Aircraft Implementation

[LuuBluum (OP)]

We know as has been mentioned a few times now that there will be some sort of implementation of "aircraft units" to replace ground support fighters. Figured that I'd offer a suggestion as to how they should work in a way that meshes well with existing systems.

Goal of this suggestion is a few things:

• Aircraft should be "more cumbersome" than vehicles of equivalent size
• Aircraft should rely on their unique characteristics to avoid damage
• Aircraft should fulfill a unique niche based on their characteristics
• No weapon should be "useless" on an aircraft

So with that in mind, I came up with this suggestion for an implementation for aircraft as a type of ground unit. Note that I'm not going to specify hard numbers simply because I'm not great at balance.

There are five types of aircraft: Light Aircraft (LAC), Aircraft (AIC), Heavy Aircraft (HAC), Super-Heavy Aircraft (SHA), and Ultra-Heavy Aircraft (UHA). The base tonnage of each should be higher than the corresponding vehicle base tonnage for a given size (since tonnage represents "transport tonnage" rather than necessarily size, and aircraft are going to be inherently larger and more complex, though lighter, than their landed counterparts). The base health and base armor should be lower than the corresponding vehicle for a given size (the need to remain airborne makes aircraft inherently more fragile than a land vehicle, and the need to be lighter means less armor for a given "weight class"). The to-hit modifier for an aircraft should be lower than the corresponding vehicle for a given size (aircraft are going to have inherently more maneuverability).

Aircraft, in terms of what weapons can be mounted on them, are similar to vehicles. However, they are "offset by one"; light aircraft can mount light anti-vehicle weapons but not medium, for instance. This is to match up with the reduced weight of aircraft so that they can maintain flight.

Aircraft cannot fortify (how would something airborne fortify?). To compensate for this, all ground units that aren't aircraft have a significantly reduced chance to hit aircraft with any weapon that isn't anti-air. The equation for whether or not a given attack will hit an aircraft is To Hit Chance / Environment Modifier * Ground-Versus-Air Modifier. The Ground-Versus-Air modifier is 1 when the attacking weapon is an anti-air weapon or the attacking unit is an aircraft. The value it has otherwise is, again, left for those better at balancing this sort of thing than me. Attacking aircraft are not immune to environment modifiers (as compared to ground support fighters, which were).

All aircraft can support other units regardless of armament from the support position. If an aircraft is mounting a bombardment weapon, the rules of bombardment weapons apply for target selection, not for from what position they can support. Otherwise, any weapon that does not otherwise interact with support bombardment (so, not medium bombardment, long-range bombardment, heavy bombardment, or super-heavy bombardment) will be engaged if the selected formation to attack during the support attack is the hostile front-line formation. This is to represent close air support. Heavy aircraft and super-heavy aircraft can support other units from the rear echelon position as well as the support position.

Aircraft with bombardment armaments work exactly the same as any other vehicle with bombardment armaments. An aircraft supporting another unit will engage the hostile formation with all of its weapons if not performing counter-battery fire. If performing counter-battery fire (i.e. the target selection chooses a supporting formation rather than the hostile front-line formation), the unit is treated like it is not an aircraft and no special benefits are conferred (i.e. the logic is the same as if you had a heavy vehicle with an autocannon and heavy bombardment supporting; the autocannon would do nothing). If in the rear echelon, supporting aircraft can only engage with heavy bombardment regardless of target selection, just like any other vehicle.

Aircraft, when not supporting other units, have unique combat mechanics. Light aircraft in the support position work like light bombardment units do presently; they will attack alongside formations in the frontline position in the same fashion, being assigned a hostile frontline formation to attack. A light bombardment weapon mounted on an aircraft in the support position will ignore the 25% support position weight modifier when targeting a hostile formation. Medium aircraft in the support position work by the same mechanics above, except they disregard the 25% support position weight modifier for hostile formation target selection. Heavy aircraft in the support position or rear echelon position, like medium aircraft in the support position, ignore the 25% support position weight modifier when targeting a hostile formation, but they also ignore the 5% rear echelon position weight modifier. That is to say, a heavy aircraft can freely target any hostile formation regardless of position. Super-heavy and ultra-heavy aircraft work the same as heavy aircraft. Aircraft in this regard work almost the same as bombardment weapons, except they do this without having to support another unit to do so, and can do so regardless of their equipped weapon. This is to capture the idea of search-and-destroy missions, which allow aircraft to fulfill a unique niche of being able to arbitrarily target formations in support or rear echelon positions outside of counter-battery fire scenarios.

