Let’s start #14 (Reboot Edition): New Airstrikes

As you can see above, the Avenger drone now replaces the F-35 Lightning in the ground attack role for the US Army, in order to clearly distinguish it from the F-22 Raptor‘s model.

But that’s just a minor change compared to the way the airplanes’ gameplay was rethought …

Some balancing …

In Reboot Edition, planes are faster all over the board. Although the Valkyrie remains roughly as he was, most other planes have received a major speed buff which brings them closer to the former.

Also, Air Control Centers can now accommodate up to four planes, while they could only three in the “vanilla” edition. This change affects all three factions.

Air Strike

Being much faster, the planes would inevitably be much harder to control in flight, if not outright unmanageable, than they were in the “vanilla” edition. That is why we have decided to make some drastic changes to the airplanes’ gameplay.

Planes now act as “strikes”, not as regular units anymore. Once called in, they will fly straight to their designated target and won’t be controllable in flight anymore. The only order they will accept will be a manual order to evacuate the battlefield.

This new behavior required some adjustments:

• When called in, planes are actually being given an evac point. Which means they will fly straight to the designated location, and will evacuate automatically when they reach it. Therefore, if you want to strike a particular target on the battlefield, make sure to place the evac point behind them.
• Planes now carry unlimited missiles & gun ammunitions. Flying in a straight line to their designated evac point, they will automatically attack all the targets on their path. The only exception being “dumb” ordnances (napalm or cluster bombs), which will only be dropped on the designated point of evac.

With this new gameplay, planes are much more reactive: they can strike quickly anywhere, but have to be handled with care, for once called in there will be no way to modify their target. Also, being much faster, fighter planes will both be much more effective at intercepting enemy planes (or helicopters), but your own reaction time to counter & intercept enemy air strikes will be short.