AARate

The servicing delay an armed building on this mission waits between passes.

Specification

Applies to: mission behavior
File: rules.ini
Section: [<Mission name>]
Value: floating point
When omitted: InheritedThe mission's own Rate=, taken from the same section.

AARate= sets how long a structure with a primary weapon waits between passes of its Guard or Area Guard mission. On each pass it looks for a target and switches to attacking when it finds one. An EMPulseCannon=yes structure, or one that holds a chemical missile superweapon, skips the search but still waits this long.

The value uses the same units as Rate: a fraction of a minute, multiplied by 900 and rounded down to whole game frames. The structure adds a random 0 to 2 frames to each wait. [Guard] and [Area Guard] each read their own AARate=.

[Guard]
Rate=.030
AARate=.016  ; an armed structure looks for a target every 14 to 16 frames

Despite the name, the delay is not tied to aircraft. It applies to every armed structure on guard, whatever its weapon can hit. A SAM=yes structure uses it on guard too, but once it is attacking, it tracks and fires every frame and does not normally wait for AARate.

AARate never sets the delay for a structure without a primary weapon. With HasStupidGuardMode=yes, the default, such a structure on guard checks again every 100 frames. With HasStupidGuardMode=no, it waits three times the mission’s Rate, or Rate itself for a UnitRepair=yes structure.

Other structure missions that repeat, such as Repair, Unload and Open, wait for their mission’s Rate.

See also — Rate, SAM, HasStupidGuardMode