Airfield capacity?

[Capitaine Vengeur]

At the moment, I'm preparing a campaign that may overstack a large number of squadrons on a limited number of airfields: the Kursk 1943 campaign for Wings over Russia by The Dev A-Team, rewritten with expanded and accurate orders of battle: more than 300 Aviapolk/Gruppe-size air units! Of which, some 240 Soviets air units are mainly and about evenly stacked on 7 available airfields, each of them rather representing the operational bases for all of an Air Army. Let us consider one of these airfields now assigned overwhelming, and oversized responsibilities:

 

[TargetArea048]

Name=Kursk Airfield

Position=789000.000000,563000.000000

Radius=7071.067871

ActiveYear=0

Location=1

Alignment=FRIENDLY

AirfieldDataFile=RUSSIA_AIRFIELD3.ini

NumSquadrons=4 - - - - - - - - - - > ??

Target[001].Type=Runway3

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

 

What does the NumSquadrons line actually mean? Does it mean that whatever the number of squadrons stacked on this strip, only four random of them could be sent up the air at the time of your mission? If so, may I expand this number to 12, or 16, to make the most of the 30+ squadrons on each airfield, and not to have the painful feeling that the overwhelming Soviet air superiority over Kursk is somewhat... congested? Is there some other data somewhere else concerning the max number of squadrons in the air during a mission that the game can process?

 

Thank you for your answers...

[Wrench]

this is how it works

 

Airfiled 1, 5, 6 -- 3 squadrons

Airfield 4 - 6 squadron

Airfield 2, 3 - 1 squadron

 

these are the max number of squadrons (assuming 18 aircraft each) that can be stationed/based on those airfields

 

that's how the campaign will see it (look at the stock terrains target inis and campaigns)

[+Gepard]

With the line

 

NumSquadrons=

 

you can define how many squadron can placed maximal on an airfield during a campaign. You can choose it freely.

If you want that this airfield will never have planes then you must set it to 0 (for instance for big civil airports with no military action)

If you want more squadrons then use the number you want.

But i'm not sure wheter there is a maximum number of squadrons which the game engine can handle at one airfield at the same time.

[Capitaine Vengeur]

The Russian map proposes mostly #3 airfields for the Soviet side of the front. Each relevant airfield could be crammed with 30+ regiments (20-32 planes), but it would be sufficent to me if only 12 of them per airfield could be present over the front each time a mission is launched (there would be several missions a day during offensives). Testing again and again with one single airfield hosting an increasing number of squadrons, each one of a different model, could help to assess the actual operational allowance of a modified airfield. Boring method anyway.

 

Thank you for your answers, masters.

[+Gepard]

If i remember right (and i may be wrong) the airfields at this time were simple grass stripes. So it would be easier for a Kursk scenario to create more simple grass runways for the terrain, than to press enourmous numbers of planes on one large stock airfield.

At this time mass take off procedures were widely used. Take the modified airfield inis from my Baltic entrance terrain to get a lot of planes into the air in a very short time.