Carrier groups

["Henry J. Cobb" <hcobb at io dot com>]

Every time I see a lone empty unescorted aircraft carrier wandering around
my coastline my respect for the AI goes down a bit.

While I don't have a full topology and fractal fix for the AI I think we
ought to be able to define standard unit combinations for it in the game
files.

So a carrier strike group would be defined as a group of units centered on
a carrier.  (With a full load of fighters and a battleship.)

The entire group moves with the carrier and withdraws with it when the
carrier is low on fuel, ammo or aircraft.

When a carrier is first built it recruits the rest of the strike group to
it and marks up a scorecard for priority production if it can't get enough
aircraft or escorts.

The aircraft assigned to the carrier will always return to it if they can
and no other aircraft will land on the carrier except if they are assigned
to a free slot.  (This keeps the carrier from launching a strike then
filling up with land based aircraft that will then crowd out the returning
airwing.)

Once the aircraft carriers are survivable we can worry about making amphib
operations work correctly.

-- 
Henry J. Cobb's Completely Unofficial list of GURPS Vehicle Builder fixes
and workarounds.  http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gurps/gvb_faq.txt