Airpower and helicopter question

[Pazam]

I changed the visibility to 70 and have the air settings to XXX on both sides, but the other side in a generated campaign has yet to provide any aircraft, be them helicopters or airplanes.

I also noticed that the UAV's that I purchased do not appear in my aircraft list at all.

[wulfir]

Pazam said:
I also noticed that the UAV's that I purchased do not appear in my aircraft list at all.

They will show up if you swith to spotters in the bombardment menue.

[Pazam]

I'm pretty sure I did cycle throught the different items [eg. spotters, aircraft, etc] but will try again. I still don't know why I can't get the other side to purchase any type of aircraft.

I am playing Israel, and they are a combination of Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf States in a generated campaign.

[interstaterunner]

If you are NOT on the first artillery screen/page when you switch to airborne or spotters then nothing will appear, unless of course you have more than one page of airborne/spotters (a rare occurance). In regards to computer air purchases you will have to set the computer air to more than xxx to consistantly see enemy aircraft. Xxx is simply a random setting and will drastically reduce the presence of enemy air, as the visibility, points, and random number of air power have to all match up. Random means 0 through 50 not 1 through 50. I was once attack during a campaign by 22 soviet aircraft! I had a solid layer of air-defense so they lost 14 of them, tsk tsk. Hope this helps

[Mustang]

In the old Steel Panthers, the ammount of air sorties each side got was determined by an "air superiority" calculation. Certain countries, like Israel, had high air superiority ratings, and so almost always owned the skies versus low-air-superiority countries like Iraq and the Middle East armies. The side that owns the sky gets ALL air sorties; the other side gets nothing; there is no situation where one side gets aircraft and the other side gets aircraft too.

I don't know if WinSPMBT does this also, but it seems to make more sense than allowing both sides to have aircraft in the same battle. If it bothers you, then don't set the AI air sorties at "XXX". Set them to any other number, and they will have that number of aircraft in each game.

So the reason the AI isn't buying aircraft is because it can't- Israel is trumping them in terms of air superiority. If you play as an arab country versus israel instead, then you probably won't get any sorties and the enemy will.

[Pazam]

One thing I noticed is that when I changed the settings, the computer did purchase aircraft for its side, but never used them. I wonder if it is buying the planes but setting an airstrike.

I still don't understand why the opposition never has helicopters too........

[Mustang]

I don't know, but it might be something you are doing that is discouraging the enemy from using their airplanes. Do you usually buy tons of air defence that scares the enemy away? Or do you just move too fast for the AI to call down fire on you?

[Mobhack]

when XXX is used - then the air superiority points for the decade and nation in question are used. Israel has a high number for this an arab countries are generally rater low, so the default state is for Israel to have planes (or none), with very rare chance of Arab air ever even appearing. These are down in the third world ratings for air, and Iraq is specially fixed to have no strike air in opposition to the US allies in Gulf War X, since they were buried in sand, flown to Iran, or in itty bitty pieces etc. Ditto, folk like the VC do not have any strike air whtsocever (and the USa has the default numbers radically increased with that opponent)

AI sometimes will buy helos - attack as a %age chance die roll based on year insted of fixed air. It will only ever buy air desant if it has LOTS of air, and rarely. (bigger chance if it is doing a river crossing assault though).

So Arab opponents to Israel are hardly ever going to have enough flights available to generate an airmobile assault.

USSR/Pact vs NATO on the other hand.. I have had UK pumas raid my Russian arty park, and Russian desant try to grab an objective from my UK campaign core.

Cheers
Andy