Spent some time reading through most of these replys and started me thinking.
I have played a few online flight sims and they all had some form of limiting feature to keep a team/country/side from being completely overwhelmed to the point that players could no longer participate. I see many valid points both for and against these kinds of systems. I am new to AHII but spent many years in AW were we were backed into a corner at only one base with 50+ enemy players vulching our last field. It was impossible to even play at that point. So I do understand the frustration in that situation.
In AHII we have the ENY factor that has a limiting effect on what you can fly to avoid the above situation. How successful is it? To some extent it seems to be but in some situations it seems to be overbearing. Situations such as when the population of the server is relatively low. So I started thinking of how could ENY be modified so that it has the limiting effect needed on servers that have a large population but its' effects are minimized or eliminated on low population servers. So here is my idea, for what its worth.
The current ENY system seems to be based on percent population of countrys on a server and the facilities they posses. Or some formula similar to this. Lets not get too nit picky here ok? I think my approximation is close enough. At some point of percent of possession of map assets and population ENY kicks in and starts limiting equipment use. The problem as I think it may be is that the formula is based only on percentages and there is not relationship with the actual numbers of players on a server.
For example if there are 350 players on a server and the maximum difference between the most populated country and the least is, for arguments sake, less than 50 I dont think there is a problem. There is still a relatively large player base on each country for acceptable particpation and fights/fun/game play. There is most likely still 50+ players on the smallest populated country. Just my example here, not etched in stone on Mt. Arrarat ok.
The problem seems to be when the actual number of players on the smallest populated country becomes so small that they can not begin to put up any real defense of their assets nor can they go on the offensive to take anything back. In some situations, such as late nights when the server populations are very low this can be a real problem with even general game play. There may be only 25 players or less on the server and if your country has numbers you can be greatly limited to what you can do.
So my idea is that the current ENY formula be modified to include a "Minimum Server Population Factor", and a "Minimum/Maximum Country Population Differential Factor".
I will let the experts debate exactly what each of these are and how they should be calculated. I consider myself a newb to AHII so I am not sure what the best way to build these two factors may be.
Just a thought I had while reading through the replies in this thread.
Later,
KayBay
