Yes, I will redo the 'air' component of ground combat at some point, probably by introducing a new ground unit type to represent helicopters / attack aircraft / fighter etc.
A bit late to the party but since you've recently started back up posting AAR's after starting your nomadic life I figured now may be a good time to start throwing ideas at you. While there have been many many suggestions for an aircraft unit type, not many actually go in depth on how to actually implement them besides broad strokes "GSF but less micro and mo' better", which is an alright start but we could definitely go deeper. The main topics to discuss is what separates an Air vehicle from a ground vehicle in terms of design and how they interact with ground units, Anti-Air, and each other in regards to the ground combat phase.
First we need to discuss the actual physical characteristics. In game the size of unit base types and components is supposed to roughly correspond to not just the physical weight of an individual unit but the overall logistical support equipment needed to operate and transport it. With that in mind, aircraft should be very very large in comparison to ground units with the same weapon capabilities. Just simply speaking from personal experience as a RQ-7 shadow pilot, in order for my platoon to operate our 4x drones (which together weigh less than a ton) we need close to 20 tons of equipment, fuel, and spare parts, not including our dozen vehicles and the ~30 personnel with all of their individual needs. The helicopter squadrons I work with are even larger and have an incredibly large logistical train. The upkeep is even more strenuous; fuel, ammunition, and spare parts chewed through at incredible rates and should be represented by significant GSP costs.
Secondly in regards to physical attributes, aircraft are incredibly difficult to hit when flying around, just from the combination of speed, distance , and altitude that they operate at. Even slow moving and low flying aircraft like helicopters are notoriously difficult to shoot down with unguided weaponry. This should be represented by a very low To Hit modifier. Conversely, they are very fragile. If you can hit an aircraft it doesn't take much to bring it down. It is also extremely difficult to armor anything on aircraft based on simple power-to-weight ratios, bigger aircraft do sometimes have the spare weight to armor only the most vital of areas like the engines and cockpit, but this is pretty minimal to the ability to armor up ground vehicles.
Thirdly, what components shall aircraft utilize. For now I'm only going to talk about what they should have, but further down I intend to detail how these will be used in the actual combat phase as I believe aircraft need some special rules, similar to bombardment. I believe aircraft should be able to equip CAP, Auto Cannon, and Anti-Air weapons as they are now (might need tweaking to AA weapon parameters), AA components obviously being for use against hostile air units, while CAP and AC would be a sort of dual purpose weapon targeting both air and ground units. For attacking ground targets I am split between giving aircraft access to Anti-Vehicle and Bombardment weapons, or giving them a new Air-to-Ground component that blends the 2 together, again I'll detail out the +/- further in the Air Combat Phase. Moving on though, non-combat equipment, FFD is a must. It is only the the first and foremost job of aircraft to be a scout/reconnaissance force and to direct friendly fires, from the first scout aircraft of the 1910s, to modern unmanned drones. Logistics equipment should also be available with new rules detailed down below.
Lastly, the first true special rules for aircraft is how they truly do not benefit from the terrain and can not physically dig in fortify their position, because well, there is no dirt in the sky. Sure they land on runways and can be stored in protected hangars, but in its hangar it is all but useless for actual combat. Their domain is above the surface with all of its helpful concealment and cover, thus they should have no ability to fortify whatsoever, to include terrain fortification bonuses. Aircraft don't care if they are flying over a desert, ocean, jungle, or mountain, and are practically speaking equally vulnerable to ground fire from all terrains. However, they absolutely should still be affected by environmental factors. High Gravity worlds need stronger engines, propellers and jet engines don't work if their is no atmosphere, cant fly if your fuel would boil in the extremely high temperatures. I believe the easiest way to implement would be to give all aircraft a permanent but hidden capability trait (boarding, jungle, etc) that gives the inverse bonus/malus of all terrain types from desert all the way to jungle mountains.
