American Airfield

The American Airfield as it appears prior to Patch 3 and for General Ironside

### Notes

Can be upgraded with security systems for self defense (does not apply to General Ironside)

### Upgrades

Security SystemsAdvanced Data Transmission Codes (Ironhand)

Uranium Plated Armor (Alexander)

## Introduction

The **American Airfield** is the main aircraft production building for all American Generals except General Malcolm "Ace" Granger. It is basically a place for building and maintaining aircraft.

## Overview

The American Airfield is, as implied by its name, a scaled-down airfield. The airfield is built upon a rectangular space with a T-shaped aircraft runway, with a "main track" supporting two aircraft and with the "branch" which has the same aircraft capacity joined together. There is also a roundabout mark at the connecting section where the aircraft coming from the "branch" can turn towards the "main track". Each of the runway has semi-cylinder-shaped hangars (total is four hangars) for the aircraft to park in. Inside, a variety of equipment and resources like robotic arms and ammunition storage are used to produce, refuel, rearm and repair aircraft. When all of the four aircrafts are taking off, the two aircrafts on the "branch" will move to the "main track" earlier than the ones on the "main track". Then said two aircrafts will take off to the air first, followed by the rest. A control tower can be seen at the upper left corner to monitor the aircrafts' behavior as well as giving orders to pilots. There is also a small landing pad where helicopters are built and repaired by engineers right in the open for quick deployment.

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, it is 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 the building space is very limited. Another weakness is that all of the 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 Townes

* **F-6 Fighter** - Advanced strike fighter, launches plasma blasts capable of one-shotting most units.
* **Laser Thor** - Attack helicopter equipped with laser pods.
* **Aurora** - Supersonic bomber, armed with a powerful energy bomb, cannot be intercepted during its attack run.

### General Alexander

* **Thor** - Helicopter gunship.
* **F-117 Night Hawk** - Stealth bomber.
* **Aurora Beta** - High speed bomber, carries a single high-explosive + EMP bomb, cannot be intercepted until payload is dropped.

### General Ironside

* **ABL** - A C-27 Spartan modified to become an airborne MTHEL.
* **Comanche** - Helicopter gunship.
* **Raptor** - Air superiority fighter, has two AA missiles.
* **Aurora Alpha** - High speed bomber, cannot be intercepted until payload is dropped.
* **Mosquito** - Anti-air suicide drone.

### General Ironhand

* **RoboRaptor** - Stealth anti-armor drone fighter, armed with anti-matter charges.
* **Pegasus** - Stealth drone bomber, can be upgraded with bunker buster bombs.
* **Raven** - Light VTOL droid, armed with a chaingun and missiles, can engage both air and ground.

## Assessment

Pros:

* Available at Tier 1 after a Supply Center is built.
* Cheap structure (1,500$).
* Produces, rearms and repairs aircraft.
* Provides valuable upgrades.

Cons:

* One of the more fragile production structures.
* Aircrafts docking on it can be destroyed if the structure is destroyed.
* Takes a pretty large amount of space to build, which will be an issue if you are constructing on rough terrain. This also makes them vulnerable to weapon strikes.