Some ideas for the implementation of strategy within AH ... (long)

[Teapot]

Some ideas for the implementation of strategy within AH.
While AH is currently in beta testing mode, it already displays elements which if combined with an in-depth strategy deployment infra-structure, would make it a great on-line WWII combat flight simulation. This argument makes the assumption that we agree, that the current implementation of strategy within existing flight simulation's of the same genre is simplistic and in need of a re-vamp, and possibly, should  be re-engineered from the start.
So what is strategy? My understanding is that it is the science and art of combining and using the tools of war at ones disposal, where success is not measured by the
immediate short range tactical outcome,  but instead their sum total, produce the desired long range outcome. This definition of strategy implies that retreat is as valid as an advance in a war, and that the outcome of an engagement should be planned to fit in with the wider picture.
While general consensus appears to be that we would all like a strategic element within AH, I'm sure that we have more or less divergent views as to how it should be put into practice. The fact that these differences of opinion exist, indicates to me that AH should plan to categorise player types without compromising the real world physics such as FM and aircraft operating detail (in fact I wish that all machine operating procedures in aircraft models will be implemented in the future!).
Indeed, the categorisation of player types will be crucial, unless AH aim for a general universe aimed to accomodate the lowest common denominator (and I'm not being derogatory!), which in this instance is probably the 'fur-baller' or main arena type. Should AH adopt this paradigm, all we'll have is an enhanced version of WB and AW, even though I understand that some attempts have been made to fit an a priori strategic element into those respective sims. I sincerely hope that this will not be the case! I'd like to suggest my approximations of player types, and I assume that the common binding element is that AH caters only for the hardcore flyer.
To my mind, they are :
    1/.    Those who wish to fly a plane of choice, to pit their flying skills against an opponent or multiple opponents (main arena), and
    2/.    Those who enjoy flying in a recreation of historically detailed environment (historic arenas). To be different (and superior) to current offerings, AH might produce an environment for the former which would require a small amount of modification to fit in with
the latter crowd. As a base implementation, such a world could cater for the first type and allow for modification to the second type. Let me explain. If AH were to
accurately simulate a virtual world which followed the rules of supply and demand,  meaning that individuals or groups of individuals can influence the ebb and flow of
the fortunes of conflict, this universe would already be ahead of the rest, and it would still be a valid universe for both types of players. Indeed, for the first type of
player, this base universe would more than adequately fulfil the requirements as an infrastructure for basic strategy. What would make the historic arena different is as
touched on by Fletchman, the design tools to create the conditions under which the universe would operate. I think we should also have gui tools to assess strategic
information as it is presented by available intelligence, the aquisition of which is controlled by the players in the universe.
Surprisingly (VBG) I have a few simplistic ideas on how an active virtual world could be modelled, remembering I'm not a programmer! Design specifics would of course be controlled by HTC, but in general I believe it might be possible to create something which use these elements amongst dozens of others :
    1/.    An interesting (maybe even accurate) geography and topology, defined by 'national' boundaries (Rook's RULE ok?).
    2/.    A virtual economy meeting the needs of supply and demand within the universe. Sort of like a 'token' concept whereby each 'nation' begins the conflict with a pre-defined amount of resources. These resources can be directly or indirectly influenced by players actions, rather than the tired old 'field capture' concept.
    3/.    A virtual transport infra-structure, using roads, rail, sea and air (with the option of players flying the cargo planes if they wish, but mostly probably controlled by AI.). Depending on the requirements and complexities of writing for an on-line environment, there might be a limitation on what can be done here, and we might have to settle for a minimum. However, I do think that a rail or road transport design would be excellent as a starting point.
    4/.    Each nation is divided into economic zones, which need to communicate and supplement each other. For example zone 'A' might have something (it can be
transparent to the player) that zone 'B' needs to make more tokens. At the end of the 'war' the nation with the most tokens wins, or something like that. There are any
number of permutations of this idea.

This basic environment could then be adapted to suit the historic arena's (hopefully many) as I mentioned previously. What would make the historic arena different, apart from the availability of design tools and tools to present the results of intelligence gathering (a configurable map inteface?) is the rules applied to the arena both from the server end (i.e. rolling plane sets) and the agreement into which one enters before joining the arena. Rules of war might be such that individuals may only participate by joining a pre-defined infra-structure, which would preclude the 'lone-wolf' syndrome. The strong point of a historic arena is the dynamic of working as part of a greater endeavour, part of a team. Just as in the real conflict, the individual chooses to obey orders and follow the strategy, or risk the consequences. This
implies that each historic setting will begin by defining who among the players or squadrons, wants to be the puppeteer, and orchestrate the scenario from each of the
sides simulated in the conflict. Methodologies to do this would be part of AH rules of war as applied to historic scenario's.

