Is the air mission system good?

[Miznia]

Is it just implemented because of the new bombardment system?

I'm not sure whether I like it or not. Anyway it doesn't seem quite balanced, as I tend to find it to be better value to build ships (for bombardment) than to build bombers+carriers and go up against fighters.

I was playing Civ1 recently, with a big, modern world war (w/o any alliances of course), and it was a lot of fun to move bombers and fighters just like other units.

And is it just me, or was the Civ1 AI really vicious in (esp. overseas) wars?

Miznia

[benjdm]

I like the general idea of the air missions but there needs to be some way to engage in offensive air superiority. I can imagine doing this in two ways:

1. Have a 'fighter sweep' mission that you select a target for and the fighters engage enemy fighters on air superiority missions

2. When you try a bombard with a fighter, jet fighter, or F-15 and an enemy fighter is on air superiority the bombard is abandoned and the aircraft fight each other.

Personally, I like 2. better. It was basically implemented succesfully in an old DOS RTS game CommandHQ where there weren't bombers / fighters, just generic air units.

[spy14]

I tend to use battle groups... carriers with battleships and cruisers, battleships to bombard the enemy and carriers to destroy enemy bombers as they come in to respond. Once the enemy bombers are depleted fighters will attack your units, when a few of those are removed you can move your bombers in and attack in relative safety...

[Jamski]

I find that the best approach with bombers is to use them en masse as artillery, a bit like Hitler in Poland and Russia. The advantage over arty is, nat., the mobility factor and the longer range. As an old (v. old) civ1 hand, I must say I preferred the old system. A combination of battle ships, transports w/riflemen and carriers with bombers garantied (sp?) all the oppositions coastal cities without caualties. And in civ1 the AI knew how to use naval and air units (esp. the Chinese/Americans) to really hit you from their continent, without invading. but leaving all your cities undefended and then... "native unrest near X"

Missions sucks, but not big time, it's just not so good as civ1.

-Jam

[Mikhail]

I like it better, personally. Having aircraft run out of fuel so soon was way too annoying, and unrealistic. Considering that they barely had enough fuel to bomb a city and come back, while American fighters can take off from Georgia and bomb Afghanistan.

Though, offensive air superiority, or, more to the point, choosing what you want to bombard (it's very annoying when you want to cause damage to garrisoned soldiers, but end up destroying an improvement)

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by benjdm
I can imagine doing this in two ways:

1. Have a 'fighter sweep' mission that you select a target for and the fighters engage enemy fighters on air superiority missions

2. When you try a bombard with a fighter, jet fighter, or F-15 and an enemy fighter is on air superiority the bombard is abandoned and the aircraft fight each other.

Number 2 is already present in the game if I'm not mistaken.

[Thrawn05]

I liked the SNES Civ way of air power.

Fighters can leave up to 8 tiles from a city, within that 8 tiles, the fighter has to do two things...

A: Travel to another city or carrier
B: Destroy another unit, and return to any city on the same turn.

If the fighter does not return to a city/carrier, the unit is lost due to lack of fuel.



For bombers, it's up to 12 tiles, and can stay in the air for two turns.

This means, it can attack a unit up to 12 tiles away, and still return the next turn, or, if your willing, destroy another unit another 12 tiles away, but the plane will be lost due to lack of fuel.

[Jon Shafer]

I don't think the new system is very good, IMO.
I think other ideas from Civ I and other people's ideas around here would work much better. Especially the whole deal with air combat... *shakes his head*

[benjdm]

2. When you try a bombard with a fighter, jet fighter, or F-15 and an enemy fighter is on air superiority the bombard is abandoned and the aircraft fight each other.

Number 2 is already present in the game if I'm not mistaken.

Really ? I didn't know that. Rarely have I been in a game where the AI got air power. Anyone else know whether this is true or not ?

[Inverse Icarus]

i wish there was a "kamakazie" switch for air units, whereas their range doubles but they die. i kamakazied fighters in civ2 all the time.

i also think you should be able to "group" air units for more dramatic battles. for example, you bomb with 3 stealh bombers and 4 stealth fighters. that way the fighters try to pick of the intercepting fighters while the bombers do their bombing.

i think that these 2 additions would add more strategy to the air game

[korn469]

i personally prefer the concept of air missions over the civ1/civ2 way of doing things, though i do think it can have better balance

air missions are exploit free, where as those of you who are looking through rose colored glasses forgot all of the exploits of the civ1/civ2 air system

a couple of those
*surround your city with air bases and it becomes bomber, missile, and nuke proof
*use air units to shield ground or sea units from attack
*fighters never fought each other, they only shot down bombers that hoovered for years at a time

also #2 is in the game, and with the appropriate settings (aka blitz mod settings ) it can make air warfare quite interesting

air missions is one of the best things in civ3!

