Bye Bye Suicide Fuel Porker. :)))

[jodgi]

I sense the start of an entertaining thread...

[vorticon]

Originally posted by lazs2

I find that surviving those 3 vs 1 fights are getting easier now that I am on of the three instead of the one.

lazs

it also improves your ability to get kills when another person was just about to grab the shot you kill stealing bastard!!!  

run with a bogey 600 off his 6 until his help arrives.

lazs did that about 10 minutes after that kill steal as well...

[Cobra412]

The porking issues we have now could easily be fixed just by upping the lethality of the AA guns around the field up to a certain altitude.  This would force folks to drop from a higher alt than the 2000 feet above their targets that you see now.  By doing this it would force them to get better at higher drops and hit percentages would be go down drastically without practice.  This goes for heavy fighters not bombers.  Bombers should also be forced high to an extent and still have to deal with an umbrella of ack at higher alts.  The density of these would depend on the field and it's overall affect to the game as a whole.  Smaller fields would have less high alt AAA coverage than lets say a larger field or depot facility.

Currently they can go in release their weapons and still take out the target with pretty high accuracy due to the lower altitudes they are dealing with.  Forcing them to release up around 6 thousand feet or more over the target could definately help this issue out.  I'm not sure about what the typical drop altitude was during WWII though so that would have to be looked at.

This would also make it harder to de-ack the fields and vulching would take more of an effort than what it is now.  If you can de-ack the field and get a vulch fest going then you deserve to take the base.  

I think by doing this it would bring the value of flying bombers up and you'd see alot more of them opposed to the heavy fighters you constantly see now.  Smaller fields could easily use the tactical approach of heavy fighters and medium/larger fields would require a combination of heavy fighters and bombers to take the fields down properly.  This goes for the HQ too.  There should be no way that the HQ should be taken down by a small group of heavy fighters.  It should be packed with AAA and be the most heavily defending base on the map.

I say bring up the lethality and amount of AAA around the bases and strat targets.  And make taking down strat have more of an affect on the game play.  Make them be extremely critical as they should be.  If you hit the local areas fuel depot then guess what, slowly the amount of fuel you have will not only decline (through amount of usage by players)but the re-supply time will go up until you re-supply the affected depot facility.  We should also have high alt AAA for the bombers at major facilities such as the HQ, Fuel, Ammo, Grunt, AAA and radar facilities.  Opposed to having just a few bombers hit the areas and take it down with almost no threat to themselves they will have to feel exactly what it was like in WWII with the massive AAA coverage on major strategic targets.  This should in a sense force them to bring more than just a few buddies in formations.

On the average for a major target the 8th Air Force flew anywhere from 18 to 36 aircraft in group(up to 4 or 5 groups) formation.  This is really nothing when you consider the amount of players we have playing on a daily basis.  With the current formation setup we have thats a minimum of 6 to 12 players in the bomber formation.  Add escort groups (which will be needed because I'm sure folks will defend now) and your looking at 2 to 4 fighters per each group of bombers.  Thats really not all that much considering I've seen 50 in missions before that in the end caused damage but did hardly much other than pork some of the bases strategic items and the base was still operable.

Oh and the whole point of war which the last time I checked is what the MA designed for, is to disable the opponents ability to fight.  Deny them the ability to wage war by essentially nullifying all targets to a degree that their ability to wage war will cease to exist.  What it's coming down to is not a war room but a dueling arena with a pinch of stradegy that equals to nothing more than a MSFS with bombs that does little to the overall scheme of things.  

There is a happy medium for fighter pilots and bomber/strategic pilots.  No matter how many discussions have gone over this it will never change.  Fighter pilots want less strategic game play and bomber/strategic pilots want more of it.  Simple thing for all to enjoy this would implement such a system where fighter pilots would be doing essentially what their job is (Combat Air Patrols ie: CAP).  They would also be doing escort missions for the bombers.  If this scenario doesn't give you the opportunity to run into fighters I don't know what will.  Your guaranteed the bombers will have escorts and you'll be guaranteed a fighter to fighter battle in and around the buff formations.  If the people setting up the missions do it in a typical manner then you'll also see fighters flying CAP in and around the target areas suppressing enemy fighters from engaging the bombers that are in route.

[SLO]

let the Vulch-Mania begin......

thats my prediction

[straffo]

Cobra peharps I misunderstood your post but doesn't this will create an ack sanctuary over each field ?

