Air Repair Pad removal

[wanton mortar]

I call for the removal of Air repair pads! Why?
It really messes with the AI, making planes, if anything, even worse.

I was conducting a liche raid, but since my 10TS OP teammate built 1st building a repair pad, my liches when faced with any amount of AA, canceled the pre-determined bomb targets, and started circling back to the repair pad.
By the time I noticed this happening, they were basically dead, as they were no longer on-track for the target, and there was no chance they were going to return alive to the pad anyway. Therefore the air pad, in fact, killed my liches, and my potential for a killing move on an Eco player. And at the end of the day, I really did get mad at the guy, because when I asked him (rather impolitely) to delete the Air Pad after explaining that it messes with my planes AI, he said: no, it's fun.

Other than that, I don't see in the in-game settings an option to toggle any of this functionality regarding team repair pads.

[primal needle]

There has been discussion before on removing air repair pads.

They have especially been a development headache with the number of bugs they have.

[patent thunder]

With them as cheap as they are, is there a way to just limit the ai to the owning player? That'd at least give an "opt in" if they're kept

[waxen forum]

Ai already doesnt make certain things

Im sure its possible

[vital moth]

the reason for the auto retreat is because of an hp tracking option
you can set your aircraft to retreat on 0% hp

repair pads are needed for dragons

it makes a massive difference for that unit

[uneven walrus]

You can also set that on the air lab level, so all of your stuff produced will come with a "no retreat" by default

I'm not sure if you can set that by default in settings, just like you can set all cloakers to cloak or not on being produced

It probably should be possible to set it

[wanton mortar]

ye but no real player builds airpads first building after the lab

[uneven walrus]

For now, it's mostly an annoying skill check to remember to turn it off when you start building your lab

[wanton mortar]

all im realistically asking is for it to not interfere with teammates

[potent shell]

Couldn't a nano turret or two do the exact same job as an air pad, minus of course the limited AI automation

[uneven walrus]

Air pads iirc have a metric ton of build power

[livid wind]

Air repair pads are useful for PvE gamemodes too. Even a fighter screen benefits from air repair pads in those modes

[potent shell]

I typicaly just set my beat up dragons to patrol over the front line and they get repaired by the misc units aorund there

[livid wind]

PvP is just balanced weird, where air is almost always all or nothing

[potent shell]

Have not had alot of sucess with the air pads even managing the retreat options.

[livid wind]

Might be worth it to set the retreat percentage to a different default, and maybe have a global option menu button to set it differently

[uneven walrus]

That does sound like the reasonable way out of this issue

[blissful pine]

default definitely should be not to retreat based on hp

remember the naval antinuke also has airpads

[vital moth]

thats a merged role unit which is likely to change in some way

[unkempt socket]

I'd like to see more functionality, rather than a removal-- the first thing that comes to mind is adding an options-menu toggle "deselect retreating units" so you don't keep ordering them around and confusing them

Or "an airpad can lend 1/4 or so of its buildpower to an air factory right next to it" (not other factories)

[vital moth]

not possible
it either can do all or none iirc

[unkempt socket]

just spitballing here

could the airpad not get a "allowed_target: airport" tag? (not that code exactly, obviously)

[vital moth]

no
it would be vtol tag

[unkempt socket]

surely it must be possible to add new tags ://

[vital moth]

no you would use the vtol tag to target the aircraft
targeting the factory wont do what you intend

also build power is split into seperate catagories
which is why rezz bots can do rezzing and repairing
but no building of new things

[unkempt socket]

I feel like I'm not being clear in my meaning, why would my suggestion require the airpad to give buildpower to aircraft assisting the factory, rather than directly to the factory itself?

[vital moth]

no
i understand what you mean
im explaining how it would be done
the reason for targeting aircraft
is because targeting the factory would repair the factory only
and not contribute build power to the aircraft being made

[unkempt socket]

I see, that leads to the solution 'add a category of buildpower specific to the airpad that can only target air units + only assist air factories'

which would potentially run afoul of feature bloat, so -- the basic stance I have is that the airpad could use additional functionality rather than removal. The suggestion was just brainstorming

[blissful pine]

its kinda lame anyway

just build nanos if u want to assist airlab

its not making the airpad itself more interesting to give it a buff like that, and forces you to place it in a certain spot

[unkempt socket]

The idea was that when you build an airpad you get a "free" complementary super-cons-turret, that could aid up to 4 air factories placed adjacent, without requiring you to do anything if that feature doesn't interest you

you can still just not use the airpad at all, but if you do want one for whatever reason then it's a tool you can use. not every tool is right for every situation

[wintry ferry]

I don't understand the issue, all you had to do is set your aircraft to retreat on 0% hp, and you can set this in the factory settings.

[wanton mortar]

brother man read the text, it was not I who built the airpad, was my OP teammate, and I just didn't see it.
The retreat command overwrites the current command every second or so, therefore even when spamming commands for the Liche, they would try retreating right after, so they wouldn't actually drop bombs where I want them to.

It's silly that my units become unusable by myself, because teammate builds a building, which is in my opinion often detrimental (in pvp ofc ye, idk abt raptor games etc).

Yeah sure i couldve set the retreat hp to 0% or whatever, but why would I consider doing that, if in hundreds of games I've seen a repair pad only a handful of times? If there was a setting in the options menu, to ignore teammates' repair pads, or default to 0%, I wouldn't have an issue at all.
It is a lack of functionality, or even it being too functional in a way, that's screwing with the bomber plane AI, mid raid, predetermined route.

[agile marsh]

we need a widget or something that sets aircraft to retreat at 0% at the start of each game, so we choose it from settings or whatever and it persists through every game played. that way we dont get fooled when a team mate makes an airpad. it also happened to me with bombers before and was quite annoying. also quite annoying having to set it every game. if i knew anything about coding i would make the widget myself. but alas i know not of this coding wizardy stuff.

[wintry ferry]

yeah just ask for a widget, don't ask for the total removal of one useful building.

it's the same thing with having Liches on "hold fire" by default, very annoying

[zenith wedge]

just so people realize, there's already a widget in the repo (not in the default game though, weirdly) that lets you change default modes for units fresh out of factory, and it persists through games (it is saved as a config file) the widget is here: https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/master/luaui/Widgets/unit_stateprefs.lua

you can simply add a few lines of code into this widget to force all air units retreat at 0% at initialization

or, if you don't feel like coding, you can turn on this widget, go in a skirmish game, build the units you want default states set, and then manually set them to retreat at 0%, then copy the config file (LuaUI/config/StatesPrefs.lua) and share it with people, and others will have the same mode setting in their game upon loading the same widget without setting anything else

with the widget, you press ctrl and then issue a state change command to a unit, and there should be a console output telling you mode change is registered, and it will take effect for all future production units

[zenith wedge]

I updated the widget and fixed a bug where it was updating at the wrong place such that it couldn't set weapon state. The new widget is here: #widgets-download message

I have tested units like Liche, setting it to "no retreat" on an existing Liche once in a game will save the pref to file and load every time in all future games on Liche upon being produced, and set the no retreat state automatically.

I didn't want to change the default behavior because it might not be desirable for all air units and people can make their own decisions and make changes with minimal effort