I've been looking in posts about a possible new modification for level bombing missions to Factories. I think you know that with the new Mods, bombs do not "fly" so straight than before, so hitting factory buildings from 4000 meters is more a question of good luck than the result of a good aiming. Unless people get the exact deviation of the bombs, but it's not so realistic, I think. And even more, it's no usefull at all to "wear" many small bombs instead of very big ones, so the planes that are only capables of hitting factory buildings by now, are those how can carry many big bombs, and the ones that can only carry a couple of 500Kg bombs are not so usefull on high altitude level bombing.
What I propose (unfortunately I don't know about programming) is to change the way that factories produce their points, by setting some more buildings around the actual structure for that, so you have for a "whole" factory installation, instead of a single building in which you perfectly see what building is the one and whole points producer, that you can completely destroy it with a single aircraft with a 250Kg bomb, you will find a "production zone" of more or less buldings (maybe six) in which one of them has a "main" production rate (40-50%) of the total for that factory, but you will find too some unknown "small" buildings with rate productions of 10-15%, so if you are bombing from 4000-5000 meters (in a realistic way of doing it) you can hit at least some buildings of the Industrial zone with level bombing formations, instead of that old quirurgical aiming procedure, so you can use long pattern destruction loads instead of single/couple drops.
If this feature was implemented I think that we could get two advantages:
- First, it will be more difficult to completely destroy all the production capability of the enemy, but harming it so much depending on the bombing accuracy, or insistence, on planning level bombing runs on that Industrial zone.
- Second, get a real and more interesting option for level bombing pilots and flights, both human and IA's, in which you can set targets by zones, and not single buildings.
By the way, factory point production can be really damaged with single bomb attack planes, as you can destroy the main production center (the actual building which would produce the 40-50% of points of this factory), but at the same time, you let the level bombers to have some possibility of succes on their raids without forcing them to use 5000Kg bombs to get some hits.
(If it's not interesting
there's no need to read more). 
I thought that if this would be interesting, it could be done (and I remember that I don't know how it could be the best way to program it, so programmers can do it, obviously, as they think and know it's better and fast) by creating another table 'Factory_Buildings', with Fields: 'Factory_Name', 'Factory_Building', 'Production_Rate', 'X_Coord', 'Y_Coord', 'Active', 'Event_Date' in which:
- 'Factory_Name': The name of the Factory insatallation. Example='Sevastopol_S_F1' or the same name that the Industrial_Installations table.
- 'Factory_Building': The number of building inside the previous field.
- 'Production_Rate': The % of production that that building has inside the total of the Factory.
- 'X-Coord', 'Y_Coord': Position of the building in which the car/object will appear in the .mis file.
- 'Active': If it's true, this building will add production points to the factory total. If it's false, it won't.
- 'Event_Date': The day/hour in which this building is destroyed to take it in count for repairing times and so on.
When analiceing the eventlog file, check the destroyable object inside, and for getting the factory prodution points, count the % of each building to get the total of this factory and set it in 'Industrial_Installations" table.
In the MP, it will only appear the "main" building, so the secondary factory buildings are hidden to avoid being straffed for non AG planes.
Of course, this is only an idea, but I think that can open the possibility of realistic high altitude level bombing runs/missions without depending on too heavy bombs.
As another possibility, but it would be more job for programmers, there could be an Industrial Configuration option when starting the campaign in which each Commander can set how much buildings and which ones are each single Factory installation. But there could be a procedure to change it when this factory changes of side (conquered or so).
I hope it would result interesting for people, and I'm sorry for not to be able of helping in developing this idea at programming level.
S!
