Possible Strat Change - Affecting capture troops needed

[Easyscor]

The only base variable that isn't currently tied to a strat factory is the number of troops required to capture a base. We've had bigger towns with more buildings, and more ack, but the number of capture troops has never been touched.

Increase the number of troops needed for capture, to 30.

Add a new "city" strat that controls the number of troops required for a capture within a local zone. Re-implement the old zone system to support the local aspect of the feature, and to provide more targets. The new "city" strat would transfer country ownership with the nearby Zone Master base, cutting off milkrunning. The Troop capture count would be displayed on the clipboard.

With the strat at 100% up, it takes the full 30 troops.
With the strat at 0% up, it takes 10 troops.

Or perhaps some derivative setup.

[Volron]

What if we based the amount of troops required, to the size of the base?  Example: 20 for a Small Field, 25 for a Medium Field and 30 for a Large.  25 or 30 for a Port and 15 for a V base?  This would probably be easier to implement than creating a strat that ties into how many troops would be needed to capture a base.

A little bit of a hi-jack here:
As for the strats, a mix of the old with the new and the addition of at least rail yards?  I like how there is a Capitol for each side.  That can stay near the HQ (or even put the HQ in the middle of it) and have that serve the rear sectors.  Bring back the City strats with individual strats (with MUCH better defenses like a flak tower or two), and make those change ownership when the Zone Base is captured.  There would be 1-3 rail yards (depends on size of map) in the Capitol Sector that would run supplies to the outlying sectors.  The outlying sectors themselves would have at least 1 rail yard to receive the supplies from the Capitol and to/from the individual strats in it's sector.

Back to topic:

Add a new "city" strat that controls the number of troops required for a capture within a local zone. Re-implement the old zone system to support the local aspect of the feature, and to provide more targets. The new "city" strat would transfer country ownership with the nearby Zone Master base, cutting off milkrunning. The Troop capture count would be displayed on the clipboard.

The bases tied to this strat, if people took the master base, would this automatically make the bases in that zone that have not been captured yet, required just 10 troops to take?  As the strat for their respective zone has been taken, it no longer applies to that field.  I would assume that it would mean, it is no different that if they had knocked the strat down to 0%.

[Tilt]

is there no training strat any more?

Given that "barracks" could be seen as a defensive resource (as well as a capture resource) you could link the health of a fields barracks to the number of troops defending and therfore required to capture............

AH measures strat stuff in %'s all the time so given the attacking force needs a superiority of +10 troops you would need some math to alter the mprm hardness on the fly that takes its components from the barrack status

We can see whether the troops are available on a field via the field report although it does not indicate this as a 5..Its either they have troops or they dont have troops

[Easyscor]

No Tilt, this isn't about troop bunkers at a base.

As you surmised, it's about map room hardness but controlled by a new strat factory that I've called a "city" for lack of a better name. This is an idea for creating a strat target that is reachable, non country crippling, not a milkrun trough, and clearly significant toward the "win the war" effort. The effect needs to stay local to an area, not global imo.

Volron, the way I see it, if the zone master base, the one the "city" is tied to is captured, then yes, all the other bases in that zone would only require 10 troops instead of 30. This makes the zone base have real importance as well.

This is also in keeping with htc's continuing progress toward making base capture more difficult.

[JHerne]

I like it.

[Pigslilspaz]

I love this idea. +1

[Chilli]

I like the idea very much*, for the additional planning it brings to the table for a capture.  Having said that, the newb horde function of base capture is the area of most concern to me.  This idea is and should be totally separate from the cause of the mega hordes that are NEEDED to capture an airbase.

Instead of killing town buildings 100%, before a capture is possible, kill all the ack in town (for more difficulty and on the airfield) and require a *higher number of troops to make it into the maproom (even as many as 100 troops if strat is full up). 

Also, if friendly troops from the country that owns the field make it to the maproom, each troop subtracts from his enemy counterpart, thus forcing even more troops to be brought into the battle.   

Basically, you will have two armies duking it out in the town over control of the maproom, rather than an elite group of 10 Seals or Rangers kicking dust on the maproom floor at Hiroshima right after it was nuked.

[JHerne]

While I like the idea in general, having to bring 100 troops to take a base will never  happen. I wouldn't be surprised if people went nuts over 20 troops to take a maproom, even with the current parameters.

I like the idea of smaller bases requiring fewer (or the base 10) troops, but as it is now - the prevailing attitude about taking bases is that the larger ones are avoided unless there's a bog horde, or there's no other place to go.

If given a choice between taking a Vbase and a large field, the V-base wins, no matter what. Yes, they count less in terms of percentage points, but taking one usually opens up other options for small or medium airfields.

I do like the idea of the strat playing a role in the number of troops required to take a base. Problem is, most strats are too far away to effect any major changes in gameplay overall.

I'm not sure if players would be pre-emptive enough to bomb a strat so they can lower the troop-take requirements. I mean really, we can't even get people to pork ords around the bases being attacked now.

J

[EskimoJoe]

Yeah, let's shift the fighting all back to low-level NOE raids on strats and goon hunting.

Brilliant  

Don't get me wrong, I the idea itself isn't a bad one, but the probable outcome is worthy of headdesk.

[bustr]

Stop requiring 100% of structures destroyed before the troops can take the map room. If you don't destroy buildings then the troops have to run up the center of the streets right into auto ack. No more Super Mario building jumping troops. Carpet bomb a path through the town, let the troops run. Role up with 20 M4 with rockets, start blasting and let the troops run.  

