ORIGINAL: Chocolino
If you have air superiority and want to force your opponent to fight then you need to see a target and air attack it with every unit in range. The ground attacks will be intercepted by any air unit in range. Even better is if you land and can see enemy air units the air unit can be attacked directly with any of you air units.
James and Mike, no bad feelings but I disagree. There are three points I would like to make so that it maybe becomes a bit clearer:
1) The underlying problem in the game system is that even overwhelming air superiority alone is not enough to protect a Mulberry, you need absolute air superiority in RTV since a single successful air attack even of a potentially understrength air unit is enough to destroy it. As the attacker you have to ensure that there is not a single air unit left that can be used after the landing. That is what you cannot ensure in my opinion as explained in point 2).
2) Your suggested method of achieving absolute air superiority works only if you play the AI or the defender is a willing accomplice. He may not be. In RTV you can obviously avoid air combat as the defender, and you CANNOT force it as the attacker before a planned landing. That is the main point. As a defender you just have to keep either
-at least one single air unit in reserve and out of range (i.e. 20 hexes or more) from any active region or
- even better buy a new one when you need it for this purpose from your strategic PP reserve.
In the meanwhile let your opponent bomb or strat. bombing the heck out of any hexes for as many turns as he likes before the landing, it will be completely in vain for the purpose of achieving absolute air superiority.
3) I am only concerned with playability. RtV and history have only a remote resemblance at best as we all know. So I am not too concerned if RtV represents history correctly. But even when using historic arguments I believe that supply depots where not overstretched balloons popping after the first needle was injected.
In my eyes the fact remains that Mulberries can be taken out at will by the defender. They need better protection from instant aerial annihilation (not ground attack) to remain useful. There is probably a reason why we don't see them so often used in player to player games I assume.
The point of the Mulberry is not to be permanent port and supply source. It's to allow you to get ashore with enough force to take a port. It is definately possibe to get every air unit within range to intercept, you just need to choose the spot properly. You can't attack the turn you deploy or transfer so the ir units must be in range when you deploy the Mulberry. You should have two turns to capture a port. If you can't then the invasions fails.
Now perhaps you can say the defense strength should be raised but they shouldn't be indestructible.
