Chinese Airfield

The Chinese Airfield as it appears prior to Patch 3 and for General Leang

## Introduction

The **Chinese Airfield** is the main aircraft production building for all Chinese Generals. It is basically a place for building and maintaining aircraft.

## Overview

As its name suggests, the Chinese airfield is essentially a scaled down military airfield. Much like its American counterpart, the Chinese Airfield has space for 4 aircraft, 3 are stored in a long rectangular hanger connected to the 2 runways while the fourth is stored in an individual hanger branching off from the main runway (this hanger also lacks a door, unlike the other 3 combined hangars). A control tower can be seen at the upper left corner to monitor the aircrafts' behavior as well as giving orders to pilots, however, a flag pole is found next to the Chinese control tower while on the American counterpart, ammo crates and missile racks can be found. There is also a small landing pad where helicopters are built and repaired by engineers right in the open for quick deployment. The layout of the Chinese airfield is overall slightly shorter than the American one, but in return is slightly wider.

While the American airfield is available as early as rank 1, due to the PLAAF being less developed than the USAAF, Chinese air units are only available for deploy later on as the conflict escalates to rank 3. This forces Chinese generals to depend more on their ground units to strike out at enemy positions or defend their bases. The only exception to this rule is General Leang, considering that she's the AAAA class Dragon General of the PLA.

The airfield is essentially the main aircraft production structure in RTS games and one of the most important structures in the game. Unlike the War Factory, the airfield quite fragile and a basic level offensive GP strike can damage it significantly or even destroy the structure altogether. Besides, it takes a large space and it might be problematic if flat building space is very limited. Another weakness is that all of the fixed-wing aircraft depend on the structure: should the airfield parked with aircraft be destroyed, the aircraft will also perish together. Furthermore, due to the fact the aircrafts need to share two lanes each, the takeoff process is slow and they might get caught in enemy fire. So never put them near the defense perimeter of your base and instead put it a bit more deeper to the center of your base. If the structure is destroyed when its aircrafts are away, said aircrafts will land on another available airfield or simply land on their original place where the airfield used to be.

## Units Created

### General Kwai

* **J-10** - Strike fighter, armed with napalm missiles.
* **Ka-29 Helix** - Heavy support helicopter, armed with dual AT missiles, can be equipped with various modules.
* **Bixi** - Heavy transport helicopter, can carry Overlord based tanks.

### General Fai

* **J-10** - Strike fighter, armed with incendiary missiles.
* **Ka-29 Helix** - Heavy transport variant, comes with space for 10 infantry.

### General Tao

* **MiG MFI** - Strike fighter, fires tactical nuclear missiles.
* **MiG-31 Interceptor** - Air superiority fighter, detects stealth aircraft
* **Ka-29 Helix** - Heavy support helicopter, can be upgraded with various add-ons. Napalm bomb is replaced with a nuclear bomb.
* **White Dragon** - Gunship armed with homing missiles. Does not need to return to airfield for reloading.

### General Bao

* **MiG MFI** - Strike fighter, fires napalm missiles that are effective against ground units.

* **MiG-31 Interceptor** - Air superiority fighter, detects stealth aircraft
* **Ka-29 Helix** - Heavy support helicopter, can be upgraded with various add-ons.

### General Leang

* **MiG MFI** - Advanced strike fighter, fires napalm missiles that are effective against ground units.
* **J-10** - Basic strike fighter, fires cumulation energy missiles.
* **MiG-31 Interceptor** - Air superiority fighter, detects stealth aircraft
* **Ka-29 Helix** - Heavy support helicopter, can be upgraded with various add-ons.

## Upgrades

* **Aircraft Armor** - +25% armor to planes and helicopters.

## Assessment

Pros:

* Cheap structure (1,500$).
* Produces, rearms and repairs aircraft.
* Is shorter than the American Airfield.

Cons:

* Requires Rank 3.
* Low durability and a large target, can be easily destroyed with offensive General Powers.
* Aircrafts docking on it can be destroyed if the structure is destroyed.
* Is wider than the American Airfield.

## Trivia

* While General Leang can build her airfield as early as Rank 1, she's also the only Chinese General to require an airfield to build Propaganda Towers.