Fighters attacking ground units
Posted: 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.
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.