Rethinking Air Combat

It's hard to put them to scale when the planes fly 10-50 times faster than most ground units can move. That's pretty much the problem with scaling things down, it generally doesn't make things more fun if you scale everything equally.

By "forced to obey the laws of physics", I mean actually collide with stuff. No more 100 fighter blobs of doom, etc.

Ah, you probably should have just said that.

I think it would be interesting to see fighters dodging and weaving around each other. But it might become pretty hard to see what's happening that way. Still something certainly worth considering.

I just hope we don't replicate SupCom2's air combat of having hundreds of fighter bombers zerg the map in a game where numbers mean more then strategy of any kind.

That and having aircraft have more HP then tanks, and less AA range then an AA tower.
All that is a knife fight without having the aircraft being as cool as transformers.

Since airspace is a 3-dimensional space you can stack aircrafts to blobs or whatever without having them colliding. So the only thing that would change will be the amount of work for your CPU.

It would make things like dodging and weaving a lot harder, and fighters at higher altitudes would have much more trouble attacking things on the ground due to the number of friendlies blocking their path.

I think it would make a lot of difference, but it'd also be hard on the CPU. Fighting in 3d space is pretty complex stuff and hard to simulate properly on a 2d screen.

And you'd have to drop bombs earlier to hit your target.

I agree, a lot.


But, personally, I'd rather reduce the problem by reducing the number of aircraft at any one time.

Well I'm just saying, do something like cause Tons of Damage to any aircraft that collide and then just tune aircraft normally, perhaps give them a bit extra power per cost. All of a sudden those 5 gunships you have are a lot more valuable because that's all thats realistically gonna be able to fire on any one target. Or you could aim ailing fighters for kamikaze strikes on the enemy bombers, etc.

i think glitches and such will make that REALLY annoying.

I would go for a four-pronged approach:

-Aircraft are fast
-Aircraft have high firepower
-Aircraft are weak
-Aircraft are expensive.

What is the result?

-An Airforce is an investment.
-AA will have a reduced hit chance (due to speed), but score kills much easier.
-Significant firepower and speed means a versatile, fast-response airfleet that can do massive damage. Recklessness causes a quick demise of your airfleet.

A sidenote: gunships and such should have a greater health. They have a very different role

A second note: i personally think that Air in many games is treated as "like armies but in the air". it's not. In real life, air amounts to great firepower (there's a reason Air Superiority is considered to be so great), great versatility and quick responses. It also amounts to large amounts of stealth and not-getting-hit-in-the-first-place. Once you're hit you're down.

I do not believe that real life should 1-on-1 be converted to a game, but it's food for thought.'

Naval: battleaxe
Ground: swiss knife
Air: scalpel.
Orbital: Needle?

Could you point out what exactly?
Dropping bombs early isn't that new (T3 Bomber in SupCom did somehow) and isn't so much physic related. The situation that your planes block the attack of other planes would require very many (>100) planes attacking a single target; it'd be a good idea to spread the planes on different targets independent, whether they block each other or not.
Also accidental suicide bomber don't sound that awesome to me.

Well, a combination of making fighter vs fighter dogfights play out way differently due to the way they hunt each other (constant interference between other fighters, needing a lot more time to get a shot, unable to just fly straight up through each other), the problems with clouds of aircraft that need complicated pathfinding, unable to use more than one bomber on a single building.

And yeah, friendly blocking. Of course it happens only with large numbers of aircrafts; that's the only time this modification is going to do anything, really. Except for the bombers, anyway.

One key feature of any new air system needs to be making air units inefficient to use en masse in a single location. It should be less efficient to have 200 planes operating in the same location, when you could have 30 squadrons of six in 30 different places for much greater effect.

The dogfight based air combat design used in SupCom is actually boring. It's essentially a numbers game, which for such mobile units is extremely dull.