The modifier for targeting support position formations weight is 0.25/(1 - 0.75(tonnage of medium or heavier aircraft / total formation tonnage)). The equation for rear echelon position weight is 0.05/(1-0.95(tonnage of heavy or heavier aircraft / total formation tonnage)). Aircraft, like all other units, can only engage the enemy when in a frontline position if not supporting (unless armed with light bombardment, in which case they can engage the enemy from the support position).

Much as anti-vehicle weapons do not confer a unit to try to attack vehicles, aircraft targeting does not prioritize any particular units: they will not try to engage aircraft or anti-air any more or less than any other unit. Why should aircraft have unique targeting mechanics that aren't conferred onto other units? Any attacking aircraft's chance to hit an enemy unit is To Hit Chance / Environment Modifier * Fortification Modifier. Since aircraft can't fortify, any aircraft targeting another aircraft will have a chance to hit of simply To Hit Chance / Environment Modifier (that is, their fortification modifier is 1).

Anti-air weapons work the same as they currently do (just replace "aircraft" with "aircraft unit"), except the chance to hit is simply To Hit Chance / Environment Modifier. You can mount anti-air weapons on aircraft (though I struggle to see how it'd be a good idea; perhaps someone else has more creativity than I do).

For non-weaponry, aircraft can mount FFD components. This, coupled with the targeting scheme above, means it's possible to have "recon" aircraft that act as spotters for orbital bombardment that can engage the rear echelon. They can also mount HQ components, though again this seems like an especially terrible idea.


The net result of all these mechanics? Aircraft let you turn any weapon into a bombardment weapon with similar mechanics, except their ability to hit behind the enemy front line isn't limited to counter-battery fire (though they are capable of doing that as well). They are also very hard to hit by fire from the ground. However, they are vulnerable to anti-air fire and other aircraft, and are generally more expensive and weaker than their vehicle counterparts.

[Aloriel]

One thing I see missing in your well thought out suggestion is how to handle airless worlds and thick air worlds.

Most planets have no air at all. Of those that do, most have a different atmospheric pressure than Earth. It seems to me that aircraft would cease to function on airless worlds (barring special technology). They have no air on which to use their wings. Thick atmosphere also presents a problem. Thicker atmosphere creates additional drag and therefore would reduce range and speed of aircraft.

The solution to this that I see is this:
* Aircraft work fine within the confines of your racial atmospheric pressure range. If people can breathe (or don't explode/implode due to pressure), aircraft can function normally.
* Outside of this range, aircraft begin to suffer penalties clear down to 0% effectiveness at 0 atmo and at double the upper end of racial limits, scaling logarithmically. This is adjusted by technology.
* Technology could be researched that increases baseline effectiveness for zero atmosphere (Call it VTOL capability or what have you)
* Another kind of tech could extend the upper range limit for thick atmosphere

[LuuBluum (OP)]

One thing I see missing in your well thought out suggestion is how to handle airless worlds and thick air worlds.

Most planets have no air at all. Of those that do, most have a different atmospheric pressure than Earth. It seems to me that aircraft would cease to function on airless worlds (barring special technology). They have no air on which to use their wings. Thick atmosphere also presents a problem. Thicker atmosphere creates additional drag and therefore would reduce range and speed of aircraft.

The solution to this that I see is this:
* Aircraft work fine within the confines of your racial atmospheric pressure range. If people can breathe (or don't explode/implode due to pressure), aircraft can function normally.
* Outside of this range, aircraft begin to suffer penalties clear down to 0% effectiveness at 0 atmo and at double the upper end of racial limits, scaling logarithmically. This is adjusted by technology.
* Technology could be researched that increases baseline effectiveness for zero atmosphere (Call it VTOL capability or what have you)
* Another kind of tech could extend the upper range limit for thick atmosphere

That's the environment modifier factor, which is still applying to aircraft combat. Just as vehicles need gravity/pressure/temperature accommodations, so do aircraft.

