I am an old AW vet, and one thing AW did which I think may solve this problem without hauling us back into the Dark Ages of Sir Pork-a-lot is limiting the number of planes that can up from a given field per unit time and/or per operational Fighter Hangers. I believe this was done in AW more to curtail server resource load but the unintended effect was actually realistic. There were only so many planes allowed to up at a given airbase at a time. Allowing unlimited planes to up instantly is very unrealsitic.
If you limited small fields to 20 planes every 5 minutes (or whatever), medium fields to 30 planes, and large fields to 50 planes, it would pretty accurately simulate a one, two, or three squadron strength force. Or, perhaps, limiting the number of fighters able to up to 5 or 10 for every fighter hanger that is not destroyed in the same 5 minute sortie cycle woud be viable. If more than the allocated number wanted to participate in that base's defense or stage an attack from that base within that finite time frame, they would have to do so, at least in part, from a nearby field. The same system could be used with regard to bombers and Bomber Hangers.This would have the effect of limiting vulching, keep hordes to a reasonable level, spread the fighting out over more of the map and make base suppression and capture more a function of gaining local air superiority than trying to cripple the field's infrastructure which is largely impractical with anything other than overwhelming numerical superiority as noted in the previous posts.
As it is now, there is no difference between a field with only 1 FH up and one with all its FH's up.Unless you are able to keep all FH's down simultaneously there is zero net effect, this is not very realistic. Hangers were the numero uno target when attacking airfields (they housed the aircraft for maintainence/re-arming/re-fueling/refitting), actual ready aircraft on the ground were also high priority but AH does not model parked aircraft. In a way, doing what I mentioned above will give the building battlers a purpose that won't require a massive numerical advantage for a prolonged time period as each hanger destroyed will restrict the enemies ability to amass a perma-horde incrementally, at the same time there will be a premium put on the prudent application of defensive fighter forces, making death more meaningfull and costly to ones' team in the local strategic sense.
Just thinking out loud here...
Zazen