I propose instead of trying to import WWII dogfighting (interesting for individual pilots, but not interesting for commanders) PA might take inspiration from the "less sexy" Cold War aircraft design and doctrine. Both sides have huge amounts of forces, but only need a few units to be effective in any particular locale. Most planes engage targets at long distances- so the plane might not ever have visual of the target it destroys on radar. But the commander doesn't really care whether the "pilot" can see the target or not. The commander can see the target- maybe they have a land unit looking at it. Having expensive, squishy planes destroy the target using a single, long-range missile strike is satisfying for the commander.

Low tech (relatively speaking) but powerful missiles allow planes to each engage multiple ground and/or air targets at long range, but are limited by missile count. If each plane is carrying six AtA missiles, then a wing of six fighters can kill up to 36 enemy planes at long range before being forced to use its dogfight guns from point-blank. However enemy air superiority planes will have similar weaponry, discouraging blob vs blob warfare from both sides, as the smaller blob will come out well ahead.

Strategic bombers are the workhorse ground bombardment aircraft against structures or large armies. Able to mount heavy sustained bombing operations at extreme ranges. Precision bombers capable of precise highly accurate single target strikes are useful for taking out critical targets, but are inefficient for mass destruction. Close air support is also available as a main combat plane against ground targets at shorter distances.

Helicopters (gunships) are everywhere. Absolutely no match for a fighter, but their tactical flexibility, maneuverability, and size of payload is unmatched for close air support. Hybrid transports/gunships can be used to insert and then provide air support to small strikes.

Extremely deadly surface and ship-based anti-air is extremely lethal against expensive planes if they get a shot off. But planes are extremely lethal against them if they fire first instead.

In a one-on-one situation this type of high-lethality combat is boring. But in aggregate across an entire theatre, hundreds of these little confrontations build up a fairly interesting picture. And it is possible for a small air force, used in the right places, to deal tremendous amounts of damage over an extended period without being destroyed. But even a huge air force will get cut to pieces immediately if the commander is an idiot.

TotalA had some good tools against air. The open ended targeting was huge. Virtually anything could take a pot shot against air, even if it wasn't very effective. As flying units clustered up they become more likely targets from ground based tanks. Splash damage was the other factor. Massed air units would fall in droves from splash hits, which every weapon had in some small capacity. It would be nice to see that again, at least in the form of more flexible unit roles and moderately effective counters.

The best answer may be to have plane swarms take care of themselves. Let air units explode when killed, dealing some damage to nearby craft. That makes it much less effective to stack them, lest they chain react and bring down huge swaths of craft. The craft roles can then be adjusted independently.

Some aircraft like to use hit+run tactics, so alpha strike weapon would be extremely effective against them. Missile swarms would work well against pretty much anything, actually. Long range is very dangerous when big loads of damage are involved, especially if it's a huge number of OHKO missiles. It could easily dominate the game.

I don't think the missile swarm is a good weapon to have on interceptors. It's kind of weird making interceptors the best counter to interceptors(and everything else in the sky). Remember Supcom? The short range weapon is superfluous and can be removed from its design, left to another unit (like a short range interceptor).

A flying alpha strike unit would likely work best as a slow, 1-volley platform. Having it die after firing is optional, and a good idea if the volley is really damaging. Think of it as a flying rack filled with missiles, gotta build more when it runs out.

The same theme would work very well on a ground platform, firing a series of missiles before demanding a long recharge(cost optional). Zero-K had such a unit as a high level turret defense. The weapon doesn't need such huge range or ammo capacity, and a mobile variant could be a valuable addition to anti-bomber air defense.

Aircraft might try to tease the missiles out, running them out of range before charging in for the kill. This offers a soft answer to huge missile volleys, wasting enemy defenses and resources.

Air in TA was an alright approximation most of the time. But its design was seriously borked on large maps or big economy games. Stealth fighters...

