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Author Topic:   "On Alert" interceptor weird bug

Xavier posted 03-22-99 12:05 PM ET
I have v3.0, and attempted to put (anti-Air) interceptor planes in each of my cities and set them "On Alert." Awhile later, I decided to attack a city with a normal penetrator. The penetrator attacked and killed the first unit in the enemy city, at which point every "On Alert" interceptor I had sprung to life and attempted to fly to that enemy city on my turn. It didn't matter if the city was 20+ spaces away, the interceptors still scrambled, leaving every city open to air attack.
On my next turn, the planes did fly back to their home base, but this left my cities, and the formers around them vulnerable for two turns. I tried the same thing later on, and had the same results. The only way around this was to give up my air power and just do assaults with only ground based units.
This seems awfully strange to me, anyone else seen this?
Dick Knisely posted 03-22-99 12:33 PM ET
Yep. Works that way and I don't like it either. What's happening is that the on-alert air superiority unit is flying out to provide cover for the attackers. But it fails to properly take range into account, especially if the attacker has greater range than the interceptor.
Now let's assume the range issue gets taken care of, then this behavior sorta makes sense but its not really what you (or I) wanted, at least not all the time. The trouble is that air defense is getting mixed up with air cover. What we need are two separate orders for interceptors--one is to designate an interceptor as escort for an attack and have it go along. The other is 'stay here and defend this area from air attack' -- real air defense. An a/c with such an order then ignores any friendly attack a/c because that's got nothing to do with defending an area.
What we've got is Alert (shift-L) that makes the interceptors run all over the place leaving the base/area undefended or we can do Sentry (L) and they'll stay home and defend that base but ignore an air attack on the former right next to the base.
Quickest fix is to change Alert (shift-L) to be what we want--stay here and defend against air attacks within your range. The escort function can get done manually if we can't get a separate order for interceptors. Doing the escort manually is clumsy, but the air _defense_ role can't be done at all manually so the tradeoff is easy there.
Xavier posted 03-23-99 10:32 AM ET
FIRAXIS - Is this a bug that will be addressed?
mauibound posted 03-26-99 10:15 AM ET
Just wanted to put my 2 cents in that DK's ideas would be a very valuable enhancement... I can't see how the air intercept function is very useful as is.
One further suggestion to DK's idea is to have the computer ask you for a "range" when you set a plane to intercept... the interceptor will then only attack enemy units that come within that range of it...
Hope some change along the lines of DK's ideas makes the list for a future patch..

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Author	Topic: "On Alert" interceptor weird bug
Xavier	posted 03-22-99 12:05 PM ET I have v3.0, and attempted to put (anti-Air) interceptor planes in each of my cities and set them "On Alert." Awhile later, I decided to attack a city with a normal penetrator. The penetrator attacked and killed the first unit in the enemy city, at which point every "On Alert" interceptor I had sprung to life and attempted to fly to that enemy city on my turn. It didn't matter if the city was 20+ spaces away, the interceptors still scrambled, leaving every city open to air attack. On my next turn, the planes did fly back to their home base, but this left my cities, and the formers around them vulnerable for two turns. I tried the same thing later on, and had the same results. The only way around this was to give up my air power and just do assaults with only ground based units. This seems awfully strange to me, anyone else seen this?
Dick Knisely	posted 03-22-99 12:33 PM ET Yep. Works that way and I don't like it either. What's happening is that the on-alert air superiority unit is flying out to provide cover for the attackers. But it fails to properly take range into account, especially if the attacker has greater range than the interceptor. Now let's assume the range issue gets taken care of, then this behavior sorta makes sense but its not really what you (or I) wanted, at least not all the time. The trouble is that air defense is getting mixed up with air cover. What we need are two separate orders for interceptors--one is to designate an interceptor as escort for an attack and have it go along. The other is 'stay here and defend this area from air attack' -- real air defense. An a/c with such an order then ignores any friendly attack a/c because that's got nothing to do with defending an area. What we've got is Alert (shift-L) that makes the interceptors run all over the place leaving the base/area undefended or we can do Sentry (L) and they'll stay home and defend that base but ignore an air attack on the former right next to the base. Quickest fix is to change Alert (shift-L) to be what we want--stay here and defend against air attacks within your range. The escort function can get done manually if we can't get a separate order for interceptors. Doing the escort manually is clumsy, but the air _defense_ role can't be done at all manually so the tradeoff is easy there.
Xavier	posted 03-23-99 10:32 AM ET FIRAXIS - Is this a bug that will be addressed?
mauibound	posted 03-26-99 10:15 AM ET Just wanted to put my 2 cents in that DK's ideas would be a very valuable enhancement... I can't see how the air intercept function is very useful as is. One further suggestion to DK's idea is to have the computer ask you for a "range" when you set a plane to intercept... the interceptor will then only attack enemy units that come within that range of it... Hope some change along the lines of DK's ideas makes the list for a future patch..