Lets take these notes and layout our base unit types with some sample parameters. - Disclaimer, all values should be subject to change for balance and playtesting, I tutored calculus a decade ago but I am by no means a mathematician
Air Unit Base Types
| Base Unit | Size | HP | Slots | To Hit Mod | Max Fort | Armor | Available Components |
| Ultra-Light Air Vehicle | 72 | 1.0-1.5 | 1 | 0.05 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MBL, LAV, LAA, LAG, FFD, LOG |
| Light Air Vehicle | 120 | 1.5-2.5 | 2 | 0.1 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, MBL, LAV, MAV, LAA, MAA, LAG, MAG, FFD, LOG? |
| Medium Air Vehicle | 240 | 2-4 | 3 | 0.15 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x), Armored (2.0-2.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, HAC, MBL, HB, LAV, MAV, HAV, LAA, MAA, HAA, LAG, MAG, HAG, FFD, LOG? |
| Heavy Air Vehicle | 360 | 3-5 | 4 | 0.2 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x), Armored (2.0-2.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, HAC, MBL, HB, SHB, LAV, MAV, HAV, SHAV, LAA, MAA, HAA, LAG, MAG, HAG, SHAG, FFD, LOG? |
Possible Air-to-Ground component attributes
| Component Name | Abbreviation | Size | Penetration | Damage | Shots |
| Light Air-to-Ground | LAG | 20 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 3-4 |
| Medium Air-to-Ground | MAG | 40 | 4-6 | 4-6 | 2 |
| Heavy Air-to-Ground | HAG | 80 | 8 | 8 | 1-2 |
| Super-Heavy Air-to-Ground | SHAG | 120 | 10 | 10 | 1 |
So, what does that leave us with. Aircraft would be oversized equivalents to ground units that while they are more difficult to hit, (though with no ability to fortify) they are otherwise very squishy and easy to kill. Honestly, they don't sound too appealing as is with a lot of downsides with only 1 minor upside. We need something more to actually make them interesting and competitive. I think the 2 key features of aircraft should be based on their freedom of movement. First, they ignore the target weighting of elements and formations in Support and Rear Echelon positions and non-combat status. This creates a dynamic of cutting down enemy logistics and HQ, crippling the frontline units ability to fight. While this is already somewhat possible with current breakthrough mechanics, this should be the core feature of aircraft. Second, they can resupply any unit globally, rather than just internal of a specific unit and its parent formations. Not only would this be a huge boon allowing resupply laterally and independently of the normal supply chain, we could also implement a new feature where if an intermediate formation is destroyed, it would cut off the supply chain from higher units to lower ones, which would be more likely with aircraft attacking the backlines. Air logistics would therefore be the only way to resupply the frontlines until reorganization happens. Also opens up an important function of one of my bonus suggestion.
Now for the nitty gritty of how Air-to-Air, Air-to-Ground, and Ground-to-Air combat works. I think it best to implement semi-separate Air Combat phases that precede the Direct combat, Support Fire, Ground AA, and Resupply phases already in place. I don't think we need any additional field positions, the current ones 4 will suffice to more than adequately replicate all IRL combat.
How I propose the Air Combat phase to resolve is as follows:
Direct Air combat
1.) Aircraft in Frontline Attack with AA weapons select an Air element to engage, LAA can target Frontline Attack and Frontline Defense, MAA can target Support, and HAA can target Rear Echelon.
2.) Aircraft in Frontline Attack with AV, B, or AG weapons select a ground element to engage. No position range limitations like AA.
3.) Aircraft in Frontline Defense with AA, CAP or AC weapons select an air element or with AV, B, AG, CAP, or AC select a ground element to engage. Like ground vehicles, frontline defense can still only target other frontline units.
4.) In the regular direct combat phase, Ground based AA in frontline positions can target aircraft with the same range restrictions listed above
5.) All other ground elements can potentially target aircraft with any weapon to simulate attacking grounded aircraft at an airfield.
Air Support
1.) Aircraft in Support of another formation with FFD engage the same target if able with the appropriate weapons. i.e. supporting a ground element in the form of CAS, or if supporting an "Air Scout" with FFD engages the air or ground targets in the form of Fighter Direction or SEAD like missions.
2.) Aircraft in Support of another formation without FFD engage elements targeting the supported formation, range does not matter so can be used as counterbattery fire as well. CAS again or if supporting an air element this could be your fighter escort.
3.) Regular ground and orbital Bombardment support follows
Anti-Air (pretty much just duplicating current AA rules, but adding CAP and AC)
1.) Units with AA, CAP, or AC can engage air-targets which targeted them.
