HTC, pay attention on strat gameplay pls.

[Guppy35]

As long as the main goal of the game is to 'win the war/reset" the problems will remain.

The glory seems to be in doing this as fast as possible so folks can say 'we're great-you suck"

Limit capturable fields, give the bomber guys strat targets that mean something so they can bomb all day long, and start swinging the emphasis back on the air war not the tac war.  

Dan/Slack

[Kweassa]

As long as the main goal of the game is to 'win the war/reset" the problems will remain.

 Very true. I'd like to add/emphasize again that this goal will not change. Nothing's gonna make AH go back to the old days. People wanted a virtual war, and now they got it.

The glory seems to be in doing this as fast as possible so folks can say 'we're great-you suck"

 I wouldn't think so. The process is backwards. People just use the most effective strategy they can think of, which in turn leads to the one-sided steamrolling "blitzkrieg". I doubt they particularly aim for a fast reset. It's just that the methods each countries use are often so very effective and devastating.

 

Limit capturable fields, give the bomber guys strat targets that mean something so they can bomb all day long, and start swinging the emphasis back on the air war not the tac war.

 The air war you may want is gone, and its not coming back Guppy. It's gone.

 AH MA is total war - people fight to win. The very reason that the horde persist, is because people want to win, and they think winning is more important and fun, than having a good A2A combat.

 We have to acknowledge that fact. The only viable option left to us(to HTC actually), is to overhaul the entire strat system so this total war at least makes sense.

 The total war concept does not necessarily have to be more dull and hordish than the old AH MA. Along with it comes as much new implications as those that have been lost with the change.

 The real question is, when will HTC start admitting this fact, and think of an entirely different strat system?

[Rino]

Originally posted by Guppy35
As long as the main goal of the game is to 'win the war/reset" the problems will remain.

The glory seems to be in doing this as fast as possible so folks can say 'we're great-you suck"

Limit capturable fields, give the bomber guys strat targets that mean something so they can bomb all day long, and start swinging the emphasis back on the air war not the tac war.  

Dan/Slack

     Not sure this would work anyway Dan, from my POV most
strat buffers are the kind of folks that like peeing in others
pools.  If they can't have a direct effect on limiting other's fun,
they get frustrated.

[Kweassa]

The typical strategy in MA derives from a very basic military strategy - "gather your forces, and hit where the enemy is the most weakest".

 It is logical and effective.

 But without any kind of structural system in the game, this effectively mans all three countries can push this principle upto the extreme point where each side mutually cancels all possibilities of strategical, tactical innovation and/or stimulation.

 In simpler words, people create hordes. They don't use this horde to bust enemy horde in force. Hitting a horde with a horde may be fun, but speaking in pure tatcical/strategical terms, its a stupid move, wildly high in attrition rates and casualties.

 And the MA folk know that. So, they use their horde to hit where there aren't any enemies around. The enemy horde does the same.

 Suddenly, the arena becomes a "chicken game" - who can ignore the advance of the enemy horde longer, and who can push deeper into the enemy territory with its horde, before turning back to defend? The classic "vulch or be vulched" scenario that plagues the MA.

 Virtually every problem in the MA comes from the formation of hordes which refuse to fight other hordes - everything.

 Apparently, the strategical thinking in the MA is correct, except it has no limitations or boundaries. Since fighting to defend a large enemy force is so unprofittable, people will "abandon posts" and give up defense all together, and go join the friendly horde offensive.

 Now in real life, the basic strategical principle would persist, but it would never happen that way. Two struggling sides always have a limited amount of force to wield. Limited amount of human resources means the quality, organization, and basic planning becomes the deciding factor in battles.

 Not so in the MA - only the numbers determine the outcome of the battle, and since it is always "vulch or be vulched", basically nobody fights the other side - there is no 'fight' at all. There is only the 'push'.

 Now, some might come up and say the MA is not real life. That is true. However, all the basic stuff that we crave in the MA that is not present, and all the basic stuff that we complain about the MA which refuses to go away, comes from the fact that our MA is a total war which totally lacks any kind of resemblence to the usage of armed forces.

 In a real war, soldiers and pilots were placed at their posts, and each theater of operations had limited resources to use. In the MA, people use up resources any where they want and voluntarily create huge hordes which are largely allergic to another hordes.

