It'd be nice if, in the future version of AH, the "normal" arenas were designed in such a way that each country needed to be reduced to say 4 airfields to be reset rather than 1. This would make the game more enjoyable for the players on the losing team since they'd at least always have a place to take off from. Currently it is not uncommon for a country to be reduced to 2 or 3 airfields, all porked and CAPPED constantly, then remain that way for hours. With the number of airfields available per country (anywhere from 25-30 to upwards of 70), this would have no negative impact on the movement of the "War".
In addition, strat targets could be capturable, and local airfield rebuild times could be dependant on distance from nearest friendly "depot". Taken one step farther, such depots could actually be minature cities, protected by small garrisons of AI ground vehicle units which would have to be destroyed prior to a capture. This would mesh well with a future FPS-type system which HTC has expressed desire to add to AH, but would also work well with the current C-47 troop drops.
Such capturable strat targets would not HAVE to be captured by a "winning" country, but they'd make it easier for them to accomplish their goals. My thought is with rebuild times dependent on distance from strat targets, if a country didn't capture the strat as it advanced then its foreward bases would be increasingly vulnerable to counter-attack. (this would, in essence, model supply lines) BUT, the country might still want to bypass such strat targets as they should IMO be tougher to capture than a simple airfield. IMO these large cities/bases should be able to spawn defensive units to protect themselves, but should not be able to be used as bases to launch attacks from.
Port facilities should have some sort of local defence in future terrains, either by means of a nearby normal airfield or by virtue of some specialized unit availablr from said ports (such as seaplane fighters like the N1K1). Ports are too vital to be able to be "snuck" by the enemy.
Large "main" airfields should IMO not only have superior defences like they currently do, but should also require physically MORE troops to capture.
Arena size does not have to be 500+ miles across; indeed, with some of the AH player base bound to be playing in the Mission Theatre, such large terrains will likely be overkill. The base distances/density of Mindanao work well; such base distance and density could easily handle more players if it filled the entire 256 x 256 map area instead of roughly 2/3 the space as is the case with the Mindanao map.
Just some random thoughts.
J_A_B