2.) Units with MAA or HAA not directly attacked can engage if they are the parent formation
3.) Units with HAA can engage any air target regardless of parent/daughter formation
Air Resupply (the only Air phase which resolves after the ground part)
1.) Like normal, unit checks parent formation(s) for LVH-LOG or pulls from integral INF-LOGS
2.) If a unit has no more internal LOG or can not pull from higher echelons, it picks a random air unit to draw on.
[Note, I did opt to have all aircraft sizes able to equip LOG components, though easiest implementation of course would just to let ULAV but I have another bonus suggestion below]
In summary
In real life, the defining characteristic of aircraft is their freedom of maneuverability. Their ability to fly over complex terrain that would otherwise halt ground movement, their ability to fly beyond the frontlines to spot and engage the enemy, and using their flight to keep safe distances from the ground making them difficult to hit. However, once they are hit, gravity's everlasting pull will take advantage of even the slightest bit of damage, and all of it comes at a very high logistical cost. We represent these factors in-game by giving them the ignorance of fortification and terrain bonuses, allowing them to engage support and rear echelon units without weighted hinderance, but all at a significant size cost and very low defensive capabilities making them easier to destroy.
I know this suggestion isn't above criticism, I do have concerns myself. #1 What the hell should the 3/4 letter acronym be!?!? I used ULAV above but LAV/MAV/HAV could be confused with Anti-Vehicle, as well another common shorthand for Aircraft being AC which would be confused with Auto-Cannon. Do we just accept another scenario like MSP and MSP (Missile Size Points and Maintenance Supply Points) or try to shoehorn another less-intuitive letter combination? I'm partial to just do AIR or AR for UAIR/LAIR/MAIR/HAIR or ULAR/LAR/MAR/HAR, but my brain just doesn't want to accept it. Could also go along the lines of what I actually fly, the US Army calls its drones UAS, Unmanned Aircraft System, so we could have ULAS/LAS/MAS/HAS.
But more seriously, I can't decide whether Aircraft should utilize Anti-Vehicle and Bombardment weapons separately to engage ground targets or to combine the 2 into a new Air-to-Ground weapon which kinda blends them together. I see merit to both, AG (I think) simplifies coding to not have to worry about the special rules of B in combat when AV lack them. On the other hand separating makes it easier of not needing to make a new weapon type to have to try and balance as well as giving more design and roleplay choices to have AV represent large bore cannons or guided anti-tank weaponry versus general purpose bombs.
With current GSP cost being based solely on components rather than base unit types, we can't really replicate the heightened logistical cost of aircraft besides making them very big tonnage wise. We kinda get it with AA weapons being able to fire a second time in the Anti-air combat phase, but its really just shooting again rather than costing twice as much. Ideally, base unit type should be a partial factor in GSP cost, maybe along the lines of INF-1x, LVH-1.5x, VEH-2x, HVH-2.5x, SHV-4x, UHV-6x, ULAR-2x, LAR-4x, MAR-6x, HAR-8x. I dunno, just spitballing as a precursor bonus suggestion.
The other big thing being in order to make aircraft somewhat viable and interesting in my eyes is that we have to give them very specific rule exceptions which kinda breaks Steve's design philosphy for Aurora C#, as well may be a P.I.T.A. to code. I do think that what I've suggested is minor enough bend in the rules to keep things interesting and in the same vein as bombardment and counter-battery fire, and GSF mechanics.
But that's pretty much all I got for the main suggestion of ground unit aircraft and how they'd fit. So on to the Bonus Suggestions that semi-correlate to the above new mechanics.
1.) Special Forces Infantry - Being able to directly target Support and Rear Echelon troops without the weighting is a big deal for aircraft, but I don't think it should be completely exclusive to them. I think giving Infantry (and maybe Light vehicles) a capability trait called "Unconventional Warfare" or "Special Operations" or something else along those lines would be pretty neat. Thematically I imagine sneaking in a company or battalion onto a heavily guarded planet with drop pods to try and take out STO units (which tend to be very large and set to Rear Echelon and non-combat) before bringing in your main invasion force. The problem though is even if you made the capability absurdly expensive, whats to stop you from just adding it to all infantry which would be absolutely broken. Realistically, Infantry fighting behind enemy lines are pretty much cut off from the friendly supply chain unless they get an air drop, so I think the best way to dial them back is to give them an exception to the normal resupply mechanics. Infantry with the UW/SO tag would be unable to resupply from LVH-LOG of its parent formations, I'm iffy about INF-LOGS but as they could be given the tag I think it would be fine, but when the formation burns through its INF-LOGS it should only be able to resupply from air logistics. However, this also leaves open the question of how to defend against Special Forces Infantry which leads me into suggestion #...
