Before-Strategy, Tactics, Stealth, and Planning Now-The Horde

[bustr]

How many of you use some form of a GPS or a print out from Mapquest while driving as opposed to reading maps on the fly anymore?

All the main roads in the town coverge in the center. All of the buildings have been placed down using the the roads as one boundry or refrence line. The whole town and its grid refrence off the dried up river bed as the primary landmark. The flag room is in the center of the riverbeds "?" question mark hook. The roads all have names and players have posted copies of maps with the roads named.

What is the problem? At least we only have the same town on every airfeild. Not a new one everytime we need to take new ground.

[Dichotomy]

jam

I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I've seen at least two sets of maps posted since the last change.  Both were very detailed and the last was color coded.  Have you considered doing some offline walk throughs to familiarize yourself with the layout? 

Just a suggestion.

My opinion of things is that the complexity of it is what makes it interesting.  Frustrating, mind boggeling, makes me want to throw my stick through the wall sometimes.  But definately, to me at least, never dull. 

[Nemisis]

It seems the game really leaves us little room for strategic manuvering. There is no high command deciding where the next big push will go in, and every section of the front can be as heavily defended as any other in a matter of seconds. There are no lines to breach since bases don't become harder to take or gather more defenses the longer they remain in your hands, and the ones further back are no less well defended or equiped. We don't have strategic reserves to throw into the fight when they will do us the most good, we have no soldiers who's morale and stamina we need to take into consideration. We don't even have frontlines, what we have are outposts; the land itself means nothing, and you gain nothing for holding it. What is important is the military facilities that somehow are resupplied by ground even when surrounded. Any approach is as good as any other aside from slight changes in terrain, you gain nothing from coming at a base from a different angle.


You are asking for strategy in a world where we have infinite resourses, infinite numbers of soldiers, and gain nothing by using blitzkrieg tactics over WWI trench warfare tactics. You are asking for strategy in a world with evenly matched opponents, where each side only has the numbers to keep 1 large attack going. Where you gain nothing by getting into an enemy's rear areas. There are no supplys to interdict, or reinforcments to cut off. You can't starve pockets of resistance into submission.

[AWwrgwy]

I like the new changes.

I like finding a fight vs. "sneaking" and "hiding".

If I wanted to "sneak" or "hide" I still can.

 


wrongway

[thndregg]

I like finding a fight vs. "sneaking" and "hiding".

Finding? It's already presented to you for your convenience.

[Masherbrum]

This thread is nothing but fail from the OP.

[Ghastly]

We lately have lost some dynamics. Because some "styles" or ways to have fun have been hit more than others by the changes.

Tank battles are much rarer now, less options what to bomb for buff drivers, less and far less challenging buff hunting for me..
Many things I have enjoyed before are not happening that much anymore, just because of of design changes. As a very diverse player, my gameplay options have been limited lately.

As a not so very diverse player, my gameplay options seem more limited lately, too.  More on that later...

Because the enemy doesn't play that way with you. Even if you get rid of all the ack guns, it's usually not tanks that meet you there to "slug it out". It's a rain of bombs and a stream of 37mm AP projectiles from il's that take you out

The town could be a great place to fight in.. if there the next airstrip was 10 minutes away, not 10 seconds  

What seems to me would be great for tank battles is if the VBases had the new towns. That way you could have a great tank battle away from the airfields to take the VBase. (Caveat, I don't play the ground game so I can't say from experience, just what I think I see. )  Perhaps new maps with towns for VBase capture could alleviate the ground play issues?

Purely my own observations, not intended to be construed as a request for change because I too think the changes are too new.

