Destroying aircraft on the ground? (or else get nuked..)

[Reign_of_Light]

Hi everybody,

I'm in a peculiar situation in a multiplayer game, where I am very close to winning a science victory. Unfortunately, my opponent realized the threat and began nuking me . I was happily surprised that the city he hit didn't lose its finished mars-module (seems to be on Mars already ).
I nuked him (actually its a her) back threefold, but there still is an airport with a bomber unit within close range to another crucial spaceport of mine. This spaceport only needs 3 more turns to complete its mars-module, but I know my opponent has more nukes at her disposal.
So I quickly moved a tank of mine onto the mentioned airport of hers and clicked the pillage-button. Unfortunately, the airport doesn't look completely disfunctional, yet, and also it still holds my opponents bomber, which she claims she still is able to select.

It was late in the night, so we quit at this point, where all hell just broke lose.

What I'd really like to know before continuing this evening is, do I have any chance to save my winning-ticket-spaceport and prevent another nuclear strike from her bomber unit?
In other words: With my tank on her airport, is there any way to destroy the bomber situated in it, or at least avert it from taking off?
Perhaps if I do another pillaging?

Also, I have a fighter jet and a mobile SAM to my disposal, but they already failed to prevent the first nuclear strike, even though being placed just one tile next to the city that got nuked...

 

[Staal]

It might be that destroying the aircraft require additional turns to pillage. At the very least I would think they will not be able to launch until the airport is repaired. Once you find out please let us know for future use.

 

[Reign_of_Light]

I would have thought so, too, but we were both mistaken. Even with the airport pillaged (two times!), the associated city taken, and a tank standing right on top of the airport, the bomber was still able to launch from it and drop its nuke onto my city (completely bypassing a jet fighter and mobile SAM unit on the way) .

In the end I was lucky as the nuke was only a conventional one (not a thermonuclear) and the spaceport was far enough away from the city center to be spared. Next thing I did was dropping a atom bomb on the damned airport and that finally destroyed her thrice cursed bomber, so in the end I won.

The same happened again when my opponent captured and pillaged one of my airports. Same as her, I was able to continue using aircraft from that airport.

Don't know if that's a bug or intended..

 

[Lord_Azazel]

Sounds like a bug, I don't think an airplane should be able to perform missions if the tile it is stationed on is under enemy hands.

 

[Staal]

Definitely sounds like a bug.

 

[Browd]

Can you post a save file?

Moderator Action: Moved to Bug Reports.

 

[Reign_of_Light]

I'd love to, but I just realized that all our auto-saves have been overwritten by the new game we started yesterday . Does perhaps anybody know if there is a way to bring back the old ones? Some data recovery software perhaps?
Or does Steam have backup-files somewhere?

We're just a couple of turns into the new game, but seemingly it's more than 10 turns as all auto-saves are overwritten. Damn..

Edit: No, we played exactly 10 turns as the savegame reveals that I saved manually when we quit. That's unfortunate ..