[theEntity]

Originally posted by benjdm
2. When you try a bombard with a fighter, jet fighter, or F-15 and an enemy fighter is on air superiority the bombard is abandoned and the aircraft fight each other.

Number 2 is already present in the game if I'm not mistaken.

Really ? I didn't know that. Rarely have I been in a game where the AI got air power. Anyone else know whether this is true or not ?

I don't know whether it is true that the bombard is totally abandoned, but I do know that the two planes will fight each other, even when the attacker is a bomber.

I've had one game where France pounded my terrain imporvement with several bombers. I put jets on air superiority missions, and while my fighters managed to shoot down the bombers, they lost a few hit points themselves. No fighter was completely destroyed though, but I guess that would've been the case if the frech had attacked with fighters and not bombers.

[Akka]

Originally posted by theEntity

I don't know whether it is true that the bombard is totally abandoned, but I do know that the two planes will fight each other, even when the attacker is a bomber.

I've had one game where France pounded my terrain imporvement with several bombers. I put jets on air superiority missions, and while my fighters managed to shoot down the bombers, they lost a few hit points themselves. No fighter was completely destroyed though, but I guess that would've been the case if the frech had attacked with fighters and not bombers.

What would be good would be that you can put your fighters in "escort" mode, and they will fight any fighter that try to intercept the bomber escorted.

[Matte979]

The new Air mission system is way much better than the old,
move them seperate. As pointed out in previous post the old system was really a pain and was not balanced. I suggest you
test the old system now when you tried this one and you will realise that this is way better.

Air superiority is very good and way more realistic.
Rebase mission what a blessing. Recon fun mission not that useful though, I just wonder if you can be shoot down on recon.
Way faster system aswell the old system was slow.

Also try precision bombing when getting smart weapons fun fun fun.

/Mathias

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by UberKruX
i also think you should be able to "group" air units for more dramatic battles. for example, you bomb with 3 stealh bombers and 4 stealth fighters. that way the fighters try to pick of the intercepting fighters while the bombers do their bombing.

If Firaxis add to the (ground) great leader the (air) great Ace concept, you can have a flying equivalent of an army (an Air Wing in USAF terms, IIRC).
Voila', easy to implement in game code, not sure about game balancing.

[OldCharlie]

I really like the air mission concept. I do think it could be tweeked some, but the basic idea is a big step forward. I like the way it simplifies and speeds up the game. Want to spend my time on strategy and not manually moving units from place to place. And there were problems with the way planes could be used to blockade in the previous versions. I think air power is better balanced with the ground forces in CIV III.

Think an "Escort" mission or "Air Army" would be an improvement. I do wonder, though, how useful the Air Army would be. Would it really add anything to the game that is not already there. Seems like it would just require larger fleets of fighters for defense and divert attention from some other aspect of the game, which is primarily about land acquisition, not air power.

Why not just bomb a target with fighters before sending in bombers to clear the enemy fighters?

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by OldCharlie
Why not just bomb a target with fighters before sending in bombers to clear the enemy fighters?

This is precisely what I do when bombing targets in known enemy contested airspace. Works like a champ!

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by OldCharlie
Think an "Escort" mission or "Air Army" would be an improvement. I do wonder, though, how useful the Air Army would be. Would it really add anything to the game that is not already there. Seems like it would just require larger fleets of fighters for defense and divert attention from some other aspect of the game, which is primarily about land acquisition, not air power.

Fact is, IMHO, that Army should be used to model integrated forces, where cavalry, archers, pikeman move in coordinated effort (the great leader effect) to multiply their power.

As they are implemented in Civ III they are too simple: just use their hit points as a common pool. It's almost pointless to mix different kind of units, because they detract each others, not multiply.

Consider how more efficient could be a mixed army of a cannon, a cavalry and a couple of musketeer, where the attack routine works more on a "scissor win paper win stone". The army will negate the bad effects (you can always have the better unit to attack or defend against a menace).

Now, an Air Army (Wings) could be like a modern "packet": bomber to attack, fighters to defend, ecm/sead plane to suppress enemy SAM (I know they aren't on the game, but they can fit).
Think about WWII "Boxes" of B17 Fortress and B24 Liberators, with Lightning and Mustang for escort.

Same effect on Sea Army (Fleet), with a battleship, a carrier, a couple of cruiser/destroyer.

You can have a better unit grouping system (easy to move around) without too much details (we know Civ saga is not a wargame)

[Grrr]

I don't like it, but all my reasoning has already been mentioned by others.

[steamthunk]

Air power is too weak in Civ3. People have been saying that it unbalances the game, but in my opinion air power really IS that powerful.

