OK BBS warriors. "Fix" the game....

[CAP1]

Put strategic back into AH.  Add more strategic targets (rail yards, strategic supply bridges (rail and road, which would stay down like all other strats), power stations, radar facilities, supply ports, supply depots, freighter convoy's, etc.) and insure that hitting them, is worth the effort.  I cannot remember which thread it was in, but someone posted that the game is now geared more towards furballing and less on base taking and strategic runs.  I would have to agree with that.  When I first played AH, which was around the middle of last year, I found myself upping bombers a lot to make runs on the strats.  It was fun.  I didn't do it for score or perks, I did it because it was fun.  The beneficial side effect was that it hurt the country I was hitting and they stayed down for an hour or more.  I recall that hitting all the fuel at an airfield, would reduce it to 25% as well.  Maybe I was seeing things then, but it did fall below 75% from what I remember.  People say they can't defend with 25% (or even 50%) and they have to sit in the tower.  Dwayna forbid they would have to resupply the field or up from another one....

With the current strategic system, not even the B-29 will affect it.  Fewer bombers to do the job, still have to hit the same target which doesn't seem to affect anything.  I love the Capital.  Definitely keep that, but more strats please.  Boosting the amount of ack over it would be nice as well.  The sky was filled with ack, especially over high value targets.  It's funny and sad, to see one set of bombers taking all the ack when there are 4 or more set's over the Capital.

Whiskey, I would have to give you that (even I will go to TT or furball, once in a blue moon).  What about restricting ords to rockets only, no bombs?  You have to give them SOMETHING to use after all.  Or leave the B-25H, and have no rockets, bombs and IL-2's??

if i'm not mistakern, there ARE strat targets.

 hit the fuel depots, and you screw with their fuel supply.....same for dar, and troops. the trains are killable. the convoys that you see resupplying damaged bases are killable.
 strats exist.....ya just hafta.....oohh...i dunno.......go kill em?

[FALCONWING]

I'll give it a shot though Ghi posted it far better in the ancient "Strat Changes" thread by HiTech.  This post covers only a strat player (win the war) viewpoint.

Over the years a goodly proportion of MA game changes have been pro-defence:

Making towns flash (ok that's from a fair way back)
Increase to 8 auto ack in town - up from 2
Increase in size and complexity of V bases (first 1, then 3 and now 4 vhs)
Increase in auto and manned ack at V bases and Ports.
Reducing the blast radius effect of bombs
Changing field layouts to prevent suppression by bombing or close capping
Increase in size and complexity of towns (several times)
Changes in radar coverage

There's others, but that's a sample that is solely intended to display a trend.  The last two have perhaps had a greater impact because their introduction so close together has magnified their effect somewhat.  The general player base hadn't learnt to deal with the problems of one before the second was added.

There is a point where the rewards (success) for attack are reduced to a problem for an average player where the incentives no longer balance the effort.  If you have to fight the system (map) as well as, or even more than a live opponent, then the enthusiasm wanes.

Fights break out in the MA because someone, somewhere decides to attack.  If the incentives (possibility of success) for defence even mildly outweigh those for attack, then that is where the player base will trend. Everybody defending means zero fights. The notable response to the challenges placed before attackers at the moment is to concentrate in large numbers at a single point (or to log off after complaining on country channel for some minutes first).

It is demonstrably possible to "move" a map with this technique.  I don't think I have seen any other successful ploy recently. It's evidently not a pleasing development to a significant number of players.

More incentive for people to attack is desirable to overcome the perceived accumulation of disincentives. More attacks, more fights.

There is another concern that seems to affect a large portion of the player base.  They don't like static maps.  Fighting over the same map for days on end (even the same field) seems to make a lot of people grumpy.  People have quite diverse opinions over which map is good, bad or indifferent.  After about 4-5 days on the same map they start to group together in condemnation of "this ch*8t map again???".

The change to the reset criteria that requires a winning side to have pushed back their boundaries against both sides, I believe, has been the single outstanding positive reform arising out of the last few years.  When it was brought in there was an initial setting of 30% required.  Strangely, (to me at any rate) there were complaints that it had become too easy and maps were resetting too fast.  A change to 40% was the response.  With the introduction of concepts that have slowed the pace of movement perhaps an experiment with 35% or return to 30% is worth a try.  It would be a minimalist change.

