Downpowering Helicopter Units?

[Alinestra Covelia]

The helicopter unit in game is the ultimate outclassing air unit - its attack strength is identical to a specialized bomber craft, and its number of attacks is far greater, enabling it to attack once for every movement remaining.

I think this is quite inaccurate - jet bombers attack only once (ie a single bombing run) but the entire point is that they do so with devastating force. The usual use of helicopters, in contrast, is to overfly a slow moving target and attack it thoroughly to ensure its destruction. A modern air force would most likely opt to use a bomber attack to destroy a static target, such as a city emplacement or a border base or maybe a large convoy, and the helicopter would be used against ground troops but not against cities.

Thus, a bomber and a chopper should receive different attack profiles. I was wondering whether or not there was a way of either reducing the number of squares that a chopper could move (and thus the number of attacks it got) or perhaps giving it a -25% penalty when attacking bases instead of enemy forces out in the open.

This would then encourage the use of bombers only against cities, and choppers as battlefield-clearing units, and reduce the present omnipreference of the chopper as an anti-city unit.

Has anybody done this yet? If not, what do you think of the idea?

[RedFred]

Looks like Vel might be working on this very thing, among others. Check out his Splinter Factions thread for more details.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Thanks for the tipoff, RedFred.

Do you fancy a cosy intimate two-player PBEM sometime Augustish?

[RedFred]

Well, since two of the three PBEMs I was playing since AXT029 both seem to have died a painful death, sure.

[johndmuller]

Technically, I think that the range could be factored down in the game; realism-wise, I suppose that would be accurate, but I'm not a RL military expert. The downside to that would be that the number of attacks would also be reduced.

I think that choppers in RL are also harder to maintain than bombers, but I don't know whether that can be incorporated into the game; something like getting damage, say 10%. after every turn it moves even when it returns to base might be reasonable, but I don't know if you can do that.

The price of armor probably might be skewed to favor planes as some sort of proxy for the fact that choppers are easier to hit, but I don't know that it would make armor any more attractive to planes unless done to extreme.

If it could be done, the battle odds w/r choppers should reflect the relatively defensless nature of helocopters - AAA and SAM in particular, should be really effective against choppers more so than bombers or fighters.

These kinds of adjustments would unbias the relationship between choppers and planes at least a bit.

[cbn]

The fixes that involved changing the range of a chopper to 4 seemed to me to be the most effective. It would really blunt the multiple attack feature since practically it would mean that you get two attacks only in most cases (assuming you have to move a square or so to get in position). This combined with the damage they take every time they land outside a base would result in a vastly weakened unit.

In reality terms it strikes me that such chopper would be fairly realistic. A short range weapon that can do devastating damage but which is hugely vulnerable to attack itself

[Ned]

A possible solution is to increase the inherent base defense from 25% to 100% and similarly increase the effectiveness of infantry against a base to 100%. If this were not enough, increase both to 200%. At some point, the utility of Copters for taking bases diminishes to zero.

The problem is that there is no similar bonus for bombers that I can see. This would make standard air useless against bases. Missiles would become much more important.

It would also adversely affect PSI attacks on a base (I believe.) In other work, infrantry would be the exclusive unit that could attack a base. But this is Alinestra's original point.

Ned

[Horus]

There is indeed something wrong with the way Helicopters (or should I say Hell-icopters) work in this game.

IRL
Helicopters are a tactical weapon, there range is very limited compared with bombers, they are confined to operate on the limited theatre were they are put.Bombers are a strategic weapon with a long range, well illustrated by the way they work in SMAC/X.

Helicopters flying rigth across continents(!) and spreading Havoc there with 12 attacks the coming turn isn't that exciting. IMO helicopters should start with a base movement /attacks of 4 or 5.

[Ned]

Another altenative is to simply eliminate them from the game and move the grav ship up the tech tree.

Ned

[Hoek]

I think that bombers should have the option of destroying city improvements...in addition, I think that perhaps helicopters shouldn't be allowed to just fly around...their flight rules should be the same as planes...the difference would be that they would be able to attack mutliple times in a turn...perhaps that could be coupled with a base-attack penalty

[Evil Twin]

I have disabled all air power in my games because of how badly real airpower is represented. The only air unit ever present is the scout chopper from the Unity wreckage and the Conventional Missile, which i am thinking of removing anyway.

[Ned]

Hoek, Your solution sounds great. However, I don't think it could be done by just you and me editing the Alpha.txt file. What we have proposed here, from reducing range, to increasing base defenses, to eliminating Copters altogether, can be done using an edit.

Copters are like Battleships in CIV or Stealth fighters in CIV II. They can clean out a base in one turn an thus are a superweapon.

Just as an aside, I have found Copters to be quite a bit less useful in games where the defensive armor is in the 5-6 range and offensive weapons remain 8-13. A Copter will normally loose to an AAA defender, especially with an Aerospace Comples. WAVE helps restore some of the balance, but not all. Typically the Copter can survive only one base kill, which is what we all want.

I have found the above situation to be the norm in games since I redid the Alpha.txt and Faction files to force the AI to research everything but "Conquer" and to force the AI to build forests. Defense stays even with offense. The use of airpower against AAA, 5-6 armor is not a good idea.

Ned

[Horus]

Another 2c, regarding Helicopters attacking cities. I agree with what Ned and Hoek writes about the issue. The chopters should have the "-50% airstrike" penalty when attacking cities, regardless of their SAM capability. Helicopters should not have the same capability to attack cities as strategic bomers have - to state the obvious. They got a comparative - i.e. compared with bombers - short range with their missiles and are by that more prone to counterattacks.

And of course, some things one can edit. But it is more fun to have a correct "canon" which all play by. But I guess it is only a dream that SMAC/Y will makle its apperence.

[death_head]

Helicopters with their slow speed, are really only good once they're inside the city, because they can fly around the streets, etc. Obviously, this isn't going to happen in a war unless the city is almost taken anyhow.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Really???


I thought they were primarily used to eliminate tanks and other mobilized units, since they go slower than jet aircraft and can therefore aim far more precisely.

Whereas jets and bombers just go for static large base defences, and can flyby once they've released their payload.

Either way, we need no further proof that the fruits of Da Vinci's workshop are still perplexing us

[death_head]

I'm talking about city assault, as opposed to field combat. You're right though.

[Horus]

Yes, the only time I in RL (as if I would have the chance to ever decide about such things), would use Helicopters in a city would be as the victory motorcade.