What's your point? They can still carry many aircraft (over 90). To limit them to a single unit in game would be really lame. You'd need many of them to get anything done.
Air units combat model : return to civ 2 model ?
- Thread starter Lachlan
- Start date
What's your point? They can still carry many aircraft (over 90). To limit them to a single unit in game would be really lame. You'd need many of them to get anything done.
One fighter unit is how many fighters you can fit on a single-hex of terrain (ie, a land based airforce base), or base in a single city.
Ie, you might want to think about how "big" one fighter unit should be. Ideally, a single modern fighter unit should be a huge amount of power.
Aircraft carrier compliments are not larger than the size of a garrison you can base out of a single city, or an air force base. So why, again, should aircraft carriers have multiple fighter units?
Is it just that you want to make each individual fighter unit weaker by a factor of 3, then have 3 of them?
Ie, you might want to think about how "big" one fighter unit should be. Ideally, a single modern fighter unit should be a huge amount of power.
Aircraft carrier compliments are not larger than the size of a garrison you can base out of a single city, or an air force base. So why, again, should aircraft carriers have multiple fighter units?
Is it just that you want to make each individual fighter unit weaker by a factor of 3, then have 3 of them?
The strength of a fighter aircraft is not only measured by the power of its weapons. It is also measured by its ability to rapidly perform missions over a large area around its base.
When an aircraft carrier receives orders to perform a strike on a truck driving down a road 100 miles inland from where it is stationed, do you think it dispatches its entire complement of aircraft all at once to go annihilate that truck? No! It sends one or maybe two at the most.
A single carrier with all of its aircraft is able to carry out many different missions simultaneously. I don't really care how they represent it in the game, whether it's a 3D model of one aircraft or 90. What matters is how many missions a carrier can perform in a turn.
r_rolo1
King of myself
There is a good reason to not get the pre-civ III air system back: the way combat is defined in civ games. Until now ( and there is no reason to assume that will change ) there had been a axiom in Civ game that is that two enemy units should not be able to share the same square and, atleast in Civ IV, the initiation of a combat is done when a unit tries to enter a square ocuppied by a enemy one. If you keep things that way and also treat air units in the same way as it was in pre-Civ III ( this includes SMAC ) you can't have one of your planes pass through a tile with a enemy unit without triggering combat, a hardly realistical result and also bad for gameplay, especially with a fuel count and 2 turns to go and come back ( want to take the enemy air fleet down? ... simply put weak units in their way back to base 
)...
Obviously this could be circumvented by making air units having special behaviour, like spies in Civ IV. But that is not the same as Civ II
)...Obviously this could be circumvented by making air units having special behaviour, like spies in Civ IV. But that is not the same as Civ II
So, a single air unit that, say, has 6 movement points, and doing a mission within the radius costs 1 movement point, qualifies?
Or even a fighter aircraft that has 30 movement points. Doing a mission costs 1 movement point per hex of distance, plus 5 for the actual fight. Now you can do many close-in missions, or a few medium-range, or very few long-range missions, with the same unit.
None of this requires having multiple fighter units on an aircraft carrier. It just requires that a fighter unit is able to do the kind of things that a large number of fighters can do.
Or even a fighter aircraft that has 30 movement points. Doing a mission costs 1 movement point per hex of distance, plus 5 for the actual fight. Now you can do many close-in missions, or a few medium-range, or very few long-range missions, with the same unit.
None of this requires having multiple fighter units on an aircraft carrier. It just requires that a fighter unit is able to do the kind of things that a large number of fighters can do.
Cause whats the point of building a carrier otherwise? A game shouldn't feature units that are useless or consistently suboptimal.
From what I've read, I would expect air combat to work a lot like it did in PG.
