This isn't really a suggestion to anyone, just a tangent my mind has travelled down for a few days concerning AH. I thought I'd express it here just to see what you guys think of it in a theoretical kind of way.
HQs
In real war, command centers are somewhat mobile to maintain a workable distance to the fighting and to avoid detection by the enemy. It seems to me sort of absurd that an enemy can overwhelm one side of your territory while you take bases in the opposite direction, leaving your HQ deep in enemy territory to be porked mercilessly. So, why can't HQs be moved like CVs? maybe not so quickly, but I was thinking it would be neat if say every two hours an HQ could be relocated up to 25 miles. Perhaps this move would take 30 minutes and during that time a visible building site could be present, but the HQ technically moves after the 30 minute period is over. Obviously HQ locations would not be on the map anymore but must be reported by scouts.
ENGINEERS
Combat engineers played a HUGE role in WWII and every war since and almost all before. In WWII, engineers could put up a runway in under 24 hours. Why not have engineers in AH? They could be dropped exactly like you would drop paratroopers. Let's say it would take 10 engineers 45 minutes to erect a small airfield (it would really only be practical if engineers built exclusively small airfields) and each engineer thereafter decreased the time by 1 minute with a maximum of 30 working on any given airfiled. While an airfield is under construction there will be a fairly obvious construction site on the ground. This site would have limited ack (combat engineers were also trained fighters) but if it took too much damage, the engineers would be lost and so would the new base. To offset the potential chaos that could ensue from a mass of new bases I suggest two things:
a.)Engineers could only be produced at HQ at a certain rate, say 1 every 5 minutes the HQ is healthy. At HQ there would be a single runway capable of launching C-47s, M3s, and maybe Me163s only. You could transfer engineers to forward bases (dropping them on an existing base would house them there) but they would be killed if the barracks was destroyed.
b.)That the total anihilation of a base be possible. If EVERY structure at the base and town is destroyed, then that base is in danger of extinction. Let's say that players have 10 minutes after the last structure is destroyed to drop airfield supplies on the base or else it is wiped off the map. Let's also say that the now-standing automatic renewal of structures does not occur if all structures have been destroyed. I think that this would be as much a problem for the attackers as the defenders as obviosly you can't capture a base that isn't there and if you now want a base at that location you have to build one yourself which is quite risky.
As you can see, I'm trying to introduce fluidity into our battlefield. These changes would bring about a great deal more "player-intelligence" and stimulate teammate communication as you would be reliant on what your teammates told you to a certain degree. To accomodate this in the clipboard I would simply make it possible to create icons yourself based on info received from teammates or that you found yourself. These icons would have a slightly different appearance to indicate they are not 100% reliable and subject to change. A raw idea that just jumped into my head is that each team have their own Admiral that would cull the information and by placing icons on his own clipboard map, would place icons on each team members maps as well. Admirals could step in at any time with perhaps the rank preference that controlling a CV has. This would avoid a sort of lurch that players would be left in when they first log on, unaware of the day's events. But like I said, that's pretty raw.
Anyway, I'm just sort of brainstorming. Let me know what you think.
