Supply and Demand

[Castle51]

  I figured I'd throw this Idea out there for all the people who want to perk the ord. or find other ways to hinder bombers while making sure its still possible for real bomber pilots to do their stuff. (not that I'm ever expecting to see this in AH but than again, they call it the wishlist for a reason.)

   What if there was a limited amount of ordinance per airfield?  Lets just say that each ammo bunker could store something in the area of 15,000 pounds of whatever kind of ordinance, and depending on the field you pick could mean anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 pounds of ordinance in total.  The stored munitions would be used and in turn the total amount would respectively go down and eventually need to be replenished either by the convoys that come in automatically or by players manually airlifting the ord in.

  Now here's how it would affect the gameplay.  From a frontline base, the amount of bombs being used would obviously be far more than a base that is deep inside you controlled territory and the munitions at that field could be airlifted to the front to supply the base in need, giving the individual flying the cargo bomber perk points.  Bomber pilots would be discouraged from upping their lancs at the frontline base as the ord there would be better used by fighter/attack aircraft and would look to up from a field further inside their country where there would be a steady supply of unused bombs.  This in turn would give them the chance to climb to altitude and bomb more realistically rather that go in at 4k on a suicide run and pull a "lancstuka" job to hit their targets knowing they would have probably died anyway.  And lastly, the ammunition strats would hold more significance in the game because if they get hit, your base operating in that zone doesn't get fully supplied with ordinance the next time the train comes around.

  So, what do you guys think.  Hit or S#!t?

[Lusche]

    What if there was a limited amount of ordinance per airfield?  Lets just say that each ammo bunker could store something in the area of 15,000 pounds of whatever kind of ordinance, and depending on the field you pick could mean anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 pounds of ordinance in total.  The stored munitions would be used and in turn the total amount would respectively go down and eventually need to be replenished either by the convoys that come in automatically or by players manually airlifting the ord in.

  Now here's how it would affect the gameplay:

"NOOB STOP WASTING BOMBS!"

- That's how it would change the game. Players would yell at each other even more for wasting "resources" and for the first time in the history of MA, they would be right.
Also griefing is very easy. You think you didn't get enough "check 6 ?" - go to the most important front line base, up Lanc formation after formation and immediately drop bombs just to deprive this field of ordinance and pi** everyone else off.

    Bomber pilots would be discouraged from upping their lancs at the frontline base as the ord there would be better used by fighter/attack aircraft

Unless they don't know what they are doing anyway (remember, most bombers are flown by rather new/very young players) or they simply do not care. Who will stop them from upping?

I'm afraid such things will work only with a common gamelpay goal, organization and a chain of command. Works in special events maybe, but not in the giant MA sandbox.

[Castle51]

like I said, it was just an idea.  But you're probably right, unless there was some way of restricting the payload of someone due to the current demand needed at that base then it probably would just work against that team.

[BnZs]

First of all, it would be very odd to treat the bombs as a finite resource vulnerable to attrition and not treat the vastly more expensive aircraft and vehicles using them the same way.

Second, making any resource, whether bombs or aircraft country-finite would have all the bad effects Lusche described.

The best thing we could do for buffs is give them something real to do on a strategic level-using them to take down hangars on a base approaches is a bit like using a sledge-hammer to kill flies-but that would have its own consequences.

[Castle51]

Well as it stand now, bombing a strat is only good for points and has little to no impact on the overall game.  So unless that changes than people are probably gonna keep flying bombers on one way trips just to down a CV or airfield hanger with 14,000lbs of ord.

[Castle51]

I would suggest reworking the strats to fix this and make factories for aircraft and vehicle production as well as transportation hubs, bridges, and several other things that would be of value to supplying a country as well as giving bomber pilots a realistic target.  But then these targets would have to be protected and that would just cause more whining....