As I recall, in PG the air units consisted could be flown away from air fields for a certain number of turns before having to refuel at an airfield. I *think* that any air mission taken in a tile adjacent to enemy fighters caused those fighters to intercept you. Otherwise, air-to-air combat consisted of moving your fighters adjacent to the enemy air unit, then having them attack said unit. Attacking ground units involved moving your air unit to the same hex as the target, then attacking it. There were also AA ground units that had a certain range, and any attempt at air-to-ground attack within that range could be intercepted, and the AA could also attack air units w/n range during its turn. Air units in general had a ton of movement, but if you charged into the fog of war and encountered a surprise fighter unit you could get badly mauled ("out of the sun!"). Air combat in general in PG was a high-stakes affair. The units were very expensive, but potentially very powerful.
As I recall, in PG the air units consisted could be flown away from air fields for a certain number of turns before having to refuel at an airfield. I *think* that any air mission taken in a tile adjacent to enemy fighters caused those fighters to intercept you. Otherwise, air-to-air combat consisted of moving your fighters adjacent to the enemy air unit, then having them attack said unit. Attacking ground units involved moving your air unit to the same hex as the target, then attacking it. There were also AA ground units that had a certain range, and any attempt at air-to-ground attack within that range could be intercepted, and the AA could also attack air units w/n range during its turn. Air units in general had a ton of movement, but if you charged into the fog of war and encountered a surprise fighter unit you could get badly mauled ("out of the sun!"). Air combat in general in PG was a high-stakes affair. The units were very expensive, but potentially very powerful.
This is only a partial solution. What happens when that fighter unit gets shot down? You lose the entire thing. The advantage of multiple units is that some can get shot down while others can continue to operate.
Perhaps you want to split the risk among the different aircraft, with some taking low risk missions while others take high risk missions. With only one unit, you lose that flexibility. With only one unit, everything becomes an "all-or-nothing" situation. Not a good compromise.
)Zarathustra(
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2010
- Messages
- 28
In civ 2, it was ridiculously easy to abuse planes mechanics. For example to ignore all kind of Control Zone by moving them before ground units. Or to spread them all around a city to avoid guerilleros. Or to completely block a tile when you knew that another civ couldn'd kill your aircraft. I remember making aircraft walls when I wanted my opponents unit to stay away.
Anyway, all versions of civ get worse in late game.
Anyway, all versions of civ get worse in late game.
Generally, units in civ5 don't look like they are going to be killed from a single failed engagement. Even if you are attacked, you apparently are going to retreat rather than just evaporate.
So a failed fighter mission will damage the fighter unit. Unless you send a very damaged fighter unit on a raid, it won't be in danger of being destroyed on a mission.
It only becomes an all-or-nothing situation when your fighter unit is low on health -- which corresponds to "you only have 1 fighter unit left".
So a failed fighter mission will damage the fighter unit. Unless you send a very damaged fighter unit on a raid, it won't be in danger of being destroyed on a mission.
It only becomes an all-or-nothing situation when your fighter unit is low on health -- which corresponds to "you only have 1 fighter unit left".
That's still not really the same thing. That's more like one giant airplane that can take humongous damage and continue doing missions before it goes down.
I don't think they ought to treat aircraft the same way they treat other units. In Civ 4, the aircraft acted more like "boomerangs" that were "thrown" by your airport or carrier. In fact, I think it's be fair to say that aircraft (and missiles) were not really units at all but ammunition for their respective vessels. In that case, I don't think it is a very good idea to limit them to one per vessel, as they are not subject to the "stack of doom" problem anyway.
No, it is like a squadron. Which can (if it fails) lose some troops in a fight.
Much like a group of pikemen isn't a "big man with health", but rather a bunch of pikemen who can be wounded/damaged in combat, which lowers the strength of the entire unit.
I understand that you see a unit as a single airplane. That isn't how it worked in Civ4, ever. (well, maybe in Civ1, where units either died or didn't die -- but then your chariot was a single chariot too).
How are they not subject to "stack of doom"? Civ4 already had to limit the number of aircraft in a city, because aircraft stacks of doom where ridiculously effective in Civ4.
