Rethinking Air Combat

Operational range is something that is becoming increasingly irrelevant today. If planes could fly off of 2-year thorium powered turbines, they totally would. A future killbot that uses microfusion just won't care. The only units that have trouble with range are too small to fit a standard power source, in which case they are drones(I.E. hive units), not air craft.

Drone carriers are a great way to put a lot of power into a ground unit. A basic drone carrier constructs a pile of simple, inexpensive drones. Unlike a missile launcher, these drones continue to deal damage as they fly unimpeded. Basic air defense can mitigate damage by killing drones, or ground units can just rush the carrier to kill it.

While the drones are technically a unit, all of the upkeep, construction, build limits, and leashing limitations are handled by the drone carrier. There is no mistaking that the drone exists to serve the carrier and not the other way around.

This is not true of leashed air. There is an aircraft factory that produces a unit, and an additional support structure that they can't live without. If a unit does not have some measure of independence, then what is the point of an air factory? The aircraft have to be built from a real carrier, lest freshly constructed units immediately fall out of the sky.

Real life high speed craft fly fast, let loose, and fly back to base for another round. That sort of interaction is already accomplished with some kind of ammo, and it's not a limitation every craft needs. An aircraft can still have limited ability to rebuild its own ammo (think 60s. or more), but the fastest solution is to return to base.

If we were to derive units from these interactions, a few basic units emerge:
- A light interceptor meant for air brawling
- Stealth multi purpose fighter/bombers
- A heavy bomber
- A long range, heat seeking air defense

Have another one, on the house:
- Cloak raiders. Using TotalA cloak rules(plus stealth when active), these guys are revealed by nearby air units, after taking damage, and after attacking. A limited duration battery (demanding direct energy and/or an air pad to recharge) makes them useful for breaching defenses and dealing deep strike hits. The battery also gives them an impressive death explosion, not so good for nearby cloaks. Obviously high tech.

Dammit bobucles, I am well aware of the possibility of using lore to justify unlimited fuel for planes.

The point is whether having unlimited fuel is more interesting from a gameplay perspective. You can justify anything with uber-advanced scifi lore- you can come up with a way to justify limited operational range.

I think that having interactions like the airbases in England clustered together against the airbases in Europe spread out in a line along the coast is straight up more interesting to play with than having a blob of completely independent planes that can go anywhere.

Having many small bases getting built and destroyed, having strategically significant territory, such as island hopping like in the WWII Pacific theatre, and having a role for aircraft carriers, is far more interesting than building planes on one continent, and just flying them wherever you want them to go.

You could have aircraft being only able to operate inside of a air control zone projected by airfactorys and carriers.

Aircraft who leave quickly degrade in health as they are no longer supported by the control zone.

With some smarter units the aircraft would then learn to navigate through zones and automaticly patrol over the projector unit, leaving units like carriers to possibly have a support cap to prevent 1000s of units from stacking into a single zone.


Not sure how to work it, but like that.

But I didn't preclude these things! I just didn't make them a direct requirement to fight.

Having a nearby base allows your aircraft to fight harder, longer, and with greater effect. Without it, then only the bare minimum of air power is available. That's more than enough encouragement to build an air base capable of supplying your entire force.

And I thought you understood what I was getting at, until this sentence.

Look, the biggest effect of having limited operational range isn't even the fact that planes can only reach targets up to a certain range away. The biggest effect is it makes air units positional.

Having only ammunition makes air units more effective with an air base closer to the target, sure. However you can still use "your entire force" within a single tactical picture. It's still a deathball. It's still a flying firepower singularity, just one with bells on. The ammo limitation decreases its effectiveness, and this reduced effectiveness may marginally encourage more interesting play, such as using other positional units, but it doesn't turn the air units themselves into positional units. This is not as interesting as having air units be deployed to a theatre, and then only be useful within that region unless redeployed.

An air force isn't a single entity. It should be spread out over your entire territory. And if they are forced to observe operational range limitations, it is possible to have planes on the other side of a continent that are simply too far away to help in a particular battle.

Having airbase capacity limitations and fuel limitations means there are limits to how you can deploy your air forces. Not just how much DPS they yield.

