AH strat

[thndregg]

Originally posted by Snubby
I dont know how many times ive gone on a milk run, in lancs at around 20k and attacked 3 different strat targets way behind the lines, and have been confronted by maybe 1 fighter or none at all..

I get my perk points and all.. but also get the distinct feeling that what I am doing is utterly pointless..

the enemy obviousley doesent seem to care..

you also see all the time on the country channel.

"something is over our city/refinery.. etc"

and the only reply is:

"prolly some milk runner at 30K"

and nobody bothers to do anything..




it strat had a direct and immediate effect this would not be the case..

if you could go level the grunt training strat and as a result disable troops at all the fields..   i would think the "oh well" attitude would change pretty quick.

I can identify with this. I'm often times hoping for a fight as I'm taking a bomber group over a supposedly valuable strat. But it almost invariably turns out to be a boring trip.

[Patches1]

Heck, I jumped in here in support of Bomber Pilots.

All I see is negativity.

I think I posted that it might take more than a SINGLE Corsair to take a strat target lower than 50%. That equates out to about 9,000 lbs, give or take a strafe or two, of ordnance if it takes three Corsairs.

Now a fully loaded Lanc can carry ...somewhere around...14,000 lbs of Ord?
And..multiply that by three...42,000 lbs of ordnance?

It matters not whether you do "pinpoint" calibration (as we do today), or whether you do the older style calibration (as we did before with the wind being a factor in bombing) by "fixing a point on the ground". What matters is... can you hit your target from whatever altitude you wish to fly, and can you encourage others to fly with you? Can you put bombs on target? Are you, perhaps, putting more bombs on target than is necessary? Can you not encourage others to fly with you?

If not, it really doesn't matter if you fly a Corsair, or a Lancaster...too many bombs is a waste of ordnance. Not enough ordnance gives you an opportunity to reverse and kill remaining targets.

How you choose to fly your strat mission...the bombing profile you selected...determines the outcome. If you choose to fly 42,000 pounds of ordnance as a Lanc with Drones and drop on three selected targets, and  you drop 14,000 pounds of ordnance per target (if all is perfect)... will you take all strat  targets you selected below 50%? I doubt it.

Accuracy, overkill, and the number of targets you select, and your individual skill in the Bombsight all come into play.

[pluck]

lol, I would love to see troops disabled at all fields.  that would go over real big.  It's hard enough for the generals to coordinate a simple base attack let alone mount defense over factories.  The minute troops die, it will be the furballer's fault, and I'm sure we'd all hear about it.  AH is about air combat, not taking bases, not war.  You are just noticing that the strat is not what it might be in a game focused on things that war is about.  Maybe CT will bring some change, but I wouldn't ask HT to slow down on that and bring about some form of major gameplay changes unless there was a serious problem.

[Gryffin]

Originally posted by FiLtH
Its the biggest disappointment of the game for me. Id prefer just 2 arenas in here. A combat arena where there are no strats or captures, just a big FT and some GV bases, and a war arena where all the strats work to strangle an enemy, where certain vehicles become unavailable thru attrition or strat bombing and people lose...and enjoy it.

I would vote for this!

[hubsonfire]

While the strat system could be a lot more robust, the outcome or effect that people seem to be looking for, is the ability to screw up things for the other countries so much that they cannot effectively fight back. Really bad for gameplay, IMO.

The little cartoon war is just a reason for people to fight continually. It is not the singular point of AH, it's just there as motivation. IMO, if you separate the "war", and the furballing fighter pilots/camping GVers, you'd have, effectively, the same setup we have now- one arena with all sorts of action, and the other would be like an EWA with a few more people- little groups attacking bases while other little groups attack their bases, and almost no resistance for either group.

I think that would really suck.

[Rich46yo]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
While the strat system could be a lot more robust, the outcome or effect that people seem to be looking for, is the ability to screw up things for the other countries so much that they cannot effectively fight back. Really bad for gameplay, IMO.

The little cartoon war is just a reason for people to fight continually. It is not the singular point of AH, it's just there as motivation. IMO, if you separate the "war", and the furballing fighter pilots/camping GVers, you'd have, effectively, the same setup we have now- one arena with all sorts of action, and the other would be like an EWA with a few more people- little groups attacking bases while other little groups attack their bases, and almost no resistance for either group.

