The “problem” with foothold is that its fast pace which makes it ideal for a fun evening with a few friends also gets in the way of the herc. You can of course fly it but in my experience you can take 2 bases using helicopters and fast jets while you sit on the ground and prepare the Hercules for flight. Helicopters are way too good at supplying airbases in foothold. Of course that is necessary in the absence of larger transport aircraft but now with the Hercules in the game it gets in the way of the Herc. If stuff like larger air defences and armour would require a Herc, suddenly it becomes interesting but as long as you can do the same thing using a Huey, flying 5-10min from the closest FOB, the Hercules feels a bit left out.
Where the Hercules shines is when you can plan out a mission and then execute it but that needs time and space which is not what foothold provides. I often spend a good 20-30min on the ground loading supplies, starting up the aircraft and then planning the route and mission (CARP, IPRA or whatever else I might want to do). Someone less practiced can easily take 60min or more to do the same.
Of course you can simply start the engines, load some cargo and go but then you leave out 90% of the stuff that makes the Hercules such a fantastic module and it’s still faster to do the same in a UH-1H, Mi-8 or CH-47.
A few years ago we build a campaign with a similar system as foothold, only much slower paced and with more restrictions on what helicopters can transport and airfields would only provide what we supplied ourselves — aircraft needed to be flown to the base, weapons and fuel delivered: you load 10 AMRAAMs → the airbase gets 10 AMRAAMs, nothing more — fuel would be provided if the active zone was at least one zone away from the captured airbase, not sure if he did that manually or whether it was scripted. You needed the C-130 mod to transport large quantities of fuel, air defences, armour, missiles and bombs, as well as supplies for large FOBs. The most helicopters could do on their own was transport troops, some rockets, a little fuel and establish a FARP, the Mi-8 could sling load Humvees and build a basic FOB. The campaign also had much larger zones to take than foothold and we had to stage forces for attacks. It was really cool. Of course nothing for quick action with a few friends like foothold but ideal for a squadron that can field 6-10 players on a regular basis. Zones also weren’t as rigourously locked like they are in foothold so you could take out supply hubs behind enemy lines to stop resupplies reaching the front which made taking the active zone easier. For example one evening we flew a deep strike about 150 nautical miles behind the front line to take out the largest enemy airbase which stopped most airstrikes on our frontline for a few nights.
Anyway, I tried flying the Hercules in foothold once but it felt a bit like a waste of time. By the time I had it started my buddies had taken two airfields and a heli base and the airfield I planned to supply was fully supplied even though it was still controlled by the enemy when I began mission planning. I switched to a different base but the planning I had done was for nothing.
All that is to say: for the flying I like to do in the Hercules foothold is not a good mission. It’s fun in a Viper, Helicopter or A-10C if you get aircover but for the Herc I want something slower paced with longer flight times.
I do agree that the Herc has a lot of system’s depth you’re not really going to touch in Foothold at least with as short as our supply lines are currently.
