1. What if hangers need to be maintained in order to ensure the captured base can be imediatley defended?...
If you can't hold the base long enough for the hangars to come back up you don't have enough people to take the base in the first place. You have nearly the same distance to spawn in and advance to the base as the other team, with the advantage of now holding the base and having buildings for cover. It can take nearly 10 minutes to drive a tank just within range to shoot a base, let alone move onto and secure it for capture. Plenty of time for the hangars to come back up.
I'm already thinking ahead of you, because your angle is as blatantly made clear in your post, as your knowledge of the superb "dive" bombing characteristics of a fully laden A20, and admiting that it's gaming the game to frustrate those trying to capture a field in it....
Huh? My point is that if you want to capture the base, and your ground forces are ineffective, and the enemy is sitting on concrete gaming the game, then the option and capability to remove his ability to game the game is there. Blow up the damn hangars, then force them to tower out or die.
Forcing me to buy a Tiger or Tiger 2 and then kill dozens of tanks just to pay for that single sortie is stupid. If I lose it, oh well I lost the tank, that's the game. I knew that risk when I pushed the button.
But punishing me for even taking it out of the hangar? Toejam that. Do that and you'll only ever see them in two locations, on a mountain overlooking V135 with 300 kills and a dedicated M3 to resupply them. ( Yay I now have 10 net perks... owait I could be down there in a IVF and have gotten 10 times that for 1/3rd of the kills and not be paranoid about every shadow.) Or 10Km away from V85 playing sniper and running everytime a CV gets close to shore.
...because Vbases are routinely spaced with enough distance to allow a group of players to make multiple respullying M3 trips before enemy tigers and panthers roll in to secure the recently captured but undefended field?
Actually... yes. You can get 1, probably 2 trips in with an M3 before a Tiger or Panther is in range of the Vbase. Depending on terrain. If they leave at the same time. If you actually have people who decide to resupply the base you can get a hangar up in one run.
And after capping a blown up Vbase... anyone who then towers out and runs off and leaves it undefended... deserves to have it retaken 5 minutes later.
2. Planes can cause notable damage to tanks via strafing, in real-life and in this game... but, why are you (and most everyone else in this game) only familiar with their threat if they come in raining heavy ordnance?...
There are only two aircraft I pay attention to when ordnance is down. Hurri 2d, or IL2. Anything else is ignored. Oh look you knocked out my pintle gun... like I ever use that against anything but a Storch and the co-ax is just as effective. I might get tracked, but the odds of that happening are pretty much nill. I've been tracked three.. maybe four times in the past year. Two from tanks, the others from near-misses by bombs.
.50 cals, 20 and 30 MM HE rounds, are pretty much useless against tanks. You might get a mobility kill here and there but for the most part it isn't worth the time. You're better off hunting M3's and M-18's with those rounds.
Bombs are certain kills if you know how to aim, can be dropped out of range of AAA, and are rather satisfying to throw at someone who has been camping a spawn for the past hour and a half.