Beyond those two suggestions (incentive to attack and increase map turnover rate) I have a couple of observations.

Sneak attacks produced some of the most memorable battles in my experience.  Long range "sneaks" to a prize base way behind the front lines brought on some glorious battles.  They didn't move the map, but they surely caused major battles.  The new dar settings mitigate almost entirely against this ever happening again.  The complexity of towns and vbases alone would make it very difficult. Take away the surprise factor and it becomes as near impossible to a dead certainty. People aren't going to invest the effort and online time.  It's another option that was used to spice up a dull day that has been removed.  It was the kind of action that was readily entered into by both furballers and stratters.  I think that such imaginative play was fun.  Its loss is sad.

If NOE had become the most used attack method, then perhaps the way to reduce it wasn't to make it near impossible, but to find a way to incentivise other methods.  Carrots can be as useful as sticks. More readily accepted too.

Investigate why the Donut map was so popular.  I believe that it was because you could instantly choose the fight that suited your temperament and viewpoint with only a few exceptions.  If the three central fields had been made un-capturable, the painful, dramatic and inflammatory outbursts about their capture obviously would have subsided instantly.  Unfortunately, there is little point bringing it back now with the current strategic supply system in place.  The map design required the older system of distributed factorys to provide points of potential conflict.  What a shame.

Thanks for reading,
regards.

Extremely articulate post from a well respected player...thanks for taking the time bud

[Lusche]

if i'm not mistakern, there ARE strat targets.

 hit the fuel depots, and you screw with their fuel supply.....same for dar, and troops. the trains are killable. the convoys that you see resupplying damaged bases are killable.
 strats exist.....ya just hafta.....oohh...i dunno.......go kill em?

They basically have no impact on gameplay, and on large maps they are back up when you are back home, landing your bombers.

[Soulyss]

I'll give it a shot though Ghi posted it far better in the ancient "Strat Changes" thread by HiTech.  This post covers only a strat player (win the war) viewpoint.

Over the years a goodly proportion of MA game changes have been pro-defence:

Making towns flash (ok that's from a fair way back)
Increase to 8 auto ack in town - up from 2
Increase in size and complexity of V bases (first 1, then 3 and now 4 vhs)
Increase in auto and manned ack at V bases and Ports.
Reducing the blast radius effect of bombs
Changing field layouts to prevent suppression by bombing or close capping
Increase in size and complexity of towns (several times)
Changes in radar coverage

First off, that was a very good post Dantoo, concise and well reasoned.  I do think it's important to view some of these strat/field  changes in light of a changing game environment. I think it's a slightly different picture if one also considers the other arena variables aren't fixed or static but also changing as well.  If we go waaaaaaay back to the beginning the map rooms were on the fields themselves and all someone had to do was de-ack the field and land troops, and I think if even the war winning types stopped to think about it objectively for a few minutes it's pretty clear that such a set up probably won't work in today's game. 

Again, thanks for the post, it was good reading.

[hitech]

If I was a bbs warrior i would.

1. Increase down times of cities and factories.
2. Add a cement factory that increases down time of towns.
3. Add a % needed variable to control the number of town buildings down needed for capture.
4. Add a flag that went down, or changed color when the town was surrendering/ready for capture.

But I don't know why I post these ideas, HTC never will do anything about it.

HiTech

[ozrocker]

 
and I would add Mountable sheep" to "ride" into town as Victory Parade to taunt captured enemy (that were added of course)


                                                                                                                       <S> Oz

[Shuffler]

If I was a bbs warrior i would.

1. Increase down times of cities and factories.
2. Add a cement factory that increases down time of towns.
3. Add a % needed variable to control the number of town buildings down needed for capture.
4. Add a flag that went down, or changed color when the town was surrendering/ready for capture.

But I don't know why I post these ideas, HTC never will do anything about it.

HiTech

I'm reporting this trouble maker...... 

