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planetfall
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Incoming from CO
Jan 2002
time: 22:22
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Agreed, Chance to Intercept is working about right. But Air Supremacy seems to rarely work.
Recently released tapes smuggled in by an informer at a Luftwaffe base near Dresden--
New Draftee German Pilot:
Herr Heimler. We need a bigger Luftwaffe. The Americans have air supremacy.
I can see 12 squadrons of B17's and 10 P41 escort squadrons and 2 more P38 escort squadrons coming at 6 o'clock low. You want me to fly this old FW 270? Alone, me vs 12 new American fighters. Have you looked at my plane: it leaks oil after 20 minutes of flight time, there are hundreds of whistles from the holes in the fuselage. It is so noisy I can't even hear my guns firing. One of me vs 12 squadrons.
Du Dummkoft.
Please Mister Heimler, I don't want to go. There are some nasty Amer guns around the bend.
Herr Heimler:
Nein, du ist dummkopt.
Didn't you get your basic training? We have the Firaxis shield. Remember. With the shield only one of those fighters MIGHT be able to see you. It's a turkey shoot. Go up their and have fun creaming those bombers before they get to Dresden. Surely you remember how to handle one of those dumb US fighters and remember how to smash those pesty allied air polluters! Just do it.
New Draftee: Yawohl, Heil Hitler.
Herr Heimler: Heil Hitler.
--{time out for mission}--
New Draftee:
Herr Heimler, sorry to come running in before getting cleaned up, but you were right. I clobbered 10 of those green monsters. The Firaxis shield worked great. There were dozens of Mustangs buzzing all around me. They flew past me as if I was not there. Fantastic. Only one P38 on the far side even noticed me, and it was no trouble keeping bombers between us. What fun. When can I do it again? Do I really have to wait til tomorrow? Can't I go back now?
Herr Heimler:
naturally, go have fun good boy. Get another dozen and we'll have an Iron Cross for you. Heil Hitler.
New Draftee: danke, danke, danke. Heil Hitler.
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Ethelred
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What defending fighters?
Fighters only defend cities or carriers and the other units on the tile. They don't defend bombers on a bombing mission. They only defend if they are given the Air Supremecy mission in which case they do nothing else. Air Supremecy worked very poorly for carriers originaly since every time you moved the carrier all the units went into sleep mode which took the fighters out of their Air Supremecy mode. Its supposed to hold now but I haven't been using carriers much lately because I have been playing with large continents.
If you want to knock out the defensive fighters you must make your first bombing runs with fighters in which case they can't do an Air Supremecy mission. That way the fighters will attack the defending fighters and have much better chance of survival than bombers. If you have enough fighters they will use up all the defending units. If you don't then the bombers that follow will have to deal with the remaining fighters.
Fighters engaged in Air Supremecy seem to work only one at a time. One bomber uses up one fighter that is on Air Supremecy. There are no multi plane actions. Its all one on one from what I have been able to see. One attacker is engaged by a sole defender even if there are many.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by planetfall
What: AS is only to the center of range? I thought the definition of AS range was 1/2 of the fighters normal range. |
That wasn't quite what I meant. I was ambiguous I guess, partly because I was hazy on the range concept. I wasn't thinking of it in terms of range when I was typing that up. Just in terms of where they were positioned. For instance I usually have carriers groups in a single stack and only rarely are there other things for the AI to attack within range of the fighers. I have noticed that sometimes a fighter will defend tiles that are in another cities territory but I hadn't really thought about it being a matter of range.
quote:
If what you say is true, then AS only works on the city center and the carrier center tiles. Adjacent tiles are not protected. |
Adjacent tiles are definitly protected. I have been shot down plenty of times trying to nail Uranium. When at war I always make uranium the highest priority target unless I can take a city that will give me control of the tile. As Jaybe mentioned allready the range is half the attack range. Maybe if I was using air units as much as I used to I would have remembered that but I didn't.
quote:
I was thinking AS applies to all air combat: both incoming bombers and fighters. It sounds like AS only applies to incoming bombardment runs and does not extend to outgoing runs. |
Correct. The mission title of Air Supremecy is counterintuitive and generates the confusion.
