Would you guys say the main problem with Strats is that they are easier to attack than they are to defend? That is, it's much more likely to find a buff-oriented player with the time and ambition to launch a group of heavy bombers, climb to 30K, and attack opposing strats than it would be to find a few players who are willing to man interceptors and climb up to 30K to try to knock the buffs down? Especially when there is no penalty for bomb-and-bail tactics, its just not worth the effort of most players to defend strats?
And further, this is why on some maps, all the strats are gathered together and placed in the furthest corner away from the opposing sides?
I don't have an answer for that, but I think it might help to create some kind of penalty for bomb-and-bail, and to introduce a heavy downdraft above say, 25K, to keep buffs at a reasonable altitude? I think another problem is VBases near strats. Its difficult for a single pilot to shut down a VBase, but not difficult for a single player to attack nearby strats and siginificantly damage them, impacting the whole opposing country.
Hajo's mention of Peenemunde gave me another idea. Maybe a new kind of base could be created, a 'V1 launch site', complete with the ramp style launchers, support vehicles & buildings, etc. Normally these bases are present on the map, but inactive. But as a country's strats are depleted, it would start to spend more and more resources to develop and deploy these weapons. So maybe at if a strat is destroyed down to 50%, for example, the county's V1 bases become active and start firing V1 missiles (AI controlled of course, say 1 missile every 15 minutes) at the nearest enemy strat target. The missiles could have visible icons and travel at 350 mph, and show up on a country's radar display, so it would not be impossible to find them and shoot them down.
Or, a side's pilots could mount airstrikes to take the launchers out. And as a county's strats are destroyed even further, the launch rate of V1s could be increased, maybe a V1 fired every 5-10 minutes?