Suggestion for a future patch

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

In the meantime, it could be helpful to give more authority to player, regardless to his current rank.
Authority to: 1) order to any comrade of any rank to “Return to Base Immediately”. 2) To over ride control tower, giving priority to damaged planes.

+1.

This would be much simpler to implement than new AI programming.

The player should also be able to automatically give landing priority to any plane - not just damaged ones. This allows planes that are low on fuel or which have wounded crew aboard to land first.

Further useful commands for players:

1) Go to next waypoint - makes friendly planes stop flying towards their current waypoint and go to the next one. If used repeatedly, this command will eventually send the flight back to base.

This allows the player to skip stupidly placed or irrelevant waypoints. For example, no reason to follow a pre-programmed fighter sweep pattern if you've already met the enemy and shot him down.

2) Go to previous waypoint - makes friendly planes stop flying towards their current waypoint and go to the previous one. If used repeatedly, this command will eventually send the flight back to base.

This allows the player to prevent his flight from getting massacred by flying through flak or fighters when they don't have to. It also allows the player to establish "rally points" where planes in his flight can regroup after combat.

3) Divert to different airfield - Makes any plane in player's flight land at the nearest non-hostile airfield. Useful for making sure that damaged planes don't crash on the runway preventing other planes in the flight from landing.

4) Land here - Makes all planes in player's flight land at the nearest airfield. Basically, the group version of "Divert".

5) Don't land - makes any planes in player's flight break out of their landing pattern. If the enemy is nearby they engage in combat. Otherwise, they join formation.

Further tactical options that would be helpful are:

1) Climb + number = makes aircraft climb by n x 100 meters.

2) Descend + number = makes aircraft descend by n x 100 meters, down to a minimum of 100 m above ground level.

3) Loiter - makes planes circle over location set by player. Canceled by Rejoin Formation or Next Waypoint commands.

4) Fly this direction - makes planes fly in a particular direction unless attacked - 0 = N, 1 = NNE, etc. Countered by Loiter, Rejoin Formation, or Next Waypoint commands.

Good for avoiding obstacles or setting up ambushes.