[lazs2]

vorticon... I can only watch people play with their food for so long... it gets painful to watch.   I believe I told you that if you continued to dance with the guy I wasn't gonna be able to help myself..

comes from being in a country that is allways outnumbered as oppossed to one that allways has the numbers... if you don't get practice you don't get any better.

lazs

[mechanic]

why not introduce marines and special forces and such like, 'a'la operation flashpoint' and have farms and civilians and children and dogs and birds to get stuck in your engine and police and air mask over 10,000ft and royal families for each country and a smell sensour system plugged into your computer to emit burning oil fumes and such like and lets have individual blades of grass on the ground and trees that hurt you and rain and snow and lightning and random engine malfunction and if you fly over 60,000ft you should be able to see god on a little cloud with angels and harps and redbull and.....and....and.....

....on second thoughts, scrap that, just give me a Sea Fury to fly!

[Cobra412]

Straffo in a sense it does but I'm sure in WWII they had much of the same at their disposal.  The other question is this are you there to take the field or are you there to pad your scores by vulching?

If you want to vulch the field then I guess your gonna have to make an effort to get that ack down.  There is many areas around the maps that are fair game and level grounds for the combatants.  Around a friendly field you have the advantage.  This should be the way it works.  If you are outside of this friendly area then it is up to you the pilot to ensure you keep the advantage on your side.

You have to realise that opposed to how the current setup is here in real life you didn't have these luxuries.  The surrounding areas had AAA concentrations and they also had mobile units.  This is not something we have modeled here.  So in affect for a unit to come in unabated to the target they have to do very little but watch their dar bars and look for cons in the area.  They can come in almost untouched unless someone actually scrambles to intercept them or someone just happens to run across them.  In real life they'd have known about your presence through spotters or mobile units on the ground and depending on the target they could have a barrage of AAA to deal with before they get within 10 miles or more to the target area.  

My thing is since there is so few areas inwhich someone can use their friendly units (AAA or mobile units ie: FLAK/M-16) you actually need this kind of umbrella.  If you just want to fight an air to air battle then take it on the outskirts of the base out of AAA range.  If the con wants to run to his/her AAA field then so be it.  They are using the equipment they have at their disposal and you chose to come to the base and pick a fight.  It's all about the decisions you make.  If you don't want this to be a possibility find a battle ground not directly near the field and fight there.  If they end up running because they're faster then yet again it's a poor decision on your part in regards to the airframe you have flown and tactics you have employed.

It's all a matter of finding a that fine line between what the fighter pilots want and what the bomber/strat pilots want.  Fighter pilots don't want their bases porked so they can't defend themselves.  Well give them lethal ack up to a particular alt and radius around the base.  Then if the bombers/strat pilots want to employ their game play so be it.  It's gonna be tougher but in the end the effectiveness of their drops and targets they chose will determine the overall outcome.  

In the end the lethal AAA umbrellas will in affect cause a few things:  Less suicide base porkers,  more strat survivability (fuel, ammo, troops, ect...), less horde vulching unless they actually work for it (using some type of strategic assault initially), fighters will have protection to climb to a certain alt before being hung out to dry by their own base(ability to somewhat safely climb out to defend against and oncoming raid if alerted early enough), and give the strat folks the game play they wish to see but at a cost of the lethal AAA umbrellas and you'll also see more furballs set about in common ground areas so long as folks aren't prone to staying in their AAA fields constantly.  This goes for all sides too not just one or the other.  I'm sure you'll find that no matter what side you play on you have those folks who will use their AAA constantly and only fight when they feel like they have the advantage.  That will never change no matter what you do.  Some are timid fighters, some are borderline and some are aggressive.

Oh and the whole you thing isn't directed at you specifically I mean as a whole.

[mechanic]

Originally posted by mechanic
why not introduce marines and special forces and such like, 'a'la operation flashpoint' and have farms and civilians and children and dogs and birds to get stuck in your engine and police and air mask over 10,000ft and royal families for each country and a smell sensour system plugged into your computer to emit burning oil fumes and such like and lets have individual blades of grass on the ground and trees that hurt you and rain and snow and lightning and random engine malfunction and if you fly over 60,000ft you should be able to see god on a little cloud with angels and harps and redbull and.....and....and.....

....on second thoughts, scrap that, just give me a Sea Fury to fly!

quoting yourself is very in this season, all the tops dogs in Paris are doing it........

[SLO]

more then 1 paragraph and you lose me....

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by beet1e
I've just downloaded the AH2 Beta36 update. I read through the changes, which were mostly fixes, but when logging on I found some more changes - fuel strat changes. The new way is going to be thus:

• 50% of fuel bunkers destroyed will disable drop tanks at that field.
• 90% or more of fuel bunkers destroyed will pork fuel to 75%.

So no more 25% suicide fuel porks.

And the fuel strat amendment announcement was icing on the cake! [/B]

LOL I still have yet to see but a handful of true suiciders in the couple years I've been here.
Usually what looks like a suicider isnt but rather the result of auto ack killing em.