2.) In addition to the Anti-Air phase, there should be a "Self-Defense" phase that enables ground units with offensive elements in Support or Rear Echelon to retaliate against breakthrough attacks and (if added) Special Forces attacks. This is something that has been brought up before, in that currently in-game it is completely and utterly wasteful to put weapons other than Bombardment or AA in the back line as they will never ever actually shoot. It's not that big a deal mechanically now since the backlines will only ever get attacked when the front is mostly broken and victory is all but inevitable. But if we make the rear vulnerable from aircraft and (possibly) Infantry, we should give them a chance to pucker up and defend themselves. The simple rule would just be ff a unit is attacked while in Support or Rear Echelon, any offensive elements within the unit may target the attackers. I don't think we need to get to crazy with parent formations and supporting units engaging as well, besides the current Anti-Air rules. This opens up massive design considerations of how much weaponry to you allocate to defend your units, or do you forgo it all together to concentrate firepower on the frontlines and much more.
3.) In regards to letting larger vehicles with multiple slots also carry Logistics components. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of LOG units simply disappearing when used up, but changing that up would require its own separate suggestion to rewrite the baseline mechanics. But working with current mechanics I think multiple LOG components as well as mixing LOG and offensive components could be viable and interesting. Similar to bonus suggestion #2, having your rear line units able to defend themselves would be necessary with my mechanics changes, and simply putting a HCAP on a VEH an addition to a LOG component would make that supply factor be more survivable when attacked. However, if we were going to have a Heavy Cargo Aircraft (HAS-4x LOG) it would be incredibly tonnage inefficient for a negligible increase in survivability in comparson to 4x LVH-LOG (560t vs 248t), and if it gets consumed, thats a not insignificant vendarite and wealth cost that disappears with it. In order to make larger vehicle logistics more viable, it give them a scaling effect that decreases their chance to be consumed. Using the example in the original ground combat supply post. We have a combat element which requires 1200 GSP and we have 4 groups of logistics vehicles 3x LVH with 500 GSP Each, 2x VEH with 1000GSP Each, 1x SHV with 1500 GSP and a UHV with 2000 GSP. As per the original mechanics, the first group would consume 2x LVH and a 40% chance of consuming the third. For the 2nd group lets give 2x LOG modules a 10% reduced chance to being consumed, so the First vehicle would have a 10% chance to survive even if all its GSP is "used" (1000/1000x1.1) and the second would have a 22% chance to survive (200/1000x1.1). 3x Log modules could give a 25% bonus so the 1x SHV would have a 100% chance to survive (1200/1500x1.25) and the UHV a 50% bonus for a 90%? chance to survive (1200/2000x1.5) [numbers need tweaking, like I said before, I'm no mathematician]. I think it's a pretty decent trade off if we are considering our supply lines to be more actively be engaged, sacrificing raw total logistical tonnage for better protection and an increased chance to get some "free" supplies as well.
4.) Last Bonus Suggestion, Low Orbit AIrcraft Insertion - This would be the most complex thing to add, but giving air units a capability trait like boarding combat but rather able to launch from troop transports to the surface without drop transport bays. This could be expanded with air units with LOG components increasing the (un)loading rate assisting the ships cargo shuttles. Though this is probably too much coding effort for something thats practically already down with just Drop bays but limiting it to only specific units.
To wrap everything up, we should also consider what we are doing with Ground Support Fighters with their Fighter Pods. In my opinion, I think we could forgo and elliminate the GSF concept all together if we were to add ground air units. Just have fighters follow the same orbital bombardment support mechanics already in place, which are already simplified to apply to fleets as a whole rather than individual GSF's. Orbital Bombardment also becomes more effective when using Airborne FFD units (and possibly Special Forces FFD) to be able to better target Anti-Air or STO units which would have higher chances of being selected for engagement.
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Again, no need to restrict it here.
