An idea about Crete/air missions

[Mike 51]

Hey,

Playing Wake today I noticed for the first time the Japanese bomber that was wizzing about all over the place was also an active spawn. It seemed to follow its own flight path and stay airborne, and you were immediately assigned a spot.

This seems to have huge implications; if you can do this, surely you can (e.g.) do the same for the Junkers on Crete, rather than having the problems at the airfield? And if you could spawn a wave of Messerschmids and Spitfire in the air for the two sides on Battle of Britain? Or for a map where, I don't know, you could have B17s on a bombing run against ME262s or whatever.

I don't understand why this isn't being made much fuller use of; at the extreme, you could even remove airstrips entirely and have the added realism of planes just 'arriving' rather than taking off 20 seconds away from the enemy positions.

Could someone explain if/why this is impractical, because at the moment this seems to be a potentialy awesome feature that could totally change FH. Certainly for paradrop/air objective missions (something else that hasn't been taken up by anyone that I can see since BoB), but beyond this for next to everything.

Anyway, not wanting to put the pressure on, but has anyone given this some thought?

[urseus]

It certainly needs to be used in a dday paratroopers band of brotheresk night time map, but the mappers dont seem to ever want to do night maps.

[Lobo]

We know Acomba Mike, this feature will be used a lot in the future for flight and paratrooper missions.

[striderx2048]

well the bombers on crete need somewhere to land and reload. ya would be nice for the paratroopers

[Cyb3rwarrior]

haha, imagine if they can be shot down
Cyb3rwarrior killed:
PlayerX
PlayerY
PlayerT
PlayerB

lol, good times, realistic too if we could have, like, 300 people on a server, but alas we live in the development era, but it will come soon!

[Beast of War]

Removing airfields is VERY bad idea......

Planes need to be able to reload in maps, and they should be able to be repaired too ( that is now a problem in many maps already )

I am totally against JU 52 being used as disposable items too, the FH devs wanted realism in their flight physics, how about realism in how planes should be used first ? Let the JU 52 spawn with a minute delay......that will make clear the pilot should not ditch them, but return to an airfield and pick up another load.

Aircraft without an airfield are disposable items.....i cannot see the use or advantages of that at all, it is a return to "vanilla" arcade gameplay.

[Mike 51]

Good point, so maybe removing airfields entirely is a step too far. But perhaps the airfields could remain even though the planes would still spawn in the air, meaning they can rearm and 'ditch' at the front-line aerodrome if necessary, but at the same time would be less vulnerable to things like tank fire and would arrive a bit more 'realistically'. It's not that big a point, it's more about appearance than gameplay, but I'm encouraged that Lobo + team are thinking of using the feature more widely... finally, Battle of Britain will be what it should be!

Edit. Have to say though, in terms of realism > gameplay, the idea of a JU52 pilot doing dedicated shuttle runs between Crete and the mainland rather than just spawning in the air really wouldn't work on a server. As far as I and many others (I think) are concerned, transport planes are expendable, and I don't see much of a problem with that, as flying one seems to me to be one of the last interesting things you can do in game short of driving a Matilda I across a map. Only passworded clan servers would be able to pull off the kind of responsible flying you're describing, so I'd have to disagree that that's the way forward.

But I take your point about the airfields...