One thing I'm not sure about in the air superiority mission. It seems that fighters only try to intercept from a carrier base if the carrier tile itself is attacked. I've tried to send a carrier fighter group with my battleships to protect them from bombers but unless everyone is on the same tile the fighters don't seem to challenge enemy aircraft. I made sure that all ships were within half the operational range of the fighters based on the carrier. Does anyone else have a different experience?

[Inverse Icarus]

i've never seen a fighter defend nearby ships while on a carrier, but i havent played the new patch too much.

[PrinceBimz]

I like how air units are handled in CIV3, I feel it is a great improvement. I think its more realistic to have an air unit assigned to a base and select those missions for it. An aircraft carrier is much more powerful then surface ships. A full compliment of aircraft onboard allows me to bomb several times and attack the enemy far inland instead of limited to coastlines only with offshore bombardment. In addition to gound support, in a naval battle a carrier will allow me to launch planes and bomb enemy ships at long range before they can even get close to surface gunnery action. This gives me an upper hand in winning the battle.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by PrinceBimz
I like how air units are handled in CIV3, I feel it is a great improvement. I think its more realistic to have an air unit assigned to a base and select those missions for it. An aircraft carrier is much more powerful then surface ships. A full compliment of aircraft onboard allows me to bomb several times and attack the enemy far inland instead of limited to coastlines only with offshore bombardment. In addition to gound support, in a naval battle a carrier will allow me to launch planes and bomb enemy ships at long range before they can even get close to surface gunnery action. This gives me an upper hand in winning the battle.

I feel this is all fine and dandy for bombing/precision attack runs (except for minimal damage being done to units, which isn't completely accurate), but I feel that the air supremacy deal should be worked out a little better than it is. There ought to be some way of using fighters to protect a certain area from enemy bombing, and likewise, a more effective way in countering this escort. I could draw up a better system if I wanted to, and prove my point, but, frankly I don't feel like it because it doesn't really matter anyways.

[Jaybe]

Fighters are used to 'use up' enemy Air Superiority tasked fighters with (default) 50% chance of being intercepted. Interceptors are the attackers, and attack strength is (default) twice the defense strength of Fighters, Jet Fighters & F-15s. I disagree with this Attack/Defense strength ratio.

I have increased defense strength to '1 less than attack strength' (except for F-15: 8/8 instead of 8/7). Allows for offensive air superiority missions without undue losses. The attacker in air-to-air combat has the advantage only when he sights the enemy first, and that basically applies only with individual plane combat.

I haven't gotten to the point yet of seeing how this plays out in a game.

[notyoueither]

Why Jaybe. I can read the fine print. Make it smaller.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by steamthunk
One thing I'm not sure about in the air superiority mission. It seems that fighters only try to intercept from a carrier base if the carrier tile itself is attacked. I've tried to send a carrier fighter group with my battleships to protect them from bombers but unless everyone is on the same tile the fighters don't seem to challenge enemy aircraft. I made sure that all ships were within half the operational range of the fighters based on the carrier. Does anyone else have a different experience?

Yes. My last game of 1.17. Jets from my Carriers shot down many Bombers trying to bomb my beach head in an invasion. The Carriers and their escorting Fleet were parked 2 squares off the coast.

[Mickeyj]

A feature that would help is an escort option for the fighters. When a fighter escorts a bomber on a bombing run and is intercepted the fighter should engage the enemy interceptor.

[notyoueither]

An escort mission may be too complex. Simple is their watchword.

The system as it stands is quite good. I've fought massive actions involving 100s of units per side with Air Forces of 30 to 70 units each.

Bomb with Fighters first. The interceptors will come up. Once you have gone through with your Fighters, or several of them have bombed with no interception, then proceed with the Bombers.

The defender will have the advantage and will have a favourable loss ratio. If you have enough Fighters you will win total Air Superiority as you burn through his Fighters.

[steamthunk]

Given the constraints of the CivIII combat system I think what Jaybe suggests about equalizing the attack/defense values makes sense. I thought that the defense value for the F-15 should have been 1 or 2 higher than a normal jet fighter to represent American advantages in developing fighters with sophisticated electronics and guidance systems that should assist survivability and in engaging the enemy first (very important). It'd be nice if its range were just a bit longer too.

All things being equal I'm inclined to believe that there's no inherent advantage to being an attacker or defender once a dogfight starts which is what my mod would reflect (well none that are easily modelled by the Civ3 system anyway).
I'd also like to see the carrier hold more the 4 aircraft. I like the Civ2 capacity of 8. A modern aircraft carrier has a lot of striking power which is not quite reflected in Civ3 IMHO.

[Evil_Eric_4]

I say we bring back airbases -
Fighters stationed there on air-sup missions will attack any enemy plane within its range.
The fighters in cities will only defend that city.
Then we have another strategic target to go after.