Updates of May 19th, 2015: Airplane Patrol

Details: How does the new airplane patrol mode work?

Airplane patrol used to be a 'passive' activity. An airplane on patrol would attack every other airplane performing an action (attack, patrol) in its patrol radius.

We turned this around: Patrolling planes now actively attack all enemy armies within their patrol radius. They also attack other airplanes with overlapping patrol areas. In return, the attacked unit's defensive damage is applied to the patrolling aircraft.

Who is attacked?

Four times per hour (every 15 minutes) all enemy armies in the patrol radius or with an overlapping patrol radius are attacked with 25% of the airplanes nominal damage. The damage is distributed over all enemy armies.

How is damage distributed?

Damage distribution is balanced with the attack strength of the airplane of the required damage type.

For example: An interceptor causes 4 times as much air damage as 'soft' damage. Thus, an enemy airplane in the patrol radius will get 4 times the damage as an anti-air gun.

In return, the attacked armies will only fire back with the same factor.

The defensive air damage of the anti-air gun is scaled down by another 25%, because the interceptor will avoid engaging this gun.

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Effects on the game:

- airplanes and V1 rockets crossing enemy patrol areas can take (and deal) damage

- land and sea units are attacked by patrolling aircraft

- anti-air guns and other armies with air damage cause damage on patrolling aircraft

- the amount of the latter depends on the airplane: tactical bombers will take a lot of damage from anti-air guns in the patrol area, interceptors only little

Interesting. So, I tend to use some of my planes for recon.

Will a fighter on Patrol auto attack a Battleship now? I wouldn't want that as the fighter would almost certainly be destroyed.

Thanks for the info.

If the plane is on recon and you don't want that the fighter is attacking the battleship set the fire-control to "no fire". This feature is only available for members of the High Command.

The fighter will attack the battleship and be attacked by it. But only to a smaller extend (Interceptors have almost no naval damage, thus the fighter will not attempt to attack the battleship too much).

If this turns out to be still to much damage taken by patrol aircraft we may have to do some rebalancing.

Zarathustra wrote:

In return, the attacked armies will only fire back with the same factor.

The defensive air damage of the anti-air gun is scaled down by another 25%, because the interceptor will avoid engaging this gun.

Zarathustra wrote:

The damage is distributed over all enemy armies.