Aircraft and Weapons

As many of you have propably noticed already, an aircraft's behaviour is strongly influenced by the weapon it carries. As there seems to be no other place to plug this in, the following article should serve as an overview of how aircraft behaviour is influenced by certain characteristics of the weapons they carry.

The first column says wether the AircraftType is a Fighter, the second column says wether its weapon has OmniFire, the third column what ROF its weapon has, the fourth column says what ROT the projectile has - these are the only factors influencing aircraft behaviour in RA2, AFAIK. In TS, OmniFire and Fighter tags do not exist. In YR, the behaviour is further affected by FlyBy and FlyBack. A special case is for aircraft using the spawned missile locomotor. The last column describes the resulting behaviour.

AircraftType: Fighter	AircraftType: FlyBy	AircraftType: FlyBack	Weapon: OmniFire	Weapon: ROF	Projectile: Inviso	Projectile: ROT	Outcome
no	N/A	N/A	no	0	no	0	1
no	N/A	N/A	yes	any	no	1	2
yes	N/A	N/A	yes	any	no	1	2
yes	N/A	N/A	no	any	no	1	2
yes	yes	0	0

Outcome 1

The Generic Bomber pattern, seen in TS on the ORCA Bomber and unused in RA2.

Outcome 2

The Hornet/Banshee pattern, seen in TS on the Banshee and in RA2 on the Hornet (Aircraft Carrier plane). The weapon is fired in a strafing run pattern, starting to fire as soon as the target gets into the weapon's Range, and the projectiles will home into the target (note that ROT=1 influences the projectile's flight path in its own special way, which is not discussed here; refer to the ROT entry). The weapon is hard-coded to be fired five times at its target per unit of Ammo it carries, unless the target is destroyed before, in which case it will also stop firing. The aircraft will be locked on its flight path until one unit of ammo has been depleted. It will then fly back, repeating the firing process, until all of its ammo is depleted. The weapon's ROF will NOT be ignored; in case the aircraft moved further away from its target than the weapon's Range, the weapon will still fire (regardless of facing, even if the weapon is not omnifiring) and the projectiles will fly into their targets regardless of the distance between aircraft and target. When given an attack command, the aircraft will NOT slow down if the target of the attack is within SlowdownDistance. After depleting its ammuntion, the aircraft will consider wether it is within SlowdownDistance of its destination (docking structure) and if it is, it will slow down (hence it would work for Remaking the Aurora Bomber in RA2/YR).

Outcome 3

The Harpy/Orca Fighter pattern, seen on the Harpy and Orca Fighter in TS, but unused in RA2. The aircraft will stop in the air when in range of its target. It will then fire its weapon. If CurleyShuffle in the General section is set to 'yes', this type of aircraft will change its position after firing its weapon. If it is set to 'no', it will remain in one position (unless the target is moving out of range, in which case it will follow) while firing. It will keep firing until its ammo is depleted, where one unit of ammo equals one firing of the weapon. During an attack mission, this type of aircraft will consider if the target is within SlowdownDistance from its current position (Note: actually, it might consider wether it is in SlowdownDistance minus Weapon Range, but this is unverified). When the target gets into slowdown distance, the aircraft will slowdown (unlike the 'strafing pattern' aircraft, which never slowdown when on an attack mission, only on a move mission).

Outcome 4

The Harrier pattern.