When the Sim becomes a GAME

[Citabr]

simple, there will be no ai ack, field defence relying solely upon the players, and it will take a coordinated huge wave of c47s dropping 40 to 50+ troops to take the field.


it all sounds real great in theory,
but in theory communism works

[Citabr]

and halftrack must beyond a shadow of a doubt spawn in cities, not on frigin airfields

[JoeMud]

Look both ways while in tower. If the ack is dead and there are fighters and bombers buzzing all over,then take off from a diff feild and SHADDUP!

[Westy]

"I wondering what will happen with C47 and Paras when the halftracks rollin around!? hmm"

 Well. Say you want top capture a field.Well first you're going to have to gain air superiority, then CAP it with not only fighters but jabos too. Perhaps you'll have to throw in your own ground forces to help. Sounds like strat!!!!

 Remember! ACK is not done yet. Neither are the vehicles nor aircraft. And this following comment isn't aimed at anyone person in particular but would all of you who are whining just STFU for once and see how this sim progresses over the next several months?
 Seems we're due for a big patch soon. It's been almost a month..... Just work with it as it is and go with the flow.
 Same day, same stuff.  eeEEeeeEEEeeeee...  

  -Westy


[This message has been edited by Westy (edited 02-27-2000).]

[Pongo]

So the conventional wisdom here seems to be.
Once the ack is down at your field take off from somewhere else..Well that would really speaed up the turn around time on fields.
And once there are flak vehicles the normal flack for a field should be disabled...and the flack vehicles should be spawned at a countries city, so the only ack available for field 23 would have to arrive by ground from  the area of field 17.  A reset(there would be one every hour) would leave 98% of the airfields undefended..and it would take 2 hrs of driving to make them so.
The field capture messages would be scrolling by like torques kills...
The delay on this release of the game is probably more to do with balancing the half track capability into the game then anything to do with the P38.

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Pongo
The Wrecking Crew

[Mighty1]

What Kieren said.

I also think that sitting a 26 on a enemy spawn point shows very little character.

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Mighty1
The New Baby Harp Seals

"Come try to club THIS Seal"

[CavemanJ]

 

Originally posted by Pongo:
The delay on this release of the game is probably more to do with balancing the half track capability into the game then anything to do with the P38.

HT said in the arena one night that the halftrak wouldna be added until the tank and flakpanzer were ready and also added to the game.

[RangerBob]

No matter how you look at it BigJim's point is correct.

His point is simply that this is supposed to be a flight sim and not just another game. You want a game? There are plenty of them around to play.

Is it reasonable to expect a B26 to land at a German field and then shoot Luftwaffe pilots starting up their planes?

The half track will solve this problem? Not really, because the situation is totaly unrealistic to start with.

The easy answer to solve the unrealistic loophole moves is simple. Do not allow the idiots to fire until the wheels are off the ground.

If your dumb enough to take off from a fully vulched field you should be shot.

Ranger Bob

[ra]

Nobody said BigJim was wrong, just that there is more than 1 problem.  

It is not realistic for a fighter pilot at a freshly bombed field to jump into a fighter and taxi around strafing paratroopers, knowing that by killing 1 he can prevent capture.  One dweeb move spawns another, ie the parked B-26.

If a whole country can't defend its fields from attack, then 1 pilot shouldn't be able to thwart a field capture by taxi strafing.

There should be targets to bomb on or around a field which would render fighters inop.

Turning off a fighter's guns while on the ground is not a step in the direction of realism.

--ra--

[lemur]

Real simple solutions:

To prevent the endless strafing on the ground by planes spawning just to kill troops:
Give the troops weapons that fire  

Basically, once troops are actually DOWN, it's suicide to spawn at that field as every troop on the ground will rake you with very accurate small arms fire. Oh yeah, and credit the kills to the Gooney Bird driver  

To prevent the enemy from parking on YOUR runway and endlessly killing spawners:
Flak Panzer anyone?

