[Suggestion] Air Traffic System

[thenooblet22]

This an idea I've been thinking about that could become something. As I was, there were many who were upset that Helicopters were unable to travel over Water Tiles. I think there is a realistic and balanced way to achieve this.

I believe Helicopters should be able to travel over Coastal Tiles. However, the air unit must return to a Land Tile by its last movement. Furthermore, air units could maneuver around obstacles without becoming over balanced.

Yet, the trick is to reprogram the SDK to limit the Civilization from moving the air unit too far out to reach land again. But if this succeeds, it could open up to new aerial ideas and, I hope, new units.

These are just my thoughts. Sorry if they been posted before. Feel free to comment, criticize, and add on. If anyone modder could accomplish this, I would be impressed!

 

[Padmewan]

This was the mechanism in SMAC, and I have to say I blew up a lot of choppers. It was both useful and frustrating... not sure if it's a good solution or not.

 

[NikG]

Yay the realism vs. gameplay again. Actually with the SDK, we could add more options, so it is based on the options you choose at start up...

Something like:

Coppers should end at land tile at the end of each turn (enabled/disable)

or whatever...

 

[thenooblet22]

Oh that's cool. Another mod already has this? Did it work well? I gotta know

EDIT:

Yay the realism vs. gameplay again

I thought my idea did add realism and gameplay First of all it's not overpowered; and secondly, a helicopter has to land to refuel and rest for the next turn (which, in Civilization IV terms, is around 1 to 10 years later)

 

[Agent 009]

You know what funny is, out of all the Civ 4 games I have played I have never noticed that helicopters can't fly over water.

Regardless of that while in the midst of making my mod I added an advanced version of the stealth and Jet Fighter. I wanted to make them able to fly over terrain...

Well I got it to work but with lots of problems. At first, they lost their bombing and intercept abilities (the buttons) and still couldn't attack a ground unit. So I changed them to a helicopter unit and put the domain to land. Well, that made them appear on the ground somewhat stuck halfway below the terrain. Not only that but all my other units couldn't even attack another civs'.

I eventually gave up trying to get it to work and came to the conclusion that there was more to it than just changing a few XML parameters.

If someone can make it so that other air units can fly over terrain like helicopters and even over water and peaks and still keep their bombing abilities. I am certainly all for it.

 

[The Great Apple]

It's quite an easy tweak to make in the SDK. I did someing similar for the 40k mod and it took about 5 minutes.

The only tough bit is getting the AI to realise that it has to return it's units to land, if you want it to work that way. As with all AI things, it wouldn't be to hard to do, but getting it to be done well might take some work.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Perhaps a modification of the Re-Base ability that normal aircraft use, Helecopters simply have the ability to re-base to any land tile not currently held by enemy forces. Each turn the Compter can attack and rebase untill its movment is exausted (blitz like). That would seemingly give us all the functionality we want and piggybacking on the current system.