Questions on Air Units

[Chalito]

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BTW, by having minus HP bonus but higher defense stats you can create air units that are resistant to being shot down by ground fire or AA city improvements but are less capable in air to air combat. For example: The "Penetrator" representing the B-1 and Tu-160 has a defense of 30 and -4HP. It has the same air to air strength as a vet def: 9 "Strategic Bomber" but has the anti ground fire and SAM resistance of a gen4 "Air superiority fighter".

Would this be the best way to emulate the Drones of today?
But the suicide Shahed Drones are probably more like Cruise Missiles, but except you wouldn’t be able to shoot them down in the game. Also, I can’t remember but do Cruise Missiles ever fail to hit something?

 

[Predator145]

Would this be the best way to emulate the Drones of today?
But the suicide Shahed Drones are probably more like Cruise Missiles, but except you wouldn’t be able to shoot them down in the game. Also, I can’t remember but do Cruise Missiles ever fail to hit something?

I do believe you can shoot Cruise Missile ability units down if they're air units. But you can't intercept them. That means fighters and SAM batteries won't do.

A good way to emulate suicide drones would be to make them air units with very low defense and cruise missile ability. The cruise missile ability means they can't be intercepted by fighters and long range SAM batteries. In real life they're just too cheap and fly too low to commit these resources. The Shahed would have done its job perfectly if Patriot missile intercepts it. Instead, give all your units the token air def value of 1. These drones can be downed by small arms. Flaks, MANPADS and low alt SAMs deal with them.

Another interesting thing is that units with only 1 HP but high defense do worse against weaker units compared to stronger ones. For example, according to the civ3 combat calculator:

A ww1 fighter with 8 atk and 4 HP has a 61.2% of shooting down a 30 def 1hp Penetrator

A ww1 fighter with 8 atk and 4 HP has a 50% of shooting down a 8 def 4hp Strategic Bomber

A 4th gen fighter with 30 atk and 4HP has a 93.8% chance of shooting down a 30 def 1hp Penetrator

A 4th gen fighter with 30 atk and 4HP has a 95.9% chance of shooting down an 8 def 4hp Strategic Bomber

As you can see, the Penetrator performs slightly better than the Strategic Bomber vs the 4th gen fighter. But does far worse against a ww1 biplane. So a counter to them would be modern age cheap COIN aircrafts.

 

[Predator145]

Would this be the best way to emulate the Drones of today?
But the suicide Shahed Drones are probably more like Cruise Missiles, but except you wouldn’t be able to shoot them down in the game. Also, I can’t remember but do Cruise Missiles ever fail to hit something?

I've just tested. I gave the bomber in WW2 Pacific the Cruise Missile unit and then Nuclear ability and gave it 0 defense. Playing as the japs I promptly expect Honolulu's huge stack of war ships to shoot them down every time as that's what happens to air units with zero def bombing something with a >0 def value. The cruise missile and nuclear ability bombers never got shot down once despite having 0 def.

This means these 1 time use units can't be intercepted or shot down . In the case of the Shahed drone, you'd just have to play with the combat calculator and reduce its bombard strength. Missing would represent it being shot down.

A stock game cruise missile has a 83.1% chance of taking off 1 HP from an unfortified Mech Inf in open flat terrain.

The Shahed, being low, slow and loud (extremely un-stealthy besides the fact that it's dirt cheap making using high end missiles to shoot them down prohibitive), is very vulnerable to ground fire. And thus it can be treated as if there's always maximum AA fire against it.

Stock game flak has a 9.1% chance of shooting down a bomber. 4 flaks (the maximum of AA units participating) would have an around 33% of shooting down a bomber from what I've read. But it could just be 9.1% x4=36.4% though.

