Soooo.....Back on to topic.....
First off a big to the AvA custodians and thier hard work. Lots of good things, and I for one enjoyed myself immensely.
Secondly, about commanding in a tour such as this:
It's completely valid for anyone on the allied side or axis side to critique the job I did as allied commander, and I accept all opinions. In retrospect, it was a very enjoyable task and I'd do it again.
As for putting in 3-4 hours a night for 5 weeks, it ain't happening. Life comes before gaming and that's not a priority i'm willing to change. I don't appologize for the job I did, and hopefully it didn't ruin anyone elses fun in the process. I felt the time I invested was completely adequate and if someone else felt they could do better, they could have signed up to be a battle captain, XO or CO in the first place.
It was a pleasure serving as Allied CO this tour of duty, and I'll definately be back to the AvA if this setup continues!
Things I enjoyed:
1. Rolling plane set with choices as to next rounds. This was cool, put some choice into the commanders hands, and gave advantages/disadvantages in some respects that needed to be overcome.
2. Objectives: Having secret objectives was cool, and was fun.
3. Airstarts - I know a lot of people didn't like this, but for bomber groups I thought it made the bombsite a lot less of an issue. It wasn't terribly high, but it allowed pilots to take up bombers without spending 1hr getting to a safer altitude. I think a lot of Bomb n' Bailing occured because no one wanted to spend an hour getting to 15-20K in a Lanc/B-17. People just don't have 2 hrs to devote to 1 bombing sortie, only to be discouraged by low accuracy.
They also inserted themselves as "objectives" as to render the otherside crippled by not having one close by. 1 or 2 per side is more than adequate
4. High damage for hangers (5K) and 35 troops for capture. This took out the whining (well at least for some) of the "milkrun". War is war, and it doesn't run on a clock. People can only play certain hours sometimes and shouldn't be penalized and not be able to take part because of it. I think this helped out immensely.
5. Deployment - I thought this worked great for A/C, but not so well for GV's. Definately made bases valuable for defensive purposes. Pretty cool to NEED CAP to defend a valuable base.
6. Capture of a "Sector" - needing to take 3 bases next to each other made it tough, and worthwhile to defend an area. With Increased target toughness I think this pretty much eliminates milkrunning. Though some will likely still complain about it. Tough eh?
Things for Improvement:
1. Frame Loss - Not sure exactly how this could be achieved, but perhaps if you lose so many of your primier aircraft, they're removed and you only get the secondary aircraft to fly. Or perhaps once a certain number or percent of your high end A/C are shot down/lost, then they're only available from rear fields etc.
2. Map Size - While I don't feel its terribly an issue, perhaps organizing "objectives" so that it focus's the fight in a general area would be best. On the last map, the south had some fights, but wasn't really needed. I liked the italy fight, Finrus seemed to be all over, and the last map was concentrated mostly in the north. I thought it worked well being concentrated more.
3. Lack of GV's - One of the reasons we didn't take them in the middle phase, was because of limited useability. If I placed em at 1 VH, then that'd limit them to 1 fight or so. We chose the sherman in the 4th round, and deployed it in 1 spot, and it wasn't used. I mostly chose it so that in round 5 we'd have access. Unfortunately there weren't any spawn points without driving for an hour. If I'd have known, that I wouldn't have taken it at all. Perhaps instead of only deploying em for each point, allow GV's only to be deployed at all V bases for 1 point, and all small fields 1 point, all medium fields for 1 point, so on so forth.
Probably more to come when I think of it....
