Very interesting.
I've noticed people were dropping paratroopers on the field a lot lately, but I've always thought it was a result of a poorly informed newbie trying his hand out in a goon run.
I've known that theoretically paratroopers could be used as an ack decoy.
The AA AI seems to set priority to the closest hostile target within vicinity, and will not stop shooting at it until either the target is destroyed, or another closer target presents itself. For some reason the AAs have difficulties in shooting down troopers, and therefore if a goon drop is made onto a field with its defenses up, the AAs will be concentrated on an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the paratroopers.
I've seen a lot of corny gaming-the-gaming stuff, but most of them did not walk over the lines of being plain silly and hilarious - such as "carbombing". However, a goon drop with its sole purpose aimed at distracting the ack certainly seems low. Personally, I'd consider it a degenerate behavior of the witless Borg buffoons in their quest for mindless assimilation of land, without taking the proper steps of capture.
If indeed such a goon drop happens intentionally, then the fact that it may be prevented, or how easy it may be to kill goons, is in principle irrelevant to the matter at hand. What's important is that a certain part of gameplay is being intentionally abused, in an attempt to do away with certain steps required for base capture which needs cooperative effort, a bit of skill, luck, and perserverance on part of the would-be conquerors.
It may not be a serious game-breaker by itself, but it certainly is enough to cause disdain and discontent among the people who try to do things legitimately by playing the base-capture routing according to the implied rules. In essence, this behavior rewards the clueless dolts, and penalizes the innocent, and therefore must be corrected.
Competition often draws out the most distasteful of people, but to think such things would happen in AH is disappointing.