Building more bases in good locations, or having carriers and fleets, etc. expand these limitations, but within a single local picture the limits are just as serious. However you can put more planes in more places even if their individual ranges remain limited, which scales equally regardless of map size. Bigger maps means more locations, and you need more to fill that space, without just creating a denser singularity.

For all practical purposes, cutting an airforce's attack power in half without a base nearby is the same thing as giving them full-on logistics. You still won't be able to afford to use them outside of their base control zone, because they're simply too expensive for what they can do at that point.

Except it gives you more options, because while they're totally ineffective, at least you can try, whereas being bound to a zone means you simply can't do anything about it.

You could have a kind of ammunition system that is similar to the childrens game or tag.

Each time ammo is dispenced aircraft would have to reurn to a carrier or airfield inorder to 'tag it' before returning to the battlefield, that way aircraft reloading is efficent and quick.

And if you want to ad some kind of force limiter, each airfield could potencially only store a number of possible reloads at a time, requireing time to refrech these reloads after it has been used by a aircraft.

THat way, while you would have one hell of an alpha strike, a continious battle ould leave many aicraft queing for the oppertunity to tag the airbase or carrier, leading to the logistical barrier to mass air deployments, if rearming is too far away aircraft run the risk of being defenceless for too long on a return trip and the problem with the time between assualts.

Is that a good idea? I kinda like it.

Igncom is going to the next logical step of having logistical limitations for the amount of fuel and ammo resupply, which is also a good idea. However first we need to convince people that fuel and ammo are actually a good idea in the first place.

Limiting the amount of fuel and ammo resupply capability makes air bases positional with respect to other infrastructure and supply routes, and can mean even if you have a base in an area, without sufficient supplies it won't do you much good. An airbase in the middle of nowhere gives you the same options, but limited in quantity and robustness by supply availability. Building supply manufacturing there, or having resupply units move supplies to it becomes a concern.

More bases and planes would naturally consume more supplies, meaning you need more support infrastructure to maintain that level of operations indefinitely, as opposed to for a limited or intermittent duration. This means you have to choose when and where to exercise your options, and spending them frivolously or to lesser effect is actually disadvantageous, as you could have saved them for a more opportune moment.

Logistics limiting the resupply capability of airbases is a good idea also. However I think it is more important in this thread to convince people of the beneficial gameplay effects of having fuel and ammo limitations for flying units in the first place.


I don't see how "tag" differs from any other type of aircraft resupply implementation, as the plane does have to return to the base or carrier. Whether it lands on a pad, enters a bay, or "tags" is really just a visual matter. I do think there should be a time delay required, most likely quite substantial downtime. If a plane can fly for a minute or two continuously, it might need to land in a base for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty seconds or more to be resupplied before it is ready to fly again. The exact numbers will vary greatly depending on map size, aircraft flight speed, aircraft flight time, and whether bases have limited logistical capability, and whether resupply costs resources (directly or indirectly).

I chose a tag to prevent situations that would casue units to become indisposed for any great deal of time.

But this of course depends on how much ammo aircraft will carry.

Assuming that bombers will get 1 run, fighters will have 2-4 missiles and the like, the time for rearming would probobly need only be instant, not even really landing but grabing the ammo by VTOL'ing down to it.

But balance is ofcourse subjective, I just don't like the idea of aircraft sitting still for a few munites to regain fuel or ammo, as to why I suggsted the airfield cap for rearming so that a mass rearm could potencially cause a bottleneck as the supported amount can eaisly go back to the fight, but the rest will have to wait for the resupply to refresh or regenerate.

I understand it just fine. I'm saying you don't need to leash an airplane to make it ineffective at long distance.

What if I want aircrafts to be able to fly limitless from one planet to another?
Would you also support that?
Cuz that is what aircrafts are in SupCom/FA or Starcraft they are able to reach everywhere on the Map. If the Map is the solar system or the Galaxy and planets are just little isles in it. That would be the same as islandmaps in FA then.

I cannot support any idea of fuel / ammo if the control scheme for aircraft remains the same. If you can fly your aircraft anywhere and micromanage their movement, then adding ammo/fuel as a factor simply won't work to solve the issues of aircraft, it just makes them more annoying to use.

