The VOSS CONSPIRACY... fascinating new book

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by AW=B17=


General comment to something DoK said. Sometimes something happens without Dar that can cause "surprises".  In (frame 2?) of Ploesti 1, pretty much the whole damn buff herd was headed "downtown" and only *one* lowly scout saw it and called it for what it was.  He was like a single lamb bleating unheard in a great wilderness..... The net result was a total frame blowout that resulted in a virtually unrecoverable points margin. Design assumed that at "some point" in a frame the buff stream(s) would get made and attacked. Due to a *collosal* Axis blunder the entire stream got in and out RTB unscathed.
I'm not sure if Gypsy Baron was buff XO - but that would help explain it.  hehe

-W

Probably the most tense I ever got in a scenario frame.  Flying escort to the 17s, waiting for the LW to hit us.  Just about jumped out of my chair when the first flak burst went off over the target and then the race to get the buffs home safe.  Never fired a shot and loved every second of it.

OK lets fly it again

Dan/Slack
+Tiff

[Arlo]

I like CAP. I don't do CAP frames often enough. A war from start to finish. Battle results affecting history. Right now it's playing out the what ifs after Britain losing BoB. It'd be even more interesting with some planeset gaps filled and some more terrains.

We need a Spanish terrain. No really we do.

[Arlo]

Originally posted by Krusher

Hey Arlo, the room is still available for the con.   Talk your twin Aub into driving down from Okie land..  No you dont have to share a room !

Love to ... you know I would. THIS was gonna be THE con I finally made it to. But I'm busted flat broke all to hell, brother. More than I ever have been in my entire life. Third-world country and a member of the untouchable class type busted flat broke poor. Still got the internet, though. Only in America.

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
I actually prefer having human spotters in the air. Some of the best moments of the early events were when scouts found the enemy formations and the intercepting groups and had to very quickly coordinate the bounce.  Now if a CO doesn't hear the report, well - bad things happen - but that's war. That's part of the fun of these events.

The the possibility of the whole event ending due to one blow-out is why I like more than 8 missions.  If the first few missions become a blow out, you have time to make rules/force changes and effectively break the event into two halves. It isn't always a design issue that causes the blow-out either - sometimes its bad luck or the talent pool getting stacked (esp. w/Pacific events where you get all the B&Z junkies on the Allied side).

 

You might define Ploesti! as a "mini-event" then LOL.  

We followed the format that the Futile Dweebs (tm) used for Pearl Harbor. It was a 3 x 3 frame,  switch side event. The switch side format was used for Pearl and Ploesti because they were both kind of Axis bowouts in real life. So to balance it, each team had three frames on each side of the coin - attack / defend.  I think it was a week for Phase one, a week break to switch sides, then a week for Phase two.

It seemed like a natural way to go.... back when I was on debate teams - the switchside event was common. The idea being to see which team could argue BOTH sides of the coin the best overall.

With Ploesti, the Allied team could choose 3 out of 4 possible mission scenarios with the caveat that during (at least) one of the frames you had to do a mass low attack of the main refinery complexes.

In frame one Culero's allied team beat around the bush at secondary objectives but scored well overall, in frame TWO they went downtown en masse with a prety sneaky route and were completely missed by the live airborn scouts. (Save of course for the one lone scout who was screaming his head off unheard by high command.)

For whatever reason they had such a jump on the Axis that by the time Axis high command figgered out that they just got buggered up the refinery - they could not catch the buff stream to even efectively harass it on RTB. The buffs got home and barely even needed a car wash to be GTG again.  

Now in *theory* - the other team *could* have recovered when it had it's turn at offence - provided they could put in a good offensive performance.  That's where some talent imbalance took over. The team Culero was on managed to detect and ravage the buff streams more in line with what was *supposed* to happen. Therefore, the frame two blowout held to the end.

We had most of the "bugs" fixed for Ploesti II "Oils Well That Ends Well" and we even had a special Mediteranian terrain done up with real live flak-trains, refineries, etc etc. I think the feller that did it up (briliantly) had everything in Romania but Dracula's castle included in there.

But like I said,  AW was summarily shut down right after we ran a beta-frame to test the reworks on the design. And we had a still born scenario.  

Drat......

-W

[culero]

Jeezuz Wayne, you're getting more senile by the minute...get yer facts straight!

1) Pearl Harbor wasn't a =Futile Dweebs= event.

