I have no view yet of how they could be made that important or where they should be placed on a map, but im sure the community could come up with ideas 
I've always thought it would be a cool idea to have Strats directly impact an associated field's available aircraft and vehicles... but my thoughts really would require a ton of work, as it's tied into a new way to setup maps... but basically...
Right now, to take a base, typical strategy is to bomb the VH, sometimes bomb the FH, take out the town and land troops.
The timings obviously can be changed for balance sake, but my thoughts were :
A) Put Strat targets with a VH spawn inside them... Call it the vehicle factories, with the ability to spawn at the strat, or between an associated airfield and town (Also allow the airfield to VH spawn closer to the strat factories as well as inside the airfield VH). This eliminates the easy "bomb VH to eliminate ground support" at the airfield, as ground support would ALSO be able to come from elsewhere.
B) Create a "standing army" at the town. This standing army is supplied by both the barracks at the airfield (let's say every 10 minutes) and barracks at the Strat barracks (every 20 minutes). The standing army idea can be very simple, and can really be thought of as hitpoints. Towns default at 20 "troops", and troops are killed on a 1 to 1 basis, meaning at minimum it requires 3 goons or M3s to capture a downed town (20 troops to take the town guard down, 1 to take the town), but if you fail, the town guard gets reinforced unless you bomb both the airfield barracks and strat barracks.
C) At the strat have "Aircraft Factories". The Aircraft Factory respawns 1 airfield hangar every 10 minutes, starting with fighter hangars then bomber hangars.
D) Move the radar to the Strat targets, and make them more than just 1 tower. Increase "dot" range over what it is today by 25%. Every picture I've seen of WWII Radar shows multiple towers, so we should have multiple towers as well. If we use 4 towers, make each one bombed reduce the radar range by 25% instead of just all or nothing.
E) Once all airfields the Strat is associated with is captured, the Strat then changes hands. Yes, this does mean that after a base is captured, it's very hard to hold as the Strat target base is supplying your enemies but not you. However, since bases still regenerate on thier own (just much MUCH faster with the strats intact), that forward base is still worth defending as you'll get it's full usage eventually.
I think this would help move a lot of fights away from the airfields and towards the strat targets. This (I think) would help reduce vulches as the fights would be centered around strat targets to take over airfields as opposed to over the runway of the airfield and it's close town. Since one strat target could be fueling 2 (or more) airfields, it's importance is greatly increased as weakening the strats would help against other airfields as well, yet the airfields still need attention because of the air hangars and town needed to capture. This also helps reduce milkrunning as it's a much bigger co-ordination needed to quickly take a base (but still not so much that it can't be done).
Again, these are all just ideas. No offense meant to the current setup at all. Mine thoughts are just different. =)
