Your stealth bomber...
- Thread starter Harvin87
- Start date
nmcul
I have missles
I've been playing recently with a modern warfare mod that adds a number of new units and techs, including early fighters, advanced fighters (think F-22s) and special units like the Red Baron. This has actually exposed some of the absurdity of Civ IV's air combat system, as the Red Baron automatically starts with the Ace promotion, and there is no differentiation between classes and abilities of aircraft in regards to plane strength and interception and evasion chances, just a straight evade percentage.
So imagine this: air raid sirens blaring, anti-aircraft guns and missiles flying everywhere as planes get hit left and right, with jet bombers and supersonic fighters being blown out of the air, trailing fire and smoke. Between all this chaos and destruction, a single red triplane is dodging fire and explosions at a lower speed than the average NASCAR car while the defending commander screams "SOMEBODY SHOOT HIM DOWN!", all to no avail. This is basically exactly how the Civ IV air system works: while the stealth bomber gets a bonus versus intercepts, there is still a 10% chance that some guy with a bazooka will damage it to a significant extent.
So imagine this: air raid sirens blaring, anti-aircraft guns and missiles flying everywhere as planes get hit left and right, with jet bombers and supersonic fighters being blown out of the air, trailing fire and smoke. Between all this chaos and destruction, a single red triplane is dodging fire and explosions at a lower speed than the average NASCAR car while the defending commander screams "SOMEBODY SHOOT HIM DOWN!", all to no avail. This is basically exactly how the Civ IV air system works: while the stealth bomber gets a bonus versus intercepts, there is still a 10% chance that some guy with a bazooka will damage it to a significant extent.
Harvin87
The Youth
or I come again... machine gun... ;-).
Badtz Maru
King
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2001
- Messages
- 674
People keep imagining the units represented in the game as being nothing but exactly what the picture is of - that the machine gun represents nothing but a bunch of guys with machine guns, that the fighter is comprised entirely of WWII era piston-engine fighters, etc. When you think of it in a more abstract sense, it makes more sense.
The machine gun is not just guys with machine guns. It's a machine-gun based city defense unit. I'm sure it includes some AAA, but is not specialized in anti-aircraft combat as a SAM unit is. Since it remains in use over a long period of time, you can assume that it's technology is upgraded over time, so a machine gun operating in a world where stealth bombers exist probably has some radar guided AAA, even if the host civilization doesn't have the technology to build it themselves they are going to have access to at least a few.
Likewise, the "Fighter" represents every force of fighter planes from the first fighters to the point where a civilization researches Advanced Flight and can crank out the end-game fighters. Think of the Vietnamese air force in the 1960s. They did not have the technology to crank out F16s themselves, but they weren't flying a bunch of WWII era aircraft.
I'd like the game to better model the more gradual evolution of weapons technology and how more primitive countries still end up with weapons that are beyond their nation's technological ability to produce, but that will probably have to wait until Civ5. As it is, we can't look at a machine gun in the modern age and think it's WWI-era machine guns. Assume that it's a unit that is not as effective as fully modern city defense troops but does incorporate some of their weaponry.
The machine gun is not just guys with machine guns. It's a machine-gun based city defense unit. I'm sure it includes some AAA, but is not specialized in anti-aircraft combat as a SAM unit is. Since it remains in use over a long period of time, you can assume that it's technology is upgraded over time, so a machine gun operating in a world where stealth bombers exist probably has some radar guided AAA, even if the host civilization doesn't have the technology to build it themselves they are going to have access to at least a few.
Likewise, the "Fighter" represents every force of fighter planes from the first fighters to the point where a civilization researches Advanced Flight and can crank out the end-game fighters. Think of the Vietnamese air force in the 1960s. They did not have the technology to crank out F16s themselves, but they weren't flying a bunch of WWII era aircraft.
I'd like the game to better model the more gradual evolution of weapons technology and how more primitive countries still end up with weapons that are beyond their nation's technological ability to produce, but that will probably have to wait until Civ5. As it is, we can't look at a machine gun in the modern age and think it's WWI-era machine guns. Assume that it's a unit that is not as effective as fully modern city defense troops but does incorporate some of their weaponry.
TheDS
Regular Riot
The captain of the Bismarck wouldn't be laughing.
For those who don't know, it was the incredibly outdated, ultra-slow British torpedo aircraft which were the only ones which could penetrate Bismarck's defenses and hit it... BECAUSE they were so slow. The aiming guides the German gunners used couldn't be set to target something going that slow, and so these pilots, expecting it to be a pointless suicide run, managed to deliver the most important blows to the German battlewagon. Without those hits, the rudder would not have been jammed, and the ship would not have been essentially trapped until the whole British fleet could arrive to take it out.
r_rolo1
King of myself
Yup, the same happened when the ( now RIP ) Tamil tigers bombed Colombo with modified Cessna and similars: the anti aircraft weapons were not tuned for such slow planes 
There is a number of events in history where one side with completely obsolete technology defeted (at least in single battle more than in the war) the more modern army. I presume that it does not happen so often that machine gun can intercept B2 (I am not playing with the patch so my machine guns can not intercept). Interception was added not for the purpose of shooting the Stealth bombers, but because of Airships which can come into gema some time prior to Flight or Rocetry which provide you with the first air defences.
Similar threads