I think that would really suck.

                       Of course everyone wants their actions to have input in winning the war. That isnt "screwing anything up". Thats called winning. As it is the game is basically won or lost on 5% to 10% of the map by guys who fly fighters against other fighters. Whatever input is made by bombers is accomplished by flying the bombers exactly how they shouldn't be flown. That is by the gang jumping in Lancs with 25% fuel and gang piling into the base 25 miles away that you want to take. How does that make for interesting game play?

                    Thats no strategy, not much skill, and not a whole lot of the games potential being used. You chase your tail long enough in a fur ball and someones bound to get in your sights so just blaze away.

                   Now the duals I have with fighters at 20,000', with 3 bombers against 1,2, or 3 fighters?? That is "skill" and finesse. I just had one with 2 guys whom I shot down, they took out one of my drones, my 17 was shot to pieces, I managed to drop my ords and somehow put the plane down. Now that action made 20 mins seem like 20 seconds. I bet for them too.

                The simple fact is anything that makes it better for bomber sticks is going to make it that much better for fighters sticks and the game itself. The more strategy, tactics, and finesse in the game the better.

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Fariz
I miss the days of taking a lone La7 and knocking out dar, troops and hurting Ammo.

 

I don't.

[pluck]

Originally posted by Rich46yo
Of course everyone wants their actions to have input in winning the war. That isnt "screwing anything up". Thats called winning. As it is the game is basically won or lost on 5% to 10% of the map by guys who fly fighters against other fighters. Whatever input is made by bombers is accomplished by flying the bombers exactly how they shouldn't be flown. That is by the gang jumping in Lancs with 25% fuel and gang piling into the base 25 miles away that you want to take. How does that make for interesting game play?

                    Thats no strategy, not much skill, and not a whole lot of the games potential being used. You chase your tail long enough in a fur ball and someones bound to get in your sights so just blaze away.

                   Now the duals I have with fighters at 20,000', with 3 bombers against 1,2, or 3 fighters?? That is "skill" and finesse. I just had one with 2 guys whom I shot down, they took out one of my drones, my 17 was shot to pieces, I managed to drop my ords and somehow put the plane down. Now that action made 20 mins seem like 20 seconds. I bet for them too.

                The simple fact is anything that makes it better for bomber sticks is going to make it that much better for fighters sticks and the game itself. The more strategy, tactics, and finesse in the game the better.

I could care less what my actions have on a the virtual war.

Anything that takes away and eliminates one teams ability to play the game is not good for gameplay, especially a game that is not about war, but of combat.

I agree that hording bases is not very interesting

I am glad you enjoy taking out fighters in your bombers, as you should.

The problem I see with more strategy, is that AH as we know it moves from being a sandbox type of game with focus on combat, to a game in which the focus is not combat, but preventing combat.  They are 2 seperate ideas and in an online world, without very strict and limiting rules the 2 can not exist together.  I would imagine rules involving how many people can take off from a base, time limit between flights, available ord/plane, so on and so forth. Granted I've thought in the past it might be more interesting to have battle over a city and not an airfield which might be more of a compromise.  Back in the day you could destroy fuel as to limit a country to only 25%.  This was done away with because people were logging on finding all the bases where porked, all the time, severly limiting their ability to fight yes, but also their fun.  Which in the end is all about what a game should be about, fun.

[Snubby]

I dont understand how people can say the game is not about winning/defeating the "enemy"..

Im sure there are people who want nothing more than a sub 5 min flight to a massive furball where they can blaze away all day long..  but saying that is the purpose of the game is just as "wrong" as saying the purpose is to only take bases..

I have alot more fun grouping up with 10/12 guys and trying to take DEFENDED bases.. etc etc.. than taking off, flying into a tracer orgy, getting a kill, or not.. getting shot down and doing it over...


I think the lack of .. or complicated implementation of strat significance is a major factor in the retarded way people take bases/try and win..  I.E. suicide lanc runs  at 2k over bases..

I understand the sequence of events required to make a difference using strat attacks.

but in a game where getting missions together that consist of more than 5 or 6 people is relatively rare..  organizing a systematic series of strikes required to effectively "use strat" is far more complex and involves way more people participating that is common in the game...  you would need a mission attacking the city, another attacking strat of choice, then a 3rd attacking the airbase..

who is going to go though organizing and participating in all of that..  when you can achieve the same outcome with 3 people running suicide attacks with bombers...

