Jets & Planes but no UAV's here.

[DRG]

That said I may have just hit on a solution........more after testing and you can test too

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

That said I may have just hit on a solution........more after testing and you can test too

Oh?
It'd be nice to see gunships actually become useful.

If the initial testing looks promising I'd be more then happy to drop it into my "Walking Dead" scenario as that sort of mass assault would be just the Kind of thing a gunship crew would have wet dreams about.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

That said I may have just hit on a solution........more after testing and you can test too

Oh?
It'd be nice to see gunships actually become useful.

If the initial testing looks promising I'd be more then happy to drop it into my "Walking Dead" scenario as that sort of mass assault would be just the kind of thing a gunship crew would have wet dreams about.

[DRG]

Test failed.......it would not work across all unit types

[Suhiir]

'E' for effort Don!

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

I appreciate the effort here my thoughts are, in thinking outside of the box...

1) KISS A. Straight line of attack like normal Planes/Jets even to the extent of the player to pick entry/exit as it exists in the game. This will cause the player "to think" about the gunships orientation in regards to weapons on target. Have it come in the wrong direction with the guns on the wrong side of the target hex the gunship either aborts or we allow it to fire away either way you risk wasting the mission, getting shot down or if we let it shoot, possibly hitting other enemy units or your own (Think of this as receiving bad target coordinates or a breakdown in the chain of command - Afghanistan comes to mind as just recently within the last three weeks that hospital was hit. A few people don't have to worry about any further promotion/or retirement.) and...

B. The target area I think should be 7 hexes/350m long with the center hex being the "target" hex chosen by the player, this would be bordered on each side by one row of 6 hexes/300m. The plane should standoff from the target area grid edge by no less then about 6 hexes/300m this should allow for the newer "birds" to fire the VIPER STRIKE Top Attack ATGW and give if you will a sense of altitude. Understand due to the suggested target area entry and departure of the plane could be limited to straight cardinal headings in regards to the game map.

C. The older gunships might be firing in the "blind" within the target area but if units are hidden they should still obviously suffer suppression and casualties. The newer ones will see the targets on approach within the current parameters of the game (TI/GSR), if armed with "VIPER STRIKE" it should attack armored units as a Plane/Jet can. Machine, Gatling and 105mm guns would fire once the plane is flying parallel to the target area.

2) Keeping the elements of B and C above, have the gunship using only the top and or bottom corners of the map/monitor screen, flying in about a 15-20 arc from corner to corner on the attack run.

All weapons should be able to attack targets within the target area, or, at a minimum the ones in the "center" hex line while suppressing/or causing light damage to the targets on the "border" hex lines. Gunships should be limited to 2-4 turns and or passes with fully loaded weapons. The AC-47 carried 2000lbs or 1 ton of ammo onboard when it flew missions. Results of a well documented attack on an NVA company has been used by many sources and was included in the ref I used in my last post, and is re-posted below. Even the AC-47 in Vietnam was able to stay on station for 8 hours doing "lazy" circles waiting for the call. I believe that's why the KISS concept would work as I believe that I've read the operating attack radius was either 2.5 or 5 miles from the target area.

Yeah it's work and all I can do is provide raw data. I would love to see a solution, however, I would fully understand if one can't be found and we're back to my original question as posted above.

http://www.dc3history.org/aircraftmi...gicdragon.html

Well I'm beat, long night at the "office" so...well Good Morning!!

Regards,
Pat

[Suhiir]

Even giving the current gunship a "beaten zone" would help.

Right now they circle the target hex and hit only the target hex.
If they were to hit the target hex and all adjacent hexes that would help tremendously. Yeah a 150m circle isn't realistically accurate, but it's something that might be able to be done with the game engine.

[DRG]

Changing the weapon class from 11 to 14 does somewhat what you want but it's a kludge that doesn't work with all unit classes ( and leaves annoying mines behind occasionally ...... ) and adding new weapons just for the GS class is not an option. The solution would be a new WC just for multi-barreled weapons that works in Gunships, aircraft and helos with multi hex graphics like cluster munitions but using the auto cannon ,multi hit animation rather than the multi-mini explosion graphic but that's a F%$@ of a lot of work for a niche weapons system ( no matter how much it's loved by some)

[Suhiir]

Yeah obviously a new WC is not a solution.
I just thought (of course with zero knowledge of the game code) that since they are already programmed to circle strafe a target hex it might be possible to have them hit multiple hexes simultaneously.
Just brainstorming.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Yeah obviously a new WC is not a solution.
I just thought (of course with zero knowledge of the game code) that since they are already programmed to circle strafe a target hex it might be possible to have them hit multiple hexes simultaneously.
Just brainstorming.

Try a test run with blast circles on, and you will see that it does affect the hexes alongside the target hex.

Also, sometimes it fires into an adjacent hex to the target hex.

So, yes it does affect the surrounding hexes, so it does have a "multiple hex" affect, if there is a horde of VC packed in there to annoy.

But once again, the class was written because a scenario designer way back when wanted to have "spooky" in a scenario. They circle a hex, and beat it up with area fire. That is all they do, and so the things are only of use to a scenario designer, who has rigged the enemy not to have credible AAA (it is night, and the foe is low-tech with no radar AAA).