Finally, I know it's only day 5 of the beta .... but when a we going to get a decent F4U-1D, my favourite all time aeroplane! ;o)

Cheers
Teapot.


[This message has been edited by Teapot (edited 10-04-1999).]

[Bullethead]

Personally, I don't give a rip about strat except for 1 thing.

It is my fervent wish that AH NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER implements anything whereby bombing buildings at an airfield decreases the performance of planes taking off from that field.  IE, no bad gas, no ammo shortage, no pre-damaged planes, none of that crap AW has..

Why?  Simple.  The type of system AW has enables no-skill, no-talent, no-sense-of-history, brainless, ball-less, dickless 12-year-old buffdweebs to ruin the arena for everybody.  Their only method of flying is to take a buff and make "pork-auger" attacks on as many fields as possible in as short a time as possible.

There is no practical way to defend against this sort of thing.  Nobody wants to circle around thumb up butt CAPPing a field all night in the arena as opposed to a scenario.  And there's no way to cover all the bases anyway--the maps just too big.

None of this is really "strat" anyway, it's tactical.  Yet you see B17s bombing airfields all over.  And because it takes absolutely no talent to do this, all the dweebs do it.  Because AW is overrun with dweebs, you have HERDS of folks doing this.  Because there are herds of them, Kesmai listens to them.  So fighters get de-nutted, buffs get made ubertuff with ubergunners, etc etc etc.  

AW is the perfect picture of sim Hell.  Please don't let AH go down that road.

-Bullethead <CAF>

[hitech]

Bulllethead that exacty same impression is still in my mind from playing long ago.

Thats why if you take a close look at the effects we have in strat it shuts downs the fields abality to attack and makes the auto defenses less but does not take away fighters ablity to defend.

HiTech

[Jekyll]

I suppose one of the perennial complaints about buffs is that they are just too damn accurate at altitude.

I know the Norden bombsight was supposedly the greatest thing since sliced bread, but in most of the current flight sims you can accurately nail acks with a single 500lb bomb, delivered precisely on the ack-gunner's head.

Wind and weather will no doubt make the job of the buffer more difficult, and more in line with RL experience.  

Ifg we're going to have a strategic element to Aces High, and you're concerned about buffs.. just incorporate a dispersion pattern to dropped bombs: something similar to bullet dispersion.  Your bombs will fall within a certain range from your crosshairs, but you won't be able to drop single bombs on single targets and be certain of success.

Bring back pattern bombing!

Besides, less accurate buffs means that more buffs are required to kill targets.  More buffs = more buffs in formation = escort fighters required = wing tactics = a whole lot of fun!

------------------
C.O. Phoenix Squadron
www.users.bigpond.com/afinlayson/index.htm
'feel the heat .......'

[Westy]

 I'm ever so glad this thread started. What BH said is the number one reason I am so sick of brand "A"'s arena flying. And Hitechs answer is THE perfect preply and is more than enough reason for me to overcome my ingrained resistance to learning trim, rpm and the other aircraft management 'chores'.
 Those chores may still take away from my social interaction and enjoyment of flying in the beginning.  But my those two things have been just about lost 'over' there anyway for me.

  -Westy

[Downtown]

I don't mind flying buffs.

I wouldn't be upset with.

Less Accurate Bombsights, (Though there should be some level of accuracy)

Less Accurate Otto.

Weather Conditions affecting the ability to drob bombs.

BUT.

I think there should be a prodigous amount of bombers in the Arena.

But.

I want them to be flying in Formation with Escort.

MAKE BOMBERS INTREGAL TO THE WAR, but not the be all to end all.

If you wanna win, you gotta bomb something.

But MAKE it TOUGH.

I am probably the only guy that flys buffs that will say this. But I want bomber formations.

With Escort.

I want enemy fighters to come up and meet the incomming raid.

If my bombers get through and drop their sticks of bombs, I want it to have an affect, so that the Enemy has to come up to intercept.

------------------
"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG

[ft]

In AH, we could actually get the bomber armadas. My impression from my experiences with the "brand W" sim is that there are, and were, people who would like to reenact the big bomber flotillas - but not at $2/hour. I'm one of those myself.

