Mobile Airplanes don't fight each other ? Attacker always wins ?

Skybuck

Prince
Joined
Apr 23, 2005
Messages
301
Hello,

Mobiles planes don't fight each other. The attacking plane always wins !

The attacking plane can even destroy multiple planes.

Is there a good solution ?

Also I gave stealth planes the invisible property which gives it a more stealthy feeling.

Jet fighters and mobile sam's can detect invisible units now as well.

Little problem is sam's can detect submarines near coast and Jet fighters can detect sub marines as well.. but I'll take it ;)

Anyway I thought about the following:

1. Making planes land units. I don't like that because it doesn't give them a "air feeling". Being able to fly over sea is cool !

2. I tried making them foot units... but then they can't be "hangered" in the carriers :(

3. I tried giving them a transport capacity of 1 so that a pilot can be added.
Now planes fight the pilots... but then the planes can't enter hangars like carriers.

I liked the feeling of civilization 1 where planes can be flown across the skies.

Adding this feature to civilization 3 conquest makes it so much cooler ! Especially the stealth/invisible bombers make it even more cool.

I have some scout fighters and even a transport plane !

All with standard graphics so it simply works in multiplayer as well.

For now I keep the scenerio private maybe later I publish it on internet.

I have a feeling it's gonna be popular real soon.

It's nearly perfect... only thing I don't like is this plane problem... where they die too easily :)

(also ground units can destroy these planes too simply... Vica versa does work... the planes attack ground units which is good)

One last problem is:

Planes can capture workers... even if capture is off... I solved this problem by giving workers a defense point... but then workers can't be captured anymore by planes at least.. not sure about ground units... workers then just die :) that's ok ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.

I see two possible cases which might be fun.

The newb friendly case, I already played this (much fun:)

0. All planes are mobile.

1. All planes die when attacked. (Think of it like this: pilot landed plane to take a rest/sleep )

2. Stealth bomber and stealth scout/figther are invisible and have stealth.
and have their bombing range reduced.

3. Jet fighters can detect invisible stealth planes and invisible submarines.

4. Mobile sam's can detect invisible stealth planes and invisible submarines.

5. Transport plane has 3 transport capacity. (Foot soldiers only)

6. Transport heli has 4 transport capacity but is a bit slower. (Foot soldiers only)

7. Scout plane is fast but weak.

8. Planes can be hangered in carriers and airfields.

9. Planes behave like "blitz" can destroy multiple planes in one turn.

10. Workers and settlers have defense value to prevent easy captures by planes :)

Then for hard players, this could be much fun as well:

1. All planes have a transport capacity, they can no longer be hangered in carriers.

2. Weak planes have 1 transport capacity.

3. Medium planes have 2 transport capacity.

4. Strong planes have 3 transport capacity.

Stealth bombers would for example have transport capacity 3.

Because they are hard to shoot down/kill.

Which makes it a bit more realistic.

The drawbacks are:

5. More units needed for "pilots".

6. Stealth planes can drop units undetected in enemy land.. unless enemy has sam's ;)

7. Planes become powerfull troop transports. But for foot soldiers only.

Since all units are pretty cheap in my scenerio this doesn't have to be much of a problem..

But micro managing all the pilots for planes and such might become a bit too much... and the game might require to many soldier units and such for plane defense..

Also fitting stealth bombers with 3 anti-tank/tow infantry sounds like fun lol.

For now I shall stick with case A.

But maybe later I switch to case B. :)

Feature wishes:

1. Ofcourse better plane support/implementation :)

2. Super Transport Plane for transporting tanks :)

Bye,
Skybuck.

I shall implement case B in an alternative scenerio.

Also the jet fighters in case A were a bit stronger and carriers did not offer that much protection against them... so maybe I would then need jet fighters to be weaker... but then everything starts to get inbalance me thinks... unless ofcourse jet fighters are just for attacking planes only or so via movement... they could even have attack strength zero... it probably wouldnt matter. though jet fighters against carriers do matter.

So jet fighters could have weak strength attack so jet fighters can attack units as well.

The defense of planes is just not working correctly in Civilization 3 Conquest... that's the only problem really.

So carriers could be given a higher defense strength... to be able to withstand more jet figher attacks... otherwise players have no way to really protect their jet fighters at sea ;)

I like carriers in original game mode... so :) otherwise those beautifull carriers would become useless in case B ;)

Given them another role wouldn't feel right.

Also the carrier role is reduced in case A... because planes are now easily mobile... players can simple take a risk... and position their planes outside of enemy terrority...

So carriers not that usefull... unless bombing range for mobile planes is reduced... and bombing range for planes in carriers is increased...

But that would also feel very strange... how come they can fire so far from carriers players would wonder ? ;) :)

So that would be a stupid discrepancy...

So even in case A the carrier roll is reduced quite considerably.

Maybe this roll could be somewhat restored by simply giving the carrier.

Artillery functionality.

So that carriers can fire deep into enemy terrority... but still have some defense against air planes or so... or enemy air strikes...

Ofcourse other carriers could then try to simple bomb the other carrier.

I think this would make carriers a whole lot more cool... I like those big things... they can be very powerfull in normal games.

Even after whole empire destroyed... those carriers mobile airfields... hard to spot and destroy :)

I would kinda miss that in case A... however the fun of carriers is not replaced by the fun of stealth bombers... which is even more fun !

