Some of us are all about the war and winning it. In the old MA, you never knew what the day might bring. Maybe my side would have numbers and we would move ahead, or maybe the enemy will have a horde on and we'll lose base after base. When 'War fighters' login, they first study the map to see how their side is doing, and what needs to be accomplished strategically and or tactically to get their country ahead in the war, and keep them there.
In the old MA, if you saw a chance to grab a base you grabbed it. Thats one more base their horde will have to roll up before before they can start on your your home territory. Every base you push forward adds to the cushion between you and defeat. Their horde may have to to roll up 10 of their own bases back before they can start on the ones you most want to defend.
Then it changed. Suddenly we have three arenas. The first few days in the new system I did what I always do - set out to win the map. I have no way of knowing that there will only be 2 knights on for the next three days. I'm going under the assumption that the numbers will reverse in a few hours and those dweebs will be doing the same thing to us - so lets head them off now and make it alot harder for them to reset us if they get numbers.
Now do you understand? It's not about taking undefended bases vs fighting. It's about inexorably pushing forward towards a map reset, 24/7. In the old MA the one thing you could count on was that the numbers would change, and in two more hours the nature of the struggle would change.
When the nature of the struggle doesn't change, well, it sorta becomes needless milkrunning. Whatever you make of it, it is just what I was doing at the time. Once I figured that out, my incessant forays to town w/ an osty ceased. Maybe the guys just wants to see how many base captures he can get in one campaign. (In the old MA I had over 100 one campaign) When you figure that for every one of them, there were 4-5 others that I hammered the town or capped the base for someone elses capture, it means I helped take 500 - 600 bases in a months time. I know virtually everything there is to know about capturing a base. I've used every trick, ruse, method, aircraft, and vehicle to do it.
Yeah I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I hear some guy who's just figured out that an M16 kills towns faster than anything but lancasters. We've put a stopwatch on the festivities to see jsut how fast we can drop one w/ a given number of people.
Training ideas:
If you aren't someone who's already killed a few thousand towns using every weapon platform in the game, it's a good way to get some some execution and timing issues worked out. Sure you could also do this in 8 player, if you dont have more than 8 people in the excercise. Once new guys figure out the mechanics of a base capture, it takes alot of experience to gain 2 more levels of understanding - timing and player psychology. Those of us who've been at it awhile know how other side will react in certain situations. We also know how other squads in our own country will react. I've learned to work with 'furballers' not against them. I know how NOT to piss them off. I can appreciate what they're doing, and make my plans after considering their responses to a certain situation. If they wanna pick, vulch or furball, i make sure our town destruction squad comes in unseen if possible. We make sure we kill the VH first, not the fighter hangars. We put our ord and HE in the town, not the hangars. We give them M16's and osties to run to if they need it (just ask that they not come to town when the troops are inbound) We can cap a base with our gv's (for a time usually no longer than the flight time from the nearest adjacent enemy base for a P38 w/ bombs
but we usually leave a hangar or runway untended so the air guys will get some action too. If theres enough of them, we don't touch the base except to kill the vh.
There's no need to quarrel over toolshedder vs furballer. I rarely anger anyone anymore with my activities. Sometimes it happens. If I get to a base with a plan in mind, and discover that there's an entirely different situatioon and psychology going on, I'm not going to turn around and go home. I'll try to make the best of the run.
Lets say there's 2 of us on in my squad. A big dar's coming out of an enemy base. I don't knwo whats up, i just logged on, and my squaddie is a bette rbomber than he is anything else. I might suggest "lets go to A19 a kill their fighter hangars then we'll use the 15 min to figure out what were going to do about these guys". So we fly over to A19 and as we're are setting up our runs we hear someone telling his crew to get the vh and deack. Hmmm - apparently someone else has a plan we hadn't considered. If it's a squad that actually knows what the heck they're doing and they are prepared to execute, I'll adjust my run and hit the town. If I see a loose collection of new guys insterspersed witha vet or two making it up as they go, I'll go ahead and drop those hangars rather than try to work our plan into theirs.
Ok - my epistle has grown beyond your original question. so ill end it here. I suspect some of the milrunning will subside in the coming days as most guys figure out it's not leading anywhere. There are some legitimate reasons for the milkrun (i.e. answer the question, how many t34's is optimum for killing a town w/ HE in less than 5 minutes) Just as in a furball, everyone sees the same thing from a different angle or perspective. The guy you're yelling at may have just logged on 5 min ago and has no idea what you and you're guys have been doing for the last 2 hours.