It's a bit simplistic, but it keeps in line with how all other ground unit systems work. "Aircraft" is a bit of a misnomer; it's just a vehicle designed to be above the surface of a planet, rather than at surface level. The actual mechanism by which these aircraft operate are left to the imagination, but we can assume that they're going to need to be bigger and lighter than things on land, but also inherently be faster by virtue of not needing to contend with limitations of terrain.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

Had some thoughts on this. To revise my initial suggestion:

Aircraft that are not supporting another unit can only attack from the front line. Light aircraft have the same targeting as other units; medium aircraft remove the 25% support position modifier, and heavy aircraft and above remove the 5% rear echelon position modifier. Light bombardment weapons now simply allow attacking from support positions with that same targeting logic; in other words, light bombardment now works with aircraft the exact same way it works with every other unit (though the target selection remains the same; a formation of exclusively heavy aircraft armed with light bombardment can engage the rear echelon of the enemy from the support position). Additionally, the special logic for medium and heavy bombardment for aircraft is gone; now those weapons also work like they do on any other craft with regard to what position said aircraft can hold with those weapons. Close air support can only be done from the support position; aircraft in the rear echelon position supporting a unit can only engage with heavy bombardment weapons.

Now, there's no guarantee that you'll have aircraft-exclusive formations. So, to support this logic, the modifier for support position weight is now 0.25/(1 - 0.75(tonnage of medium or heavier aircraft / total formation tonnage)). If the formation is all medium aircraft, the weight is 100%. If the formation is all infantry or light aircraft or whatever, the weight is 25%. For everything in-between, you get a nice curve. Why the curve? Makes it so that it only really makes a difference when you have a ratio of tonnage skewed towards aircraft. Makes mixing, say, vehicles and aircraft not confer any benefits to targeting, but mixing aircraft and infantry can be quite a boon. Note that this is, of course, for target selection of the entire formation; think of the logic as a sort of paratrooper or helicopter-transported unit. The equation for rear echelon position weight is now 0.05/(1-0.95(tonnage of heavy or heavier aircraft / total formation tonnage)). This curve is skewed even more.

Why the changes? One, the original proposal didn't account for mixed formation composition. Two, the original proposal resulted in a significant change of logic (allowing support or rear echelon formations to trigger attacks outright) that honestly wasn't very desirable. Three, the original proposal kept aircraft too "out of combat", so to speak; nothing would ever actually attack them directly other than artillery. Four, the bombardment logic change was unnecessary and added additional rules and conditions to a system that didn't need them.

This also has the benefit of being able to use aircraft to boost the power of whole formations that can include infantry and maybe some light vehicles.

EDIT: I also forgot about FFD. FFD on an aircraft would be rather convenient, because it allows the aircraft to act as a "recon" aircraft for orbital bombardment purposes. That plus the fact that heavy aircraft can target all the way to the rear echelon means that you can do some serious damage to their back line with this. You can also mount HQ components on an aircraft, but... why? Aircraft are inherently more vulnerable to AA fire; putting HQ (or even AA honestly) on them seems like a terrible idea. I guess at least with some AA you can have light bombardment heavy aircraft also carry some AA for multi-purpose roles (they aren't likely to be attacked directly and they wouldn't be able to make use of anything other than more light bombardment, so if more damage isn't necessary having the extra AA fire can be of some utility) but even then, I think I'd rather just put more light bombardment on them.

[Ultimoos]

We are playing a game in which Newtonian physics is obsolete. Aircrafts use the same tech every ship and its shuttles use. Some kind of antigravity magic. So, any air unit can be a subject to the same modifiers that ground units are.

I remember someone proposing in great detail implementation of air units, completely implemented in to existing ground combat mechanics. With different aircraft sizes, weapon stats and roles on the field. I tried to look for that post many times, but failed to find it. There is another one posted I thing in April of this year, but that is not the one I remember. 

[LuuBluum (OP)]

We are playing a game in which Newtonian physics is obsolete. Aircrafts use the same tech every ship and its shuttles use. Some kind of antigravity magic. So, any air unit can be a subject to the same modifiers that ground units are.

I remember someone proposing in great detail implementation of air units, completely implemented in to existing ground combat mechanics. With different aircraft sizes, weapon stats and roles on the field. I tried to look for that post many times, but failed to find it. There is another one posted I thing in April of this year, but that is not the one I remember.

Exactly. I'm trying to make as few assumptions as possible while still keeping the "spirit" of what an aircraft is. As for why I didn't want to include particular "missions" and whatnot with my suggestion, it's simple: I didn't want it to lead to micromanaging ground forces. They should be set-and-forget, and this system allows for exactly that.

This system also lends itself well to working with existing systems.

[Froggiest1982]

These types of posts come up from time to time, and don't get me wrong — I would love a simpler, yet still deep, aircraft model that could work with AA in an entire ground setting.