I just want MORE FUN LOL. Why can't I have both lol... maybe I can I wonder...

However battleships have smaller artillery range... so that would kinda be weird... and then player has no way to counter the long range artillery strikes... so that would be a bad replacement. So I am not gonna do that ;)

I have one more idea:

Planes could be made very slow... but still a bit faster than tanks.

Light tank: 3 moves.
Medium tank 2 moves.
Heavy tank: 3 moves. ( more powerfull engine)
Stealth bomber: 4 moves.
Stealth figher: 5 moves.
Jet fighter: 5 moves for interception. (Currently it's 6 or so in my scenerio)
Scout plane: 6 moves for fast scouting.
Transport plane: 5 moves.
Transport heli: 4 moves.

To make carriers worth the trouble they should be a bit faster.. but they already are hmmm :)
Carriers: 7 moves.

Well carriers have to go past the coast... so that reduces their usefullness.
Making them faster would make the rest of the fleet unbalanced... and super fast ships seem kinda strange.
Actually the planes already kinda slower then ships... that would be weird but consider it as follows:

Stealth planes and Stealth fighters need to fly slow otherwise they make to much noise :)

I like the current feel of scenerio A.

Maybe I am gonna make jet fighters a bit less powerfull in attack strength and carriers a bit more powerfull in defense strength.

I think jet fighters and carriers is: attack strength versus defense strength and not so much air defense... air defense probably only plays a roll for "air missions" of enemies.

But for now I am gonna give the pilot idea a try... I think many newbs won't like it but here goes lol

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Yeah to make the carrier a bit more usefull I'll just turn it into a "deluxe" transport..

Simply a better way to transport units with more protection power :)

Yeah... foot soldiers and tanks can be transported by carriers ;)

I'll simply rename the unit to "heavy transport".

It already had a transport capacity of 8 or so... maybe I increase that a bit too 10 or so lol.

Hmm, Unfortunately can't test it now...

Gamespy is down... oh well me go play some battlefield 2 later ! ;)

Hehe,

Case B: Newb gave up after me raping his land in like 5 turns or so lol.

Still gotta try it somemore ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.

Lol, second newb quite as well... maybe same player.

He played better though.. he made many sams..

To bad he didnt know sams dont fire at passing airplanes.

He died in turn 6 or so lol.

I have had mercy for 2 turns lol ;)

He quit by the way ;)

I like this pilot stuff though... very cool.

Newbs just gotta get used to it I think lol ;)

Definetly gonna play it some more.

Bye,
Skybuck.

I''ll slow down scout planes though..

To speed 4... otherwise it maybe a bit over-powered for quick rushes..

This gives newbs a litttle bit more time ;)

Newb died for the third time real fast.

Maybe it was because I gave 500 gold pieces at the start to every player..

That was because scenerio original had some units to start with... so that was to compensate for that..

But now only settler and worker... so gold not necessary anymore...

Newb probably didn't know he had 500 gold... or he didn't use it lol.

So no more gold pieces at start.. just the default of 10 gold pieces or so is better... more newb friendly ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.

Yeah.

Noob lost again.

His governor now setup right and he not terraforming correctly.

For future it's best to start with granary and build irrigation...

Then city will grow fast and automatically got pretty good production at start... thanks to forest, grass with shields and mines.

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Maybe given stealth bombers "invisible" and mobile sams "detect invisible" is bad ?

I just played with a player and he/she (?) complained his/her stealth bombers died so fast !

He/she (actually it think it was a she:)) is a very experienced future player so she told me.

And she performed very well, she almost defeated me but she had to go cook :) ;)

I also made nukes very expensive but she still managed to build them in 5 turns.

Accelerated production was on though.. otherwise it would take 10 turns ;)

Also maybe the scenerio needs some more resources tweaking because I changed those first... to remove them to test... but now getting oil doesn't give anything new because more resources I needed.

I do like the tougher requirements for cruise missile for example... oil is now needed as well for fuel... but maybe I undo al those resource changes and simply use original settings for resources ;)

To pilots in planes works very well.

It force players to be more defensive... otherwise they might get in trouble.

So far played only 1 v 1... me wonders what will happen in real multiplayer games.

So far the experienced future player wasn't really stopped by me... only at the beginning did I manage to cut her resources real fast but she recovered real fast.

So this time I was the noob lol... but then again I knew she had better resources then me... was close though I almost mentioned to connect extra resources.

I played really defensive with tow's and such. Had to me thinks or maybe not... maybe next time i need to attack a bit more and threaten them resources hehe ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Oh yeah that stealth bomber sux complains definetly need to be investigated..

I'll do that later though.

If this invisible/detect invisible makes stealth bombers worse then maybe I got to get rid of that.

And finally I think stealth bombers a bit overpowered in normal game..

So I think I'll change intercept rate for stealth from 5% to maybe 25%.

So that 4 mobile sams can take out at least 1 stealth bomber per turn or so... if multiple/four bombers attack or so ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Well, one solution I did with the FF mod was to make the "air" units (with the exception of transports like the cargo airship and Gelnika Transport) land units that have the following features: Airdrop (so they can drop on land x number of tiles from a city with an airport), all terrain as roads, radar, recon and re-base. That way, they can use airstrips for landing platforms, and airdrop from such...

Far from perfect, but as someone else said, much with the Civ III engine is.
 
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