... Honestly, this change isn't good. It makes all aircraft nigh useless unless you've either already declared war or are using naval bombers defensively to scout for submarines. Besides that, there is literally no use for aircraft, besides getting tacts for striking AI opponents. And why do you have patrol doing 2 things at once? A patrol, when I think of a aircraft patrolling overhead, it usually either means A. a RECON patrol, the one that I think of most often, which many aircraft are either intended to be used in or are used in a pinch for, excluding strategic bombers, is when the aircraft are patrolling the area, scouting for targets and other useful locational information, and then there is B. a COMBAT patrol, which generally only FIGHTERS ever use, as a CAP(combat air patrol) is specifically intended to search, hunt down and destroy enemy aircraft, gaining air superiority(the main and ultimate goal of CAP), and never to find ground targets(and even then, it's usually to SPOT the targets for tact bombers which come in after. They never engage in a combat air patrol, EVER, as it is unique to air superiority doctrine with fighter aircraft). Basically, you should have just removed the ability to cause attacks to happen on neutral countries, which would be the sensible thing to do, not make patrols declare war, because that is just silly.... I mean, really, I've never ONCE put a aircraft on a patrol to harm the enemy, it has ALWAYS been to gain intel on enemy positions, because it is always more useful to know where the units are than to destroy the actual units, because then you can target the weak units and eliminate them quickly. I mean, seriously, raise your hand if you've used aircraft to ATTACK a neutral country, before you knew of the existence of this glitch. Nobody? Thought so.
darksoul111 wrote:
PS. This thread obviously inspires me for a new unit : the spotter plane! Flying high-alt, unarmed with cameras at 7k meters like in the good old days 
- Special performance : flies undetected over your territory. Just like submarines in the water, but over people's lands. Can only be spotted when planes arrive in a 50km radius.
- Speed : 700km/h (Cold war U-2s flew at 800km/h)
- Range : 1000km (for your information, elite strategic bombers have a range of 1210km. Cold War U-2s had over 5000km of range. It is therefore not absurd)
- Combat stats : Attacking planes, 0.1. Defending from planes, 0.1.
- Requirements to produce : researched (obviously). Level 3 air base, level 5 industrial center (rare alloys and specialised equipment needed).
- Costs to produce : 1000 rare materials, 7500$, 1500 oil, 500 iron, 1500 goods.
@MontanaBB @Dixie
Most spotter planes were fighter aircraft without guns, in the WWII era... Just saying.
Also, literally nothing in the game currently needs a level 5 industrial center, as the level 1 industrial center usually implies already having the advanced materials and just not being fast at producing equipment. A nuclear carrier can be produced with a mere level 1 industrial center, but it will take forever to build the carrier.
While I agree this could be useful, as a late game unit, it is not practical for most of the game. The way patrols work needs to be restructured, rather than making a brand new unit for something the units could already do.
There should be 4 types of patrols:
RECON: Reconnaissance patrol, intended purely to gain intel on enemy positions. Ints, Tacts, and Navs can use the reconnaissance patrol, along with the rocket int, though it will have a significantly smaller recon patrol radius. However, it takes some time for aircraft to gain intel over an area(well, minus small groups of units, like if you only find a lone unit or smtg), and during that time, the recon patrols will be logged in the espionage tab(unless the aforementioned spotter plane is implemented, and then no recon patrols would be logged in the espionage tab, and can be acted upon for declaring war, but the AI can not directly declare war from it. Something along those lines would be pretty good. AI countries should default to this, as it means they can not fight whatsoever in that way and cause war to be declared over and over again.
The next 2 are intended to separate the current patrol function.
CAP: Combat air patrol, intended for air superiority and EXCLUSIVE to interceptors and rocket interceptors ONLY, and will not target ground units. Basically like the current patrol function, except it excludes the ability for fighter aircraft to attack ground targets. This will not declare war on a country if it is overhead.
GROUND POUND: Intended for tacts, nav's, and strategic bombers, this one is the one that will be used for a group of aircraft that is being sent on patrol over a region to attack any and all surface targets while ignoring air groups. If a neutral country's units are underneath, it will not immediately declare war, however, if it is over neutral territory, with buildings and the like, it WILL declare war and do damage. The ints can be in a group with them, but it will be purely to protect the aircraft it is accompanying. IDK, seems like a good idea, anyway. They don't have that much damage against ground targets.d
and the last one
Combined Arms: Basically like what the patrol is now.
It would fix a lot of problems, namely the ones that caused this patch to become a thing in the first place, and give more reasons to have interceptors early game, because TBH, without recon, level 1 interceptors are basically useless, and by the time you actually need them to intercept other aircraft, it will be at level 2 already.
Sadly not everyone agrees on all changes, it's actually never possible to only make changes where no one disagrees. So hopefully in the next updates we have more stuff that you specifically will like 
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