Load the town with auto ack at every street junction and mannable ack all over. Put auto ack, 17 pounders and mannable ack around the town perimiter for defense. Put a GV hanger in the town. If it takes 30 troops at 4am PST because only one guy is in the arena doing milk runs, let em rip over the town or from a mile out if he can survive getting that close alone. He can fly a box of bombers first to clear a path, auger, up an M3 and run troops. Make sure the map room has auto ack in its palza and a mannable position next to the door. Anything that valuble in WW2 was made a virtual fortress and had gun positions like fleas on a dog.

Just make sure all roads into the town have auto ack such that an M3 or Halftrack cannot survive trying to drive to the map room alone. Nor can a C47 or its troops survive trying to drop alone or troops running from a mile out survive the ack perimeter ack if a path has not been cleared.

But when all those auto ack and mannable ack and the GV hanger is down. War is heck, and at least a feild gets taken for change. If you don't need all of the town structures down to run troops, then even when the GV hanger comes back up and Tigers, Whirbels and Fireflys roar out. They better shoot fast befor the troops slip past them through the broken buildings where vehicals can't drive. Setup the town ack for zone resupplying to bring it back up. Three M3 drops per town zone to bring back all guns in that town zone. One C47 drop per zone. Drops only work when all guns are dead in a zone. M3 and C47 can up from that towns airfeild or from far away feilds. Be another good reason to keep things suppressed at the local airfeild.

EDIT:

Once your first troop is in have that kick off a timer for 15 minutes to get the rest of the troops in. At this point 30 troops doesnt sound bad if you no longer have to get all of the buildings down. When the first troop is in have a range channel pink text report troop in 15 minute timer running. At 15 minutes if the last troop fails to get in have the same range text report mission failure start a new timer. Oh let M3 from the town GV hanger resupply tanks in town.

[1Boner]

This is also in keeping with htc's continuing progress toward making base capture more difficult.

Difficult?
Why would he want to make it more difficult than it is right now?

[Easyscor]

Difficult?
Why would he want to make it more difficult than it is right now?

hehe Well, every time I turn around, bases are harder to capture. I believe I've spotted an ongoing trend, not that I endorse it you understand.

I think it would slow the late night milkrunning somewhat, if that's what htc is striving for. During regular hours, the bomber guys would have the proposed strat to hit, causing a drop in the troop count for captures to 10 troops again. Seems like the best of both worlds to me.

The current difficulty in base capture that's been reported, is another issue entirely.

[Tilt]

I like the idea of the maproom hardness being inversely porportional to the % of  an attritable asset (plus 10).

At 0% destruction it would require 110 troops. At 100% destruction it would require 10 troops.

In terms of a attritable target function that relates to troop availablity or requirement then it can have both defensive and offensive characturistics.  Presently strat only effects offensive capability in terms of how quickly barracks rebuild (it has no defence attriting qualities). This is like all strat which integrates into game play via "rebuild time modifiers".

However if you want it to be in the zone of battle then it may as well be tactical. i.e related to local field assets. Town buildings are currently the only defensive asset that relates to maproom hardness. (In as much as the maproom is only available for attrition when they are sufficiently attritted) In early AH1  only a % of town buildings needed to be destroyed so a proportional modifier re hardness pre condition  is but a few lines of COAD away.


The next step in COAD would be to link the pre condition to another field asset. IMO the ideal asset is barracks
(as these can directly represent the infantry force available for both defence and attack).

However to achieve your end  the usual distribution of  barracks (on a field)are too few and very "porkable" in game.

To this end each field could have a more realistic barrack population adequately  defended by auto ack.

It would basically be a "Camp" located out side the field consisting of 10, 20, 30 or 40 barrack objects.

If you retain the town building attrition pre condition
(which to me is weird... basically killing enemy troops should be the priority not destroying civilian buildings)
then the COADer can play games linking maproom hardness to either town buildings or barracks (or both!) and setting thresholds accordingly.

[Easyscor]

I agree with much of the principle behind that Tilt, but I don't want to redesign the whole game mechanics lol.

You're right, it would be better if our towns were replaced with a barracks complex instead. Kill the local defensive barracks before the capture, but destroying a strat town would represent civilian support for a zone of multiple bases, therefore fewer troops would be needed for the capture after the local barracks are destroyed. Make sense?

Goal 1 is to give the bomber guys a target that has real impact on the movement of the front lines without making it crippling the way aircraft factories would be. The strat "town" would have to be large enough that it would take at least four to six B-17 formations to kill it, but just 2 guys could still drop the troops-to-capture down several notches. It should also be design in such a way that there are no "good or bad paths" for the bomb drop, ie, the guys dropping on the outside edges should get almost as many objects destroyed as the guys flying over the center.

[Tilt]

You're right, it would be better if our towns were replaced with a barracks complex instead. Kill the local defensive barracks before the capture, but destroying a strat town would represent civilian support for a zone of multiple bases, therefore fewer troops would be needed for the capture after the local barracks are destroyed. Make sense?

Then the simplest way to do this would be to make a big central town that actually consists of town buildings belonging to local fields. The only COAD then is a piece of maths making the maproom hardness inversley proportional to the % town attriton. Removing (or modifying down permanently) the pre conditon that the town buildings attributed to a field must be attrited to a certain level before capture is possible (setting a % already in COAD to a value).

I would not display the actual town health anywhere such that attacking forces  must establish "over kill" to be sure of capture.