[hubsonfire]

If attacking strat had the same immediate effect as divebombing lancasters into a mass of hangars, you'd have divebombing lancasters doing the same thing they've always done, and gameplay wouldn't change a bit.

I know it sounds neat, but people look for the path of least resistance, and a complex strat system would be just as overlooked as the current setup.

[Kweassa]

The key is ... you have to level the city(s) first ... City(s) supply strats ... take out the City(s) and the strats won't be resupplied.

Then when you level the grunt strat ... any troops that are disabled on airfields for that country are rendered useless for up to 2 hours.

 The whole concept of 'strat' is to initiate attacks on vital resources to deny the enemy the potential to fight back.

 In other words, a regular scale of attack on vital resources should be more efficient than pushing every enemy field encountered during advance with humongous numbers of planes, and gaining local airsuperiority with a 1:1 attrition scale.

 The reality is, it isn't.

 Going after the strats does something to the game, except the overall efficiency of hitting a strat target is so low that people would rather use all that manpower in hitting individual airfields on a tactical scale.

It has three tiers to make it effective ...

City -> Strat -> Airfield strat.

 If they are leveled in that order ... you have made a difference and if you keep the City(s) leveled, it will continue to make a difference ... and then you will get noticed and you would probably see all sorts of "bomber" killers in the air.

 The 'tiers', and the effective downtime, is the main problem here.

 A bomber group successfully makes it deep inside an enemy territory to level the enemy city.

 By the time they actually return alive, and then up another bomb run to go hit the strats this time, the city is starting to up again.

 By the time that bomber group hits the strats, returns, and then gets ready to hit individual fields, both the city and the strats are back up.

 So, this time, you actually make three bomber groups and go hit the city, the individual strat, and the field all at the same time... and now, since your mission has pulled out so many people from flying active fighter duty, that your whole front is pushed back.

 

Just leveling a strat (such as Grunts), for all intents and purposes, does nothing ... except help your "rank" and that is the only reason why people spend as much time as they do leveling those places. Their intent is not to hurt the enemy ... it's to bolster their l337 rank.

 No arguments there.

[Fariz]

Originally posted by Masherbrum
I don't.

Can you please do not fake quotes? I never said or meant that.

[Lusche]

Originally posted by Kweassa

 A bomber group successfully makes it deep inside an enemy territory to level the enemy city.

 By the time they actually return alive, and then up another bomb run to go hit the strats this time, the city is starting to up again.
 

Not at all.

City buildings have a invariable downtime of 3 hours. Once the buff group has landed, it will be still down for app. 2 1/2 hours. (On our small maps, no return flight should take more than 30mins in any case.)

If they have managed to have completely leveled the city, the strat targets stay down for 2h

[Rich46yo]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
If attacking strat had the same immediate effect as divebombing lancasters into a mass of hangars, you'd have divebombing lancasters doing the same thing they've always done, and gameplay wouldn't change a bit.

I know it sounds neat, but people look for the path of least resistance, and a complex strat system would be just as overlooked as the current setup.

                               Its a different type of stick that goes after a strat. That and flying that long at low altitude would probably be suicidal. Being in a bomber that low without fighter coverage not only slows you down but you cant use your defensive guns to full advantage.

                             My guess is the same guys bombing strats will still be bombing strats if the game was changed. And the same guys defending them would be the same guys defending them. There is a small cohort of guys I usually see defending strats. I dont think that would change all that much. Truth is most folks playing this game are young and they dont have the patience for such long flights. Thats why there is so much air at 25,000', its because very few have the patience to climb that high.

                         I hope they either place some importance on the strats or just take them totally out of the game. You can have both strategy and combat at the same time. Ive been flying with the Bishops and weve won quite a few wars after we organized into somthing resembleing a man with a plan.

                      And I could go into the game now and see every strat at 100% because nobody is attacking them. I'd rather see them taken out of the game completly then have this silly policy in effect.

[Hap]

Originally posted by Fariz But all those changes made AH a sterile environment stratwise. It does not require much of teamplay, planning and efforts anymore.  [/B]

Fariz, great to see you, and you're right.