 Unless something forces people to spread apart, and forces each "fronts" to use only their share of the pilots assigned there, the "horde" problem will never, ever go away. Nothing can change this problem unless some basic organization is forcibly implied on.

 And I must ask to the people with allergic reactions to any suggestions that involve "limitation of freedom" in the game, that, would such minimum constraints be so worse as to tolerate the current style of MA play indefinately? Is being assigned to certain place, having to fight equally spread numbers, having to use limited resources to defeat the other side, so worse than meeting the same steamroller again and again and again?

[Furious]

WW2 as played in AH.

The German army abandons any captured territory to the west for an all out attack on Russia.  Meanwhile,  the Russians are unavailable to meet this attack due to the fact that their entire armed forces are on the march to Manchuria in order to attack the Japanese.  The Japanes will not be there to defend as they have sent every man they have off to California to kill Americans.

....but, they are not there either.  The Americans are all on the way to Germany, which appears to be empty.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Kweassa
Unless something forces people to spread apart, and forces each "fronts" to use only their share of the pilots assigned there, the "horde" problem will never, ever go away. Nothing can change this problem unless some basic organization is forcibly implied on.  

Correct again, Kwe. That "something", as far as I was concerned, was the pizza map. Not an ideal solution, perhaps, but the best that we had, and provided far better gameplay than the small maps hordefest.

[Charon]

For some people the strat system is broken. Kweassa, Cit, myself and others have posted long-winded and less long-winded solutions that in many cases would require a complete reworking of how the war is won. To somebody who likes a realistic, deep strat model these changes would be worth the effort. Imagine if you actually had to lead a group of escorted heavy bombers, at high altitude, deep into enemy territority to attack a target that was critical to the war effort. Sounds like a winner to me. But, what about HTC and everybody else?

What we have now is basically the same strat model that was found in AW, and as far as I know Warbirds. The proven model. Kill some local defenses/ resources, cap a base, do some vulching and wait for the goon - rinse and repeat. Strat targets apparently can have an impact now, but why bother since the basics require a lot less effort and get the job done just well. 400-500 paying customers seem to agree each night at prime time.

Does HT think strat is broken? I've asked a couple of time but no response. Without hearing otherwise, I would suspect that HT thinks strat is largely fine, at least for now. TOD is the next big project (no doubt an exciting new programming challenge as well as potential new-busines opportunity), and he's got his own real plane to fly now for fun vs. those virtual ones in the MA.  And HTC gets plenty of people to fill the arena each day, who are apparently having fun doing the steamroller thing.

If strat were an issue to HT, I suspect he would be interested in doing something more than short term band-aid types of fixes. It is kind of odd that he added trucks and trains  but that they are more eye candy than intergal to gameplay. Remember the excitement throughout the combat flightsim community at large when they were announced? What real impact do they have today?

Personally, I think we're going to have to play AH for whatever individual value we get out of it today and not have higher aspirations for an MA the delivers the "WW2OL dream" (which WW2OL apparently fails to deliver as well) or "Civ3 meets AH" or even the exceptional layered FPS/RTS/Strat complexity of BattleZone (the modern remake).

It is what it is and it puts gas in the tank of the RV8.

Charon

[edit: People will often say "You'll get your strat when TOD arrives"... but frankly that's apples and oranges. First of all, it's more role playing than strat. You attack an assigned target to advance in rank, not to win the map war. The whole regimented TOD mission structure will not appeal to many MA types who can't do what they want, when they want with what they want to fly. It's hard to see this as being a viable solution to MA players who like the MA model but want something more.]

[GreenCloud]

I think the MA is a great place..Fly what you want ..when you want..At certain times ..a HUG evariety of styles you can do...other tiems..only a few styles to fly/ride..



TOD...is going to be kik azzzzz



I LOVE THE MA!!!

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Furious
WW2 as played in AH.

The German army abandons any captured territory to the west for an all out attack on Russia.  Meanwhile,  the Russians are unavailable to meet this attack due to the fact that their entire armed forces are on the march to Manchuria in order to attack the Japanese.  The Japanes will not be there to defend as they have sent every man they have off to California to kill Americans.

