific effect against population,buildings,etc...

MM hell

[tyrantpimp]

Heres is a thought thats been turning in my head for but a brief moment.

What if there was some sort of menu that allowed you to choose how you wanted your armed forces to behave. You could have the choice of using only conventional tactics or a list of unconventional tactics (uct) at your disposal. For example chemical and biological weapons fire bombs that sort of thing.

To simulate this in game for each uct you enable your units will be slightly more destructive when engaging civilian population centers. Optionally units could be more powerfull when facing other armed units but this would have to be delicately balanced.

To counter this, once you enable uct options your relations with other nations will drop into the gutter. Previously friendly nations would be more prone to embargo trade against you. You would incur a civ wide happiness penalty and of course your upkeep costs would go up.

Perhaps the penalties could be as severe as having the ai team up in an coallition against you to remove your "rogue regime"

For this to work there would have to be some considerable modification to the tech tree to reflect when the uct options would become enabled. Not to mention whatever other magical stuff the source code team would have to conjure up to make it happen.

Is it worth it ? Dunno whos to say im sure it could be simulated in less troublesome ways. This is however my thought at the moment feel free to chime in with comments.

[MrBaggins]

Theres a danger of including too much material in any one time period. This idea is mainly keyed to the modern era, and that already is pretty full of new warfare options... flight, missiles, carriers, tanks, subs... to name but a few.

Chemical warfare exists... but doesn't have an effect that can't necessarily be modelled by the existing combat stats... except you might want to provide more protection to protected units such as Tanks (or other AFV's,) and modern infantry.

I wouldn't waste a flag and code on this... these kind of properties should be generalized. There's one more feature I want to implement in the db, to allow easy bonuses and penalties between attack types, so advantages and disadvantages can be easily modelled in the units.txt, but thats something I'm planning on working on, after BuildClasses are taken care of.
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There is already the concept of atrocities in CTP2... nukes and biowarfare. Biowarfares effect is cool to a degree; the way it spreads in particularly... but I'd like to abstract it (along with other unconventionals) and have a more profound effect.

There are already diplomatic options in place to do what you're talking about.

I'd love to see a "Cold War turns Hot" scenario, in the mid-late 80's... Warsaw Pact vs. NATO. Lots of detail could be lavished on modern warfare units and quirks, and there wouldn't be the same micromanagement issues, to concern ourselves about.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by kaigun
Sorry but the Civ 3 air system is also totally bizarre and unrealistic.That it is better than the present CTP system isnt a recommendation.If you want an air system that works and is fairly realistic I suggest you adapt the model used by Paradox in its WW2 hame HoI it works the scale is similar the AI uses it well and its flexible.

I just read a few player reviews of HoI. The only comments about air combat in general were negative (some very negative.)

Here's a sample of a moderate complaint...

Air combat suffers greatly from the buggy/poorly thought out system for intercepting enemy aircraft. Another big problem is that air units are capable of attacking almost constantly. This gradually wears down their effectiveness, but it is almost impossible to outright destroy air units in battle. So the AI will happily throw its battered planes at you 15 times a day.

I read a magazine review that every unit could fire back at planes... not just the attacked unit. Yep... thats realistic.

I don't recall these kind of complaints about Civ3... except Air Superiority, but CTP2 already has a good Air Superiority model... all you have to do is put the two together.

[Gilgamensch]

I just want to throw an idea in:

Instead of having the air-units on the ground-layer, can we not introduce an air-layer, where they would fight?

The only 'problem' I see is that the bombers would have to be a mixed state, or they could be abstracted, that you would put them in a city on guard and if a enemy unit comes into strike rane, it would (again abstract) attack it. If the unit(s) attack have air-defence capability the bomber could be damaged/destroyed.

And only fighter (or units with fighter capability) could (on the air-map) attack bombers.

Only an idea...............

[MrBaggins]

An air-layer would be nice (as would a space-layer,) but its a "significantly down the road" goal for the coders, not least because of the complexity.

We should, though, perhaps start a design thread about layers... to get the discussion going about what layers we want/need and how we'd like them to work in practice.

[Gilgamensch]

As I said, this was just an idea, as it might be easier to implement as trying to teach the AI proper handling of the units.

But the space layer was/is fun

Although I hardly ever used it so much for bombing, but having the cities with nice income

[epeterson]

Originally posted by MrBaggins I'd love to see a "Cold War turns Hot" scenario, in the mid-late 80's... Warsaw Pact vs. NATO.

Boy, you should read Tom Clancy's, "Red Storm Rising" if you haven't already!

It has been so long that I played C3 that I forget how exactly they work air units. I don't think it gives you the ability to take cities with combined forces though. Something I dearly love in CTP2! (6 tanks w/ 6 stealth fighters =

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by epeterson


Boy, you should read Tom Clancy's, "Red Storm Rising" if you haven't already!

It has been so long that I played C3 that I forget how exactly they work air units. I don't think it gives you the ability to take cities with combined forces though. Something I dearly love in CTP2! (6 tanks w/ 6 stealth fighters =

I'm a big fan of Harpoon (2) I've played more of these kind of scenarios than I could list, and they're very fun (for me at least.)

As for Stealth Fighters and Tanks... I don't think they really mix. Jets really do operate independantly of ground forces... Helos don't... but they're almost ground units in CTP terms anyway.

I love Stealth Fighters too, but I'd separate THESE combined force attacks out, for gameplay's sake.

[Aias]

I like what Mr. Baggins is saying. One thing that I do like about having hanging air units in CTP2 is that if I bomb a far off target, I have the planes hang close by, do my turn, and then bomb the next turn and I then have enough fuel to limp home.

In the Civ 3 version, I really like the craters that carpet bombing leaves on tile improvements. I think it would be interesting to implement this into the game. Perhaps taking 2 turns or so for the PW to repair the landscape. Also, the precision bombing that is available late in the game to target specific units and city improvements is great!

Being able to make bombing runs and stack planes with infantry makes for much more historical battles. Take Kursk, for instance. There was also a lot of dog fighting going on, as well as Stukas and IL-2's doing tank busting.

Bomber landing on carriers is very helpful, even if it’s not very realistic. It helps with the cross water invasions or just harassment.

On another air-type note, I think that paratroopers were much better in C:CTP. The units morphed into little planes to do their own airdrop. Cargo copters would be great for airlifting tanks, but IMO I don't think the paratroopers are as effective. They're just glorified Marines.

And a 'cold war turns hot' with all kind of toys! I'd probably have to quit my job and become somebody's pool boy!

[J-S]

I think the Civ3 system is much much better. However, I would still like to attack with tanks and bombers at the same time... would this be possible if the new based air units system be implemented?
Also, I found a bit ridiculous (spl) when you could attack an army of archers with a bomber and the archers got my plane. I would eliminate the ability to 'attack' from planes and just give them the posibilities in Civ3.

[Ekmek]

I thought someone was working on an immobility code to put civ3 style aircombat in effect. Did it ever work?

[Solver]

Adding the Immobile flag in units.txt works like that .

[Ekmek]

does bombing have a range now so it can work like civ3?

[Solver]

No. The BombardRange flag in units.txt doesn't really work, too. I remember going through the relevant code some time ago....