Planes on carriers

[BoneDoc]

I was wondering if it's possible to restrict certain planes from landing on carriers. I want to limit stealth fighters and bombers to land based operations. This way jet fighters will be more useful...

 

[skywalker]

Just give the aircraft that you don't want going on the carrier the foot soldier flag. I've done this for everything except the fighter, jet fighter, and F-15. This gives carriers, especially nuclear carriers if you've added them, a much better look, because you usually only picture a modern carrier with jet fighters on them, not stealth bombers.

 

[Hawkman]

Thanks for the info Skywalker!!!

 

[BoneDoc]

Thanks a lot! I'll try that

 

[Kilroy]

What about just not giving the plane the "load" ability?

 

[TVA22]

I've tried taking away the "load" command, it doesn't work.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Somehow "Load" is the basic command that needs to be given to a unit (other than ships of course) or else you can't do anything to it.

You can't even specify whether a unit is offensive or defensive without the load command checked.

 

[Kilroy]

Originally posted by Dark Sheer
Somehow "Load" is the basic command that needs to be given to a unit (other than ships of course) or else you can't do anything to it.

You can't even specify whether a unit is offensive or defensive without the load command checked.

You don't need to do that for air units. And, you can still select "Air Bombard" under AI strategies even if the unit doesn't have the load command checked.

Also, the helicopter is missing the load command by default, and it seems to work fine.

 

[Quentin]

I thought the Americans used stealth bombers to bomb Afghanistan?

 

[BoneDoc]

Land based, but not off carriers.

I couldn't get the load to work either--could still load the planes onto carriers.

I've given both stealth planes and the bomber transport ability. I check off 'can carry only footunits' and 'can carry only aircraft' (therefore, can't carry anything) with a transport capacity of one. The also have 'lethal land bombardment.'

I gave the fighters and jets 'lethal sea bombardment' and clicked both 'bombing' and 'air superiority' missions.

Works so far for the human player. We'll see how the AI reacts...

 

[skywalker]

What I did was give Bomber, Stealth Fighter, and Stealth Bomber the "Foot Soldier" flag so that they wouldn't be able to load onto a carrier. I then gave every air unit the "Can Kill Sea Units" flag and all but Fighter the "Can Kill Land Units" flag. This makes Industrial Era carriers (which only have fighters) very important for naval power but not very good at projecting power onto land (I also jacked up all of the air unit bombard strengths) and with the disovery of Jet Fighters carriers can now be very important in an overseas land war, which is realistic. I also made a new unit, the Nuclear Carrier, which is available with Nuclear Power, which has greater attack, defense, hit points, and carries six air units instead of four. I gave the Nuclear Carrier the standard Carrier graphics and took the WWII Carrier graphics that someone here made (I can't remember who) and used them for the Carrier.

 

[BoneDoc]

But skywalker, I could still load planes on the carriers with the 'foot soldier' label...

 

[Cyclonic]

I've been messing with this idea for a while now: I've made a prop-driven Naval Bomber, so level Bombers need to be land based only. But I found that the Footsoldier idea didn't work. It looks like a Carrier is a valid airbase for anything which is defined as an air unit, whatever other flags you set. Eliminating the Load order works as far as it goes, but it doesn't prevent rebasing to them (which is how I always do it, and so does the AI probably). Has anyone tried any of the WWII mods out there? There might be a good fix in one of them.

 

[Cyclonic]

Just checked out BoneDoc's solution (transport cap of 1 for bombers) and it works! I don't know why it does, but it does. Thanks a lot for that - I now have a naval bomber with a real purpose in life.

 

[Losqualo]

I didn't try BoneDoc's solution yet, but if you check off the ability to transport foot and air units, aren't the bombers still able to transport all other Land units?

I surely don't want the AI to drop tanks on my cities

 

[Cyclonic]

I was expecting that too, but setting both 'carry only aircraft' and 'carry only foot units' seems to prevent units from carrying anything at all, so it works.

Since I've made my helicopter an attack unit, I might remove its transport capacity, which should allow it to do ASW from Carriers. Remove Detect Invisible from the Carrier, add it to the helicopter instead, and make it the player's job to put a heli on the Carrier for sub-spotting. The Carrier would need 1 extra transport cap. Helis are used for both, and it's hard to decide which is the better function for it.