Oh it's a comabt simulator... I see. 
Are you seriously suggesting that Aces High II is *not* a combat flight sim?
Yeah those Town buildings and map rooms are there just there to give you furballers more asthetics, right?
Hardly. The town buildings, field buildings and map rooms, in their current respective states, represent the evolution of resource denial.
Years ago, when this genre was in its infancy, an example of a resource which might be denied to the enemy was high-octane fuel. If one successfully destroyed fuel tanks at an airfield, the performance of aircraft which required that fuel would be diminished.
As the years wore on, other types of resources began to be categorized as "deniable." That is, they could be attacked and destroyed to put the enemy at a disadvantage. Leaping ahead; we arrive at the point when airfields, themselves, could be denied to the enemy via means of rendering them unserviceable.
For the reason which, as previous mentioned, is open to debate, the difficulty with which one (or several) could deny the enemy the use of an airfield was steadily increased. This took the form of increased amounts of AAA, multiple hangars, etc, etc.
Ultimately, not even this was enough. The decision was made to incorporate towns into the mix. Airfields could no longer be captured simply by dropping drunks off on the runway - you had to level and then capture the applicable town.
At that point, the achievement of two objectives - destruction of the airfield (ideally) and the town were required. By default, this split the attackers into two groups. The intended side-effect of this was likely to give the defenders a better shot at getting airborne and into a fighting position.
The objective of this continuous process should be fairly clear. Its an ever-present effort to increase the difficulty of base-captures.
I know Saurdini here is probably just tickled with the furballer catering service they've gotten, but I really don't think I'm the only one that finds this fact less and less appealing. Even Super Mario Bros. had levels to accomplish.
What you consider to be a catering service is simply the way things are designed. How many people do you think stumble across
www.hitechcreations.com and say to themselves "FINALLY! I can fly a C-47!" or "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I can now shoot buildings in a town as Ive always dreamed!"
Not many, I'd gather.
Most of the people who send HTC fifteen of their hard-earned dollars each month probably said something to the effect of: "Eh? I can do what? Fly a P-51? Like in the movies? What? Against 109's!?!?! Holy... whats this... HAY-ZEUS AMAZINHUNK!! Against other PEOPLE in 109's!?!?!?!?! WHERE IS MY WALLET!?!?"
Countless PC games have been developed and sold to "cater" to customers who, like almost all of us, have an unnatural passion for warbirds. Hundreds of titles from shareware to old-school retail to the latest and greatest "shoot at your friends online!" genre.
Ive never seen an advertisement for a game which promised the endless, repetitive, capture of airfields.
If territory acquisition is your thing, though, MAN do they make some great games. I'm still a religious follower of the Total War series. Have been since Shogun. When I want my fix of "base-taking" I'll fire up Empire or Rome.
But when I want to pretend I'm a cartoon fighter ace? I'll double click on the red "AH" icon.
Air combat is what brings in the money. The lack of air combat would be a detriment to HTC's bottom line. Since the base-taking culture is a detriment to air combat by means of resource (flight) denial, its a threat to cash flow, by default.
Dale owns an RV8... not a halftrack staffed with a dozen, period-correct, uniform-wearing mannequin's.