And regarding bobucles' analysis of the "missile swarm," that is not at all the result of what I suggested. A player using a "missile swarm" is going to get obliterated by a much smaller missile swarm. Any big missile swarm going all-in on six planes is going to get its teeth kicked in to take down only six enemy birds. Bunching all your air superiority units together is a very risky move, for highly dubious gains.

Furthermore, that aircraft design with six long range AtA missiles and a dogfight gun is indeed effective against pretty much everything that flies. It's an air superiority unit. It's supposed to be. The "counter" to air superiority units is ground units or ships. Let's see how those expensive air superiority birds like them some Surface-to-Air-Missile batteries encroaching on their airspace.

That said, complex air counterplay is still possible even against such powerful anti-air missiles. Cheap interceptors might lose everything but the dogfight gun, enabling a player to build many more of them. In a close quarters dogfight these units would be vastly superior to air superiority fighters (same weapon, lower cost). So even though an air superiority fighter might have the speed, operational range, attack range, and firepower advantage, enough cheap birds with guns spread across your airspace will force them to stay away.

Interceptors might even be automatically produced by and stored in an interceptor bay structure, which automatically scrambles them when enemy aircraft are detected within range. And which rebuilds them when they are destroyed.

Ok, so here's the radical idea that you've all been waiting for!

Overview

Aircraft management has always been difficult in TA and Supcom. Despite attempts to promote individual airstrikes and spread out bombing runs, the fact is that the most common usage of aircraft is to make a giant blob, and wave it around the map. Even worse, the constraints put on aircraft were easily supplanted by micro - bombers could be coaxed to drop huge strings of bombs if the player picked targets the right distance away, and fighters could be forced to hover or turn on a dime, encouraging the player to micromanage his aircraft - and the more you have to micro your aircraft, the less time you have to manage more than one set of aircraft at a time.

To address this, I have come up with an idea that takes the micromanagement out of the picture, and brings control up a level so that you can orchestrate coordinated attacks, escorts, and transportation without worrying about the nitty gritty of where an individual plane may be.

Four main pillars of the idea:

1. Operating aircraft should cost resources
2. The player should not have direct control over individual aircraft
3. Aircraft should behave more like aircraft and less like hover tanks
4. Altitude should matter.

This is predicated on a few assumptions:
1. TA style aircraft give a large advantage to the one who micros
2. It will be difficult to micro an air blob across multiple planets
3. Aircraft patrolling your base perimeter and/or landing in your base TA style is messy
4. Most importantly, a unit that can cross immense amounts of terrain at high speed with a huge amount of stackability and potential damage output will always be more desirable than a land unit for anything other than assaulting heavily defended bases.

Ok, I made a little sketch on the concepts I outline below:


Control
- Aircraft are controlled via the player managing 2 things - Routes, and Zones.
- Routes are drawn on the map, and designate plane movement. Routes are smoothed out and control points can be added or removed by the player (just like a vector drawing app handles drawing curves)
- Zones are painted on the map - simple add/ remove
- Planes attempt to do their best to follow their assigned route, but avoid each other any any terrain that gets in the way.
- Patrol routes allow the player to dedicate a certain amount of resources to keeping their planes in the air. This would represented with a blue line the user can click to add points to or drag around, and a UI element that shows the player how many planes are availabe for the route, and allows the player to set a bar (0-100%) for the number of planes in the air, along with average resource drain. (Eg, 10 planes on patrol might cost an average of x resources per second to create the supplies for that patrol).
- Attack routes allow the player to plan and execute attacks on the enemy. This would involve creating the route, and then selecting the route and assigning a number of bomber groups and fighter groups to the attack route. Once assignment is complete, planes will start to move into position in the nearest airbases, and the player can then click on the route at any time and then click 'launch' and all the fighters and bombers will lift off and execute their attack run. This could be expanded to include more than one attack route and synchronized attacks.
- Transportation routes would indicate a loading/unloading area, and transports assigned to the route would automatically pick up units that arrive in the loading area.
- Defensive Zones would be an area designated by the player as requiring defense (suprise!). A defensive zone would automatically create a larger area around it which would trigger a scramble if enemy fighters encroached on that airspace. This area could automatically be calculated and displayed so the player knows how much area he needs eyes on to properly defend his zone.
- Instant Attack Zones would simply be an area the player wants to attack NOW. Paint over an area and all enemy units in the area are targeted (paint small to pick a single target)A slider could show how many aircraft are available, and a quick group button could designate all nearby aircraft of a specific type. Eg. All nearby gunships that can be here in 10 seconds, attack this target now.

