Remove landing pad from reef

I'd like to make a case to remove the landing pad from the reef.

It can be a hub for drones, but I suggest for planes to stop considering it a reload pad entirely.

It's a few games now that I order my bombers to reload, and one of them (sometimes a likho) flies to a reef on the front and gets shot down by AA.

Not only that, but even if bombers don't get shot down, they repair slower than landing pad assisted by caretaker, and can even force a plane to be stuck in repair hell on the reef getting nibbled at by aa while the reef repairs.


I think it's a really cool idea to have a ship that planes can land on, but it's too low capacity and functionally too ineffective to properly behave as such. What's going to happen the vast majority of the time is the air fleet will fly to pads except one plane who will fly to reef and either repair slower or get shot down.


Heck if you want planes to reload on water, landing pads float. I see very litmited use for reef to be a carrier, only potential liability. It's already a good enough unit as a drone equipped mobile stun silo. It doesn't need to be more than that.

quote: I'd like to make a case to remove the landing pad from the reef.

You can do a similar thing as an air player without waiting for a reef redesign:

quote: Maybe it could get its own torpedo bomber drones (or scallop depth charge) in that place, that need to rearm and can only rearm on the reef.

FWIW i think the coolest would be if it could spec out different drone types and launch them deliberately in some way. E.g. as a form of stockpiled weapon.

The disarm missile could also be a type of (bomber? suicide?) drone fwiw.

And another one:


Yet I would still like to see all planes being untargetable by AA when fully landed. (regardless of reef change)

quote: Well then maybe reef could have a few caretakers on it? that would also look really cool...

That's kinda what the funnel does at the moment. I don't think we want to transform reef into water funnel.

quote: I have seen reef's aircraft carrier function being put to very good use before though, as even if it does take more time to repair, it is still faster to fly to a reef that is right there than all the way to the other end of the map to the airpad (unless you build one closer).

That's the thing. I covered this already. Pads are cheap and can be built on water without terraforming.

I have never done it, but I am pretty sure cons can repair any unit landed on a reef. It's just that front line cons are often reclaiming. I also wouldn't count on allies to repair stuff, or wouldn't ask them to if I had pad+caretaker specifically set up for that purpose.

quote: Also if it lost it's aircraft function if would need something to replace it, otherwise it would be underpowered.

Meh. How often to planes land on reef? Not that frequently. It's just to avoid a potential mistake clicking the reload button on planes instead of manually ordereing move to pad. Although if the reef does change I don't see an issue in giving it some kind of perk that doesn't overlap with what the funnel does.

quote: Another idea: the reef could have some type of AA shield at close range around it, making it so that if airplanes are landed on it, they wouldn't get shot.

I'm not gonna touch that one. I don't really care if it gets something in trade or not. Disarm missles are already pretty good. Reef used to be a moving anti nuke, in case you didn't know.

As in "Anti airborne"

If reef hitbox just be bigger than any landed plane, any AA projectile would kill reef instead of plane right?

AA hitting landed stuff makes you ask the question why AA can't hit anything on land.

Doesn't Artemis do less damage to ground stuff it hits, or am I mistaken?

i wanted to ridicule this engine-defined setting that an AA-projectile can only target a target with air property (whereby it can definately damage any unit hitbox in its path.

how is it calculated with submarines ? torpedos are also some kind of special. ground weapons can hit these subarines though in shallow water. as previously proposed, aa guns should be able to hit anything, which is above a certain height. can this be achieved by getting rid of AA guns altogether and using "ground" guns on static AA structures (or all air units). to prevent using these like normal ground units, the gun could be restricted to point mostly upwards and all flying stuff must gain a reasonable altitude?

It might already be possible to let AA target based on unit height. It would be easier to block it from targeting landed planes. I'd rather the second than the first, because whether something has landed or not is more clear cut, and baiting AA with jumping units sounds silly. It might be a good idea to wait for better engine support though.