Aerial Pursuit for WH3

Flying units should be fun! Your general has other things to worry about than micromanaging bombard orders for units halfway across the battlefield.

Currently in beta. Only tested in single-player so far.

This mod allows you to tell flying units to move above enemy ground targets that you choose and hover above them. This mod will even automatically use bombard abilities on the enemy below, depending on your configuration.

1. Added support for automatically using bombard abilities wind-up times (Sky Junk, Knights of Immolation, and Arcane Phoenix). Feedback welcome.
2. Auto-using bombards is turned on by default. Change the configuration if you wish to only use abilities manually.
3. Ranged flying units without fire-while-moving can now stop to fire their main weapon between bombardments.
4. Opt-in unreliable beta-ish feature – You can choose turn on the following option in configuration: If you give a new order to a locked unit, Aerial Pursuit can attempt to automatically unlock so the unit follows your new orders. Unfortunately, it gives false postives and false negatives in some situations. The game doesn’t have the functions I need to make this fully reliable, so I’ve turned it off by default. By default, you need to unlock Aerial Pursuit before giving that unit a new order.

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1. Select one or more flying units.
2. (optional) Click near the enemy you want to target, or click to attack.
3. Activate Aerial Pursuit using the hotkey or the button.
4. This mod finds the enemy ground unit that is closest to the place you last ordered your flying unit to move or attack. This mod locks in that target.
5. This mod tells your flying unit to move above that target, frequently updating the move order.
6. If an enemy flying unit comes nearby, your unit will attack it to maintain air superiority before continuing on to its ground target (this can be configured).
7. (optional) When your attack-moving unit is above the enemy ground target, it will start automatically bombarding the enemy, depending on your config.
8. If the enemy flees, your flying unit has done its job! It stops its pursuit, unlocks Aerial Pursuit, and awaits new orders from you. (You can configure it to keep chasing fleeing units if you prefer.)
9. If you need to give a unit a different order, unlock the aerial pursuit order by selecting the unit and using the hotkey or pressing the button. It will only accept your new orders after Aerial Pursuit is unlocked.

   Most bombardments and some character skills have no wind-up time, so you can use those abilities even with the Aerial Pursuit lock turned on. However, some abilities (like Dragon Breath attacks and most spells) have a wind up time that will almost certainly be interrupted by this mod unless you unlock the unit first.

   **This mod cannot determine if you’ve shift-clicked some orders. It will just lock in the final destination and all the other orders in between will be lost.

This mod should work without you doing anything with configuration. However, you can customize a lot of variables between battles using either MCT (new or legacy) or the configuration text file.

You can use whatever key combination that you set up. This mod typically uses whatever you set "Save Camera Bookmark 8" to be (it’s usually not set to anything). I personally use X, since I don’t ever use X to control the camera.

You can use this mod to move any non-summoned flying unit, whether it has bombard abilities or not. The Auto-Bombard Abilities it can use are:

• NEW – Knights of Immolation Searing Torment (Tzeentch RoR)*
• NEW – Cathay Sky Junk Bombs
• NEW – Arcane Pheonix’s Emberstorm
• Flamespyre Phoenix’s Wake of Fire
• Lizardmen’s Drop Rocks (and Spheres) of various kinds
• Dwarf Gyrocopter, Gyrobomber and Skyhammer bombs
• Flock of Djaf’s Death From Above (Tomb Kings LoL)
• Any other units that use the abilities above. If mods add custom abilities, they can let Aerial Pursuit know about them like the Thunderbarge submod for WH2 (works identically for WH3). If you let me know about them, I can add to this list.

This script only affects battles, so you can start using this mod within a campaign at any time.

Should be compatible with almost any well-written mod. If you find an incompatibility, lmk so I can talk with the other modder or at least list the compatibility here.

Keep in mind that custom bombard abilities won’t be automatically used unless they are registered with this mod like in this Thunderbarge submod for WH2.

I have not yet tested this in multiplayer. Based on mods I’ve made in the past, I suspect that in multiplayer cooperative campaigns, it will only work for one of the players who has an army in the fight (not spectators, even if an ally gifts you units). If you try it, let me know how it goes.

1. Flying units with aerial pursuit locks often won’t use their ranged auto-attacks unless they can fire while moving. This is just because they will probably be moving frequently.
2. Automatic unlocks can have false positives and false negatives. That’s why automatic unlocks are disabled in the default configuration. It could work 100% of the time if CA adds more information to command_handler_callbacks to indicate what unit received the order and to differentiate between orders given by the player and orders given by other sources (unit controllers, AI Planners, etc).
3. See also the section on multiplayer, above.

RPFM (of course). Hambango for the hotkeys idea. Icon is a cropped version of high elf icon from the game.