It doesnt take 15 people, it takes two. It is to the point where manned guns and m3s are the go to defensive choice.
It only takes two skilled people, but 15 marginally skilled ones is what often shows up instead.
Anyway I'm not convinced that resup with M3s is an effective defense by itself. At a bare minimum it takes 3 runs to resup the town, more if the strat is porked at all. With no opposition it takes two passes from one Lanc formation or one pass by two B-24s to WF the town while one or two fighters clean up the town ack and then one M3 with troops which will have spawned before the defenders spawned their M3s. The resup usually doesn't get rolling until the town is flagged, or at least until after the first bombing run, so it's pretty easy for the attackers to take the base first if all of the defenders are just resupping. Those same three potential defenders stand a decent chance of killing the troops if they up fighters IF it's only a few attackers like we're describing. If they're afraid to do so because they're terminally allergic to A2A combat, nerfing the resup won't change that, they'll just sit on the field in wirbs or manned acks, equally ineffective.
So as I see it the problem isn't that resup is too effective as a defense, it's that some defenders are afraid to up fighters even if that's their best chance. Eliminating or nerfing the resup mechanic won't fix the latter problem.
What makes effective resup so important is the strat system. If the city and ack strat are porked the town and guns will be down for two hours or more. It isn't practical or desirable to baby-sit towns for two hours after the attackers move on to somewhere else - that's as much of a fight-killer as resup. So one guy baby-sits the flag while a few others resup for a few runs and then they can go somewhere else to fight without leaving the base totally open to a sneak. If you nerf the resup you have to nerf strat raids so it isn't possible to drop a town for 2 hours. This is especially true for small maps and off-peak hours where defending the strats becomes impractical.
But where I see the resup defense as being both more common and more effective is against horde attacks. Half the time the horders just want to vulch and are too lazy to look for resup M3.
Why should a squad or team spend hours flying extra long distances just to pork a field (which is incredibly mind numbing, yet easy task) just so that some dweeb can't resupply his town.
Most of the time it's not a team, not an extra long distance, and no more mind-numbing than bombing the town. Unless the defenders have multiple spawns it's one guy flying one sector to drop one VH. He can then rejoin the attack or have fun trying to solo kill the defenders who want to fly back from that base (a lot more fun and challenge than multiple guys vulching a deacked field!) Or one or two guys blasting the M3s, which does get a bit boring but no more than vulching does.
It is a simple fix really just remove the ability to magically resupply town buildings only. That way you preserve the supply line aspect and remove what I find to be an un-realistic gimmick. You didn't see Coventry or Dresden rebuilt in 10 minutes!
The town/field capture is so abstracted that I don't think any comparisons to reality are warranted, but if you must, I'd say you're not actually rebuilding the city - after all, Cassino and Caen proved that rubble is even more defensible than intact buildings. The down time is the time it takes for the surviving defenders to recover their senses after being carpet-bombed and take up new firing positions. You can think of the resup M3s as reinforcements, medics, and so forth. It might look a little more realistic to have them bring friendly troops rather than field supps to get the town back up, but the effect on the game would be identical.
I have been in the situation many times and covered the spawn, the dweeb gives up after 1 or 2 tries and then grabs a bloody wirble to sit there and still not save his base and avoid upping an aircraft at all costs!
Exactly! This illustrates two points I'm trying to make. One, it's not that effective or that hard to stop. Two, much though you might like, you can't force good game play. If they're determine to avoid upping an aircraft at all costs it's probably for one of two reasons: either the defenders have been vulched repeatedly before their wheels were up, or the defenders are allergic to combat. In the first instance the bad gameplay is equally on the part of the attackers. In the second, there's nothing you can do to change that. You cannot force good game play.
In sum, I'm not trying to argue that players ought to resup more and fly less, rather that eliminating or nerfing the resup mechanic won't do much to change the bad game play you're (justifiably) decrying but will have unintended negative consequences in other situations.
I think the unintended consequences are what makes many of us disagree with you two, JunkyII, Masherbrum, et al on this. We think the actual consequences of the change will be different from what you want. Unintended consequences are a [bear]. As an example:
To the people claiming lack of fights, de-acking airfields and having a bunch of guys in vulching range is not going to promote a fight.
That's exactly what I'm trying to show.