1) I don't really care so much for the massive furballs, or air-hordes, or whatever you want to call them. Given the amount of cooperation that it takes to take territory coupled with the huge dar circles (note assumption on my part as to what's causing it!) , what I'm seeing more and more frequently when I sign in that there is only one active field pair - with all but 3 or 4 of the players on your side flying there, and maybe the same number of enemies near your airspace anywhere but the ginormous air battle where most of your players are. The entire rest of the front is inert, inactive.  I wish there was some incentive to spread out some, but there's actually more incentive not to now.  So most often, it's fly there, or fly alone and unopposed elsewhere, or play chase the single shiny red dot across the map.  

2) I worry that the current settings seem to be decreasing the number of bombers I see in the air.  It could be perception of course, but a big part of the game in the past has been bomber intercept for me - generally away from the masses.   Lately, it's been much harder to play that part of the game, simply because I haven't seen as many of them - or maybe it's just that they are all ending up in the middle of the air mob.   And with the huge dar circles, it's hard to believe that I'm not seeing them if they are up.  

I know they say "careful what you asked for", but what I used to enjoy the most was the roughly 10 v 10 that you'd often find away from the main battle for a different field pair, where a few sorties is all that it took to build a sense of camaraderie between the players flying together for your side and to an extent those you were flying against.   It's totally ironic but when I'm involved in the smaller engagement I feel a part of the team - but when I am flying in the ginormous air battle, I feel like I'm truly flying alone despite having 50 or 60 teammates within a sector (or two at most.)

Again, just observations.

<S>

[RufusLeaking]

No offense but I'm sure all you limp wrists whining about the NOE changes will take offense but maybe this game isn't just for you types.


ack-ack

Exactly how do you explain your well developed forearms?

No offense.     (my first 'bolt' emoticon)

Sounds like a mission formula. POTW proved last night if 20 fighters came in above 15k and pushed all the cons down at a field, 12k and up was wide open to a hoard to hit a base.

Sometimes, one doesn’t have the time to climb to 15k and transit a sector to counter the tactics described above.  You said it before, Bustr.  Immediate gratification.  I want it all, and I want it now!

Game play has definitely changed... I'm hesitant to ask for changes since the time period since the changes has been so brief.

I've noticed much more dog-fighting but that tends to degenerate into a massive red and green pick-fest, so many tend to fly higher and in faster planes with a lower ENY value. I'm curious to see Lusche/Snailman's charts is this is really true or just my viewpoint.

Agree with all of the above post, with the exception of ENY.   Pickers up high ENY birds (190s, 38s, etc.)  just as often.

1) … what I'm seeing more and more frequently when I sign in that there is only one active field pair - with all but 3 or 4 of the players on your side flying there,
 

I see this, too.  Either this is an exercise in dodging picks, or a race to pick the red guys before the friendlies start shooting over your shoulder.   

2) I worry that the current settings seem to be decreasing the number of bombers I see in the air. 

My perception is that more are coming with more altitude.  From either the bomber or interceptor point of view, it means more time to climb = delayed gratification.



Back to the OP:
The pendulum has swung from too easy offense to too easy defense.  This is my perception despite numbers that don’t bear this out.

Twelve days into LW Tour 127, I was ranked 2131 in bomber field captures and 2313 in vehicle field captures, with zero captures in both.  So, 2130 and 2312 folks have at least one field capture in the respective category.

2130 + 2312 = 4442 field captures,

4442 captures/12 days = 370 field captures per day,

370/24 hours = 15 captures per hour, or one every four minutes. 

Something is not right with these numbers.

[Traveler]

No offense but, what tactics and strategy? Since the first time I dropped by these forums in 2004, it's always been "all about the fight". Seems to me the reason you find so many mindless furballs is because that's what a large number of people enjoy, and one horde is inevitably going to be answered by an opposing horde until one side gets tired of it and moves somewhere else.

Isn't one horde opposing another horde a furball?

[bustr]

Sometimes, one doesn’t have the time to climb to 15k and transit a sector to counter the tactics described above.  You said it before, Bustr.  Immediate gratification.  I want it all, and I want it now!

Ever noticed how the younger players are not worried about time or investment in it? They seem fearless of throwing themselves at the game.