Basically, Civ5 is defining "one unit" to be "the number of this kind of unit that can fit in the area defined by a hex". Why should airplanes be any different?
A unit of airplanes = one carrier load of airplanes. Whatever a carrier load of airplanes should be able to do, so should a unit of airplanes. Game remains "one unit = 1 hex", and ... the problem is?
Because pikemen don't fly all over the the place and attack many different targets, they stick together and must fight as one unit. Airplanes are totally autonomous and split up to go in many different directions at the same time.
So one unit of airplanes on a carrier should be able to split up and go in 90 different directions at the same time?
The Cosmic Kid
Warlord
For all we know, each air unit will be able to perform four missions per turn.
Yeah, but if it gets shot down on the first mission it cannot complete the rest. This is not the same as having four units, each able to perform a mission without any dependence upon the success of the others.
The Cosmic Kid
Warlord
No, it's not, but I think it would be an acceptable abstraction for the purpose of streamlining gameplay. It's not really any different than the unrealism we've always faced by, oh, having to commit an entire cavalry unit to mop up some heavily damaged spearmen.
I think it's pretty unacceptable. It'll lead to situations where you're forced to use dozens of aircraft carriers to get anything done.
Even more ridiculous is the situation where you have more aircraft carriers than aircraft.
Once again, as far as we can tell, units don't get killed from single actions in Civ5.
Heck, in Civ4, a fully healed airplane unit isn't shot down in a single action either.
In effect, you want more granularity. But more granularity means longer turns. And they are trying to cut down on the granularity of Civ unit management, especially in the modern era.
If an intercepted fighter loses a bounded amount of HP from a failed mission (against a given set of defences), and can act more than once per turn, then a single fighter can emulate to a high degree of accuracy the "there are 4 fighter units on a carrier", except you don't get 4 distinct units.
Given that you can emulate the behaviour of 4 units (with some obvious exceptions -- you cannot split the fighter into 4 units and send them to 4 different cities, or have 4 understaffed carriers, etc) with 1 fighter unit, what concerns remain?
Because, you can do that emulation. And it is already being done in previous versions of Civ, where a N fighters on a carrier doesn't represent N individual fighters.
Heck, in Civ4, a fully healed airplane unit isn't shot down in a single action either.
In effect, you want more granularity. But more granularity means longer turns. And they are trying to cut down on the granularity of Civ unit management, especially in the modern era.
If an intercepted fighter loses a bounded amount of HP from a failed mission (against a given set of defences), and can act more than once per turn, then a single fighter can emulate to a high degree of accuracy the "there are 4 fighter units on a carrier", except you don't get 4 distinct units.
Given that you can emulate the behaviour of 4 units (with some obvious exceptions -- you cannot split the fighter into 4 units and send them to 4 different cities, or have 4 understaffed carriers, etc) with 1 fighter unit, what concerns remain?
Because, you can do that emulation. And it is already being done in previous versions of Civ, where a N fighters on a carrier doesn't represent N individual fighters.
The Cosmic Kid
Warlord
We've seen nothing to indicate that this is the case. I think it would be pretty obvious to the devs that they have to increase the relative effectiveness of single fighter units, so you can "get things done" with fewer. Especially since this is explicitly their philosophy for all units.
How so? I believe we're all agreed here that a single fighter unit represents multiple aircraft, but a single carrier unit represents just one ship.
sputnik323
Magelord
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2008
- Messages
- 394
If air combat is like PG probably the best way to handle airplanes is a limited range from an airbase, they can stay out an infinite time because the limited range shows how far they can go with returning and refueling. That way you could have planes surround an aircraft carrier just as armies could surround a city. Then you could have one unit on the carrier and a few protecting around it. You could limit how many planes can refuel on the carrier limiting the number of planes.
That way there are no stupid moves to go refuel... a horrendous waste of time.
That way there are no stupid moves to go refuel... a horrendous waste of time.
