posted 03-08-99 08:01 PM ET            

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WITH the important proviso that they be in their HOME city. Otherwise the fighter will fly off to that city and then defend it. Which can be very irritating.

I think only [SHIFT]-L does this, too. Just pressing L will send the unit into sleep/repair or sentry mode.

posted 03-08-99 09:16 PM ET            

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Woops, I forgot to post that I meant one or the other, but I couldn't remember which.

Funny, but I had a plane in a city I had just taken, and it didn't fly back to it's home city, it stayed right where it was (and no, I didn't change its home city).

posted 03-08-99 09:27 PM ET         

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It must be the 'home' city thing that I was missing, had put them on Alert before but as you say, they kept flying off.

Thank you both for the information.

G

posted 03-08-99 09:52 PM ET            

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In that specific instance, yeah. But the night before, I had them running from close enough to fly in one turn. The secret seemed to be pressing shift-L while it was in the city you want to defend.

Once actually, I had a unit return to an ally's city, when it's home base was reachable. Weird...

posted 03-09-99 09:52 AM ET         

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Oh, so THAT'S why the suckers keep flying off to nowhere! Solution: home them to the base you want to defend around. Also, can you auto air defense from an airbase outside of a (city)base? The UoP just blasted some supply crawlers off my "PK Energy Plateau", so now i need an effective air defense there.

Also, I still not clear about what factor air superiority units "defend" with when intercepting...

posted 03-09-99 08:54 PM ET            

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It's in the manual. Air versus air always compares the attack values of the two aircraft.

Hence you pile extra armour onto an aircraft and not get charged for it - because it isn't used. This is a good way to colour code your bombers and interceptors.

Finally, the best thing against airpower is an AA chopper. One of these babies can take out three or four aircraft in a single turn, for the same price (approx) as a standard interceptor. A great way to punish a wave of airstrikes.

posted 03-10-99 07:42 PM ET         

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Shining1: Armour is used on air units - when they're attacked in cities (and, I think, when being attacked by SAM units, but I'm not sure). For this reason alone I'd like the auto-designer to put armour on my air units ... it doesn't get used often, but when I need it, I really need it.

James

posted 03-11-99 06:42 AM ET            

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To Wombat.

Units pricing in the datalinks is pretty obscure, I mean, it seems to make sense but, if you reflect on it, many statements can be ambiguously misinterpreted.
I'm not thath much int air exploitment, and I'm writing off the top of my head, but IIRC it is somewhere said that (air units only?) you can always get for free a weapon up to half the value of your armor. So, if you increase the armor to the double of your weapon, the cost drops.

Whhops, it comes to my mind, when we will engage in MP, will I have to regret my *free flow of information* principle (which I usually do not apply in gameplay)?

posted 03-11-99 05:41 PM ET         

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MoSe:

Interesting, but thats not quite it. it seems to happen in very specifice configurations. For instance, a helicopter with Tachyon beam (level 12 weapon), a fission plant and no armor and no special abilities costs 60. Add any armor strength 2-5 and the cost goes down to 50. While this seems to indicate it happens when weapon is greater than twice armor, if you change the weapon to plasma shard ( level 13) the effect dissapears, and the helicopter stays the same price when you add armor. It's oviously a quirk of the pricing scheme, but its fairly subtle. At any rate, making a unit better shouldn't make it cheaper, except of course for the improved reactors, which are designed for just that purpose.