Well, I guess I'll chime in on this to.
This may come as a shock to most, but I also agree with the change to 100,000lbs of ords to kill the HQ. I have done a lot of research on WWII era flack towers, and can tell you it would take a heck of a lot of explosives to kill one. Especially the German type which represents the HQ. The fact is that in real life these were MASSIVE structures. The HQ type was seven stories of reinforced concrete built to not only fire at bombers, but to house 10,000 citizens in its air raid shelter. It even had four 12ton armored ammo vaults on the top of the building to supply the roof guns. One of these towers still sits today imploded upon itself.
I am glad to see that some of the old salts to the game are coming back to play again due to the HQ change. That is wonderful for the community as a whole! For the record, 90% of the time the 49thFG does not kill HQs to "grief" people. The other 10% of that time has been a more recent occurrence and is due solely to the continuous and relentless "grief" the 49thFG takes from the "griefers" & "trolls" in the community; in game & on the BBS. Every time an HQ goes down the 49thFG must be the culprit and is instantly blamed for it, which is BS. I also hear a lot that we are dweebs in bombers, that bail after the HQ goes down. I can assure you that is not the case. What is most likely the case is that we are sitting at the base of the building waiting for it to come up again so we can kill it again; not to "grief" anyone, but because when you drive that far why take it down only once? Not to mention that you would think someone would come kill us, which on some occasions happens. BTW we do not get pissed off when that happens, we expect it! One guy, two cahones, and an IL-2 could have ended all these "issues" before they ever got started. Unfortunately though it takes less effort and skill to log & whine than it does to defend a strategic target.
While I do agree with a harder HQ, I also think it should stay down the same time as it has been, if not a lil longer to adjust for the increased hardness. It is still a strategic target, still causes a serious disadvantage to the enemy, and should now more than ever be worth while in attacking. I have never thought it was a good, logical, or sane thing that one set of Lancs could kill an HQ; and now that three sets can take it down for 5 min is essentially removing it from the game. If that is the intended outcome, why not just actually remove it? The band-aid that has been applied is a sad concession to a few...who apparently have a few accounts. I doubt anything with the down time will change unless enough of us gripe about it, but whatever...
49MERLIN
CO 49thFG
P.S.: Since it now takes so much explosives to kill the HQ, and we will never have nuclear arms; how about change the typical fire and smoke of an HQ kill to a small mushroom cloud to represent a "nuclear like" explosion and make some good film for anyone capable of achieving 100,000lbs of damage to any one target!?! This type of mushroom cloud explosion did exist during WWII as is evidenced by the 1Kt TNT test which was a part of the Manhattan Project,(used to determine blast & yield data for the A-bomb).