Commander unit and Anti-air units

[Logwad]

Whenever I attach any anti-air units to a commander, they do not engage vtols, even with a sensor (counter-vtol or wide spectrum) unit attached.

Is this how it should be, a bug, or something to be worked on for the future?

[sautedman]

I've noticed this as well (and brought it up in a discussion). I can't think of a reason for it. I used to think that units would not fire at things their commander can't fire at, but AT cyborgs and AT units do shoot at VTOLs even when linked to a commander.

[Logwad]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only this happens for.

I was disappointed to find this out when the AI started sending hoards of VTOL's, and I couldn't make dedicated anti-air commander groups.

[Corporal Punishment]

The aa-behavior of commander groups has long since been a problem. I originally thought the problem was commanders can't target VTOLs and hence AAA attached to them would sit tight because their own sensors are disabled. But AA-capable units will fire at VTOLs if these were manually assigned as the group's target. It seems to be a problem with not-very-intelligent artificial intelligence: The commander can't target VTOLs indeed but AA-capable units attached to it can and do. Unfortunately, the commander forces all units attached to it to hold fire until either it issues a firing command or one such command is issued manually by the player. So the solution could be to teach the commander to distinguish between air and ground targets, forcing his group to hold fire only on the latter.

[psychopompos]

a dedicated system turret to which you assign vtol units, that will only target vtol units, has been suggested before as a fixed tower.
if i had a clue how to i would have created a mod to do this long ago.

with vtol spam being annoying & ground based AA being quite useless at times.

irl your ground based AAA systems are last ditch defence for when your own air support is dead.

having vtol bug lancer units deal with bomber spam is pretty damn effective!
when they actually go after the air targets

[Zarel]

Or just have weapons ignore commander targeting if they're either AA weapons or the commander isn't targeting anything...

[Roux Le Corps]

give commanders anti air? i always thought the blue beams came from the antenna anyway so up and down shouldn't matter too much... or would it?

[Zarel]

The problem is, what if you have a bunch of lancers assigned to a commander, and the commander is targeting some air units, even though there are ground units within range?

[psychopompos]

reminds me of the discussion about commander smart target designation.