Airbases

In the Panzer General games, aircraft behave much like land units. Of course, they move in their own layer and thus, can overlap a land/naval unit, but everything else is similar: you move them on the map, they stay there until you move them to some other place and once in a while you have to place them over an airfield for refueling or getting reinforcements. They even obey the same zone-of-control rules as ground units do.

However, you have to pay more attention to their fuel level. If you keep moving an aircraft spending all its fuel, the next turn it will disappear (it crashed into the ground). To avoid this, you have to move it to a friendly airfield and refuel it during next turn. If there's no such airfield in range, you would better leave the airplane there and try to take one that is close enough from the enemy's hands.

One problem, in my opinion, with this approach, is that the aircraft's real range is not having too much of an effect on the gameplay. Of course, you have to go back refueling more often with some types like the early war fighters, but I think that's not enough.

Let's recall the Battle of Britain case. German Bf 109s, based on airfields on the French coast, barely had enough fuel to reach England and fight for a few minutes before returning home. That meant the bombers that could fly to more distant targets had to do it without the protection of their fighters. Luftwaffe knew about this so they designed the Me 110 heavy fighter. The Zerstörer had a bigger range but fared poorly against the more nimble British fighters.

One cannot simulate this well enough in the Panzer General games. You could move a Bf 109 all the way into middle of Britain and then leave it there waiting for the ground troops to take a nearby airfield to resupply the fighter.

What if airplanes stop behaving like ground troops in a different layer and be based on airfields instead? We could use their range to determine what their operational area would be. Let' analyze this approach a bit:

• The movement attribute becomes useless because what matters is only the range. They could move anywhere within a certain radius centered at the airbase location.

• Aircraft would supposedly return home after performing their mission. Because of this, they would be able to refuel and rearm every turn, for free.

• However, adding reinforcements would require holding the unit for the entire turn at the base (justified by reorganizing actions, let's say).

My initial intention was to leave the airplanes where they are at the end of the turn. That raised the question: how would the spotting take into account the unit's movement? Because moving the unit reveals area covered by the fog-of-war not only around their starting and ending locations, but also along the path of their movement.

If we leave the planes where they are, next turn when they move they will uncover the area along the trail, which might not make much sense if we consider that they should return home after each mission. It is also a bit cheating, since it will clear the fog-of-war in the area where the plane was the previous turn even if there are no friendly units there in the current turn.

So let's suppose that air unit returns to base after a mission. When should that happen? If they return immediately after a mission or at the end of that player's turn; the other side doesn't get the chance to strike back. Maybe they want to attack them with fighters or AA guns, so it would only be fair to leave the units there during the enemy's turn. Only at the beginning of current side's next turn would the aircraft return at their base, ready for another mission.

I'm currently implementing the approach described above in our The Panzer Division game. I have no idea whether it's going to be a total failure or a huge success, but I think it's going to integrate well with the changes in the general supply mechanism I'm planning to make in the game. Also, there are some details to sort out, like the air transports and paratroopers. Anyway, I would like to hear your opinion, so feel free to comment on this post.