Originally posted by Simaril
As I understand it, Airscrew, the problem people are talking about has to do with the relative pointlessness of the strategic component of the game. (Note: not talking about tactics, like taking down hangars -- real strategy, where distant actions have indirect but meaningful effects on local conditions.)
In short, the effort it takes to hammer the strat system is far greater than the effects that effort produces. One example described in this thread: long flights to kill HQ, with high probability of devastating interceptions -- and even if the HQ goes down, resuppliers can get it up again within a few minutes.
Ideally, it would be great to have a system that didn't stop the air to air guys from furballing; let the GVers play their game; allowed straight line capture people to still have fun; but also gave strategically minded capture guys something that changed fight conditions enough that they would want to attack or defend it.
Ok, so currently strategic bombing seems to have no appreciable effect in the overall prosecution of the "war". As it stands now, most only hit strat targets so they can get "points" for their score. A few of you like the bomber missions with escorts but no one really takes the time to engage because strats dont seem to be important enough to protect. Because its not just about bombing a target, you also want to fight your way in and fight your way out.
(I havent played for a year so my memory maybe be inaccurate.)
I load up a Lancaster with 9,000lbs of bombs and go in search of a target. Depending on distance and altitude I could spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more to hit a strat target. Depending on my skill I could cause about 30 - 50% damage on the strat. How this damage affects the resources at the enemy bases depends on long that strat stays damaged. If I hit the City strat then that increases the downtime for all the other strats; if I dont hit the City then that strat could be back to 100% in about 15 minutes; hardly worth the effort.
Now the more people I have in the missions the more damage we can cause and this relates to more impact on the resources at the enemy bases. But there's a problem with this. There is a limited pool of manpower I can draw from for the strat side of the game. Lets say you have 100 players in your country, a percentage of those players are:
A. fighters/furballers (they go where ever the fight is and dont care about the strat/capture)
B. Base Capture player go for the "capture the base" game but dont particular like bombers, or its just not fun for them. They grab a fighter with some bombs and fly off in mini hordes and attack/swarm a base until they capture it or get run off and try somewhere else.
C. And finally there are the Strat/Capture guys. They see a challenge in wearing the enemy down, its not about brut strength and overwhelming numbers, they play the game like its chess, moving pieces and using tactics to defeat the enemy and win the map.
Now if the countries were perfectly balanced with the same number of people and percentage of player types this probably wouldnt be an issue but the reality is the countries are inbalanced and with in those countries there might be more or less Type A, B, and C players. If a country has a higher percentage of Type A players then the Type C players will get discouraged because they cant play their game. If one of the opposing countries have a higher percentage of Type C players then the other Type C players could feel overwhelmed because they will spend more time defending/guarding their bases rather than attacking. Type C players may also get aggravated with the Type B players because they sometimes do not appear to use any logic when selecting a base to attack/capture.
Now I'm not saying this is absolute. Some people move back and forth between these types of play daily and some never change. Some people thrive on strive and being the underdog and some people dont.
The Type A player is happy as long as there are fights
The Type B player is happy as long as he has the means to attack/capture and defend bases
The Type C player is happy as long as he can have meaningful missions and accomplishments with a team.
Currently it would appear that Type A and B players are finding their style of play, but the Type C player has to work harder at it and sometimes cant find their style of play.
So the trick would be, how to get "more" game for the Type C guy without hurting A and B's fun.
We already know that fuel is directly linked to A's fun and B's fun. So maybe we dont touch fuel.
We know that Bombs are not important to A players, somewhat important to B players and very important to C players. Ammo Strat.
We know that Troops are not important to A players, but very important to B and C players. Training Strat.
Now I'm hungry and forgot where I was going with all this....
What if eny was tied to strat. The more people in a country the lower the threshold is for damage, the longer the downtime for certain strats; the fewer people in a country the higher the damage threshold and shorter the downtime for certain strats.
gotta eat...