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Thrawn05
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All Your Posts Are Belong To Ming
Dec 2001
time: 00:22
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quote:
Originally posted by cyclotron7
Thrawn, I recently wrestled North America from the Indians in one of my games... My entire land attack was based out of Alaska and Central America. Even with Modern Armor, my two bomber-carriers and bombers operating out of Greenland and Mexico made my job infinitly easier. I agree that fighters seem to be a waste (I have only seen 1 interception in all my games) but bombers in my mind are tried and true powerhouses, especially when based offshore. I've never gotten to Steath Bombers, but it seems like they would be even better... I'm kind of shocked that bombers don't work for you. What do you normally using them against? I admit that MI fortified in Metros seem to hold of bombers pretty well, but as I always play oil denial in the late game this rarely bothers me. |
And some people actualy get a leader.  
I just don't like the failure rate, I have had successful missions, but (and this is off the top of my head, need to work this out) about 1/3 of ALL of my bombing missions are actualy successful in some way. Lethla bombardment helps, but rare.
With carriers in mind, carriers have basicly replaced the battleship across the board, and with this bomber failure rate, I don't see that in Civ3, but that's a discussion for another thread.
Some months ago I tried making bombers and fighters like regular units, but the crashed when I attacked.
Increasing the strength would help, but I don't want it to be too unbalanced. Any mods that combat this?
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planetfall
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Incoming from CO
Jan 2002
time: 22:22
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Isn't funny how everyone "understands air combat" until you start asking questions?
quote:
Originally posted by Wormwood
Ok, so I'm a newbie when it comes to Civ3 air combat, but if my understanding is correct, this is how it is:
A fighter on AirSup. attacks only ground units attacking the city (or area of operation?) |
This can't be as AirSup mission is different from bombardment mission.
quote:
A fighter on AS does not attack incoming bombers |
But this seems to be the primary mission of AS both in my understanding and in game play.
quote:
To have a fighter set up to intercept any incoming bombers, does one need to have a fortified fighter in a city? |
Now that is interesting, what are the options for fighters?
-- bombard
-- skip {this turn}
-- AS
-- {relocate}
-- fortify.
-- can you sentry,"y", a fighter, fortify til enemy within range?
Is there any game play difference between Fortify and AS? Doesn't Fortify put unit to sleep and require manual wake to reactivate?
quote:
Should one have at least two fighters in a city, one for AS and one fortified for interception? Given the poor bombard ability of a fighter, is it worth it to have it perform AS?
I know these might seem like sophmoric questions but this is all vey confusing. any help would be appreciated. |
Poor bombard ability, yeah, I'd saw about 1/50 for a road. Guess the designers never saw any WWII footage.
AS does work vs bombers. But how do we get fighter vs fighter action? Fake a fighter bombing run? But won't AI just wait for bombers and let the ineffective fighter bomb missions go unchallenged?
We have questions, anyone have better answers?
-- PF
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planetfall
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Incoming from CO
Jan 2002
time: 22:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Thrawn05
Why not call it Air Interception mission? |
Because it does not intercept defending fighters. It only intercepts attacking bombers.
Bomber Interception would work, though.
Last edited by planetfall on 04-09-2002 at 01:44
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Wormwood
A fighter on AirSup. attacks only ground units attacking the city (or area of operation?) |
No. Only a bombing mission attacks anything on the ground.
quote:
A fighter on AS does not attack incoming bombers |
No. Attacking incoming bombers OR fighters on a bombing mission is exactly what Air Supremecy does.
quote:
To have a fighter set up to intercept any incoming bombers, does one need to have a fortified fighter in a city? |
It must be given the Air Supremecy mission. A fortified fighter does nothing except sit on the ground exactly like skipping its turn only automaticly. They do not contribute to defense in anyway.
quote:
Should one have at least two fighters in a city, one for AS and one fortified for interception? Given the poor bombard ability of a fighter, is it worth it to have it perform AS? |
Whatever you find works for you. The AI tends to have a lot of fighters. I rarely bother with fighters as they get shot down fairly often by bombers. I do build Jets. They make the kill most of the time when they intercept a bomber they have more range and a better chance on a bombing mission as well. I tend to be on the offense by the time the AI is using bombers so I am rarely defending my cities against bomber runs.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by planetfall
Because it does not intercept defending fighters. It only intercepts attacking bombers.
