I think the main issue is that an anti-economy bombing mission that the AI can defend against is better than an anti-economy bombing mission that they can't defend against.
I don't see this as much as you do. In my latest test game (on Monarch) the AIs have been fairly aggressive in keeping fighters in most cities near my borders during war. I beat the fremen to Air Superiority and just wiped out most of their wasps with my Locusts of course, but that's not entirely their fault
. Could they do a better job of responding to air bombings, yes, but improving that response is a better course of action than removing this mechanic.
To put it simply, this is a
fun thing to do sometimes. I don't use it often, but when I do, it's because it's fun to be able to hurt an enemy economy using air superiority, and if it was taken out, I don't think I'd be the only player who would miss it. For that reason, I'd rather focus towards improving it, not removing it--if we have to do anything at all. A simple GlobalDefines option would be easy to add though that controls if it's possible or not, much like I've done with thopters and capturing cities. Most players will never change such things, but they give deeper customization options to those who really want them without cluttering the custom game options screen with a million little things.
I've lost track of which options are on in the latest build. As you say, there may also be some weird code issues here, but possibly that wouldn't be unsolveable?
The DCM options have a tab in the BUG options in RevDCM, but having just looked, Deliverator didn't merge that tab in. The only place to change those options are in 'My Documents/My Game/BeyondTheSword/Dune Wars/RevDCM.ini". None of the patches touch anything in that folder, so the default options here are from 1.9.1, which I haven't changed on my computer and DCM airbombing is set to 'false'. So that should be the default setting. If you can bomb buildings then this was set to true at some point on your computer, but I'm assuming most players have it off.
As for fixing issues, anything is fixable
. It just means I'll have to pour over the DCM air bombing code and see how it's organized, and I really, really do dislike the way Dale wrote his code
. I mean, really, couldn't he have just named things 'bombBuilding' or 'bombPort', but no, it's 'bomb1' and 'bomb2', and that's just the start of it
. And... sorry for another Rant. His code really bugs me every time I have to look at it for something.
But yea, it's fixable. So the real question is, how many people actually use the DCM air bombing?
It does not address the main issue at all
While I still haven't really decided I'd actually do it anyway, it does help the issue by still allowing the bombing of improvements (and hurting the enemy by it), which again is just a logical and fun thing that should be available to the player, but reduces the impact, makes it so multiple runs would be needed to utterly destroy improvements or really cripple the opponent. Making it take longer in and of itself makes it unlikely you'll be destroying the entire countryside (an ironic term to use for Arrakis, I know), but still leaves the player with the satisfaction. Remember, it's not always balance, sometimes it's more important to keep it fun.
But it is something I consider a minor improvement in the scope of the overall game and no high priority. Which means it'll probably never be done
, at least not before the real priorities I have.
To answer a few of the other questions, the AI is simple as you treat it like an unimproved tile, with value modified by the actual yield lost from damage when workers consider what tile is the best next plot to work. Fits right into the normal decision flow for them.
Discreetness merely requires a close look at different scenarios, the initial system I'd think to use multiplies each yield it gives by damage/100 then rounds it, the biggest yield given (e.i. hammers for a mine) never drops below 1 until, obviously, the improvement is totally destroyed.
repair wouldn't be any more busywork than rebuilding a completely destroyed improvements. Either case requires the worker action. I'd already covered the need for artwork making it clear it's damaged in the first post.
a successful bombing run adds a "bombing damage I" building that gives -10% hammers, gold, science, culture, and is removed after 10 turns. You could also have bombing damage II, III, IV, V buildings, so that heavy bombing could reduce city yields by up to 50% or more.
That's a much better approach than destruction of buildings. It represents more the temporary disruption in infrastructure without setting the city back 20 turns or whatever from one successful bombing run.