At a flat rate, I'm sure there will be a lot less resistance to getting in a BUFF and doing a proper altitude level bombrun. If we have the bomber armadas and they are the effective way to close bases/factories etc, the NME will start focusing on bringing down the bombers. This means there will be a need for escorts, and escorts will see action. Fun for all!

<War story/semi-brag mode   >
And we're already seeing it. Yesterday, we had three enemy 'forts buzzing down on our base through a canyon (no climb to altitude - yet) escorted by two spits. We had a guy flying recon, I think he was low on ammo or something, calling their position out on the radio. Three or four friendlies came to intercept. I was the first one to dive in. With no Otto, I made my first pass from the tail of the formation, nailing the ship in the purple-heart corner.

I extended, no escorts on me yet so I pulled up into a chandelle to get turned around and swooped back in. I'd misjudged my turn so the aspect ratio was a bit higher than desirable. I still injured one fort enough for it to go down later on.

Again zooming out of the canyon, I encountered one of the escorts coming right at me. I decided to risk the headon - didn't have much choice by then. A turn would only have exposed me to his fire as I was getting slow and the distance was down to about 2.5-3.0K. We both fired. My engine oil started pouring out, and I had some control surface damage - the Spit must've been worse off though as he went down maybe 15 seconds later.

My friends had kept the other escort busy in the meantime, so I had a clean run back at the remaining bomber which must've been hurt already by my friends. Another long burst from 6 o'clock into the left wing didn't bring him down immediately, but I was later credited with the kill.

I tried limping home down in the canyon as my Pony was starting to show the wear. Up front, my friends were engaged in battle with the remaining Spit which put up a good fight. I was just sneaking behind a hill to go out of sight when the Spit doubled back and came towards me. I didn't have enough manoueverability left to escape, and was certain I'd had it. He'd just have to drop down on my six.

He went at me headon though, which meant I got a shot in - and it hit home. Down he went! Unfortunately, so did several other large chunks of my plane. With gear, control surfaces, radiator, vertical stabilizer, rudder etc out of order, I tried for an additional twenty seconds to nudge my dying crate back towards home. Eventually, she would have no more of it, overturned and began a lazy spin towards terra firma. At that point I decided it was time for us to go separate ways. Canopy off, unbuckle safety straps and a quick nudge of the stick forward shot me right out of the cockpit. I was left riding the silk back to the ground, hoping I'd get back to civilization (and the right side of it!) without too much trouble.

All in all, it was the best online experience I ever had (not to mention my best mission AND longest kill streak). If the 'forts had had their guns manned things would probably not have worked out that way though...
<End war story/semi brag mode>

Sorry about the longish post, if you think it is too out of place just tell me and I'll retract the story part. But I think it serves a point in showing the potential for greatness of AH. Yes, I think I'm falling in love with this game...

[This message has been edited by ft (edited 10-08-1999).]

[Jekyll]

Yep ft, bomber armadas would have been great in 'Brand W'.

But when a single bomber can cruise at 25k above an enemy field, with 12 500lb bombs, and drop them one by one on enemy acks AND NEVER MISS! why do you need an armada?

BUT, if the buffs had to pattern bomb in order to destroy targets, then you have to have more buffs in formation.

More buffs in formation means that they will draw enemy aircraft like flies, so of course you'll need escorts.

And on long buffing runs, the enemy might be smart enough to try to hit the formation early, forcing the escorts to drop their fuel tanks, and leaving the buffs unprotected later on in the flight.

Hmmm.... this could be a LOT of fun  

------------------
C.O. Phoenix Squadron
www.users.bigpond.com/afinlayson/index.htm
'feel the heat .......'

[Bullethead]

RE:  inaccurate high-alt bombs
Yes, yes, yes.  And as the person responsible for AW's tank shells having such a feature for many years, HiTech's just the guy to do it  .

However, IMHO low-alt drops should be pretty accurate.  So medium bombers and jabos could still come in and do TACTICAL bombing on point targets like specific, dispersed airfield structures.  Leave B17s for real strategic targets way in the rear.  Kinda like the city thingy on the current map, with densely packed buildings to carpet bomb but hard to pick out specific buildings.  Such deep targets should have absolutely murderous low-alt ack to force the buffs to fly way up high where the bomb dispersion kicks in.

