All air units could stay on air between the turns?

[wieder]

This is a change civ2civ3 has today.


- Increased fuel of all Air units by one, in order to allow battles for
air control. All Air unit lose 10% of HPs, like helicopters, when they
end out of a city or airbase.

[Corbeau]

I don't know the combat values for fighters, but in that case, they should have equal strength for attack and defence.

[wieder]

Why equal? The ability to stay on air between turns is kind of choice and the player takes a risk similar to sending out ships with similar A/D balancing.

Then again, the fighter and early fighter both have attack and defense of 4. The stealth fighter has attack of 8 and defense of 7. My guess is that the defense value slightly lower compared to attack is there to simulate the surprise factor. Not that big difference anyway but something. Fusion fighter has the same values as the stealth fighter. Probably not too big issue if the defense is 7 instead of 8.

[Corbeau]

Yeah, attack should be slightly bigger than defense, but only slightly. Why? Because if not, fighters are completely useless as escorts. With defence much lower than offense, it is absolutely senseless to leave them in the air for the next turn. Also, with no use of terrain, no cover, very low chance of initially getting the upper hand, air combat between fighters throughout history amounted to battle of equals, with the key factor being experience and hardware, not the fact that you're attacking or defending.

Also, why 10% damage for fighters? That kind of air units is sufficiently nerfed by the fact that they have to refuel every now and then. it's not a helicopter that doesn't have to do it.

[wieder]

The idea for 10% comes from civ2civ3 where is now used this to make them weaker if they stay on air. No need to really do that if it's too much. Not implemented yet actually on LT40.

[Corbeau]

Well, if an airplane needs to land every second turn, that's already a significant limitation so I wouldn't go for additional punishment. This would mean it has to stay landed for an additional turn to repair which *may* make sense, but not really every time it goes on a mission. Maybe decrease this to 5% or 3%? This wouldn't reduce its capability significantly, but if it accumulates over time, then it may. Would depict the real-life thing of machinery having to undergo repairs every now and then, even if there was no combat.

[wieder]

Yes, I'll need to check how easy it is to implement 3-5% or something like that. I'm only guessing that the ability to stay on-air is indeed intended to give some penalties for not staying in base during the tc.

This new ability will also allow some nice new strategies with even deeper suicide missions. You can get quite far away even with the first fighters if the range is 15 and the plane is not going to come back.