Bomber Interception would work, though. |
It intercepts ANYTHING on a bombing mission including fighters. Thats one of the uses for a fighter. Send them on a bomb run to use up the Air Supremecy defense units. THEN send in the bombers. If all the Air Supremecy fighters were used up on the bombing fighters then they won't be available to attack the bombers.
Thats as close as you can get to a fighter escort. Fighters first then the real bomb run. Fighters are really lousy at bombing missions but they are good at handling the air defense.
I just send in the tanks now and forget about bombing most of the time. That lets me take the cities intact. That method works best when you are going to eliminate the victim fairly quickly so you don't have to worry about culture flipping except in the short term.
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planetfall
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Incoming from CO
Jan 2002
time: 22:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Ethelred
It intercepts ANYTHING on a bombing mission including fighters. Thats one of the uses for a fighter. Send them on a bomb run to use up the Air Supremecy defense units. THEN send in the bombers. If all the Air Supremecy fighters were used up on the bombing fighters then they won't be available to attack the bombers.
Thats as close as you can get to a fighter escort. Fighters first then the real bomb run. Fighters are really lousy at bombing missions but they are good at handling the air defense.
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This is why we need a relabel. Air Supremacy implies this mission is to fight for total control of air space. This would include challenging non-bombing missions: recon and other civ's Air Supremacy missions.
I have only been setting fighters on recon missions and AI does not seem to challenge those. I will have to try "bombing" with fighters and see if there is any response.
quote:
I just send in the tanks now and forget about bombing most of the time. That lets me take the cities intact. That method works best when you are going to eliminate the victim fairly quickly so you don't have to worry about culture flipping except in the short term. |
Agreed, I used to waste too much time for bombing missions. Doesn't make sense anymore. BUT they are extremely helpful for getting that first foothold on a distant continent. Once there it's airlift time.
In current game I was trying to remove the 2 tiles each of oil and alum from Greece. I was trying to use bombardment until I had time to get units over there.
Discovered an interesting technique that was most effective in this game:
Situation: Greece had a few MA and my panzers were no match. Greece was ahead in score and in productivity. We were down to 4 civs, each on it's own continent: Greece, Rome, Japan, and Germany.
Strategy: MPP with Japan. For about 40 turns everyone ganged up on Greece as they were about 300 score points ahead and about 3..5 tech ahead.
Result: Greece went communist, and other 2 civs sued for peace. I could not as no money and too far behind. So landed at coastal alum spot and put up a city with 1/2 alum inside borders.
Tactics: used bombers to remove roads around oil and other alum. Only about 1/2 of time successful. Greece really jumped from 8 fighters to over 30. I was loosing too many bombers and could not continue that way.
So I brought over 2 MI armies. Planted 2 over one oil. That left 1 oil and 1 alum on other side of continent. Previously I try to take out cities on the way to the strategic resource, but did not think I had the power this time. Instead I tried a stack of 5 MI and 5 panzers. Ignored the cities, ignored the MA attacks, ignored the cruise missile hits and marched for 6 turns of 2 tiles per turn over to the 2nd oil. I did get there, but lost a couple units and most were down to 1-3 HP. But without regular lost of bombers, I am now able to remove oil from Greece.
In about 4 turns I will have enough money to try to buy a spy and see the effect of this hard work. Surprised it worked. Late in this tactic, I realized I might as well use the extra move of the panzers to remove improvements on the march to the oil.
Still not up to Greece, but now am making progress. For Greece I will retire bombers and only use a few fighters. I won't disband because may need for Rome or Japan.
I haven't had a game like this where Greece took off at the end of the Industrial Age. Looks like best strategy is to get rid of Greece, or at least knock down during Middle Ages.
--PF
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03-09-2002 20:44
I also was disappointed in the lack of depth to air combat. Half the air missions should be devoted to knocking out the other's airfields & aircraft, but especially artillery. Oh well, too complex for a "popular" strategy game. 
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