Making airships more interesting

[ap817]

I feel like one of the joys of playing RTW is making strange ahistorical things and seeing how they work and extending the advancement of airships further beyond their historical best-before date is certainly intriguing. So I've been thinking about a few ways of making them more special and more viable.

Things that would make them stronger than they are now:

- Allow them to operate at night, at least if the visibility is good otherwise. Pretty sure they don't right now.

- They should be able to mount search radar sets pretty early given their payload capabilities. Would make them more powerful at night later on.

- Strong ASW improvements like sonobuoys, depth charges, ASW torpedoes when you get them. Again, airships should get them a bit earlier than aircraft, given equivalent research priorities.

- Extend the research tree with more general improvements like more defensive guns/better engines/armored cupolas for more durability and such things.

Things that would make them weaker than they are now:

- Right now airships become pretty cheap later on, adding to their cost as they get some key improvements would balance them.

- I don't know if losing airships in battle costs money right now, but it should and the production rate should be low also.

- You should easily be able to lose them in storms, even during battles. Right now they are mostly damaged on landing, have them be destroyed mid-air instead.

- Maybe have CAP engage airships(also recon planes generally) if they are seen on radar, not sure how far they "aggro" right now.

These could extend the airship era into the 1940's for those extra spicy playthroughs.

[noshurviverse]

One thing I'd be careful of is introducing elements that can become extremely ahistorical, because at that point you can start undermining the feel of the game as a reasonable representation of alternative history. Not saying any individual suggestion here does that, but wanted to mention it.

I agree airships should be spiced up, I have some different ideas on how to do this; subdivide airships into different categories, or have roles that they can be set to, depending on which makes more sense

Scout airships: largely operate how airships do now, providing spotting information and perhaps the occasional bombing attack

ASW airships: contribute to ASW, while also reducing the chances that you get the "while retiring, X is torpedoed by a submarine" if a ship is entering a port where these operate out of

Seige airships: if a seige airship is within range of an enemies home territory, each turn has a chance of causing an event such as "airships terrorize Great Britain, gain X VP/unrest increases". If present near non-home territories, they improve invasion odds and perhaps conduct automatic attacks on coastal batteries. Any enemy airbase should mean there's a chance of the events being replaced with "airship attacks blunted by air defenses" instead, with the effectiveness of airship bombings decreasing rapidly as fighters become more capable

[dorn]

Issue with airship is, that as aircraft became better, airship cannot survive fight with them. 
And as you can see in WW2 no rigid airships were used mainly in areas where no enemy airpower was present.

[oldpop2000]

Ok, first of all, there is a difference between a dirigible and a blimp however they are both airships. The latter was used for coastal ASW and reconnaissance during WW2. They are still used over games and races or just to advertise. The blimp is a pressurized airship, powered, steerable that is lighter than air but that has no internal structure. It is essentially a balloon with engines and a gondola.

There are some semi-rigid airships today. The loss of so many airships was essentially the fact that only helium is safe for use. It will not explode like pure hydrogen. The US was, at the time, the only nation that could and did produce helium. We would not sell it to the Germans. 

Here is the list of airship losses - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents

I believe the game should distinguish between the dirigible and the blimp.

BTW, if you want to see an airship hangar, go to Moffett Field in Silicon Valley. North Island used to have one, and I used to walk through it all the time until it was torn down and replaced with a new building.