Author Topic: HT, one more radar thread...  (Read 143 times)

Offline hblair

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 4052
      • http://www.cybrtyme.com/personal/hblair/mainpage.htm
HT, one more radar thread...
« on: June 06, 2001, 09:16:00 AM »
After all the talk about radar lately on the boards, I was wondering if we could get your ideas on what it should or should not do in your game. I remember mentioning something on channel 1 the other day when you were in the arena, asking you if there were any plans on modifying the way the radar works in the main arena. You said something to the effect of "there has to be some way to warn the other side", which is completely understandable.
That got me to thinking. (dangerous huh?  ) What if you coded some way for the country under attack to recieve a warning in the text buffer when X number of planes got within a certain distance of the field? And did something with the bar and dot radar while in-flight.

The mission planner in this game is way cool. My squad and I use it almost every night. We do all kinds of historical attacks:

Sometimes we get some P47 d30's heavy with 1000lbers and rockets to kill the VH and acks, couple of P47d11's for cap, and B26's to clean up the hangars.

Sometimes we do a German Jabo run, 190A8's with 30mm cannon for deacking, 190F8's to help with hangars, then some JU88's to clean up hangars.
What I'm saying is that we try to be creative with the mission planer, last night after a few field captures, we just did a few KI61 fighter sweeps with it.

But, As cool and useful as your mission planner is, it is useless unless you have some big numbers, or the baddies are asleep. For example, last night the bishops tried an NOE B17 attack all the way around the back of the knights home island. These poor guys flew a long way for this, what would have been a brilliant HQ attack without the bar radar, was a failure-from-the-start deathfest.
---------------------------------

Here is a screenshot of last sundays event in the SEA:
   
(More about this event  here)


I was leading the axis to capture a field to the west, the allies were on the way to capture the field that we upped from. Neither side knew what the other one was doing, there was no enemy radar, we didn't know we were this close to running into each other til after the event. The possibility of this flavor of stuff in the MA would really be nice, IMHO. I know the main arena is not an Historical Arena and should not be, but can't we swing the pendulum halfway between furball arena and Historical arena? Seems now it is way closer to being a furball arena than anything else, not that there's anything wrong with furballing, I do it a lot myself, I just wish the MA could be more friendly to guys who like to do organized stuff. I feel like this is caused almost entirely by the radar we have.

The point of all this jibberish? Well, congrats on the mission planner, and, Are there any plans on toning down the Main Arena radar?

[This message has been edited by hblair (edited 06-06-2001).]

Offline Nifty

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 4400
HT, one more radar thread...
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2001, 03:42:00 PM »
Hey, hblair.  Just wanna say that I'm glad you're playing Knit now, because I really enjoy flying in your squad's missions!  Flew in one of Zig's last night, and even though we didn't take the base, I had a blast!

As to your radar comments, however.  I think the Chk 6 was -too- far swung the other way.  Without ANY bar dar at all, including in the tower, there was no way to know that you guys were attacking A5 until you had claimed victory.  As it was, the Mongrels flew around for quite sometime before we actually had visual contact with the enemy.  I enjoy the historic events, but spending the first hour of a 3 hour event just finding the enemy ain't all that much fun, though it was good formation flying practice!  ;)

I like the idea of toning down the radar some, but not to the extent that Camo had it for the event.  NOE shouldn't show up on sector bars.  In flight radar shouldn't be realtime, but updated at some regular time interval (to simulate GCI).  If enemy comes within 5 (or 3 if ya wanna stick with Icon range) miles of a base, then maybe a text message in the buffer saying base X is under attack.  Base HQ shouldn't knock out arena wide radar, but perhaps knock out dot dar and sector bars outside of friendly base and CV sectors.  

These changes wouldn't be so radical as to eliminate the furballer's effort to find a fight, but would give the strat folks a little more options in planning attacks.  Also, you won't ever lose total dar as we do now on an HQ raid, which would keep the furballers a bit happier as they could still find the big fights near their own bases.

Cheers, and keep pumping out missions!  I'll buff on them when I can!  :)
proud member of the 332nd Flying Mongrels, noses in the wind since 1997.

Offline hblair

  • Platinum Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 4052
      • http://www.cybrtyme.com/personal/hblair/mainpage.htm
HT, one more radar thread...
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2001, 08:56:00 AM »
Hi nifty, actually you and I are on the same page I think. Although I don't dig in-plane radar at all I realize we're just gonna have to have it, with the attitude having so much radar the last 2 years has created in the game. I'd just like to see some concession for people who like to run missions and get organized.

Comments anyone? HTC?

Offline DmdNexus

  • Silver Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 901
HT, one more radar thread...
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2001, 12:08:00 PM »
Chaff was used during WWII - would be intereseting if such a feature were added to AH.

Perhaps, AH buffs could drop chaff over an enemy radar, it would disable the DOT DAR and make the DARBAR look like a major attack were underway.  I would think this would have a limited range of 1 to 2 sectors around the radar in which it was dropped.

Altitude and wind would influence how long the chaff stays in effect.

That would be fun - spoofing the enemies radar.

Nexus

Additionally, If the chaff were not dropped near enough to the radar, then it would not affect the DOTDAR, but it still would affect the DARBAR.