slow dive ai

if a raven misses a target.. lets say a reaper.. it chases the reaper while still at snail pace low mode.. and if the reaper is on the move the raven cannot catch up ever.. so a slow raven drifts along the ground slower then a golly until dead.

could there be ai. that tells the plane.. you missed and need to climb to gain speed to catch the target..

as is.. if anything is running away.. then the raven chases it.. if the raven is slower it gets shot and dies.. so it cannot bomb allot of non-static units.. even heavy units can outrun it.

SmokeDragon that is doable. There are better ways to do this, but the basic idea i have in mind is a script that will overwrite the existing attack order if the raven has been chasing an enemy for longer than 3 seconds.

-let there be a local value called TimeToGiveUp set to equal 0 by default

-Execute following script once per second
-IF (the current raven in the for-loop has an attack order) AND (the speed of the current raven in the for-loop is less than half that of normal speed) THEN (mathematically add 1 to the current value of TimeToGiveUp that is assigned as a value to the current raven in the for-loop) END

-Execute the following script once per second
-IF (TimeToGiveUp for the current raven in the for-loop is greater than or equal to 3) THEN (give the raven the retreat/rearm order to overwrite the existing attack order and reset the value of TimeToGiveUp assigned to the raven)

This is poorly pseudocoded for the sake of non-programmer understanding.

personally i would make ravens simply purge targets that it cannot hope to bomb from it's attack order queue, allowing you to simply provide an area target command and allow the widget/gadget/unitAI to sort things out automatically.

The raven nerf has supremely buffed the crasher, as the crasher was already capable of outrunning ravens pre-nerf.

the raven probably wont live for longer then 3 seconds at such a speed almost at ground level.. but anything.. even if it was just cheaper.. as is they only make cost vs slow units or units not running away.. so are no-longer viable for attacking many retreating units.. even heavy units.

maybe a script would place a drag on resources with constant state checks..
individual raven id checks might multiply the workload many fold..
i cant see how a nested statement can avoid this

umm.. maybe what about a fast bomber that just drops a bomb that things can avoid.. then its good vs statics.. ok vs heavy slow units.. fast and that’s nice.. and not good vs raiders who are on the move.. kind of like ba. is it ok to mention balanced annihilation here? .. because that mod has working general purpose bombers

I suppose ZK is in a favour of anti-physics. Because irl when a plane loses attitude it gains speed not loses it.

maybe this would be a good moment to consider a phoenix buff, like napalm that lasts longer than an instant. i barely ever see them and when i do they whiff with their bombs and the fire is over before it can hit anything walking through afterward.

quote: Gravity loses altitude to gain speed?

no.

did you mean:

irl loses FTFY when gain applies engines to without speed altitude something?

Maybe this would be a good place to point out that raven dive behavior is not configurable within new unit states. Also, there's no 'dive for shields only' option, so you end up losing perfectly good behavior when using always fly high.