On the other hand. Fuel may only go down to tops 75% But think of the new fuel burn rate.
LOL might as well be 25
The base porking complaints will never go away untill people actually decide to actually protect their feilds

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Shuckins
The fuel strat changes will mark a watershed moment for this game.  They will help drive a stake through the heart of the horde mentality.  Most of us don't mind being outnumbered so long as we are still able to fight.


Kudos to them!  

Regards, Shuckins/Leggern

I dissagree.  Mark my words.Unfortunately the hoard will live on just fine.
If you watch closely. The Hoard usually tries to take bases as intact as possable. They dont need to pork the fuel.
Typically what they do is kill the VH, All the ack and maybe the hangars. then cap the feild with such rediculously overwhelming numbers that  its impossable to defend a base no matter what the fuel status is.
fuel porking on the other hand as well as killing off the barracks is at the moment the only thing I've seen that even begins to slow the hoard down.
The lack of ability to pork fuel is only going to serve to help the hoarders not hurt them

[MadSquirrel]

"Fuel Porking" is a valid tactic.  Irritating, yes, but valid.  

Balancing reality vs. game play is a very tricky situation.  You can't have as much reality as some would like and still make the game playable.  

Whether it is the usual lone "Pony" that drops his 50 megaton bomb from 15K and destroys the VH without so much as a scratch, or the 50+ P-38 raid that destroys everything on the field including the field mascots water dish and every blade of grass and fly away unscathed, field flak is dismal at best at times.  I notice in AHII that field ack is much tougher to destroy, but is it as lethal as it could be?

There is no clear-cut answer to all the questions.  Beef up the field ack?  Beef up the fuel stats?  Harden the fuel bunkers?  The hardened Ack will make it more difficult in some respects, but the volume of fire at a field under attack seems wimpy.

Every field that I have seen pictures of had many more guns and ack emplacements than what AH fields have.  Maybe part of the answer lies in not so much increasing the accuracy, but increasing the volume of fire.  Put some .50 caliber mounts around the field and on some buildings.  Also put in a few more large AAA guns.  That might slow down the divebombing Lancasters and the ground strafing B-17s a bit.

Will this help?  I don't know.  But a single aircraft should not be able to destroy a field’s fuel, ammo or VH and fly off untouched.  Realism vs. playability.  Again, a tough mix.

LTARsqrl

[Replicant]

Originally posted by DREDIOCK
I dissagree.  Mark my words.Unfortunately the hoard will live on just fine.
If you watch closely. The Hoard usually tries to take bases as intact as possable. They dont need to pork the fuel.
Typically what they do is kill the VH, All the ack and maybe the hangars. then cap the feild with such rediculously overwhelming numbers that  its impossable to defend a base no matter what the fuel status is.
fuel porking on the other hand as well as killing off the barracks is at the moment the only thing I've seen that even begins to slow the hoard down.
The lack of ability to pork fuel is only going to serve to help the hoarders not hurt them

I totally agree, and why I pork fuel, and btw, it's very, very rare if I get killed porking fuel; never my intention to be a suicide dweeb!!

Sometimes you'll get a horde take one base after another.  I'm not talking about 6 or 7 people doing squad ops, but the 20 - 30 odd planes that just walk one field after another.  These fields are normally taken intact.... so having fuel to defend didn't help at all did it?  They still walk more fields.... so then it's time to pork their fuel to slow them down or at least concentrate them attacking in one direction only.  I've often gone in alone and taken the fuel down and RTBd safely.  I'd pass attacking planes who were more interested in vulching that to come after me and stop me.  There's a difference in goals and mentality.

So, as I stated before, I expect faster resets because as soon as one side starts rolling they'll be no way to slow them down other than try and defend, and which doesn't really work against overwhelming odds.

[kj714]

Originally posted by Replicant
I totally agree, and why I pork fuel, and btw, it's very, very rare if I get killed porking fuel; never my intention to be a suicide dweeb!!

Sometimes you'll get a horde take one base after another.  I'm not talking about 6 or 7 people doing squad ops, but the 20 - 30 odd planes that just walk one field after another.  These fields are normally taken intact.... so having fuel to defend didn't help at all did it?  They still walk more fields.... so then it's time to pork their fuel to slow them down or at least concentrate them attacking in one direction only.  I've often gone in alone and taken the fuel down and RTBd safely.  I'd pass attacking planes who were more interested in vulching that to come after me and stop me.  There's a difference in goals and mentality.

So, as I stated before, I expect faster resets because as soon as one side starts rolling they'll be no way to slow them down other than try and defend, and which doesn't really work against overwhelming odds.

All true, porking fuel is a good defensive move when the horde attacks.  I like it too as it tends to move the furball back toward the horde base and makes for some good fights in the middle.

I'd have to agree on faster resets because of it. Or the defensive strategy will have to switch to porking troops all the time, which will cause a lot of crying around as well.