Unfortunately, many fail to understand or remember that Steve spent a considerable amount of time and effort developing the current mechanics. I don't think he would simply scrap it, especially since we’re talking about removing a significant chunk of code and quite a few techs from the tree. Unless, of course, we’d prefer having the two systems working together, but to be honest, I don't see much value in that.

Soon, we will likely see the usual posts highlighting that you can now create a unit from the bombardment series, name it a bomber, and it will function as such since ground units are just a concept and can be used or imagined in any way you see fit.

This is something I have never responded to, and frankly, I find it ludicrous because it disregards the entire AA system and the concept of limiting units to engage only specific types of units (in this case, air units).

Beyond the effort Steve has already put in, I have developed my own theory over the years: Steve may view limited engagements as an exploitable rock-paper-scissors situation, where a player could deploy thousands of air units, effectively nullifying the entire ground unit concept and mechanics, or finding other exploits within such mechanics. This mindset has led to numerous changes from VB6 to C# (notably PDC) that had, or still have, similar implications.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

These types of posts come up from time to time, and don't get me wrong — I would love a simpler, yet still deep, aircraft model that could work with AA in an entire ground setting.

Unfortunately, many fail to understand or remember that Steve spent a considerable amount of time and effort developing the current mechanics. I don't think he would simply scrap it, especially since we’re talking about removing a significant chunk of code and quite a few techs from the tree. Unless, of course, we’d prefer having the two systems working together, but to be honest, I don't see much value in that.

Soon, we will likely see the usual posts highlighting that you can now create a unit from the bombardment series, name it a bomber, and it will function as such since ground units are just a concept and can be used or imagined in any way you see fit.

This is something I have never responded to, and frankly, I find it ludicrous because it disregards the entire AA system and the concept of limiting units to engage only specific types of units (in this case, air units).

Beyond the effort Steve has already put in, I have developed my own theory over the years: Steve may view limited engagements as an exploitable rock-paper-scissors situation, where a player could deploy thousands of air units, effectively nullifying the entire ground unit concept and mechanics, or finding other exploits within such mechanics. This mindset has led to numerous changes from VB6 to C# (notably PDC) that had, or still have, similar implications.

I think the fundamental underlying issue with ground support fighters as fighters is that there's a level of necessary micromanagement if you want to use them in support roles (necessitated by the fact that they're individual ships rather than whole formations), and that it's far easier to spam vast amounts of AA than it is an equivalent amount of fighters to contend with all that AA. Plus the fact that you can't even make use of ground support fighters as a defender because your fighters, though immune to fire from space when in a ground support role, will eventually need to stop being in that role to resupply in which case they're vulnerable to fire from space. It also just doesn't really align with the regular gameplay of ground forces being much more of a "set and forget" sort of thing without too much in the way of bespoke customization per unit (every other ground unit has a small selection of components to work with and little else, after all).

I just don't see a way forward with ground support fighters. Steve seems to at least recognize the problem since he has mentioned a coming rework to the point where he didn't even bother, when giving NPRs fighters, to have them use fighters in any sort of ground support role, saying that this was because that was all going to be reworked anyway. Given that a few of their mechanics were never actually implemented in the first place (combat air patrol, to my understanding, is nonfunctional), my guess is that Steve also ran into limitations with their current implementation and might not be as attached to keeping them around as you think.

Ground combat is just too big to be caring about individual units.

[Ghostly]

I see nothing fundamentally wrong with having ground support fighters be actual ships, not abstract ground units. Sure, the system has some deep flaws currently, but with enough balance changes it would be far more preferrable to adding five whole new classes of GUs, of which I'd say we have plenty already. Not to mention that having fighters that are built from player-designed components and are atmospheric-capable in the lore (and can be build in ground-based Fighter Factories) coexist with "ground-support fighters" that are actually GUs, require no component design and are built in Ground Force Training Facilities would feel very, very weird.

That being said, here are some problems I can see with the current GSF and orbital bombardment support systems and some possible solutions:

• Both are remarkably weak and cost-inefficient. No surprise firing a ship-based weapon just once per combat phase is underwhelming when one can afford dozens if not hundreds of similarly capable weapons on the ground for the same BP cost. For example, at Inertial Confinement fusion, my destroyer escorts fire 196 10cm railgun shots at 5200 BP for ~26BP/shot, and railgun fighters cost me 51 BP/shot. That's 10/20 damage, while it costs PW infantry 0.15 BP for a 15/15 shot, and 0.24 BP for CAP infantry to fire 6 such shots.
  
