OpenRA

Is there any more efficient (in terms of human attention) way to do this rather than just microing them on the airfields/helipads? Something more automatic like what can be done with a service pad?

Somewhat...
If you have multiple bays open, say 4, grab a group of air and control fire across the map somewhere.
The empty ones will now return to the 4 bays to refill, while you will have to stop the ones with ammo from moving. Its a decent way to separate them.

The hotkey for rearming air units is "F" (deploy). This will force them to rearm regardless of their current ammo payload.

The next release has complete automatic queued reloading of aircraft
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/11393

It's really awesome.

r34ch wrote: ↑The next release has complete automatic queued reloading of aircraft
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/11393

It's really awesome.

That is really exciting! However I could see this becoming a balance issue when massing up air units suddenly becomes super convenient. Will likely need a lot of playtesting.

Doubt so, you still have the bottleneck of airports.

In terms of time spent that's nothing compared to micro managing one and one aircraft onto the airfields. BTW do the autocue relate to single airfields or does it take advantage of every airfield available to the player?

Having rearmed aircraft lift off and use the rally point would be a better alternative than queued refilling. That way it's not as painstakingly micro intensive as it is now but doesn't completely remove the need for micro.

SoScared wrote: ↑does it take advantage of every airfield available to the player?

Yes all of them. As far as I can tell if air units do not have a target when refilling, once reloaded they take off again and go to the building waypoint allowing other air units the chance to reload.

By proxy, it also seems to reduce the number of times air production is blocked by a landed air unit.

Then I think there really can't be much doubt about it, this will likely have big repercussions for the gameplay. If I'm reading this correctly, re-arming aircrafts goes towards my rally point without skipping a beat, even with large numbers of aircrafts - using only the rally point and my deploy hotkey. That's nuts.

Don't get me wrong this is fantastic, I'm just saying be prepared for a potential big shift towards dominant air play with the next playtest so we don't get a panic ridden balance discussions weeks before a potential release

SoScared wrote: ↑-Snip-

I think it will promote aircraft as main army unit rather than throw-aways. Also; i think MORE people will be complaining about AA than aircraft after this

the amount of micro you put into re-arming helicopters only happened because the game didnt act the way it should. i dont think it will make them stronger, change the meta or have any repercussions for players who defend properly (unless the units are OP), they will just be used as effectively as they should be during the game rather than blocking each other on the helipad.

Well the current meta has been built around glitchy, slow and manual re-armament of aircrafts. Doesn't matter how good or bad players are, the fix is universal so.... expect change