| rdfs:comment
| - Unlike ground and naval units, air units have a simple progression with strength and cost increasing together. Cost levels and strength increases:
* 14, initial strength 12: Flight - allowing, for example, a fighter with 48/12/8.5 costing 70, or for the same construction cost a reconnaissance-and-blocking craft 0/12/8.5 with four reserve fuel tanks and therefore total range of 42.5 MP between refuelling stops; however, at no additional cost you can research Rocketry to increase the range
* 17 +6: Tactics (requiring University and Warrior Code) - also adds to ground unit strength and enables Military Academy and therefore often researched before Flight, regrettably making your earliest air units more costly; however, if you avoid Electronics and Miniaturization and Composites before r
|
| abstract
| - Unlike ground and naval units, air units have a simple progression with strength and cost increasing together. Cost levels and strength increases:
* 14, initial strength 12: Flight - allowing, for example, a fighter with 48/12/8.5 costing 70, or for the same construction cost a reconnaissance-and-blocking craft 0/12/8.5 with four reserve fuel tanks and therefore total range of 42.5 MP between refuelling stops; however, at no additional cost you can research Rocketry to increase the range
* 17 +6: Tactics (requiring University and Warrior Code) - also adds to ground unit strength and enables Military Academy and therefore often researched before Flight, regrettably making your earliest air units more costly; however, if you avoid Electronics and Miniaturization and Composites before researching Combined Arms you can have a cheap multipurpose plane 0/18/12.5x5 costing 102 (or 51 after the first with Line Production) and a similar spy plane that has a greater range than your earlier model
* 20 +6: Electronics (requiring Atomic Theory and Radio)
* 24 +8: Miniaturization (requiring Plastics and Robotics)
* 26 +8: Composites (requiring Metallurgy and Plastics) - also adds to ground unit strength and is therefore commonly researched before Miniaturization and can be researched before Advanced Flight
* 32 +11: Smart Weapons (requiring Advanced Rocketry (which requires Computers and Rocketry) and The Laser) (which requires Miniaturization and Physics)). With all of those, a typical attack plane with one spare fuel tank could have A/D/M of 255/51/12.5 and cost 224 materials. At that stage you could almost certainly produce ground units with greater strengths more cheaply, but the ability to overfly water and enemy zones of control can be of great value. In addition, however, by replacing Weapons modules with Bombs modules you can double the attack strength, e.g. getting 0/51/12.5 with 510 "bombs" - the disadvantage being that you have only one shot per flight and then have a civil unit until it returns for refuelling and restocking of the bomb bays. At the 224 material cost, line production would certainly be appropriate unless you expected to produce fewer than four such units.
* Finally: +4 cost +7 strength (for each of 25 possible steps) Artificial Intelligence (requiring The Laser and Smart Weapons); the first step adds 12.5% to the total cost but 14% to the strength of each weapons or armor module; each subsequent step adds a fraction less in percentage terms A potential increase in defensive strength comes (as with ground and naval units) with Steel, which allows a fourth defensive module for air and naval units (and a third for ground units) without an increase in total weight allowance or module strength. However, because air units have no part in city defense, if you stick to single-trip aircraft (i.e. craft without extra fuel) you may have no use for any defensive modules. Steel is not essential for any other aspect of air units except Combined Arms, though it may have been a contributor to your discovery of Mass Production and it is virtually compulsory for well-armored ground units and naval units.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)