DESIGN: Air Combat

[Peter Triggs]

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

Did you ever get that to work?

[Solver]

Grr, can't remember properly now, but I did get units to be immobile. I can't remember now whether a combination of flags worked already, or if I did some code modification. I'll look later.

[Ekmek]

any luck? this is much needed...

[Solver]

I am currently doing some coding, and during a test run I found my Settlers unable to move. That must be from some code I did some time ago, found this for Settler in units.txt:

MovementType: Immobile
MovementType: Mountain

I can't remember now whether that Immobile movement type was already in, or was something I coded myself . You can check it now, or I can do after I finish fighting the code I am dealing with now...

[Peter Triggs]

I had a look at this too because I SLICed immobile units (pillboxes) in Call To Conquest. The "immobile" flag is Solver added.

What I did was just to override the k_UDF_FIRST_MOVE flag when GetMaxMovePoints()< 1.0 so that setting the units MaxMovePoints to 0 would actually work.

The next problem, though, is to keep the AI from grouping mobile units with immobile units.

[Solver]

AI getting hang of it is indeed always new stuff.

Heck, I deleted the code adding the immobile flag .

As for ranged bombard... I supposedly removed the code that only lets you bombard neighbouring tiles, but the problem now sits in the GetDistance function, which I don't really understand, with all of the stupid squared distance it returns. So sometimes it misinterprets the distance...

[Ekmek]

Solver,

Since the problem with immobile flag is the grouping isnt there something dealing with special units (like spies) that prevents them from being group. IIRC I never see the AI group spies with army units.

[Solver]

I see AI stupidly group Spies all the time.

And Immobile flag grouping isn't that much of a problem, IMO. Group Cannons with Infantrymen, and the stack won't be able to move into mountains. Makes sense. Just don't group immobile units with mobile units (you wouldn't want to anyway).

[Flinx]

I once again voice my opposition to the Civ3 style of air combat, this was the absolute worst idea introduced into Civ3.

[Ekmek]

We understand Flinx, but I'm sure the old ctp2 way will remain. and really it looks like we (Solver) will have aircombat be long range bombard with an immobile unit. The original ctp2 aircombat model I think will be useful for close-air-support and attack helicopters and this civ3 style will add a little variety between copters, fighters, and bombers.

so dont fight it too hard please

[Ekmek]

Solver,

I saw this SLIC in the workersSLIC that may help the immobile code

HandleEvent(GroupOrder) 'DonLrtWorkerBeGrouped' pre {
int_t i;
int_t numUnits;
location_t tmpLoc;
unit_t tmpUnit;
	tmpLoc = army[0].location;
	numUnits = GetUnitsAtLocation(tmpLoc);
	for(i = 0; i < numUnits; i = i + 1) {
		GetUnitFromCell(tmpLoc, i, tmpUnit);
		if(tmpUnit.type == UnitDB(UNIT_WORKER)) {	// Look for a worker unit
			return STOP;

[Solver]

As I've said, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to prevent grouping of immobile units. Why do that, if one could otherwise group 5 aircraft and have them all bombard with a single order?

Also Flinx... Civ3 style air combat would probably be left to mods. The idea here is to make a Civ3-style aircraft unit (ranged bombard & immobile) possible through the source, and then modders can enable/disable that. I don't think Civ3 style air combat was a bad idea, although it is more exciting maybe to actually see the units fly around (the reason I'm against abstracting unconventional units).

[Peter Triggs]

I only played Civ3 for a few months (a neighbour lent me his CD). At first I thought that the Civ3 style of air combat was really neat, but it rapidly got very boring. I think it's too repetitive and would prefer to stick with an improved version of the CTP2 system.

[Solver]

What I like about the Civ3 system is that it's more realistic (aircraft don't fly around and hang around in between turns) and can reduce micromanagement (just assign the bombing runs as you need them). CtP2 has active air defense, which is already partially what we would need if we were to implement something like how interception of aircraft works in Civ3.

[Tamerlin]

Though I originally voted for the Civ3 style air combat, I tend to agree with Peter, it is not as fun as it seemed to be at first. I also agree that the CtP2 style can certainly be improved... though I don't know what could be added. The main problem IMO is to teach the AI how to use it efficiently.

And once again I strongly believe that we should not think about Civ3 when we want to improve CtP2, Civ3 is certainly the worst 4X game I have tested and I don't want to find some of its so called "features" into CtP2.