Hi all, and welcome to the next installment of our 2026 Dev Corners. Your feedback on ideas in early development, including my prior ones on army quality and airborne troops, is very helpful to us. I hope I can benefit from your input once more.
As you can likely surmise by the content of my previous DCs, I’m a big enthusiast of the history of airborne troops. Really, if you’re into WW2 in even the slightest way, it’s impossible not to be moved by the dramatic image of lightly armed, elite troops leaping into the unknown, bypassing fortified front lines to strike directly at vulnerable points in the enemy rear. The high stakes of such operations, the extreme demands they made on the men who conducted them, and the sheer audacity of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and landing on a gunfight…it stirs the heart.
However, from the first days of airborne experimentation it was acknowledged that even the greatest soldiers in the world would not be able to sustain operations for long, jumping out of a plane only with what they could carry. Bravery means little without ammunition, and much thought was given to how to supply large bodies of airborne troops post-landing, so they could go beyond being small parties of saboteurs and achieve really significant, operational results.
As you know, we already have supply by air in the game, in the form of parachute supply. If you can afford the transport aircraft and fuel it can provide supply, however the effects of it are quite diffuse, spread all over an air zone. As a complement to the developments we’re looking at with airborne troops, it seems only natural we should improve their air supply potential as well.
So, what I would love to know from you is:
- What are the limitations of the current system of air transport wings, and how they deliver airborne troops and supplies?
- How would you feel about not having to control all transport wings manually, and if they were more abstracted at a national level similar to naval convoys, doled out automatically according to need?
- Would it be interesting for you if there was a more specific, point-to-point connection between two airfields you controlled, that would allow air transport between them that was more efficient and targeted than the current parachute delivery of supplies?
- Would using airborne troops Crete-style, to capture and hold an enemy airfield to use as a base of replenishment and remove the vulnerability of operating entirely isolated, be something you would want to try?
Thanks for your feedback, and I’ll see you in the comments!