[Soulyss]

 

[shreck]

A "challenge button"
 Would work like the "check 6" button. Scroll thru enemy cons to "challenge" one, the enemy hears the challenge thru audio and could reply if interested by pressing button, both planes now are treated as "KILLSHOOTER" till one is dead ! This "KILLSHOOTER" would work cross country! Ofcourse the icons of both aircraft would have to change to signify to ALL that they are "in challenge". If the enemy would rather not they simply ignore the challenge, the challenge could "time out" say after 3 seconds! also the "challenge" would automatically terminate if the "challengers" get more than say 2k away from each other!
I'm sure there would be issues to work out, that is above my pay grade  

 This may settle down the GAYnging a bit. IMO folks don't mind being GAYnged usually, it's when the GAYnging happens AFTER you're already deep into a "hellafight" that really gets the goat!

Just my $.02  

[Lusche]

But I don't know why I post these ideas, HTC never will do anything about it.

HiTech

If HTC sucks so much, why don't you go and program your own combat flight sim?





    

[5PointOh]

Not sure how it would work, but here are a couple of things I'd like to see:

I:  Two Country MAs: Seems to me depending on the map or time of the day, Country A and Country B goes after Country C while no fights take place between Country A or B.  This may help aleviate some of the ganging on the side with the lesser numbers, or two vs one countries depending on the maps.  Bring the % to "win" down to 30% to help with map rotation

II:  ENY Factories: Place factories in the strat areas that have factories that produce certain ENY level of planes. Exp: ENY 5 factory at the strat destroyed, no ENY 5 planes could be flown say for 60min.  This brings back some the strategic value for the buffers, gives the guys who want to keep the Spits, 51D, 190D ect ect something to protect.  

III:  Zone Strats:  Perhaps more zone oriented strat cities.   Currently we only have one moving strat city, I propose more.  Say you have four zones, each with a strat target associated to it.  Perhaps lessen the ack at these zones strats (except the HQ strat). If one was to destroy the fuel for that zone maybe only 25% could be taken, destroy ord: maybe only the lightest load of ord could be used, troops: troops for captures must be flown in from other strat zone.   These strats could be great places for A2A and ground battles to take place. This also give the buff guys a target that may affect the out come of the "war" vs. killing the fighter and bomber hangers.

Just my thoughts though.  

[Changeup]

If I was a bbs warrior i would.

1. Increase down times of cities and factories.
2. Add a cement factory that increases down time of towns.
3. Add a % needed variable to control the number of town buildings down needed for capture.
4. Add a flag that went down, or changed color when the town was surrendering/ready for capture.

But I don't know why I post these ideas, HTC never will do anything about it.

HiTech

Its good to be king....

Changeup

[Dichotomy]

 

always worth a check when HT chimes in

[Ghastly]

Hitech's #3 is one of the things I had intended to mention. But I've also been toying with the idea of what might happen if, instead of a simple pass/fail on the 10 troops, if for each 2 or 3 troops that entered the tower if a/any structure(s) were still up, the most damaged structure in town were destroyed instead of those troops counting for the capture.  This way, if you drop 20 troops, up to 3 structures could still be standing when the last troop went in the tower and the capture would still take place.

Additionally, I'd restructure TG control, such that both rank and distance from the TG factor into who can take control, so that a moderatedly low ranked player at the CV could potentially take control from an even lower ranked player that's across the map from it.  (Either that, or come up with a different system than rank for determining control.)

Finally, anything that spreads the fight out some is going to be a good thing, I think. 

<S>

[Vudak]

I like those ideas, HiTech, but I'd ask that you try placing the cement factory somewhere defending 163s can not easily reach it (especially since its destruction would not be as crippling as the HQ's).

It would be interesting to have a target that induced sectors-long interceptions and escorts, without people being able to just sit around, scramble 163s at the last minute, and completely annihilate the mission with relative ease.

Der Grosse Schlag was an extremely popular scenario, and it would be great to have the opportunity to form missions that emulate it in the MA with regularity.

THAT's something I think is currently missing in this game.

If I was a bbs warrior i would.

1. Increase down times of cities and factories.
2. Add a cement factory that increases down time of towns.
3. Add a % needed variable to control the number of town buildings down needed for capture.
4. Add a flag that went down, or changed color when the town was surrendering/ready for capture.

But I don't know why I post these ideas, HTC never will do anything about it.

HiTech