Military flight tech questions

I'm playing BTS and have a few questions:

1. How do I counter defending airships? They put a dent in my invading force

2. I love bombers but it seems fighters have no advantage of their own. I guess they can defend or go on carriers. But how do you get bombers/fighters past enemy defending fighters? Do you just have to wait for stealth bombers? If so is the only option until then for bombard/collateral guided missiles (poor range) or artillery (can't keep up with tanks)

3. I made an aircraft carrier and before I could fill it, a destroyer destroyed it. If it were loaded with fighters would it have automatically won, or still lost?

Thanks

1. Attack with fighters first or have SAMs in your invading force.

2. To get the most out of bombers when your enemy has fighters, you need to attack with fighters first. Once all of the defending planes have been in dogfights with your fighter planes, you can send in your bombers. The advantage of the fighters is they can be used as in the first part of this (2.) answer, they can be used as defenders against enemy air attacks, they are much more effective against ships.

3. If your carrier was loaded with fighters, you would still have lost to the destroyer but you would have also lost all the planes. Carriers should never be at sea by themselves. Always make them part of a fleet with adequate destroyers/battleships/missile cruisers to defend the fleet. My typical invasion fleet will contain 4 to 6 carriers, 6 to 10 destroyers and battleships (or missile cruisers), enough transports for the land troops to succeed. If there are many coastal cities, I will typically have 4 to 6 transports full of marines, plus several more with garrison troops. The battleships and destroyers defend the fleet. If possible, I attack any enemy ships encountered : first with fighters to knock them down to 50% then with destroyers or battleships. Upon arriving at the target, the battleships bombard the city to eliminate the defense factor %, then the fighters attack to reduce the defending units to 50% strength, finally the marines take the city and then the garrison troops land. Move on to next coastal city and repeat.

You can't really defend against Airships until you have Fighters. SAM infantry, Infantry, Machine Guns, Destroyers and other units get an intercept chance, but it's not a good chance until SAMs and you will rarely kill an Airship that way.

As SB says, your Fighters can go dogfight defending Fighters if you set your Fighters to attack anywhere in the territory the AI Fighters are defending. Some mods have a specific "fighter intercept" mission to do this.

Carriers will rarely win in straight-up combat with a Destroyer. Having Fighters on board is irrelevant.

How do you get them to dogfight? I select "air strike" and click on the city where the airship is. Then my fighter skips the airship (clearly visible in the stack) and shoots a cavalry or rifleman.

A "dogfight" occurs when a fighter is set by the defender to patrol. Then when you attack it will engage your plane. If the AI is using its airships to attack, put your fighter on patrol. When the airship attacks the fighter will engage it. That usually results in the airship getting shot down, since it is so much weaker than the fighter. Even in the rare case where the airship survives it will be heavily damaged and unable to attack your ground troops. Alternatively, if you put some SAMs in your ground troop stack, they will probably shoot down the airships.

I thought fighters could only defend cities? So if I'm on the attack, a fighter patrolling a city wouldn't be much help, right?

Also I noticed a city that was captured but then retaken by me seems to have lost the planes based there, is this how the game works?

Fighters can bomb units, tiles, and cities as well. Fighters do not do collateral damage; bombers do. I generally will have my fighters reduce cities' cultural defenses before having them attack units in cities.

iwn said:

I thought fighters could only defend cities? So if I'm on the attack, a fighter patrolling a city wouldn't be much help, right?

Also I noticed a city that was captured but then retaken by me seems to have lost the planes based there, is this how the game works?

Click to expand...

As Lennier said, fighters can attack units in and out of cities, cities, and tile improvements. By placing fighters in the intercept mode, they will automatically defend/attack any hostile air units during the Ai turns. You have no control over this. All aircraft function like ships in a captured city. If an enemy Ai captures one of your cities all air/water units are destroyed. If you have open borders you can base your aircraft in a foreign city and use them to attack another Ai you are at war with, and even set them to intercept missions. However take note, that if the civ you are at war with has open borders with them too, you will need land units to defend your own aircraft. That is a lesson that I and many others here on the forums have learned the hard way.

iwn said:

I thought fighters could only defend cities? So if I'm on the attack, a fighter patrolling a city wouldn't be much help, right?

Also I noticed a city that was captured but then retaken by me seems to have lost the planes based there, is this how the game works?

Click to expand...

The patrol range of an aircraft is it's entire attack range (8 tiles for basic fighters iirc), so they can defend into enemy territory quite easily if you move them into newly captured cities. But like your other post says, if you lose the city, you will automatically lose the fighters. As other has said, they only get into dogfights if one side is on defense (air interception), and airships cannot perform air defense missions, so you can only fight them if you go on defense with your fighters.

Make sure your carriers never leave the city they were built in without an escort. I've totally done this thinking the area was secure and lost a carrier full of high level jet fighters to a submarine.

And make sure if this happens to you, you punish the civilization responsible! I'm sure it says that in one of the loading screen hints.