Mostly they just want to get to the action and achive gratification. But, if coming into fights at 20k is percieved by them as an advantage to increasing that gratification you see hoards of them all night dropping in from the moon. Because they are young, their sense of time investment and outcomes is underdeveloped. The self dopamine reward at the end is more important than the cost or awareness of everything it took to get them to the reward.

As players get older you can tell they are older by their intollerance of percieved wasted time investment versus gratification(dopamine). It has a measurable formula in this game, roughly the following:

  (TimetoAlt*TimetoFight/ChancesOfLandingKills)/PersonalExperienceQuotient

It's no longer a fear of personaly being defeated because thats accepted as the common currency of playing the game. Instead it becomes the fear of how they invest their time, versus what they realisticly beleive they can achive, based on their intimate knowlege of themselves, versus all of the systemic uncontrolable factors of the game. Remember the 1983 Movie "Wargames"? At the end the computer ran through all of the permiutations of MAD and determined no one could win then conceded the game. As we get older we do that with any endevor that has a personal time investment factor outside of body functions, sex or severe neurological addictions.

Time investment becomes proportional to the personal expectation of success factored by the perceptional experience bank of age. Adults often think too much and with faulty imagery when they play games because they have too much experience. Consciously or unconsciously they will play out the up coming scenario in their head before they even turn over the first card. Then allow that outcome to be the key factor in how they will invest themsleves in the current hand. (You psyched yourself out was the old term.) Time and wasting it in a game is only a perception of the the extent of the dopamine reward you are receiving. If you are gaining maximum dopamine reward, one of the side effects is a loss of time perception. Thats why time seems to fly when you are having fun or sex. 

As you get older and increase your life experience quotent it takes more to trigger the same intensity of self dopamine reward in your common activities than when you first started. Wanting it all and NOW is a lament to the fact your personal dopamine factory is being inhibited by your own mind.

[jamdive]

Buster, unscrewing the light bulbs in your bathroom and leaving the plunger in your toilet would be a satisfactory dopamine rush for someone of my age. Where do you come up with this crap?

[flatiron1]

"Twelve days into LW Tour 127, I was ranked 2131 in bomber field captures and 2313 in vehicle field captures, with zero captures in both.  So, 2130 and 2312 folks have at least one field capture in the respective category.

2130 + 2312 = 4442 field captures,

4442 captures/12 days = 370 field captures per day,

370/24 hours = 15 captures per hour, or one every four minutes.

Something is not right with these numbers."


You are right something not right with these numbers.

It's the logic you are using to get them I think.

[bustr]

Buster, unscrewing the light bulbs in your bathroom and leaving the plunger in your toilet would be a satisfactory dopamine rush for someone of my age. Where do you come up with this crap?

I've always been fascinated with why my peers don't know any of this aformentioned CRAP. But, instead are convinced that their emotional archology and subsiquent happiness is an innocent pawn of external influences granting them discretion in assaulting others in the name of their victomhood to feed their need for dopamine(feeling good). The anonymous nature of the Internet is a victoms dopamine addtiction.

If you tell yourself everytime you startup the game that you will have a good time, by golly gee whizzzz, you will have a good time. But, if instead when you startup the game you only visualise and hold an expectation of the hoarding, time involved getting to fights the lame game play and such. Be careful what you tell yourself. Your subconsious always takes your expectations litteraly and makes them come true.

So why do you need to infer I'm CRAP via projection of the information I presented to make yourself feel better? This is the only reason to toss that specific bone into the conversation at this juncture.

[Ghosth]

Agree

Or the acks that are there should be moved farther out from the town center so they can be spotted and popped by tanks from a distance.

fair enough.. I think the ack shouldn't have been added back either, if we want tank action.

auto-ack free towns!

[AWwrgwy]

Finding? It's already presented to you for your convenience.

Exactly.

I like convenience.

 


wrongway