Scenarios with Tanks?

[AW=B17=]

Corporate support.........   (light bulb)

For the sake of argument, I'll postulate that the most sucessfull scenario ever run was the Bigweek Scenario to launch AW3 (or was it 2?)

I call it the "best" because it did what no scenario before or after ever did.... it gelled an alpha-community who to this *very* day refuses to let the bigweek.general newsgroup die. It won the marbles.....

Regardless..... it had support from the highest levels of the corporate organization with all the "office staff" such as BB,GE,Moggy,Mage, Quarters et all taking some active participation in the event.

Now..... if you could design an event.... and convince HT and Pyro take a break from the endless programming, improvements, and stuff and **be** the CO's. ( I mean, who's gonna catch up to this in a month?) Tout it on the boards - and build up some rivalry and hate(tm) etc....  Then a lot of people would follow to see just what the hell the noise is all about.

Moreso than any form of financial or trinket support (those are nice too), the best thing HTC could lend to an event is "star power" where the whole office gets involved in the planning and the hate.  You'd get a buzz going alright....  

One could add incentive with patches and hats - sure!  Also to steal a trick out of my former life as a sales motivator: One could "attach" the CON banquet dinner to the event.  Anyone attending from the winning team eats prime rib au juice with a big baked potato, and garlic roasted green beans.  Anyone from the losing team settles for (you guessed it) lambchops, mashed, and the veggie du jour.
THE LOOSERS WILL EAT SHEEP I TELL YOU!!!!  (heh)

Add to this the benifit to HTC staff from getting down and diirty with the rank and file players again.  (Even the Rolling Stones have to go back and play along to the old records time and again  to keep the music from changing too much over the years.)

Sure.. I'm rambling.... but.....

-W

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Agreed ... we have the tools and staff we only wished for in the past.

But it's almost like we need to restart the education process. And that takes a lot of time and community support. And it'll probably require some corporate support from HTC to provide incentives for the MA-entrenched players to try something different.

[Flossy]

Originally posted by AW=B17=
One think you can't simulate with a "scenario lite" is combat fatigue.  We learned this well with RM and (too)Longbow with 2 sets of 8 frames.

Longbow was actually 3 phases of 6 frames as far as I remember.... I did 4 frames in each phase as the other 2 were evening, mid-week frames, which I couldn't get to.  Although many started calling it Too-Longbow, I loved it.... but of course I only went as a gunner then; perhaps if I had been flying all those frames I might have felt differently.  

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by Flossy
Longbow was actually 3 phases of 6 frames as far as I remember.... I

I think you're right....  I know it was Loooooong... and intense.

But real fun in a sadistic kind of way...  

-W

[Flossy]

It was great fun and..... well I'm sure you've heard many times how the end of the last frame was so special for me, one of those times when I really felt I was there..... and of being 'empty' when I realised it was all over.

[AW=B17=]

That's the mark of a great event... you get totally "sucked in" you're "there"... and have a feeling of loss when it's sadly over.

-W

[Octavius]

Originally posted by AW=B17=
Now..... if you could design an event.... and convince HT and Pyro take a break from the endless programming, improvements, and stuff and **be** the CO's. ( I mean, who's gonna catch up to this in a month?) Tout it on the boards - and build up some rivalry and hate(tm) etc....  Then a lot of people would follow to see just what the hell the noise is all about.

That... is... golden!!!!!!

Too many newcomers view HT and Pyro as "the devs," untouchable gods (which they are ...  The general populace compares them to many other developers and that isn't right.  Games of this caliber and genre shouldn't be considered to be 'just another game' by .  It isn't a FPS, it isn't an RPG.  If they participated as CO's in a scenerio that would certainly spark a revolution.  The MA-entrenched folk, as Dok said, would flip!

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by Octavius

That... is... golden!!!!!!

 

I'm glad you like it Oc.  I hope you like me too.  

Tilt just sent my tranfer orders to the P40E group.

Effective immediately.

Signed, seald, delivered, I'm yours.

-W

[DoKGonZo]

I don't know how many people could handle HT's management style.