Let's assume 33% of the Shaheds will always be shot down. That means 33% less hits. 83.1% x 2/3=55.4%

Giving the Shahed a bombard value of 11 with ROF of 3 would be the closest at 55.7% hit rate. It's not perfect. But I think it does represent drone swarms well. There's meant to be lots of attrition trying to overwhelm with numbers. You can make them have 2 movement points to quickly rebase and strike to differentiate from stock game CMs.

I make them dirt cheap (40s for 1 turn production) and give them precision bombing. May take you a couple but if you take out a Factory or Powerplant it's worth it.

 

[Chalito]

Thanks man, these are good ideas for bringing Drones into Civ3!

 

[Predator145]

From debug testing I can report that the AI often rebases it's Air Def flagged units into border cities at the front. That leaves their core unguarded against strategic bombing. And while the cities themselves can be guarded with anti-air improvements, the tile improvements around them are very difficult to make the AI protect.

Industrial era interceptors have the range of 6, meaning they interception range extend 3 tiles back from the front city. The AI places cities like 4-5 tiles or more from each other. That leaves us with at least a 2 tile radius that will eventually be turned into craters with impunity.

I'm still thinking of a way to make the AI station interceptors in their core. But as long as you have operational range on a unit, the AI will be able to rebase regardless of that air mission command has been assigned in the editor or not. And in order to intercept you need to have operational range. A short operational range of 1 would result in 1 interception radius from rounding up if I'm not mistaken. But even that would result in a 6 rebase range, causing that unit to leave the city.

Another path would be point defense. I've created "Strategic SAMs" that are air units with high Air Defense value and -4HP. They are flagged as "Air Transport" (Air Def results in them performing interception and Air Bombard will result in them bombing) with no carrying capacity and are the target of stealth bombard for ground attack aircrafts/tactical bombers/fighter-bombers, allowing these units to perform SEAD missions against them. Being air units, they can be lethally bombarded.

The Air Transport flag makes the AI rebase them to their front line cities, protecting their offensive aviation there from the player's offensive counter air. If you give them high def value, they could shield other air units from regular air bombard until finally hit and destroyed. The AI still can't use them very intelligently and will often stack more than 4 of them in 1 city. Thus they shouldn't build too many.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2M978N4/pre-production-bristol-192-xg451-carrying-a-bloodhound-guided-missile-2M978N4.jpg

Immobile SAM being "rebased" by air in real life.

By not having the "Air Transport" AI strat but another one like "Explore"/"Flag Unit" and being immobile, they will be stuck in their original cities, where they can provide point defense with their AD value. Perfume will make the AI build anything, including things with "Explore" or "Flag Unit" AI strats. So you can have Strat SAMs flagged as "Air Transport" that serve in the front and Strat SAMs that are flagged as "Explore" to serve in the rear.

But what about the tiles? They're still exposed. How can we have the AI position units with AD value on their tiles? What kind of unit would the AI just cover their core tiles with?

"Terraform" AI strat could be the answer. But terraform units only move onto tiles that need working and will move away once the tile has been finished. Still, mobile AA units with zero worker strength could cover bombed tiles while the real workers reconnect them. But then they'll move off and the human would just bomb them again. The AI does not know how to cover its strat res with AA units. Plus the AI would prefer building AA units flagged as "terraform" over real workers despite their worker strength being zero. So they need the king unit treatment or be purely available through auto production.

Or one could have them be immobile and given the Offensive flag and the operational range of 2 with airdrop. The AI would airdrop them and have them stuck there. But from testing the AI would just airdrop them on the same tile instead of covering their territory with them.

With Flintlock patch enabling artillery usage, having AA units flagged as defensive could lead to the AI leaving its cities covered nothing but 2 flak batteries. It's better to have them flagged as "Offensive" and given 0 attack and appropriately perfumed to be built. This way the AI will move them forward with their offensive stack or will defend their cities with them in a pinch but won't treat them as part of the 2 minimum defenders. You could also have some flagged as "Artillery" with bombard range and value to accompany their artillery SOD. AA guns are used to bombard ground targets after all.