....but, they are not there either.  The Americans are all on the way to Germany, which appears to be empty.

[Kermit de frog]

Originally posted by Kweassa
Awww Kermit, stop being the little man who holds an arena grudge inside himself. Only a headcase would still be mad of losing a single fight in the MA, and then involving the grudge into everything he sees on a discussion board, sheesh.

 Get a life dude.

Kweassa

You didn't even hit me in the fight.  You ran away you PU$$.
I had to break off because I used ALL my fuel on you.  Everytime you dove in on me, I'd move and eventually get on your six.  Then you just ran away.  
Like I said earlier....LEARN TO FIGHT YOU PU$$.
Otherwise, keep your mouth shut.

[Fariz]

Originally posted by Kweassa
Now in real life, the basic strategical principle would persist, but it would never happen that way.

MA is not a real life. MA will never get a complexity of a good board wargame with a 100kb of rules, because complex rules are good for few, and borring for many. MA shall be addictive to keep people playing it. MA is not a structured environment, here people can't give orders to other people (well, some try to do it ). In MA you can only ask for a help and cooperate with others.

What I am asking for is a better ballance of what we have, the ballance, which will make strat playing more interesting. What I want to see is the situation, when to deny a skillful and time consuming efforts (for example squad NOE or a country mission to get a base), you will need a skillful jabo or a few. It is a ballance issue, nothing else.

If you want to  hear my opinion about current realization of a strat model as a whole, I do not find it satisfactory. Too many things do not work as they were intended to work. Factories are bombed by scoremongers, not the strat players; trains, barges and trucks are being killed by chance, not be the plan, 163s are  a bomber raids plague, etc. Actually there are many possible simple strat models, which will be better than what we have now. Just seems strat model is neither the strongest skill of HTC, nor their main interest. It looks like in this field they use the aproach of a UNIX system administrator ("It works? Nothing is broken? Please, KEEP YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM IT")

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Fariz
MA is not a real life.

True, but there are quite a few in here who, when they see something in the game they don't like, will cry "Waaaaaah, that could not have happened in real life" as a justification for a change to be made.

Selective Realism™ !

[F1Bomber]

Figure i will put this here for the archieve.

Alot of the strat/gameplay issues that we are seeing and experencing right now is the direct result in how aces high 2 was implimented and how the new gameplay styles were introduced. Instead of slowly introducing new gameplay styles and seeing if they would work, HTC decided to include everthing in one huge basket. Major problem with this approach of putting all your eggs into one basket, is that, you cannot see how the changes either directly or indirectly effecting the game play of the product. Until acouple days later or months later than the original release date.

I do agree with fariz he has alot of valid points about aces high 2, and the main reason why some players have quit. Not everyone want to get into a furball every day of the week.

How to fix the current system? Well thats hitech job not mine, the strat system right now is broken. Mabe it would be a good idea to revert it back to the old system, then slowly introduce changes from the original model, instead of trying to adapt this new model to the old one.

[Simaril]

Why do most players ignore the strat part of the game? At the most basic level, because their gameplay impact is too indirect. If your goal is to keep troops down, it's more effective, safer, and faster to send a solo 110 across the entire front NOE than it is to send buffs on deep penetration at altitude. Those missions are long and often thankless -- and in AH, boring is gameplay death. Hitting strats CAN impact play, but in the flow of the MA it jst isnt worth it.

Which is why a map can have disconnected strats that nobody notices. They just dont care, because it doesnt impact gameplay.

So here's a thought.

One: Since base fuel cant go lower than 75%,  the fuel strats are especially meaningless.

Two: The major impediment to effective base capture with non-horde numbers is difficulty getting and keeping the base safe for M3/goon.

Three: FH and VH down times are just a bit short to allow attackers to clear the defenders adn bring int he goon. This cycle is where most stalemate attacks stall.

Suggestion: Why not convert the currently useless Refinery strats to Manufacturing strats, that affect the hangars' down times? Terminal damage to the strats could cause hangars' down time to extend from current roughly 15 mintes to maybe 30 of 40 minutes, with incremental effects for partial damage.

This change alone would radically change the way that the capture crew approached a base. I suspect we'd see less of the horde, actual concerted defense of a strat target, and a breakdown of the stalemate seen in so many maps.

Simaril