RE:  buff armadas
To be honest, these make AW scenarios pretty cool.  Last year I led a Jug squadron in such a scenario.  In the final frame, we tried the same deception trick once too often and had the biggest trainwreck I've ever seen.  The formation of 48 B17s and 36 close escorts got hit by about 50 interceptors all at once.  Simply incredible.  In the space of 2 minutes, something like 40 planes went down.  Lucky I was in a Jug because I took a lot of "friendly" gunner fire chasing Doras through the buff herds <G>.  Westy was there, too, I think.

The escort of such armadas is about the hardest thing to do right in a flightsim, however (which is why AW fighters are de-nutted and buffs are so uber:  dweebs can't do escort right so they need these crutches).  Requires 2 groups at least:  an advanced sweep to prevent attacks at all, and a close escort to prevent leakers from making more than 1 pass on the buffs.  Getting this organized and coordinated is a real squeak.  You just won't see it in the arena very often.  It requires scenario-type preparation.

Brings up another subject:  gunners.  In principle I'm against autogunners because I grew up in AW where there ain't such things (even back when AW was at least $2/hr) and in my WB experience, the autogunners were always WAY too deadly <GG>.  But OTOH, autogunners free up arena slots for scenarios so you can have more planes flying per frame.  So I can live with them..

However, $30/month is cheap enough for folks to gun regularly.  So why not give them an incentive to.  If we must have autogunners, make them much less accurate than the average dweeb (except in scenarios, where you can jack them up as needed).

Another thing about gunners:  make them incapable of firing when the buff is maneuvering wildly.  Have them black out or something  .

-Bullethead <CAF>

[Hans]

You want multiplane buff formations?

Easy.

Make the targets they are meant to hit tougher than any single bomber's payload...and repair that partial damage fast.  This way two or more buffs need to drop their entire load at the same time.  To do this the planes need to be in formations.  Make the target on the ground physically large enough so that if two planes reasonably close enough together dropped their bombs at the same time, they both will hit it.

What people don't realise is only lead planes of bomber box formations use their bombsight...the rest of the formation bombadiers just have their finger on the button and stare out of the plexiglass nose over at the lead plane.  When the leader drops his bombs (usually the first bomb is actually a smoke bomb for high visibility), the othe bombadiers drop their bombs.

MOST IMPORTANTLY...put that info about bombadier tactics in the game inside the plane description info or something.  This way everybody will know what to do without being told.  Actually being able to do it?  Well...thats another story.  But because they have to learn, they will.

Second.

To keep the action up at altitudes where it reasonable ought to belong, make low alt raids suicidal by means of very acurate AAA up to medium altitudes...say 15,000 feet.  You need to go in at 16,000 to avoid those gawdamn guns or not even bother.

Hans.

------------------
Hey, Frans....Yo tink dees guys are gut enouff to shooot us down?  Ya! Dats right.  Vie aw 'ere to shoot....you down!

[ft]

Bullethead,
don't you think escort duty would be a lot easier with realistically effective defensive autogunners in place in the buffs? It'd still be as hard to do it right of course, but letting a fighter or two slip through would not mean disaster as it does with defenseless buff formations.

Also, flying intercepting fighters against gunned buffs is a lot harder. For example what I described in my post above would most likely not have worked out. The interceptors who do slip through will not be too eager to go for the easy but dangerous six-o-clock pass but try to manouever a bit, giving escorts more time to catch up as well.

Cheers,
    /ft

[Westy]

Hiya BulletHead. I remember that scenario VERY  much . That was when I fell in love with the P47  

As for gunners? I prefer real human manned guns myself. Why? Because real gunners cause all sorts of problems for everyone. AI gunners don't get nervouse and sweaty trying to hit the incoming bogy missing alot. Human gunners DO accidently hit near by buffs and accidently fire off at thier own little friends too.  AI gunner(s) always pick the correct incoming target, always hit unnerringly and never frag by accident. They also maintain aim and lethality in maneuvers.
 In 'brand W' a good gunner could bring down an incoming bogy or two. Use AI and the percentages climb dramatically.
 As for what is harder, escort or intercept?
 Like it's even debatable. Escort is MUCH harder.
 In most cases escort is tied to the her of
buffs and must ride shotgun always on the lookout for the incoming bad guys. The intercept can almost ALWAYS pick and choose the moment of combat.
 Escorts have to always wonder if an incoming
group of enemy is a feint and hold back pilots to keep the buffs covered. Most often
 Escorts are always shadowed by the enemy when found and the position is radiod as long
as the escort maintains vis on the formations. Chase the snoop away? So now your
down two pilots while a gaggle of 40 are incoming from the exposed flank the scout called in.
 Interceptors that get tied up dogfighting with escort are fools. Th escor twould much rather that happened as it means that the buffs continue on to the target.
 And in the meantime possible more fighters
are vectored to the action.
 Nope. Escorting is harder. No doubt in my mind and to be honest I've only heard once that someone thought Intercept was harder.
And it was in this thread.
 
