Air-Raid Sensor

[Molotov]

I first posted my idea for an air-raid sensor in my thread for VTOL bodies, but I thought it was a good enough idea to deserve it's own thread.

How many times have you played WZ and established a respectable defensive force of aircraft, when the AI starts throwing fewer and fewer tanks at you. Your VTOL force easily dispatches the tanks, but now is completely out of ammunition and must reload. While you wait for your aircraft to re-arm, you see a blob speeding tword you on the radar screen:
Enemy VTOLs.

Up until now, you have been quite proud of your flak emplacements, seeing as not a single plane has been able to get past them so far, but once they reach your base, it becomes apparent that your flak is not the target. They speed past your AAA, only losing a few fighters, and head straight for your re-arming pads.

You lose almost every fighter in your fleet, the only survivors being the few aircraft you managed to arm halfway and get into the air before the blob could hit them. The resulting damage is appalling. The pads they didn't destroy are either burning or heavily damaged, the fighters they didn't kill weren't based there to begin with.


So, how about a sensor, like the Strike Sensor, but only targets air units? It would need a bit of tweaking to be useful though, seeing as you dont want to waste all your ammo on a single plane, it would have to automatically target multiple VTOL's and assign them to certain aircraft.

I just got another idea while typing:
Improved dogfight coding, so when VTOL fights VTOL, you wind up getting to watch them maneuver and jink, trying to get on each-others 6 o'clock. Of course, it would also involve smarter spending of ammo when dealing with enemy aircraft, so you don't end up with an armada wasting its ammo on one plane. Wouldn't that be sweet?

[Olrox]

Well, it's a very nice idea. Would be very useful.
But isn't an armada a large division of ships?

[themousemaster]

You do realize that vtols don't actually have to have ammo to lift off, right? If you see a VTOL attack coming for your pads, just select all your aircraft (hopefully they are hotkeyed to a group?) and give them a move order (rather than an attack order). They will move to wherever you say... which, in the case above, would sound like "directly away from the attacking group so that my AA can shoot at them longer" is the best choice.

[fisk0]

I think it would be good to have something like that, but I think the amount of sensors already in the game is a problem, rather than adding more sensors they'd need more functionality.
Perhaps there could also be a switch in the command options menu (or what it is called) where you could set what kind of enemies your units which are capable of both firing against airborne and land based units should prioritize? Maybe a scrollbar like when you set enemy difficulty, with Ground units to the left and Air units to the right, if set furthest to the left, air units will be ignored, if set to the right, ground units will be ignored, and in the middle the unit would just choose one randomly, and if set anywhere in between it would choose to either go for air units first and then ground units and vice versa.
Then you could have various units set to prioritize different kinds of enemies attached to the same sensor and they would go for different targets.

[fisk0]

of course, it could be cool to have something looking like an over-the-horizon radar, which would not only be capable of seeing incoming VTOL's, but coupled with anti-missile defenses they should be able to shoot down incoming rockets, providing a defense against ripple rocket artillery (and eventually cruise missiles and nuclear weapons, if that would ever be added to the game - the latter at least exist as a mod) for your base.