Why can I only attack UFOs with bombers?

[SixSweetness]

I've spent the past 10 turns as I approached the Age of Visitors making a strong airforce comprised of Supersonic Lancers, Propeller Fighters, and Propeller Bombers, but it looks like only the Bombers can attack UFOs? How does that make sense? if anything it would be only the fighters that should be able to attack the flying UFO objects and the bombers attack the ground targets.

[Ricochet]

I also have that issue. Apparently, alien motherships are considered ground forces than air. On my 1st full run game, I built a lot of fighters when the countdown hits only to find them obsolete. I did reset the game due to how slow age of visitors on my end is (too many alien attacks in addition to the slow loading screen).

[SixSweetness]

Yeah I loaded up a save from 8 turns before the aliens arrive, so I’m gonna go back to there and make bombers instead of fighters. The ground units are easy

[SixSweetness]

I was just looking at the "Air Units" entry in the tutorial popups and it pretty specifically states that:

"Air Fighters automatically engage any enemy air Units that enter into their intercept range.

Air Bombers can be commanded to attack enemy Armies or Navies within their range."

So it looks like no matter what you can only command Bombers to attack things, where fighters are always defensive, and only against bombers? That's unexpected, but alright now I know.

[Qoojo]

How does a bomber work on an air target. Seems kind of dumb.

[SixSweetness]

It's definitely not intuitive. Basically there are no air targets or ground targets. All units are targets, and Bombers are the only ones that can attack units. Fighters maintain a perimeter that, if anyone tries to send bombers, then they will attack and attempt to destroy them before the bombers can attack.

[Ricochet]

Originally posted by SixSweetness:

I was just looking at the "Air Units" entry in the tutorial popups and it pretty specifically states that:

"Air Fighters automatically engage any enemy air Units that enter into their intercept range.

Air Bombers can be commanded to attack enemy Armies or Navies within their range."

So it looks like no matter what you can only command Bombers to attack things, where fighters are always defensive, and only against bombers? That's unexpected, but alright now I know.

I was also deceived with this tooltip/info lol.

[The Konrad]

I had barbarians with clubs and axes attack my hot air recon balloons and my balloons were barely able to shoot them down.