"Guard area" or "Combat Air Patrol" feature

"Guard area" or "Combat Air Patrol" feature

This specification aims to improve the usefulness of AircraftTypes and the usability of air-to-air-combat through the implementation of a "guard area" mode for aircraft, in which the selected AircraftTypes stay in the selected area and automatically attack all hostile units entering the guard area.

Original Request

Make it so that if you put an aircraft (padaircraft, i.e. fighter=yes and with/without AAcombat) in guard mode at a point it will circle it and attack enemies until it is out of ammunition, at which time it will go home, reload to full then fly back out and guard the area like it was before it ran out of ammo.

Specification details

Goals

• The aircraft permanently stays in the selected area and attacks all hostiles entering/appearing in it.
• Should it have to reload, it leaves to do that and returns to guarding the area afterwards.
• The aircraft stays airborne the entire time; it does not land, wait for enemies and then take off to attack them.

Suggestions / Notes

• Basic functionality should replicate guard for VehicleTypes - click in the middle of the area you want guarded, wait till the aircraft is there, trigger guard mode. The aircraft would then guard a circle with a radius half of GuardRange around the guard spot, continuously patrolling the outline of the circle and attacking anything entering it. (Half of GuardRange because that way, it is exactly GuardRange away from one side of the circle when it's on the exact opposite side of the circle.)
• Alternatively to attacking anything entering the area, the aircraft could attack anything it sees, though that would make the effective radius of the guard area GuardRange/2 + Sight.
• Given that aircraft might be fast and hard to target, and that units might leave the guard area quickly, the guard should weight a number of factors before deciding for a target if multiple are available:
  • How fast is the target, i.e. how quickly will it leave the guard area, evade our attack or simply outrun the aircraft?
  • How effective is the aircraft against the target, or how effective is the squadron as a whole? Killing the target quickly allows attacking multiple targets while the army crosses the guard zone.
  • ThreatPosed and Damage - iow: How dangerous is the target?
  • How tough is the target?
• One approach would be assigning points to each consideration, adding them up and shooting the target with the highest score. This ensures the engagement is not wasted on the wrong target (i.e. a slow, strongly-armored transporter could not be used to distract the guard until a dozen nuke-carrying light hitters passed through).
• If a guard spots a unit it cannot attack, or if the unit itself cannot attack (think AWACS), how should it react to enemy presence? Keep circling or follow the enemy anyway, for example for observation?
• Like ground units, aircraft should be able to guard a particular other unit for close air support. (Mind [General] -> GuardModeStray)
• [General] -> GuardAreaTargetingDelay
• GuardSound
• GUARD_AREA
• For OmniFireers, the unit should keep circling, if its range allows that, firing at the hostile while circling it.
• Depending on the guard code, enabling patrols for aircraft might be worth the effort, and a means to achieving success with this one (one would simply automagically create a patrol circle around the area to guard).

See also

• Original request
• Imported request at LaunchPad
• Blueprint meta-data at LaunchPad