Originally posted by JBA
What if you could build a base, though troop drops.
First land a c47 to make the spot, then bring in troops, in (X) numbers to build Hangers and guns.
Perhaps while still in hangers before take off you designate what the troops will build, AA, FH, Vh etc.
How about something more limited? Let's look at 'field supplies'. You drop them on a damaged airfield, they help rebuild the field. So field supplies must include building materials, ammo, fuel, and ordnance. So let's expand the usage of field supplies.
1) Allow field supplies to be dropped places other than airfields. When dropped away from airfields, a field supply package remains for some specified amount of time if not used, and can be destroyed like other ground objects.
2) A field supply dump has a fixed number of supply units -- let's use 10 for a first approximation. Each supply unit can do one of three things: rearm a plane, refuel a plane, or repair a plane. For game-balance purposes, either field supply dumps should not resupply bombers, or the number of units of supplies necessary to resupply a bomber should be multiplied by the number of engines (i.e., a B-26 takes 2 units of supplies to rearm, a B-17 takes four).
3) A field supply dump creates an 'arming pad' around it until exhausted. When you land your plane, taxi within the limit of this 'arming pad', and stop, you get a pop-up window with the available units of supply and three checkboxes (one for each type of resupply) and an OK button. You pick what you want to get and click the OK button, and your plane gets reloaded.
What this does is allow people to run supplies forward and create 'ad-hoc' airfields to stage toward enemy bases, while making them keep running supplies in to keep it operational. Because you don't have a real airstrip, you're stuck with taking off on whatever ground surface exists, which makes it more difficult to land and take off again, but the flexibility of being able to put a 'rearm pad' pretty much anywhere outweighs that.