TEAM PEARL

2) At Ploesti, we went downtown the FIRST mission (Tidal Wave). We just attacked the one target that exposed us to their defenses the least, and from a direction they didn't expect. They were pissed we didn't just run it down the middle.

Then, the second mission you're talking about was to a secondary target.

It shows just how piss-poor a CM you were, you never even understood the damn event rules

culero ( ~kick~ )

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by AW=B17=
With Ploesti, the Allied team could choose 3 out of 4 possible mission scenarios with the caveat that during (at least) one of the frames you had to do a mass low attack of the main refinery complexes.  

Something I want to note here. When I took the newsgroup input and actually cohesed it into a written rule-set. I left a deliberate rathole in the rules that no one took advantage of.

It was pick three out of four missions - so that there would still be surprise on the third frame. BUT I very deliberately left out wording that said you HAD to run three out of four. The only thing you HAD to do was make one trip "downtown" low.

The points were set up so that three mediocre trips to the refinery (risk included) should have scored as well as one trip and running two secondary missions.

In theory a team could have taken the risk and planned THREE missions downtown. Or one downtown and two others repeated. That (the hole) was the only  part of the rules that I did totally unilaterally (and quietly) so as to add an extra element of surprise should a sneaky team actually pick up on it and use it.

I had a vision of a team doing just that, the other side screaming about it, and then being able to sit back and say "Tell me where it says they can't do it?" It would have been a good H8 generator.  Alas, no one tried it.

Were I a CO with a fairly sucessfull trip downtown under my belt, I *think* I would have taken that risk and gone back yet AGAIN just to try to rub salt in it and make the other team scream.

It's not just about winning.... it's making them scream that feels the best.  

-W

[culero]

Nah, we saw that in the rools. The only reason we went downtown the third frame was because the team wanted a good fight, and we had to promise it to 'em when they all complained how BORING the Frame Two sneak attack was gonna be.

Then, as +Tiff said, that mission turned out to be fun and not so boring....but a promise was a promise

Besides, Vampi was CO and he wanted a good fight, too. I had to work on him hard to convince him the sneak attack would P-O Team Hanky enough to be worth it

culero

[Arlo]

Next we'll be talking about why the gorram Betties died.

[culero]

Originally posted by Arlo
Next we'll be talking about why the gorram Betties died.

Oh joy

culero

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by culero
Jeezuz Wayne, you're getting more senile by the minute...get yer facts straight!

It shows just how piss-poor a CM you were, you never even understood the damn event rules

culero ( ~kick~ )

Listen joker..... "Team Pearl" looked a lot like the Futile Dweebs when you read the roster - EXCUUUUUSE me!

And I stand corrected on the exact details of the Ploesti rout and which frame was which.  But I captured the essence of the "feeling thing" about Frame 2.

As for understanding the rules, I think so.  I was the moke that had to take that whole damn newsgroup and filter it down into a typed ruleset.  According to my last post it was you clowns that missed a glaring oppertunity left in the rules.  

-W

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by culero
Besides, Vampi was CO and he wanted a good fight, too. I had to work on him hard to convince him the sneak attack would P-O Team Hanky enough to be worth it

culero

For Dok's benifit..... Culero (and to a large degree myself) both attended and graduated from the "Gypsy Baron School Of Way Too Sneaky Bomber Planning" (tm)

Now you have a good reason to hate us both... (grin)

-W

[culero]

Originally posted by AW=B17=
~load of blather~
-W

Just so everyone here knows what I mean, here's a pic of Wayne here while on CM duty:



culero  

[AW=B17=]

BASTICH!!

-W

[DoKGonZo]

Originally posted by AW=B17=
For Dok's benifit..... Culero (and to a large degree myself) both attended and graduated from the "Gypsy Baron School Of Way Too Sneaky Bomber Planning" (tm)

Now you have a good reason to hate us both... (grin)

-W

It wasn't the "too sneaky-ness" ... it was the doing crap which he knew damn well wasn't in the spirit of the design and not asking if it was OK and doing it anyway and then whining about the fall-out afterwards.

That stuff really sucks because the CM has to deal with the other team who rightfully feels that they were shafted. And then it sucks again because the next event you gotta spend an evening putting in so many rules stipulations into the write-up to protect against a repeat of that happening again it starts to look like a friggin legal document.

[Quarters]

Originally posted by culero
Now yer gonna hurt Quarter's feelings

That so isn't the case and you know it, Culero. Now reel that hook in and go try casting in different waters.