Fighters attacking ground units

Thor · Post by **Thor** » 18 Feb 2007, 01:54

There is currently no way to control the behavior of fighters - fighters being any non-hoverattack plane that does not use bombs. Right now, they will automatically attack any ground unit they see when told to patrol (or fight), which most of the time is a very bad thing, since in most mods fighters are relatively weak and only useful as air defense, and will get killed very fast by ground fire. This is a huge problem in nota, because fighters and air superiority are extremely important, and fighters' current behavior makes them very difficult to use. Say, for example, that you want to eliminate your enemy's patrolling fighters just before a bombing raid. You give your fighters a patrol order over the enemy's base, but rather than ignoring ground units and killing only air, as you want them to, they all stop to attack the first tank they see. So you have to give them a move order to get them to stop attacking the tank, but now that they're moving instead of patrolling they won't engage enemy aircraft either, so you have to constantly be babysitting them, switching to patrol when you see an enemy fighter, and then telling them to move again after it's dead so they won't get killed attacking the ground units.

It is currently impossible for a mod to change this behavior. Even if the fighter does not have any weapons that are allowed to attack ground, it will still try. Also, while most fighter units in most mods are meant to be anti-air, not all of them are: some are meant to be ground attack planes, so for them the behavior as it is now is fine.

One way to fix this would be to allow mods to specify whether a plane should be anti-air only, ground attack only, or both. A fourth option to allow the player to toggle between them would also be nice.

Another, simpler fix would be to just change fighter behavior back to how it was a few versions ago: they did not automatically attack ground unless they were set to roam. Also, they used to automatically engage other air units from a move order, which was more convenient than having to tell them to patrol/fight. The only problem was that they wouldn't disengage if given another move order, but this could be fixed by just having two move orders in a row disable the auto-engage behavior.

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 18 Feb 2007, 02:53

It would be nice that when you order any "fighter" plane to a spot it would patrol that spot rather than land. A second-click on the same spot, however, would tell it to land there.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 18 Feb 2007, 07:08

I think it'd be better if Spring just checked whether the weapons are allowed to aim at ground targets.

TheFatController · Post by **TheFatController** » 18 Feb 2007, 15:14

Id go for splitting the NoAutoFire tag into air and ground, so stuff could be made to autofire at air but not ground or vice versa..

rattle · Post by **rattle** » 18 Feb 2007, 15:36

TheFatController wrote:Id go for splitting the NoAutoFire tag into air and ground, so stuff could be made to autofire at air but not ground or vice versa..

Seconded.

Foxomaniac · Post by **Foxomaniac** » 18 Feb 2007, 16:55

rattle wrote:
TheFatController wrote:Id go for splitting the NoAutoFire tag into air and ground, so stuff could be made to autofire at air but not ground or vice versa..
Seconded.

I third that AND request an added twist :

NoAutoFire on a per-weapon basis.

Snipawolf · Post by **Snipawolf** » 18 Feb 2007, 19:00

I fourth this, and we could do quite a lot too!

AP Shells for tanks and HE shells for aircraft :D

NOiZE · Post by **NOiZE** » 18 Feb 2007, 21:05

Foxomaniac wrote:
rattle wrote:
TheFatController wrote:Id go for splitting the NoAutoFire tag into air and ground, so stuff could be made to autofire at air but not ground or vice versa..
Seconded.
I third that AND request an added twist :

NoAutoFire on a per-weapon basis.

+1

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 18 Feb 2007, 22:41

Just for the curious:

TASpring change log

0.next

- Added boolean FBI tag AirStrafe. Only effective if HoverAttack=1.
If AirStrafe=1, gunships and construction aircraft will strafe in a circle around the target.
If AirStrafe=0, they will not strafe, they will sit stationary in the air firing their weapons.
around their target, if set to 0 they sit at one place

- Added boolean weapon tdf tag canAttackGround.

- Added weapon tdf command SweepFire, if 1 (default 0) it will make the weapon continue
firing while it aims for a new target. Only works on continous beam lasers currently.

Snipawolf · Post by **Snipawolf** » 19 Feb 2007, 00:06

woot for sweep fire!

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 19 Feb 2007, 05:25

Snipawolf wrote:I fourth this, and we could do quite a lot too!

AP Shells for tanks and HE shells for aircraft :D

Quite possible already.

Pxtl · Post by **Pxtl** » 19 Feb 2007, 17:58

MadRat wrote:Just for the curious:

TASpring change log

0.next

- Added boolean FBI tag AirStrafe. Only effective if HoverAttack=1.
If AirStrafe=1, gunships and construction aircraft will strafe in a circle around the target.
If AirStrafe=0, they will not strafe, they will sit stationary in the air firing their weapons.
around their target, if set to 0 they sit at one place

- Added boolean weapon tdf tag canAttackGround.

- Added weapon tdf command SweepFire, if 1 (default 0) it will make the weapon continue
firing while it aims for a new target. Only works on continous beam lasers currently.

Airstrafe FTW. Perfect for large starship mods, for example. Personally, I would've just had a "strafepercent" attribute which would be strafe speed as a percentage of movement speed (so you could have slow-moving strafing in addition to stop/start behaviour) but in a pinch this is still fantastic.

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 19 Feb 2007, 19:46

Snipawolf wrote:woot for sweep fire!

Doesn't work that well, unfortunately

Spring RTS Engine

Fighters attacking ground units

Fighters attacking ground units