[kertvon]

While I am not a fan of vehicle regen, I certainly hope that air vehicles are harder to take down with AA if flown at high altitudes. If you can't take them down from the ground then send up some pilots to bring them down. If the devs maximize the ceiling cap to cater to air to air battles, high altitude will be an entirely different battlefield; even to the point of enabling air vehicles to fly above the clouds to conceal themselves from ground units while traversing the continents. Think of the layers of progression air ops would have to consider.

1. High altitude travel towards target objective.
2. Air cav/scouts fly ahead of support aircraft to overcome enemy air to air and gain air superiority.
3. Additional reinforcing support fighters escort in the gals and libs and provide cover.
4. Fend off the waves of reinforcing enemy aircraft.
5. etc. etc.

These tactics are limited when ground units have just as easy an ability to take down air vehicles(minus flak weapons which have always been high altitude capable).

Yes, I agree, people will die a lot to pilots, but it is certainly not exclusive to pilots only. Once aircraft come into the "common zone" below high altitude where they are more vulnerable, between flak, MAX's, and any Ground-to-air equipped vehicles, there will be plenty of pilots getting punished.

Crippling the skies by making Ground-to-air weaponry more efficient is counter productive to air tactics. It's not like defending factions can't defend the skies with aircraft based defenses. If, however, the advantage is solely in reference to regen, then obviously that should be addressed. I think repair pads, as someone mentioned earlier, are the most practical solution.