cracker
Gil Favor's Sidekick
Again using the early Airpower test map, I have been evaluating how Helicopters really work. In the test map, Helicopters become available with the advent of Iron Working even though they do not have a resource restriction.
To test how the Firaxis special programming codes work, I upped the movement points from 1 to 2 when I first tested the Helicopters. This lets Helicopters gain and additional movement stroke in any turn unless you perform a RECON mission first. Recon Missions use up all the movement points for the unit even when there would otherwise be more than one move.
A second test thing I added was to disable the "IMMOBILE" flag under special unit abilities. Just disabling this flag alone has no effect on game play. I believe what this flag does is restrict the units to just stay put in cities. In order for units not to be totally frozen in the cities, you have to disable "IMMOBILE" and then go up to standard actions and enable the "GO TO" command which is default excluded from all air units. At this point, the functioning of some of the commands becomes much clearer to use. When the "go to" command is enabled, the unit is treated like a ground unit for the pourpose of movement events. So for helicopters with two movement points you can move out of a city by two squares of level ground without roads. If roads are present, you can follow the roads for 6 squares and get out to what would be your normal operational range and effectively look like you made a field landing.
The "REBASE" command for aircraft will only rebase to a city (or in some cases a carrier unit). Currently this REBASE command has unrestricted infinite movement range. You cannot rebase to an open terrain square within your operational range even when immobility is disabled. (Wish this could be fixed to have the rebase command interact effectively with immobility and rename immobility to be "restrict to city bases" or something equivalent.)
The third test change enabled the "TREAT ALL TERRAIN AS ROADS" feature which let the 2 movement point helicopters zip out to any square within a 6 tile radius of the starting point. Enabling this feature also defeated the river crossing penalty (although that will not be a factor in real games because helicopters come well after engineering).
Even with these options enabled, helicopters cannot get to the other side of a one coastal square gap.
The airdrop command drops units out into any square that is within the operational range of the helicopter. The program interface that plays animations for this movement does not always work well and many times you see no helicopter, you hear the helicopter and "Presto" units appear in the drop zone. There is some interface in this command that interacts with terrain features to say "Airdrop failed" in some cases. I am not sure of the variables that cause this event because the sample size is too small. The units in the helicopter that were effected by the airdrop failed event will just evaporate without playing a death animation sequence so I am not sure if this is intended or a bug. In both of these early cases the drop zones were in jungle adjacent to unoccupied barbarian villages (not goody huts).
Helicopters (as shipped by Firaxis) cannot load and carry Settlers, Workers, Scouts, Explorers, or any artillery weapons. They have the "Can Carry Only Foot Soldiers" Flag engaged and this restricts them to just the units that have the "Foot Unit" flag engaged under special abilities. Someone posted early that Helicopters could be used to solve the problems of transporting Settlers and Workers and this is not correct. The work around to this requires you to classify Settlers, Workers, etc as Foot Units and then they can ride along in the jump seat next to the combat soldiers.
I also increased the transport capacity in a helicopter to allow 2 units to be carried in each helicopter and this was particularly nice place a settler with an accompanying defender unit.
Conclusions
The biggest impact to helicopters in a logical fashion could probably be made by fixing the interrelationship of the "IMMOBILE" special unit restriction and the "Rebase command" this would allow units to rebase to locations other than cities when not restricted to immoble. The immobile option should definitely be renamed to be more intuitive relative to its role in holding airbase locations to cities. I would also restrict the rebase function to selected terrain types unless a city is present.
The Immobility fix will be a better fix than allowing Helicopters to move like a pseudo ground unit because the ground movement and air operational range movements do not interface together well. Using the ground movement work around would set up the helicopters to use railroads wiich would give them infinaite internal mobility in a single turn and that woulb be unbalancing.
I have stated this fact in other discussions as well but, Air unit rebase ranges should be restricted to a multiple of their operational range. 2x to 4x would be typical expection. Giving helicopters global transportation range as the default and only option creates a conflict of balancing issues. So the Game balance Nazis have to compensate for this excess by disabling the unit in some other way.
If the helicopter functions were fixed to work together in some way, then the helicopter rebase range would be restricted to 2x the operational range. The immobile function would be disabled to allow rebasing helicopters into selected terrain tiles that do not have a city. I would not enable the "Go To" function or " All terrain as road functions" as these are just Kluges that treat the helicopter as a fast mobile ground unit. Then I would reduce the operational range of the helicopters to be 3 tiles while increasing their movement points to 2. This would allow helicopters to rebase foward to a terrain location that is up to 6 tiles in the forefront. The helicopter could then unload its passengers and rebase bace to its city of origin or any other location within the 2x rebase range. As a more aggressive movement option, the rebased helicopter could still conduct recon or airdrop its passengers forward by another 3 tiles, but then the helicopter would be empty and undefended on its forward terrain base.
These changes would also fix the problem that current helicopters have no "extract" mode and also cannot cross small, narrow water barriers. If implemented properly, the fixes to the immodility and rebase features would eliminate any need for further discussion of an extract option.
This would severely restrict the rebase and recon ranges for helicopters and require them to make series of hops to get far forward. Helicopters would not be able to cross large expanses of ocean. But that is how they should function.
As a final note, the special unit ability flags for "Detect Invisible" and "Radar" should be able to toggle on and interface with the recon mission functions. Units that have these abilities with recon need to have the ability apply the terrain squares where they are conducting recon and not just to the squares around the unit while they sit idly at their base. Radar should increase the size of the recon box and detect invisible should reveal any invisible units (like submarines) that are located in the recon zones.
