Benefit of Air Patrol vs Air Strike

For aircrafts, Attack is better than Patrol, why?

Cause, what Attack does is do offensive damage to your target, whereas Patrol does is do defensive damage to a target which is half the amount of the offensive damage. In Patrol, the damage is done to all units that is under the Patrolling Radius (Everyone under the Patrolling Radius damages you back though). The only better thing about Patrol is that it can do damage every 15 minutes and dont have to refuel, wherein Attack, you have to wait for your aircraft to reach its target, it attacks, and then refuels again, and then aircraft will once again reach its target, only to find that its gone. (Atleast you did twice the damage of patrol)

So basically :

Aircraft Attack -

Does two times the damage of Patrol

Only attacks its target

Needs to refuel for 30 minutes

Aircraft Patrol -

Does half the damage of Attack

It attacks everyone in the Patrolling Radius

Everyone in the Patrolling Radius attacks you back

Doesnt need to refuel

Does damage every 15 minutes

You will find that patrol is more efficient than attack in most cases. Attack if 1 shot will kill enemy, otherwise patrol is best option. Patrol attacks every 15 min at 50%, but receives only 50% damage. Patrol will usually deliver more damage as it does not waste time traveling back and forth to airstrip, and does not waste time refueling. I believe if you asked most experienced players they will agree that patrol is what they recommend.

user26817643 wrote:

Cause, what Attack does is do offensive damage to your target, whereas Patrol does is do defensive damage to a target which is half the amount of the offensive damage.

Actually both patrolling and direct attack have their use cases. In a completely static situation, patrolling is better, because the flight time from base to target is "extra" in the direct case. So if your flight time is 5 minutes (and 5 minutes back), you do your full damage only once every 40 minutes (5m + 5m + 30m refuel); whereas it only takes 2 ticks (2x15m) to do your full damage in the patrol case. Apart from that, you miss out on that horrendous refuel window when your plains are terribly vulnerable to enemy counterattack.

But as I said, there's use cases for direct attack as well:

- You can do one load of your damage immediately, instead of waiting for 15m. This can be very useful in cases where you can destroy your enemy in that single hit, as stated above (and you are facing the flight time back anyway if there are no other targets around in your purple pie slice). It is also useful when your enemy is about to get out of range, or when you're going offline so you wouldn't be able to reposition your planes when they were patrolling (a "goodbye hit").

- When the tactical battlefield situation is about to change to your disadvantage, it can also be more advantageous to do your damage immediately ("while you still can"). For example, you may see enemy interceptors approaching, or an AA is about to merge with your target stack.

- When you have a higher level air base, the refuel gets shorter, decreasing the "full damage" time. When you get your refuel time down to 10m, you can do your full damage in 20m in the example above; which is more effective than the 30m for patrol.

Oh, I am very sorry for spreading false information, this was just what I know about it and I expected someone to argue with my reply, I have learned something new today. Thank you for your response.