What is the logic behind which airplane defends choice?

[timek28]

I've encountered this problem on several occasions. There are couple of my planes guarding say artillery. Enemy bomber comes in and tries to bomb artillery. However ALWAYS my WEAKEST plane tries to stop him. That is the one with least SP. Say there are 7, and 10 guarding but 7 is the one to fire. I bet if there was 1 and 10, that 1 would fire. What is the logic behind this weird behavior?! Is it a bug? I hope this wasn't done on purpose...

And I checked it out - as a matter of fact that is also not the most experienced plane of all that could be chosen... Sigh...

[ThvN]

Hello timek28, I'm not sure how it works, but to me it seems the positions of the intercepting aircraft matter. It's a bit like being able to predict were a retreating unit will go, and this mechanism seems to use a similar kind of logic.

I've noticed when attacking something and being repeatedly intercepted, the interceptions seem to go in a clockwise motion. At first an intercepting plane in the hex left and below (southwest) from the protected target will engage, and with repeated engagements the planes that are next in a clockwise circle will fire. If there are 'open' positions or there are planes that already intercepted the next available in a clockwise motion seems to be selected. So for example, if there are two planes that can intercept, and one is in the hex south of the target and another one north, the northern one will intercept first.

Once again, I'm not 100% sure about this, but it should be possible to start a 'hotseat' scenario where you can control both sides and create a few interceptions, to see if I'm right.

[timek28]

Hmm... I will try this out. But if it is like you ThvN said that means that we should carefully position planes in that manner to have strongest one at the desired position (whichever it may be), and then weaker and weaker planes...

However to me that is just completely random. I understand that maybe that was the easiest way to implement firing logic but on the other hand if it is just a simple "go through the neighbouring unit list in counter clocwise manner, and fire", that could have included unit strength and experience. In a way the unit with most strength and experience fires first, and then the rest. I guess that is not too hard to implement (every unit has it's parameters, it just takes some coding to find the one with best parameters), but since patches are already out I doubt anyone will notice this wish.

The good thing is that these kind of situations are not happening that often..