 Let's say I'm hoping that we get to find out here with Aces high.
 
 BTW. when do we get the P47? C or D I don't
care     Maybe I should lobby for the M?  

--Westy
 

[Rojo]

My God, Teapot...your writing style could only have been acquired working for the US Government  .  Seriously tho, a number of good points in there.  Below is a repost of my own ruminating about a dynamic campaign, ala Falcon 4.0. We must break the paradigm of field capture, or we're doomed to dweeb hell for eternity.

Repost:

IMHO, the whole concept of field capture needs to go away, at least as the one and only method to "win the war." Except for a few rare historical incidents, air power never occupied territory. Rather, it made it possible for land forces to take the territory. We need to break the WB paradigm of field capture.
Divide the terrain into a good old fashion hex-grid, ala tabletop wargames. Create a dynamic ground war campaign engine such as Falcon 3.0 and 4.0 use. In those stand alone games, the progress of the ground campaign was INFLUENCED by the airwar. Air Tasking orders (ATO) are generated by the campaign engine for each side, and posted. These ATO's specify mission type and targets, including intercept of enemy strikes. Depending on how successful your side is in executing the ATO, the campaign engine shifts the "front" as time goes on. Do well, and the front will generally shift in your favor. Allow a major strike to hit your factories, or an armored thrust to roll into your lines unhindered by CAS or interdiction of second echelon forces, and your rear area will soon BE the front line.

This still allows the lone wolfs to cruise for kills, but will reward the side that accepts the tough ATO's and executes them in organized fashion.

Example: The Rooks' Air Operations Center (AOC) generates ATO-9903R, ordering a particular bridge to be captured by paratroops, in order to allow your countries armored forces to quickly forde a river and make a break out into the enemy's rear area. The Buccaneers send a message to the AOC, accepting ATO-9903R, and begin a five minute planning session. Four pilots volunteer to fly Gooney Birds. The remain 8 Buccaneers "on-duty" at this time divide into a group of two (Jabo's to take out a radar site, and clear a lane for the C-47s) and a group of six (escort for the drunks). They send out a request for any available pilots to form a scratch force to hit the nearest nme airfield to the target bridge. Their goal is to close it for at least 15 minutes, in order to allow for the troop drop and egress of the strike force.

The strike goes off like clockwork (like all Buccaneer missions ); as a result, the campaign engine adjusts the frontline in their favor. Not only does the bridge now belong to the Rooks, so does a big chunk of territory around it, including that enemy airfield supressed during the commando raid. It was "overrun" by the Rooks' armored thrust. Just a few random thoughts.

Rojo (a.k.a. Sabre)

P.S. Famous quote: "Amateurs discuss strategy and tactics; professional military officers talk logistics."  If hitting a target doesn't affect an enemy's short term or long term freedom of action in some fashion, it is a pointless and wasteful exercise.

[Bullethead]

FT said:
>>>>>>>> don't you think escort duty would be a lot easier with realistically effective defensive autogunners in place in the buffs?  It'd still be as hard to do it right of course, but letting a fighter or two slip through would not mean disaster as it does with defenseless buff formations. <<<<<<<<<<<<

In my AW example above, the buffs were far from defenseless.  Each of them had at least 1 gunner aboard.  The arena capacity was 250 and it was full to the gills.  The only people who missed that huge battle (all in 1 sector) were the 2 US fighter squadrons out doing an advanced sweep (which the Luftwaffe avoided).

And in AW scenarios, they typically jack bufftuff and gunner leth WAY up there.  So individual interceptors picking on buff formations DIE from multiple gunners before they can do much damage at all.  It takes attacks in at least full squadron strength to dilute the gunners' fire enough for interceptors to kill many buffs.  