Just put the "motor pool" a short distance away from the field to build in some delay for the FP to get into position.

Once there are vehicles, we'll have a great chance to use all those bomb-laden fighters.

Still, in a perfect world, virtual or not   , the base would have 8 or so troopers defending it. When the agressor troops land they duke it out with the defenders, and since they have better numbers they wipe out the troops, 2 troops survive and they take the base.

These defender troops (1 per building?) also try and take out any agressors parking just to kill spawners. They are 'coded' with really poor aiming algorhythms that only work on stationary and / or large targets; relatively useless against incoming troops and fast flying planes, but great against anyone who's parked.

This also has the advantage of giving bonuses to heaviliy armored ground attack planes. The p-47 was not a great dogfighter, but in this role (immune to small arms fire) it'd be a great ground support vehicle.

Plus, with one assigned to each building, you essentially get an 'easier to capture' bonus the more damaged the base is. For every building that's flattened there's one less troop defending it.

Just an idea.

~Lemur


[This message has been edited by lemur (edited 02-28-2000).]

[snafu]

Hi all,
   I have watched this thread unfold with great interest, Of course you are all right.

   People park a B26 at the end of the runway because people strafe troops. People strafe troops because the games limited AI assumes that just because a couple of ack's have been taken out the field is defencless. What are all the goons in the barracks doing while all this is going on? Yes I know this is still very much work in progress but we pay now so these things should be given top priority, the last thing we need is another bloody fighter. When is the Mossie coming :-).

   No offence HTC but human endevour will always triumph, and thats what is happening here, Leave a loophole and it will be exploited, as I am sure happened in 1939 - 45. It's not cheating. I know this is a flight sim and the various flight models are the core of the game (Sorry simulation) but unless it moves towards the "WWII Online" idea (Heaven forbid) the AI has got to be improved 10 fold.

   Stopping guns from firing on the ground is just counteracting a realism issue by bringing in more "unrealism" (Unless anyone can convince me that guns actually were inoperable on the ground). Strafing troops in rolling Spit is highly unlikely probably suicidal but I am sure not impossible.

   So there you have it, moan, moan, moan. How about some constructive ideas?

1).   Only allow pilots to spawn from a field once in a given time period, then they can throw the entire population in to save a field if they want to but most will end up having to re plane somewhere else.

2).   Limit the time troops can stay alive once they land, I've had goons refuse to come on a second mission unless I provide the coach fare to the map room, this time could be variable dependant on how much of the field is destroyed.

3).   I see craters in runways and planes just rolling over them, surely if the system knows where the holes are it can make planes fall into them and depending on speed you either ditch or die. It's pointless destroying a runway if all it does is make a landing a "ditched" most of the guys taking off don't expect to come back in one piece anyway.

4).   Landing at an enemy field should be instant death. Making the runway inoperable would negate the need to do this anyway because short of "driving" around the craters, fighters would not be able to get rolling (Or strafe troops). I'm sure a few well placed 500 pounders could achieve this.

5).   Field repair time should carry over into the new ownership. Monday night I did a troop drop with a Spit on my tail, As I broke left after dropping the troops I got "Map room destroyed" and saw this poor guy explode in a hail of ack. (Quite funny but not very realistic all the same).

6).   Blow up the fuel or ammo dumps and it does what it says (Can't fly from here no fuel).

   I am sure some of these suggestions are niave to many of the old hands out there so fire away,  (Ducks behind wall).

TTFN
snafu.

"It's better to burn out than fade away"

(Well everyone else seems to have a sign off).

[Pongo]

Those are all good for some game...but AH is played by capturing fields...if they are not defended then what is the fun of the game. They cannot be defended from 50 miles away especially if those fields have been made inoperable with 4 anti fuel bombs.

