[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#2329) Portattacks 7

["Davide Pagnin via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2002-11-15 at 19:27, Per I. Mathisen via RT wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Thomas Strub via RT wrote:
> > > Ah. Let us visualise the situation. A fighter squadron attacks the 
> > > city(London)
> > > or a stack of units. Can the riflemen on the ground possibly stop the 
> > > fighters
> > > from attacking and destroying air units? No. It makes obvious sense that 
> > > air
> > > units/AA units are picked first as defenders against air attack.
> ...
> > > I refer you to WWII and the Germans and the Japanese. They destroyed many
> > > airforces on the ground. Aka Pearl Harbour, Poland, etc etc. Hell, the 
> > > Gulf War
> > > is a great example of Iraqi planes being destroyed on the ground by air 
> > > attack.
> >
> > The examples are all some where the defender wasn't aware of the danger.
> > You forgot the six-day-war.
> >
> > But what was in longer wars?
> > Afghanistan? WWII? Vietnam? Korea?
> 
> My original rationale for making air units work in this way was simply
> that otherwise there is no way for fighters to gun down enemy planes. As
> aircraft works currently, only careless players will lose aircraft to
> enemy fighters: Fighters must land after their mission, bombers should
> move out of range of enemy fighters, and stealth planes can now hide
> really well anyway. So fighter aircraft as air-vs-air right now are a real
> joke.

At the moment we have two types of units, Fighters and Bombers.
Fighters are the only units that can attack Bombers.
Every unit can defend from Bombers.

When a bomber attacks and is successful it ends its turn, then it is
vulnerable to attacks by fighters.

What, usually we don't see, is fighter agains fighter.
In civ2, fighter get a huge defense bonus against other air units
attacks, and most of the time they were chosen when fighter/bomber were
attacking a city.
If this is not the case in FreeCiv, than we can mimic this.

Moreover, we can introduce AntiAir flag and give that Flag to units that
should defend well against Air units.
Afterwords we should change attack/defense number for Air Units, to let
them being more realistic.

But, IMHO, attacking bombers in a city, by default, instead of an
artillery unit, isn't that correct!

> 
> So my idea is that bombers present in a city will be flying missions, not
> just sitting duck, and are hence targettable by fighter (F_FIGHTER)
> planes. Often you can see where the bomber was headed after having blown
> some of your units away, and you can send your fighters in that direction
> to exact revenge...

This is not necessary, bomber should be targeted for revenge at the end
of the turn when they attack.

Fighter vs Fighter happens when a fighter attack a city and the city
best defender is a fighter (which get double defense against air units)

Thus I don't think that this change is needed.

Nevertheless I agree that protecting land units stack with a bomber, and
thus protecting that land stack against other land units attacks, isn't
that fair, nor for the fighter that may attack the stack (and lose
against a mech. inf) nor for a tank not being able to attack the mech.
inf.

We can talk about this perhaps. I feel that something like:
strict_layer_attack (TRUE | FALSE) 
should became a game.ruleset option

> 
> I must admit, though, that this rationale is not as good as the one for
> port attacks. So if someone have a better idea - for example somehow
> implementing civ3's fighter system - I'm open to that.
> 
> For those who didn't play civ3, aircraft can enter some kind of patrol
> mode (don't remember name) where they protect a given area of map against
> enemy aircraft. Any hostile air units entering the area are automatically
> attacked.
> 
> > Make it as a seperate patch. It are 2 different things. One where all
> > people say its a good idea and one, which is a really big change in
> > freeciv.
> 
> I agree.

I agree too! :-)

> 
> Also, Raahul, did you remember to add that land units can attack air units
> on airfields? See can_unit_attack_unit_at_tile() for all these
> special cases.
> 
>   - Per
> 
> 
> 
>