But ... this did give me an idea which would be far easier to implement and which kind of follows the Big Week concept. If HTC worked with the scenario team and had the roll-out of new planes happen within the confines of an event first, that would draw over the MA players.

Oh sure, they'd whine about "Why do I have to fly in a scenario to fly the Ki-84 in combat? Wahhhhh...."  ... but ... it would force people to really test fly the new planes (as opposed to the usual MA splooging around), and it'd be an incentive to be in a scenario and get first crack at the new planes.

The only real issue is that releases happen every "two weeks" which makes scheduling an issue. HTC would need to give the scenario team two months warning and then the release would need to be available in beta quality at least 14 days prior to the first mission.

It could easily replicate the Big Week communit where there's several hundred folks in on every major release scenario.

[ROC]

The primary reason I came back to fly was for the events.  

MA has it's moments.  It's good for a squad night, but you just have to love a long drawn out collaborative effort.  

What's funny is the low turnout at Rangoon while the MA is screaming for organization and mission planning.  They are yelling for what Rangoon is, but stick to the MA.  I honestly don't get it.

[DoKGonZo]

We didn't publicize Rangoon as well as we could is part of it - not everyone reads the BBS, and if you don't read that you probably don't know this is even going on.

And the MA crew are a pretty lazy bunch. They want missions, but they want "someone else" to organize 'em. So I don't know how many would stay with Rangoon once they got in and saw they'd, like, have to read instructions and stuff.

[Ed561]

You may be able to increase special event arena participation by shutting down the MA during the event.  I'm not sure it would be a good idea, though.

Ed561

[Tilt]

http://www.btinternet.com/~fulltilt/niemen/battle.html


Niemen was 2nd only to Midway in attendance and held numbers better through out its 4 frames.

It was the first multilife AH scenario to incorporate an attrition model and introduced the concept's of "travelling" and capture by encirclement/ logistic starvation. As well as bridges which could be driven over blown up or captured.

I have run Niemen twice. Once in AW and once in AH in both instances victory was an absolute cliff hanger decided in the final moments of the final frame.

The ground war element of a scenario is used in two ways IMO

1) it pulls the air war down into a ground support / ground attack role in a manner that influences the Alt war component to a point where alt caps are not required.

2) it provides role play beyond the initial ac ride


The danger is when it becomes the sole deciding victory consideration........ ie gv's become the main plank of strategm.

Our GV rides are not wide enough in breadth for this and it goes against the mantre of an Air Combat Flight Simulation

When considering heavy GV use, the terrain design has a massive influence on game play and its design has to be taken down to very detailed levels to achieve the balance required.............

unless your setting it in a desert that is.

[AW=B17=]

Originally posted by Tilt
http://www.btinternet.com/~fulltilt/niemen/battle.html


2) it provides role play beyond the initial ac ride

The danger is when it becomes the sole deciding victory consideration........ ie gv's become the main plank of strategm.

Yes,
In all the events I've seen GV use in,  the most important element was that it gave dead pilots (and pilots whose primary mission was over) a way to contribute for the duration of the frame, as well as adding another "scoring condition".

GV's used well can really add another cool dimension to the play.

-W

[Easyscor]

Originally posted by Wotan
In Kurland the v hangars were un-killable but v hangars along the front were under artillery fire and with just 1 gv life players dared not spawn there. The allies did lots of testing to get range on the front line v hangars and defensive guns and with their 5 min artillery barrage they were able to destroy most of the defensive guns along the front then concentrate on the V hangars taking out the axis players dumb enough to spawn there

Wotan, I spent hours testing "GV deaths" caused by the artillery and is just isn't possible unless you have line fo sight.  It dosen't matter if it's in a H2H room or the SEA in AH1.  Trust me, we wanted to use it.  Every guy who got killed without knowing who shot him complained about artillery death.

[genozaur]

Guys, I don't know what you are talking about, but the timeframe of the actual active use of T-34\76, PzIV, La-5, P-39 on the Eastern Front includes the years of 1942 and 1943 when massive ground and air battles took place, the most impressive of them being the Kursk battle.
If you don't expect reasonably massive turnout at Kursk, there's nothing else to expect at all.