[jjnell95]

This responds to the report that weapons systems don't work, there is no integrated air-defence network, and flight operations are clunky. Three audits traced the weapon path, the shared air picture and the deck cycle before anything changed. The full write-up is in docs/2026-10-03-integrated-air-defence-and-flight-ops.md.

Weapons

• Refusals say why. A refused fire order from the menu, the dock, Ctrl+right-click or the firing board now reports the reason (weapons hold, out of range, no line of fire…). It used to report only "Order refused".
• Stale plots. A standing attack gives up after 4 minutes on a stale plot instead of holding for up to 30 minutes.
• Kills. Queued rounds at a contact the plot records as sunk are refunded.
• Air-to-air over land. Air-to-air and anti-air "direct" rounds (AIM-9X, ASRAAM, IRIS-T, AAM-5, PL-10, Mistral) no longer die over land.
• Weapons Free against aircraft. A commander's ship on Weapons Free engages identified hostile aircraft in its envelope, one round at a time, keeping four of each missile type for missiles. Classic, Tight and Hold are unchanged.
• AI salvo size. The AI fires a weapon's own salvo at aircraft, not the four-round anti-ship volley.

Integrated air defence

• Force allocation. The defence cycle works the raid in two passes: one interceptor per inbound round first, then top-ups. A ship with a free guidance channel is asked before a nearer saturated one, and the budget uses one time-to-impact.
• Per-ship inner layer. Each ship keeps its own layer allowance, so an escort's point-defence shots no longer use up the carrier's own.
• Networked fire control. A new cooperative_engagement platform field covers the 2027 US carriers, cruisers, destroyers and frigate, plus Maya. Two fitted ships on the link can guide each other's shots below the shooter's own horizon, while the consort's radar holds the target. This is a gameplay abstraction, not a model of any real system.
• Display. The Air Defence board names the ship engaging each round and shows networked status. A unit panel chip shows networked fire control.

Flight operations

• Holds.
  • Fixed-wing aircraft fly a racetrack hold instead of stopping in the air.
  • An aircraft launched without orders holds ahead of its ship instead of flying off until bingo.
  • Holds are marked, so the AI and stalled-task checks still treat the aircraft as idle.
• Recovery.
  • Aircraft back at a busy or burning deck hold in a marshal stack astern at economical speed. The mission board shows MARSHAL.
  • No landings on a burning deck.
  • Helicopters aboard a carrier take helicopter-deck turnaround.
• Missions.
  • CAP intercepts are flown at dash.
  • A dash the commander orders on station stands.
  • CAP and ASW with auto-return off keep working.
  • Recon no longer circles submarine contacts.
  • A strike that never flew says "called off".
  • Routine mission bingo no longer drops time compression.
• Ready alert. A deck can hold 2 or 4 fighters on alert from the right-click menu, and scrambles them into a CAP toward a hostile raid.

Validation

• Regression suite: 1,004 tests, 0 failed (977 before). New files are tests/test_integrated_defence.gd and tests/test_flight_deck.gd.
• All 18 CI steps also ran locally under Xvfb and passed. They cover the runner self-check, Northern Passage outcomes and replay, save continuation, and every native interface suite in the workflow (passage, Command Watch, cold-war, fleet-command, deep-command, recognition, air missions, command priorities, readout, command training, fidelity, operational fittings, aviation, workshop and weapon control). Each ran at one resolution.
• Before and after, seed 2, AI on both sides, 6,000 s:

Operation	Interceptors	Intercepted	Leakers	Offensive rounds	Hits scored
Taiwan Strait	46 → 57	12 → 14	6 → 4	43 → 37	2 → 2
Aegis Bastion	0 → 0	—	—	40 → 24	5 → 5
Carrier Watch	60 → 66	15 → 15	1 → 1	16 → 8	0 → 0
Hormuz	77 → 79	29 → 29	5 → 5	26 → 35	3 → 3

Not done

• Scenario data. The generators were not re-run: in this container they do not reproduce data/ byte for byte. The Maya file was hand-edited to match the generator's output exactly.
• Browser build. Not rebuilt.
• Ballistic trajectories. Left at a single altitude, which an existing test pins.
• Air Operations dialog. Still opens on the LAUNCH tab, which CI interface checks depend on.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_011cJ1dThG7Td8etLDqjbxm1