Warsim's Point

Was building a scenario with some air bases and thought I'd share some tips. The rest of you scenario writers please do add and correct anything in this. Helpful to the new guys

1)Realistic Construction

You do have some specific facilities that are needed for an air facility to function properly. These are: runway, avgas facility, munitions storage facility (ammo dumps) and aircraft holding facility of some sort (hangar,tarmac,revetments, etc) and control tower. (Not sure if Avgas and Control Tower are needed for these to function but believe there is a minimum as to what is believable). Beyond this you can add as many of each type of facility as you wish as well as populating the base with other structures (barracks, generators, etc. etc).

Please do be aware that spacing is important. Bases can be anywhere 1-10nm but be aware that certain facilities should be very close together. So your taxiways should be right next to your runways.

There are plenty of resources on the web to view your airbases or certain airbase configurations. The most popular is global security due to the fact that it has many satellite photos or diagrams of the facilities you would like to build Here's an example:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... ngtian.htm

10/20/04: Input from Calum: Add lots of tarmacs/revetments.



2)Resilient Construction

If you wish to build a airbase that'll survive a few raids there are a few things that can help.

First, Ragnar has provided tons of hardened facilities in the database. These range from fortified ammo dumps to underground hangars. These generally take a few hits to properly destroy and in some cases take very specific weapons (bunker busters).

Second, you must understand there are facilities that if destroyed can wreck an airbases ability to function. The ammo dump unit is the clearest case of this and unfortunately is the achilles heal. To overcome this you can add additional dumps, however, understand that weapons are drawn one dump at a time in the order they were added to the base group. Other units under this category are the runways and aircraft holding facilities. Aircraft holding facilities can be destroyed as well as the aircraft in them. The answer here is add more and distribute your aircraft among them.

Third the order at which you form your base does matter. In terms of how harpoon operates when you click and drag creating your base the unit list is populated in that order. So if Foxhole Norman decides to target this base with Tomahawks then they will be struck in that order if he doesn't otherwise specify. His attack list is generated by what he can see and how the facility list is generated. So, when constructing your airbase select your achilles heal type units at the end. Like wise you may want to be kind and not put the indestructable runways at the beginning of his list but towards the end in front of the achilles heal type units. Doing this actually rewards players that take the time to plan their strikes and specifiy targets

3)Air Defenses

Ragnar probably wins "the prize" for setting these up properly. However, I will add that I find it best to not group air defenses (AAA,Radars,missiles) with bases. Instead I add them as separate facilities with autodetect off (player cannot see unless he/she detects). I use more SAM/MANPAD type units then AAA as they are the most effective.

Hope this helps