Bomber-Cons

quote: It's a bomber. It has to go home and refuel between shots. This effectively gives it a capped buildpower. All it does is place static builders - those builders in turn must assemble the defenses. That means putting a lot of unnecessary immobile BP out in the field - just capping mexes with this thing would be a nightmare unless they were clustered close enough that you could cap multiple with a single builder. I'd be more worried about it being UP or micro-hell (instead of just ordering a nearby con to go do something, you've got to order a bomber to drop the builder and then start assigning orders to the builder once it appears). The excess-field-BP problem could be balanced with some kind of high-efficiency self-reclaim command tied to the immobile builder or something, but that only makes even more micro for simple mex claiming. Yeah, it would be tricky.

You've identified all the problems with a bomb-con Pxtl.
I've thought about this for a long time and the best way would just be an automated drone which inherits the build order of the plane. Flying drone for minimal obstruction, or land for AA immunity (so the bomber can operate into light AA), or low-flying non-AA drone if people can stomach it.

There should be a limit to drones per con so you cannot spam them at the air pad.

One problem is that the bomber will drop a drone on an uncompleted build order even if the current drone is more than capable of completing it. But as long as the build order is merely inherited and the two can be ordered independently this should not be too much of a micro burden to avoid.

We only really need two bits of new lua for this: A limit for drones per plane (the current drone lua wont work for this) and inheriting orders from the parent. The bomber may need to be informed when it's constructions are finished though, because I believe cons still try and execute and order which has been built over.

Gunship and plane factories are the only two factories that share a constructor. I was thinking that planes needs a constructor that acts like a plane. My ideas:

1: Bomber. As a bomber, it needs to rearm at an air pad. rearming cost metal and energy equal to the BP it drops. When the bomber drips it's payload, it drops a self reclaiming constructor. The dropped constructor inherits the build order of the bomber. This constructor reclaims it's self as it builds, this way it does not use metal and energy a second time.

2: Sighting fighter. As a fighter, it needs to continually move forward. This unit would not be good at assisting one project, but would add BP for several projects as it patrols. The more construction projects it has the more BP it could use.

3: Landing plane. The plane needs to land to build. Once landed it can construct. When BP needs to be elsewhere, it can take off and quickly move to another location.

4: Turret plane. The plane has a turret that can be aimed to the side. The range of the nano turret needs to be at least equal to its turn radius so that it can continually work on a project while it circles it.

Why cannot the air builder orbit like a c-130 gunship

http://defenceanalyst.wordpress.com/tag/artillery/

EDIT: Post moved to new thread- http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/4499

You're misunderstanding Pxtl. Here orbiting means that the constructor would be circling its target, not stopping like the gunship constructors do.

And by higher altitude I didn't mean up in space, I simply meant higher than the gunships con, to make a distinction between the units. Just as planes in general fly higher than gunships.

Edit: But yes, having simply two different constructors that both use the gunship flying model would be fine. Cost, speed, buildpower, HP, flying altitude... there's many ways that they can differ.

Good point. Propellers are really good. Can plausibly use the hovering gunship movetype, while also being fast like a plane.

Interesting thought: if we went with a nanotower-like bomb that is placed by an air unit (athena? Whichever), could it also be an air pad? That would be a good way to get the air repair pads out of the general build list and into the plane lab where it belongs.

Then again, if a nanotower can double as an airpad, it's worth considering making the basic nanotower into an airpad (and remove the standard 4-pad). But that's offtopic.

Okay, so you say a giant nano factory will assign construction to airplane...

But what about bomber-con that I propose? I propose a bomber-constructor that bomb a nanoframe that instantly complete a certain % of the construction. So it would look & act like airplane but without new stuff.

but to build a construction pad + aircon is an added complexity, right?

More easier is to skip construction pad, and let each aircon create and drop their own 100metal nano-bomb (without needing construction pad).

AI stuff is really hard.

What you suggest is to make construction pad as command&control unit. This is mind boogling hard problem.

Also, you need to control air-con indirectly. Which is not fun. Its like an AI force move unit and you can't control it (it will be super annoying if AI is not as perfect as player himself).