Cost
- All aircraft cost resources to move and fight. Lets call these resources.. nanogel supplies, for lack of a better term. Different actions use up supplies at different rates - standard cruising speed could use hardly any, combat speed could use more, and firing missiles could eat up a big chunk.
- All aircraft would carry a reserve amount of supplies in order to automatically return to base at top speed.
- Resupply is quick if the airbase is stocked with supplies, but a long battle could deplete your supplies stored in your airbase, reducing the effectiveness of your aircraft.

Airbases
- This requires aircraft to be based in an airbase - this could be something as simple as a japanese parking garage style hangar where planes lift off one by one, or it could be a multi-runway aircraft carrier. Airbases have an unlimited aircraft storage capacity, but have a limited amount of supply storage & generation capability
- Aircraft are smart enough to resupply at the nearest airbase which has sufficient supplies
- This brings back the need / usefulness of aircraft carriers and forward bases, as you can only project power so far before you need to come back for resupply.


What this means for anti-air is for another post...

I agree with this. Air should be an expensive investment that can easily get blown away if not properly used.

I forgot one consequence it has:

-anti-fighter fighters will be absolutely dominant against air. The most effective air counter would be air. because of low health, the obvious result is that air-to-air combat is pretty short, intense and effective. This also means that Naval, Ground and Turret AA is less effective, but also more lasting.


To the pain-style above:

i disagree with a lack of direct control and any form of fuel. I totally agree with the zoning and routing.

Remember that Uber is investigating better cooperation among units, so that bombers better spread out. Neutrino's hate for unit clipping, combined with Sorians skills give me good hope that Air Blobs are a thing of the past.

How would that work? Have you even seen what happens when one unit instantly kills 6 times its value with no risk? The light interceptor would have to be FREE, and even that might not be enough. Anything less than a complete swarm dies to deal ZERO damage. There's no point to trying anyway, because the long range, high speed missile spammer renders air play completely impossible.

And I thought the ASF was bad enough.

Clumped units are best addressed with splash damage. The weapons can have splash, or the plane death explosion can have splash. This causes damage to multiply against air units, offering a very simple effect of diminishing returns on a critical mass.

I like the suggestion regarding airbases. My concerns with aircraft, in PA is that it's going to become so difficult to control everything across multiple planets. Selecting planes, adding them to a route etc. And just keeping an eye on them is going to take time.

I like the idea of having airbases, giving that airbase orders and the planes assigned to it respond. So all interceptors engage anything that enters defined area. And bombers launch strikes based on a way point plan setup. Then 1 click attack to launch strike. With a defined amount of the the interceptors to provide cover.

Set amount of planes you want, up to airbases capacity and it will rebuild any lost.

Can then manage, launch and deal with planes in a few simple clicks. Rather then faffing about with it all.

Give planes low fuel, and Ammo. The fuel won't have to be micromanaged as will just mean that it limits or increases their operational range,(bit like radar range) as the plane will always save enough fuel for way back. Also, this will limit the time the planes can spend at the edge of that range.

To counter this aircraft carriers or building forward airbases would then increase that operational range.

This relies on the airbase having a quick launch and Land system for multiple craft. I think multi story car park best bet.

Think can keep manual control of planes, but once there about to run out of fuel they'll return to their base.

Isn't this a task that's usually done by AA-turrets?

@Pawz
What happens if a airbase is destroyed, especially to the units in flight?