A standard transport capacity of 2 would make helicopters into the equivalent of land galleys for the modern era.
To test how the Firaxis special programming codes work, I upped the movement points from 1 to 2 when I first tested the Helicopters. This lets Helicopters gain and additional movement stroke in any turn unless you perform a RECON mission first. Recon Missions use up all the movement points for the unit even when there would otherwise be more than one move.
A second test thing I added was to disable the "IMMOBILE" flag under special unit abilities. Just disabling this flag alone has no effect on game play. I believe what this flag does is restrict the units to just stay put in cities. In order for units not to be totally frozen in the cities, you have to disable "IMMOBILE" and then go up to standard actions and enable the "GO TO" command which is default excluded from all air units. At this point, the functioning of some of the commands becomes much clearer to use. When the "go to" command is enabled, the unit is treated like a ground unit for the pourpose of movement events. So for helicopters with two movement points you can move out of a city by two squares of level ground without roads. If roads are present, you can follow the roads for 6 squares and get out to what would be your normal operational range and effectively look like you made a field landing.
The "REBASE" command for aircraft will only rebase to a city (or in some cases a carrier unit). Currently this REBASE command has unrestricted infinite movement range. You cannot rebase to an open terrain square within your operational range even when immobility is disabled. (Wish this could be fixed to have the rebase command interact effectively with immobility and rename immobility to be "restrict to city bases" or something equivalent.)
The third test change enabled the "TREAT ALL TERRAIN AS ROADS" feature which let the 2 movement point helicopters zip out to any square within a 6 tile radius of the starting point. Enabling this feature also defeated the river crossing penalty (although that will not be a factor in real games because helicopters come well after engineering).
Even with these options enabled, helicopters cannot get to the other side of a one coastal square gap.
The airdrop command drops units out into any square that is within the operational range of the helicopter. The program interface that plays animations for this movement does not always work well and many times you see no helicopter, you hear the helicopter and "Presto" units appear in the drop zone. There is some interface in this command that interacts with terrain features to say "Airdrop failed" in some cases. I am not sure of the variables that cause this event because the sample size is too small. The units in the helicopter that were effected by the airdrop failed event will just evaporate without playing a death animation sequence so I am not sure if this is intended or a bug. In both of these early cases the drop zones were in jungle adjacent to unoccupied barbarian villages (not goody huts).
Helicopters (as shipped by Firaxis) cannot load and carry Settlers, Workers, Scouts, Explorers, or any artillery weapons. They have the "Can Carry Only Foot Soldiers" Flag engaged and this restricts them to just the units that have the "Foot Unit" flag engaged under special abilities. Someone posted early that Helicopters could be used to solve the problems of transporting Settlers and Workers and this is not correct. The work around to this requires you to classify Settlers, Workers, etc as Foot Units and then they can ride along in the jump seat next to the combat soldiers.
I also increased the transport capacity in a helicopter to allow 2 units to be carried in each helicopter and this was particularly nice place a settler with an accompanying defender unit.
Conclusions
The biggest impact to helicopters in a logical fashion could probably be made by fixing the interrelationship of the "IMMOBILE" special unit restriction and the "Rebase command" this would allow units to rebase to locations other than cities when not restricted to immoble. The immobile option should definitely be renamed to be more intuitive relative to its role in holding airbase locations to cities. I would also restrict the rebase function to selected terrain types unless a city is present.
The Immobility fix will be a better fix than allowing Helicopters to move like a pseudo ground unit because the ground movement and air operational range movements do not interface together well. Using the ground movement work around would set up the helicopters to use railroads wiich would give them infinaite internal mobility in a single turn and that woulb be unbalancing.
I have stated this fact in other discussions as well but, Air unit rebase ranges should be restricted to a multiple of their operational range. 2x to 4x would be typical expection. Giving helicopters global transportation range as the default and only option creates a conflict of balancing issues. So the Game balance Nazis have to compensate for this excess by disabling the unit in some other way.
If the helicopter functions were fixed to work together in some way, then the helicopter rebase range would be restricted to 2x the operational range. The immobile function would be disabled to allow rebasing helicopters into selected terrain tiles that do not have a city. I would not enable the "Go To" function or " All terrain as road functions" as these are just Kluges that treat the helicopter as a fast mobile ground unit. Then I would reduce the operational range of the helicopters to be 3 tiles while increasing their movement points to 2. This would allow helicopters to rebase foward to a terrain location that is up to 6 tiles in the forefront. The helicopter could then unload its passengers and rebase bace to its city of origin or any other location within the 2x rebase range. As a more aggressive movement option, the rebased helicopter could still conduct recon or airdrop its passengers forward by another 3 tiles, but then the helicopter would be empty and undefended on its forward terrain base.
These changes would also fix the problem that current helicopters have no "extract" mode and also cannot cross small, narrow water barriers. If implemented properly, the fixes to the immodility and rebase features would eliminate any need for further discussion of an extract option.
This would severely restrict the rebase and recon ranges for helicopters and require them to make series of hops to get far forward. Helicopters would not be able to cross large expanses of ocean. But that is how they should function.
As a final note, the special unit ability flags for "Detect Invisible" and "Radar" should be able to toggle on and interface with the recon mission functions. Units that have these abilities with recon need to have the ability apply the terrain squares where they are conducting recon and not just to the squares around the unit while they sit idly at their base. Radar should increase the size of the recon box and detect invisible should reveal any invisible units (like submarines) that are located in the recon zones.
A standard transport capacity of 2 would make helicopters into the equivalent of land galleys for the modern era.