Don't forget that by linking your airforce with your ground forces, you open up a lot more possibilities in terms of the ground force game. You can scout for airbases and identify enemy air corridors, you can know that the enemy won't fly in a particular area because he has no airbases nearby, and you can make outposts and expand beyond your main base in the late game because you know that a giant blob of aircraft isn't going to land on your head.

By moving the control scheme up a level, the UI can then start giving the player more information to make informed decisions - How much will it cost to patrol this area? How much will it cost to make this attack? How many targets can I destroy with these bombers? How fast can my fighters respond to an incursion? How much does it decrease the amount of ammo available if I send my pilots out twice as far?

I agree with you Pawz that a new UI system for controlling planes would be an excellent addition to having significant air bases.

However I disagree that both fuel and ammo should draw from the same internal resource pool. Ammo and fuel should be counted separately for each bird. It should not be possible for a plane to shoot so many times it runs out of fuel, and it should not be possible for a plane to use enough fuel that it can no longer fire.

Well, it's a pretty small difference. Both methods are worth testing, to see what works. I was kind of thinking of how for long flights, fighter aircraft would mount extra fuel tanks... but whatever works out best.

Can you show all this info on a single strategic icon? If not, it is effectively invisible to the player using it. Invisible attributes are a complete nightmare.

At the best, you might be able to show fuel, or ammo. But definitely not both.

Oh, easily. The most obvious approach is to simply have units display neither fuel nor ammo quantity until they are running low. Then, they indicate what they are running low on. Bullets, missiles, battery, fuel, build materials, etc. where applicable. Rudimentary icons will suffice, but other methods of display such as small colored indicators, there are many possible methods.

For units with very short counts of things, such as a nukes or other big missiles, there might even be a pip indicator which actually indicates the count. Suppose three "missile" icon pips indicates that unit has three missiles. Air bases might do a similar pip indication with squadrons of planes, or wherever else a small integer counter is applicable.

As another possible approach for fuel, a unit can easily have a second visible bar, like the yellow fuel bar SupCom which is constantly visible at suitable zoom levels. Add to this the ability to display icons for resources that are running low. For example, if it's running out of ammo, show an indicator, which will be absent under most conditions.

Most of the time I expect players will be sufficiently zoomed out, and with enough units, that much of the time even individual unit HP won't be information the player always needs displayed, unless they zoom in to view the units. Effectively querying those units for more local information detail.

Adapt from other games for showing such indicators. Planetside 2 has the possibility tho display the hud in a circle around the crosshair.

Who said that lifebars and such stuff has to be a linear bar?
Try give the unit a circular bar then u can divide that bar in parts if u need more then one Ressource to show.
U could even combine that idea with the little strategical icons.

I also would appreciate, Overlay maps as in some Simulation Programms. There can be some for movement, ressources, area controll, damage, fighting intensity ...
But tha was OT

Pretty much this. Going with an air heavy build should mean choosing speed and flexibility over armor and sheer firepower. Just because the number balancing hasn't quite been there in the past doesn't mean their signature speed and flexibility should be castrated to compensate.

That sounds great, except it makes absolutely no difference to the problem at hand.

Imagine if your ASFs all had 10 rounds to shoot. Would you be more inclined to split them up? Would you stop micromanaging their movement? Or would you still cluster them all into one giant ball?

You'd obviously just cluster them into a big ball, because changing the effectiveness of aircraft doesn't change how they work, it just changes the balance they have with other units.

Imagine it like this then, your ASF have each 2 rounds.

Now the problem becomes logistical, at least one the fighting starts becuse now you need to manage when and where those shots are becuse otherwise time and effort will be wasted possibly causing sevear problems.

If you over kill a target, all thuse aircraft now have to go back to rearm, unkill and you leve the battle without finishng the job.

You need to at least spread out your air bases in order to reduce your travel time to rearm.

Putting all of your forces in one place will only work as long as you have time and the logistics to rearm all of your craft, after the limited exchange you will be dealing with limited resources as your airfields try to rearm all of your planes.

Thats my take on it.