This is where the close escort guys come in.  If the interceptors set up their attack correctly, they will be able to make 1 pass thru the buffs at full gallop.  The CE guys will swoop in behind them and chase, eating the attackers from the rear and forcing those in front to keep on going into the sunset instead of coming back for another pass.  With the high bufftuff and short shooting opportunities due to the forced high overtake speed of the interceptors, few interceptors will be able to get enough hits on 1 buff to kill it themselves.  So generally they attack in a column of flights with the guys in the last flights finishing off the buffs damaged by the leaders.  If the CE is on the ball, however, the last interceptors die or dive away before they can attack.  Net result, you lose a few buffs, have a fair number shot up, but most survive.

In my huge trainwreck example, however, the interceptors totally swamped the CE.  While they all only made 1 pass as far as I know (per their own orders to avoid getting killed by CE), we were only able to neutralize part of the attacking force.  Several German squadrons were able to attack undisturbed and they chewed big holes thru the buff formation.  

Like I said, I believe about 40 planes died in less than 2 minutes here.  Losses in this schlachtfest were were proportioned about like 17 buffs, 17 interceptors (about half by gunners, half by CE), and about 6 CEs (all by gunners).  I thought this was a pretty reasonable result given the forces engaged.  When the Germans hit less well-defended formations, they wiped them out.  When they attacked similar formations with less force, they got driven off or wiped out before they could inflict much damage.

-Bullethead <CAF>

[Bullethead]

Westy said:
>>>>>>>>>>> I remember that scenario VERY much . That was when I fell in love with the P47 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Yeah, Jugs really shine in scenarios.  My squadron chalked up a 7.33 k/d for the duration  .

>>>>>>>>>>> As for gunners? I prefer real human manned guns myself. Why? Because real gunners cause all sorts of problems for everyone. AI gunners don't get nervouse and sweaty trying to hit the incoming bogy missing alot. Human gunners DO accidently hit near by buffs and accidently fire off at thier own little friends too. <<<<<<<<<<<<

Quite true.  Not to mention what happened to us in this battle I been talking about.  The gunnerdweebs didn't lead the screaming interceptors enough so they shot the Hell outta CE guys chasing the bandits  .

>>>>>>>>> As for what is harder, escort or intercept?  Like it's even debatable. Escort is MUCH harder. <<<<<<<<<<<<

Having done both in scenarios, I wholeheartedly agree  .

But what we really need to discuss is the day-to-day arena context.  You know, just the ongoing business of fighting and taking fields when it's not your squad's mission night.  Here, the difficulties of organizing effective escort, already bad enough in scenarios, are compounded by the lack of advanced planning and the ad hoc nature of the attacking force.  And interception is more fatal to the mission because of the small number of buffs involved.

In the arena, close escort by itself just doesn't work.  The interceptor shows up and shadows the buff. The CE positions itself between the interceptor and the buff.  The interceptor attacks the CE, forcing the CE to turn to face the interceptor and point away from the buff.  The interceptor passes the CE head-on and gets a free shot at the buff while the CE turns back around.  Repeat as needed because the CE isn't going to get very far from the buff, giving the interceptor freedom to extend and reposition.

So, the only really effective way of getting buffs through in the arena is to bring them in behind a big fighter sweep.  The fighters attract the nme fighters and tangle them up below the buff's ingress alt.  And because it's the arena and not a scenario, the defenders are more likely to get tangled up anyway instead of trying to keep looking for buffs--they're there to fight after all  .  Another advantage of this system is that it requires much less organization.  Just line up a bunch of fighters, set them loose, wait a minute, and launch the buff.  In fact, buffers can follow fighter mobs by themselves w/out needing to coordinate at all.  And they don't need gunners most of the time because they won't be attacked at all.

Unfortunately, most folks don't realize these things.  So you have buffers attempting solo naked bootleg missions, or they rely on CE instead of a sweep.  Naturally, they die all the time.  So then they whine about buffs being too flimsey, or gunners not deadly enough, or FW guns being too powerful, when the real problem is lack of tactical appreciation and skill by the would-be attackers.

How the game company deals with these whines is critical.  It can either say, "learn to fly escort properly," or it can cave in to the buffdweebs.  As mentioned, escort is the hardest job to do right.  So in AW's case, swamped as it was with hundreds of thousands of totally raw AOL baby seals, proper escort tactics were beyond all hope of evolving in a reasonable time.   Thus, AW bufftuff and gunner leth got jacked to obscene levels, so buffdweebs could do their idiotic solo suicide runs and actually win most of the time.  And thus the buffdweebs came to be the dominant factor in how AW3 evolved......

-Bullethead <CAF>