Can we make AA units auto target gunships instead of fighters?

I've seen too many AA units be destroyed because they were shooting at peregrines for me to not think that this needs to be changed.

Bump this onto the first page.

Yes. Absolutely agreed.



(But there will be a mod for that)

Try not use the word bump in your bump messages. Keep it classy.

But yeah units don't prioritize too much at The minute. Turrets go for closest unit to the turret. But maybe you have 10 t1 fighters and you know their 3 t2 fighters will kill them so taking out the fighters works better for you in this instance.

Hard to tell the computer to prioritize when there can be many different scenarios.

You mean:

Every ground AA unit should prioritise air units which can kill them, would also avoid things like the commander trying to track circling Peregrines. Bombers then gunships I think, since bombers deal a lot of damage in one pass, you need to his them first.

I very much support this.

Ground based AA should target aircraft that can fire at the ground – both gunships and bombers.

Doesn't the players priority of what needs to die first change?

Generally you'd rather your AA survive by taking out the enemy anti ground before taking out the anti air rather than taking out half of the enemy fighters before dieing to gunships. If this isn't the case then you can always reassign orders to your stingers but in at least 80% of the situations you want the gunships to die first. PA is not a game about micro. We shouldn't need to tell our units to attack that which is attacking them rather than that which isn't.

Making a a lot of assumptions about my post there.

And besides, I have had opponents use bombers to cover for their fighters to wipe out my air-force.

So that isn't as nearly clean cut as you make it.

It's pretty clear cut. One method allows AA/the Commander to survive to continue firing on other aircraft, one does not.

Why would you use bombers to cover for your fighters? Just don't build the bombers and build more fighters.

What if you could click on turrets and a little menu popped up (like the build menu) and you get set priorities there?

It depends on your priority.

Particularly when a player know of the priority, and uses it specifically to keep their fighters alive long enough to destroy your own airforce whilst suicide bombers are taking all of the shots.

I am not in favour of a priority system for AA, first come first serve.

I agree with ingcom here. At the minute closest unit is priority. This is a fool proof system. Beginners know what to expect.

There is of course situations when you would prefer to attack the gunships but most of the time I want the fighters killed so I can have bigger wins with my fighters against their less protected gunships.

Really depends what the gunships focus is and wether I have air units close by to defend something Id rather not die like I should.

Alternatively if I have no air units I would prefer the gunships gone. But should the enemy be punished for having air superiority?

I think it's debatable as to whether they should target fighters or gunships first.

If they target gunships then they may survive that fight while the enemy maintains air superiority in general.

If they target fighters then the gunships may kill them but now MY fighters can gain air superiority and wipe the gunships. That's the risk of using your fighters as a screen for AA -- or would be, if more players had their own fighter squads on standby, ready to take advantage of the situation.

Maybe we could make the missile turrets prioritize fighters but have flak prioritize gunships and/or bombers.

nifty idea, I likey lots! but a slippery slope. how to streamline a UI from which you can pick many units? and this would apply to the selected turret, or all turrets? and how to set it up to where it remains consistent when we eventually extrapolate this prioritization option to all other units? what a can of worms. not that it can't be done, but I'm glad I'm not the one doing it!

There aren't that many air units so that shouldn't be a problem. But for ground turrets you could generalize:
T1 bots
T1 vehicles
T2 bots
T2 vehicles

Also any manual commands should override the set priorities.

I'm totally on your side, like the idea, not arguing with ya - but there's 5 air units (t1 fighter & bomber, t2 fighter, bomber and gunship) in 3 categories. not to mention fabbers. Just seems like a lot, but I guess an expandable menu could include them, I donno. (kinda like the menus on the right that pop out when you hover, for factory continuous build).

I don't think six units would make for a particularly bulky menu.