Self-repairing airfields

[xvii-Dietrich]

Over the past few days, I've been following various discussions regarding missions, objectives, statistics, tactics and so on. Although they do not explicitly state it, there is an underlying theme to many of the arguments put forward, namely: how do we encourage pilots to fly more realistic missions. A comment from Ezzie regarding map rolling got me thinking about the bombers. Although some of us try to make an effort to fly in formation and send over "raids" to hit enemy targets, there are also a lot of "lone wolves" that just do their own thing. That's sort of okay, but there does seem to be an awful lot of this compared to the formations. But formations were typical for bombers during the war. So I started thinking about why.

Partly, this is a survival issue; bombers in formation could take an escort and thus get through. This is similar to the Allied merchant navy convoys crossing the Atlantic. In the case of a bomber group, concentrated gunner fire also was more effective than a single aircraft dealing with an incoming RAF fighter on its own. Another reason is that as a corollary of the Schwerpunktprinzip, you are better off totally destroying one target, then merely damaging several. If you take multiple bombers and hit the one target, you are more likely to cause critical damage and thus knock it out of action completely.

That then gave me an idea...



Self-repairing airfields

I would advocate that airfields can recover themselves with time. Let's say airfields repair at a rate of 1 percent every minute. Exact numbers could be tweaked, but let's use this as a rough working model for now and consider this example:

Typically, a Ju 88 on the Hellfire map can dish out (approx.) 30% for a full load of bombs on target. Send in 4 x Ju 88s and the airfield is gone. However, if one lone Ju 88 went in and did 30%, but the next lone Ju 88 didn't turn up until 20 minutes later, the airfield would have in the meantime been repaired from 30% back down to 10% damage. This means that you would need to send in a Kette or two to make a serious impact. This encourages formation flying. Even if not perfectly tight formation, it does reward a concerted attack.


Intelligence

It also has the advantage that it becomes difficult to know how badly damaged and airfield is. At the moment, we can damage an airfield and make a note of the percentage done. We can then send in the right aircraft to perfectly match the remainder and not worry about overkill. With the repairing airfields, it would still be possible to know the damage levels, but it wouldn't be obvious and it would give some more interesting intelligence tasks to the bomber crews on their long flights out to target.


Small targets

This idea would not apply to any target that a single bomber could take out. For instance a ship, a bridge or a radar mast. Instead, this is something that is for the large targets: airfields and industrial areas.


Limited repair.

Of course, airfields weren't repaired historically so quickly, so perhaps the system could be that they repair up to a maximum of 50% or something. This would prevent them from going back to 100%-pristine within the mission time, but it would still get them out of the range of a single bomber.




Anyway, that's the idea. By having repair crews on the airfield, it would increase intelligence uncertainty and encourage more coordinated bombing raids. Small targets (ships, radar, troops, bridges) would remain for the lone wolves, but to knock out an airfield, and thus roll a map, you would really need some teamwork.

[♣_Spiritus_♣]

I like the idea. I don't really mind the lone wolf bombers as I usually end up being one but its a cool idea and should be doable via script. So long as there are other targets on the maps rather than just airfields I think it could work out great.

To build upon your idea... and scripting work.... Perhaps put in some structures and vehicles at the airfields that are the "construction" HQ and equipment which can be destroyed to cripple this effect, and instead of 1% a minute it gets cut in half if these are taken out. This could give an "attack" role for light bombers or fighters as well while not directly effecting mission objectives.



You could locate them just off the airfield so the formation couldn't just bomb them and get % of the airfield at the same time. It would have to be coordinated.