  I would propose making supporting ships and fighters fire more than once per ground phase, perhaps in 1-hour increments or maybe 8 times at once (rolling for maintenance 8 times in a row) at the conclusion of each ground phase. In case of GSFs, I'm not sure if they should take ground AA fire each time and some testing would be required to determine that, as my limited testing of Search & Destroy GSFs against an NPR homeworld has revealed that 3-4 fighters get destroyed each increment no matter whether their top speed is 20kkm/s, ~1kkm/s or 1km/s, so I suspect the AA system is bugged in other ways.
  
  I would also consider altering the space->ground damage formula to perhaps double the ground damage instead of 20xSQRT, which would give an additional buff to all orbital support besides GSFs and also take care of ridiculous moments like mid-game light infantry armor-tanking 10cm Rods from God. If this is feared as too big a nerf to STOs I used to dismiss their armor/HP too, but recently I found myself in a few battles where I needed to close range to defeat them because firing 1 damage shots would leave enough survivors for my fleet to run out of MSP, perhaps their cost formula could be altered so the build/research price of putting armor on them would scale with their size and not with the cost of their weapons, as is logical.
  
  These changes combined should not bring ship support to parity with ground units in cost efficiency, as that would make GUs obsolete, but it should at least become somewhat competitive and possibly a decisive factor in ground engagements.
  
  
• Both are a tremendous pain to set up. Nothing in the ground combat system requires as many clicks as assigning orbital/fighter support. There's already a weighted average probable damage system in place for assigning ship FCs to targets when a Fire at Will button is clicked, so this could be solved with a similar Support at Will option on the Ground Forces screen if a population with available orbital support is selected, perhaps with an additional weight for FFD units in Frontline Attack formations.
  
  
• Fighters cannot be used defensively. Perhaps this is where PDCs can make a comeback of sorts. A planetary hangar with built-in maintenance capacity for its contents only, either as a building that drains MSP minerals or as a bulky GU with high wealth upkeep and is exposed as a separate contact when fighters within take flight or land, would alleviate this issue, provide exciting possibilities for space defense both by the player and by NPRs, take care of the micro associated with repairing and resupplying defender's GSFs and make perfect sense logically.
  
  
• On the attacker's side, taking care of the aforementioned micro would be as simple as allowing carriers with fighters to provide orbital support without launching the fighters first. This would simulate the fighters' abilitiy to repair, refuel and resupply between sorties without player intervention, with every fighter in need of repairs counting as having missed a sortie.
  
  
• Finally, I'm a bit opposed to GSFs being a unique class of fighters with no other fighter type being able to perform their role. This is partially addressed with missile fighters being able to mount fighter pods at 1/3 the size efficiency, but I would also suggest making ground support orders available to regular beam fighters, as even with my proposed double space->ground damage buff they wouldn't be as efficient as specialized GSFs (a 50t railgun fires a single 10/20 (proposed 20/40) shot while a bombardment pod of the same size fires 3 26/65 shots at my tech and 3 14/35 shots at Composite Armor tech which would correspond to some very early fighters indeed). This way GSFs would not be a unique fighter class, but rather a specialized one to be deployed when the situation truly demands it.

[Steve Walmsley]

I agree that the simple solution to ground support management is to automate it. Orbital warships and ground fighters automatically respond to formations with forward fire direction units, maybe with some priority system by formation type. Also agree I probably need to remove ground support pods and use existing weapons, but perhaps with some weapons being more useful than others, or the player can design 'cluster bombs' maybe - a multi-warhead missile with no engine. That also makes it far easier to get the AI to use ground support. Anyway, I will give it some thought.

I still would need to rebalance AA and orbital support needs to be more effective in general, but not so much it becomes dominant.

In terms of defence, fighters can already make use of ground-based maintenance facilities. They just can't reload as quickly. Maybe the solution is a new 'Airbase' installation, that allows reloading a certain tonnage of fighters on the surface at hangar speeds (which could only be used by fighters due to 500-ton restriction on planets), without the overhead of managing fighters in hangars

[Ghostly]

In terms of defence, fighters can already make use of ground-based maintenance facilities. They just can't reload as quickly. Maybe the solution is a new 'Airbase' installation, that allows reloading a certain tonnage of fighters on the surface at hangar speeds (which could only be used by fighters due to 500-ton restriction on planets), without the overhead of managing fighters in hangars

It's not merely about maintaining fighters around a planet, it's about being able to station them on the ground, utilizing the atmosphere for cover so even if the battle in space is lost, surviving fighters could still contribute to the battle on the ground without being taken apart by the enemy fleet. The key difference here is that any fighers thusly deployed can continue to rest and resupply on the ground without entering orbit to do so where they will be instantly destroyed. That's the only way I can think of to allow actual defensive use of GSFs and allow the player, who is far more often on the offense than on the defense, to fight against them.