If we are going to rewire the game mostly from scratch how about this

If you had more room on the map maybe you could get rid of the concept of fixed fighter fields and just have them showing up as needed on the ground. Have a finite but large number of places that a field can be.
They could come into effect with limited capability and then progress to a full functionality, such fields would not be captured but destroyed (by removing all structures at the sight). So you are trying to capture the main fields (or a series of strat targets) but as you destroy a fighter field a new one appears in another clearing in the same sector..(Unless there are no defending planes in the sector in which case it spawns an attacker strip) It does not appear on the map you have to find it and close it to maintain air superiority in the sector, which allows you to suppress the main fields..
Such fields would not be able to launch Medium bombers until they developed a bit, they would start with no tarmac. They would progress from 25% fuel to full fuel and drop tanks, they would develop barracks over time and never get heavy bombers.  
Probable get 2 * 20mm (non laser) ack or start with one and then move to 2
Start them with tents and no radar, evolve to radar maybe.

So the game is to capture the enemy bomber fields but if the country army barracks is up, then the paras are destroyed on hitting the ground. Maybe a % of the paras is destroyed matching the % of country army barracks surviving.

Wouldn’t really need laser acks at the airfields anymore, just normal ones, wouldn’t really need laser norden sights anymore the bombers are going after the barracks which are defended by ack and heavy ack..

This flying circus kind of concept is quite different from currently in AH and of course not at all like the other online games that I know of, but it is more in line with what was done in WW2, fighter bases were hard to find.

Probably a lot less vulching, the bad guys are trying to suppress your army enough to take your fields. Most fighter fields are being hit by fighter-bombers not heavy bombers. Besides you would defend a sector from capture by flying in the sector not launching in it.
Any plane that touches the ground in an enemy sector suffers the same fate as the paras. If 100% of the barracks are up he is captured.


If there is any huge advantage to this in the context of AH it is that it changes very little of the strength of the game or the game itself. You would need the ability to dynamically (or apparently dynamically) place fighter strips but most of the other stuff is there.

An after thought…maybe anything on the ground gets captured or destroyed as a % chance in relation to the surviving barracks every minute. Then a quick strike and para drop might capture a field but highly unlikely.

Anyway quite a different game, with mostly equal numbers it would be pretty static. Even with heavy one sided numbers it would be slower. The team with the numbers would need sustained bombing of enemy barracks to capture the last fields.  They would need lots of county wide team work to finish someone off.  
Heavy bombers would only ever be able to take off from friendly bomber fields. So they would need protection for a long way. To hit the strat targets.
//edit
1)sector contol should require an ajacent sector in control...
2)fighter strip establishment could be sped up by goon deliveries..
3)Exotic planes could start to be intorduced when very few sectors are under control
4)Tanks and other vehicles could make limited range trips from controled sectors to suppress barracks..(1/2 their range just like the planes)
//end edit
Fire away..


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Pongo
The Wrecking Crew

[This message has been edited by Pongo (edited 02-29-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Pongo (edited 02-29-2000).]

[RangerBob]

A lot of good ideas.

Just one more note:

People land with B26 bombers at the spawning location for 1 main reason.  To rack up a kill score.

Ranger Bob

[Pongo]

Not really Ranger...I have seen it done to suppress a field.. that is all, normaly i dont think you get alot more kills then you would vulching.

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Pongo
The Wrecking Crew

[CavemanJ]

 

Originally posted by snafu:

5).   Field repair time should carry over into the new ownership. Monday night I did a troop drop with a Spit on my tail, As I broke left after dropping the troops I got "Map room destroyed" and saw this poor guy explode in a hail of ack. (Quite funny but not very realistic all the same).

Field repair time DOES carry over for everything except the acks.  Once upon a time it carried over for everything, but some people would wait in the tower, and right after the attacking gooney driver has dropped they would spawn in a C47 and drop thier troops right behind the attacking troops.  This resulted in Field XX has been captured by YYYYY.  30 seconds later in the buffer you see Field XX has been captured by ZZZZZ.  There was one night, way way back in .37 or so, that field 21 went back and forth like this for several hours.  It was shortly after that night that acks were rebuilt on field capture.