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Ranged Air Combat

Aircraft missions would be ranged and performed from air bases instead of moving on the map like normal units.

airplane variables
speed
the speed of the plane, in Mach numbers. used to determine the intercept chance and the escape probability (faster planes intercept better and escape more).
bomb rate
the weapons capacity of the plane. higher bomb rates mean the plane causes more damage to other planes and ground units
range
the radius of the circle of tiles the plane can attack

basic missions
ground support
attack ground and sea units. different unit classes would have different max damage.
sea and heavy land would be 100% (can be completely destroyed), and land would be around 60%
bomb defenses
add an effect that would reduce the defense bonus of the base or city by bomb rate for 5 turns
intercept
attempt to stop enemy aircraft from preforming missions within range
air superiority
attempt to draw enemy fighters on intercept into an air battle

advanced missions
anti air suppression
attack enemy anti air and SAM installations
bomb factories
bomb and destroy production and factories in enemy cities
bomb cities
bomb and destroy buildings, gold, and population in enemy cities.
bomb hanger
bomb enemy bombers on the ground

That is basically how CivIII+ aviation works: ranged operations from bases + rebasing. We already have ranged bombardment to an extent since v.3.0.

Elefant wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:59 am the speed of the plane, in Mach numbers. used to determine the intercept chance and the escape probability (faster planes intercept better and escape more).

Well, we should make some generalization of what is now diplomatic combat power. Currently, all diplomats have the same basic power that is modified by veteran bonus and "Spy" flag (also, "SuperSpy" always beats others), and diplo defense effect; we should have attack/defense bonus effects for any (one-round dice roll) actions. We may also adopt CivIII system of intercept (defender effect, probability to notice, stop and fight an actor) and evasion (actor effect, probability to perform in action without checking for interceptors), as well as intercept range (currently, it's 0 for diplomatic defense). I think the evasion should be however dependent on what is the target's locators capacity, like, the effect of both attacker player and unit and target player, tile and city. Also, we probably need a counter of how many times a unit has intercepted an attacker this turn, thus further interceptions become either impossible or progressively less probable and you can't stop endless airstrike with one single turret.

the radius of the circle of tiles the plane can attack

Interesting idea: like, a plane may strike several targets on its way before returning to a base. That may be done in a way of striking area radius, if we work in a paradigm "air attack=one ranged operation". Maybe though there could be another paradigm: "air attack=unit moving ignoring enemy units and cities unless they intercept it", that requires some more interaction but removes questions like "how the plane gets freely over front line defenses" if we check only target area for interception.

add an effect that would reduce the defense bonus of the base or city by bomb rate for 5 turns

Like, it's not only for air units but also for rams/artillery/saboteurs. CivIV-inspired idea: let any tile have fortification counter that can be reduced by certain actions and regenerates in a while until reaches maximal value defined by a tile effect, and let cities have yet another (cultural) defense bonus that is applied if it is currently bigger.

Yet another missions: evacuate unit by helicopter; air reconaissance.

Yeah. The idea was to have a improved civ III/IV air combat system. I have played both games and think that it is a much superior system. I especially like the improvements that the DCM mod for civ IV add to the system.