I'm suggesting some sort of a secondary Maintenance Capability pool provided by the new Airbases for fighters only, that can be selected as a target for Fighter Factories or fighter-manufacturing shipyards, can't be exceeded (excess fighters overflow into space), treats them as parasites (full maintenance/resupply/etc, can't be acquired as a contact or targeted, every destroyed Airbase results in the loss of a percentage of total fighters) and can either launch them into space as a fleet or into the atmosphere for a ground support mission of the owner's choosing.

The possible case for possibly making this new Airbase a GU is that there's already a precedent of certain GUs (STOs) having a separate contact associated with them, and I'm fairly sure having one for Airbases would make sense as targeting enemy airfields is a staple of modern warfare, although this might also be entirely counterproductive unless they're exceedingly difficult to destroy from orbit, as that would nullify ground defense fighters as a threat in the face of enemy space supremacy.

[alex_brunius]

I agree that the simple solution to ground support management is to automate it. Orbital warships and ground fighters automatically respond to formations with forward fire direction units, maybe with some priority system by formation type. Also agree I probably need to remove ground support pods and use existing weapons, but perhaps with some weapons being more useful than others, or the player can design 'cluster bombs' maybe - a multi-warhead missile with no engine. That also makes it far easier to get the AI to use ground support. Anyway, I will give it some thought.

I still would need to rebalance AA and orbital support needs to be more effective in general, but not so much it becomes dominant.

My suggestion for balancing is to try and ensure the biggest benefit from orbital support is as some sort of force multiplier.

That means don't make the main contribution from them direct damage, but instead increasing damage (or more likely hitchance) of supported ground units up to a certain %boost that motivates the cost and tonnage of including FFD. That way you will automatically have a balancing where if you add too much orbital support you reach the support % cap and just get the damage (which can stay similar to now, fairly lackluster but still a few enemy units destroyed).

The tricky part then becomes how do you make it so that:
- This cannot be abused by either a single FFD unit in a 50000ton ground unit giving full %bonus, or having 50% of tonnage in a unit be FFD and giving say a +500% combat bonus?
- This bonus is shown in the combat log and the calculation is clear so you get good feedback when it's useful to add more or not.
- There is some UI feedback how the mechanics works when your designing units with FFD and seeing how much of the max bonus current FFD/orbital support assigned fulfills.

Another type of force multiplier is negative penalties for the opposing side that are targeted by orbital bombardment during ongoing combat.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

In terms of defence, fighters can already make use of ground-based maintenance facilities.

The main thing is that there needs to be a place for fighters to stay on the planet. Otherwise when attempting to leave a particular ground support order, they're back in space and able to be shot at by an invading navy.

Otherwise they're just useless defensively, if you lose control over orbital space. Can't reload or refuel without getting shot down.

[Andrew]

The main thing is that there needs to be a place for fighters to stay on the planet. Otherwise when attempting to leave a particular ground support order, they're back in space and able to be shot at by an invading navy.

Otherwise they're just useless defensively, if you lose control over orbital space. Can't reload or refuel without getting shot down.

This is not something I think is needed. I thnk it quite realistic that aircraft cannot survive in an envirtonment with ships in orbit engaging with light speed weapons, this is an impossible environment for aircraft to operate in unless they can take a hit from a warships weapons , in which case they are not aircraft but large blocks of metal , even a Blackburn Buccanner could not take a hit from a big gun.
I find aircraft being useful against ground based lasers dubious but there is no hiding from space based lasers

[alex_brunius]

This is not something I think is needed. I thnk it quite realistic that aircraft cannot survive in an envirtonment with ships in orbit engaging with light speed weapons, this is an impossible environment for aircraft to operate in unless they can take a hit from a warships weapons , in which case they are not aircraft but large blocks of metal , even a Blackburn Buccanner could not take a hit from a big gun.
I find aircraft being useful against ground based lasers dubious but there is no hiding from space based lasers

It's not really reasonable that an aircraft that sits on the ground is easy to hit but the tank next to it is almost impossible to hit, so if you want consistent rules then anything near the ground of similar size needs to be at least equally difficult to hit.