Game Play Ideas/Wishes

[Crash Orange]

Country X still has more players than Country Y.
Country X still has more players than Country Z.

Country X is not outnumberd by either enemy.

By that logic, Germany should have won WW1 in two weeks because its army was bigger and much more powerful than any of the individual opponents it was fighting.

By that logic, if you put the starting 5 for the Celtics on the court against the starting 5s for both the 76ers and the Nets, the Celtics should win since they are the best team and since they aren't outnumbered by either the 6ers or the Nets.

Of course, that logic is nonsense. 5 = 5, sure, but 5+ 5 = 10 and 10 > 5, it'll be a slaughter. The Celtics would get stomped, even if you mimic AH by saying the 76ers all have to stay on one half of the court and the Nets all have to stay on the other half.

Likewise, country X isn't fighting one of those countries, it's fighting both of them at the same time, but they are devoting their full attention to X. If you are a player for country X, you will be outnumbered 3-2 wherever you fly, and to add insult to injury you and your outnumbered teammates will be flying FM2s against superior numbers of Spit 16s and ponies.

ENY does not work to balance sides. Encouraging people to switch from X to Y or Z doesn't accomplish anything if they keep on ganging X along with anyone else (and the ones who are too loyal to do that, probably won't be the ones to leave X).

In order to work as side balancing, ENY needs to account for WHICH of the two opponents each player in the air is fighting. That can be approximated pretty easily by looking at where they are on the map.

The only thing ENY forces people to do is make a decision.

According to the game designer, it is supposed to do more than that, it is supposed to work to balance the sides. It isn't doing that reliably.

To relate that directly to what you're saying, the decision it's forcing people to make is the wrong one. It forces them to decide which country to fight for (and what limitations to accept as a result), but in a 3-way game numerical balance is actually decided by what country everyone is fighting against, which is not the same thing at all.

[Chilli]

To sum up what the ENY critics are saying, it does not work.  It doesn't address the 2 vs. 1 country complaint, where one or both of the joined attackers have given up on the idea of winning the war.  You simply cannot win the war by attacking only ONE opponent.

Why did they give up on the goal of winning the war?  Someone else said it better, but they must feel that such a goal is too difficult to spend their precious AH moments engaged in challenging strategic warfare, and simply log on to have a few laughs with friends or fly to the nearest fight.

Okay, problem solved!  HiTech is promising to institute changes in the game to counterbalance the unintended result of larger towns being more difficult to capture.

Since we don't know what changes HiTech is thinking about, I assume that this thread was intended to list ideas. 

Ideas listed so far:  perk system change, hangar option update, troop carrier role update, war end conditions changed.  Did I miss anything?

So far, "war end conditions" is the only idea to address the problem of reduced interest/ or ability to capture bases.

So, for some critical food for thought for the developers, what would most likely bring you on board to do a base capture?

• do you want better stealth ability for NOE missions
• do you want porked objects to stay down longer requiring lower numbers (short of milkrun numbers)
• do you want a flashing light, saying base is ready for capture bring troops now
• do you want your troops / carriers to stand a fighting chance to destroy objects as well as capture the flag

[Knite]

...

First off, in neither of your examples, do the players or soldiers have a choice. And BTW if you look at Germany at the beginning of WWII they almost DID win the war before it eventually started to turn over.
Also, in neither example, do you account for the fact that perhaps the smaller or less "capable" teams are ganging up on the larger/better team BECAUSE they are larger/better.

Let's go back to the XYZ thing..
X=60
Y=45
Z=45
The two teams with 45 both see who the biggest threat is... guess who that is? Country X. So they both attack Country X. It's not some big grand scheme... heck, most of the time you can't even get 4 pilots together to defend a base, what makes you think each side could get all 90 to co-ordinate...
Country X is saddled with ENY. The Pilots of Country X (unlike German soldiers or Celtics players) can CHOOSE to stay with their country and lower plane options, or CHOOSE to go to a country with less pilots. What does putting ENY on the Y and Z countries accomplish? Trying to get them to transfer to X? What happens with Y and Z suddenly start fighting each other? What's to stop X with an ENY advantage from steamrolling Y and Z countries? Zone ENY? Sure, what do you do to stop smart squads from taking advantage of that process by doing small, multi-airfield launch strikes? Zone ENY would never work unless your aircraft changed in MID AIR as you entered an ENY'ed zone.

If pilots would get the hint ENY is trying to tell them, 10 pilots would leave X in frustration, 7 to Y, 3 to Z... that gives a total of....
X=50
Y=52
Z=48
Now suddenly... *gasp* there's no ENY, and in reality Y is a bigger threat to Z now than X, so Z moves some of their focus over to the Y front and the battles even out.
Taking the original numbers, lets' say 20 leave in frustration, 13 to Y, 7 to Z, for totals of
X=40
Y=58
Z=52
You still think poor X would be getting ganged on? Plus, Y and possibly Z would now have ENY penalties...


If you're CHOOSING to be on the country with high numbers and ENY going against you, YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

[AWwrgwy]

...

And, to take your scenario one step further:

If players switch from X to Y and attack Z, (what else would a "loyal" x do?), it also removes some of the pressure from X by threatening Z. 


wrongway

[Knite]

And, to take your scenario one step further:
If players switch from X to Y and attack Z, (what else would a "loyal" x do?), it also removes some of the pressure from X by threatening Z. 
wrongway

And to take your note one step further...

Which would force Z to retalliate against Y, taking even more pressure off X.
=P

[bustr]

Currently the game is tilted towards needing a maximum effort to take and defend capturable objects. Initially with the radar and town change the first few weeks saw large scale battels over single objects. For a short period it finally became fun to defend a field. But, now there are two general types of attacks.

1. The obvious attack that will fail because too few are attacking.
2. The attack that most of the time will succeed because there are enough attackers to swamp the field in the first 60 seconds.

Granted there are variations on these. Many of them become the 3 to 4 hour go nowhere seesaw fight between two bases. The attitude seems to have devolved into an all or nothing lack of willingness to go past a certain point of personal expenditure. Taking bases so far only seems to work if you bring 30 plus players at the same time. Either you make it impossible to defend your base by virtue of numbers or the the base is uncapturable by virtue of too many defenders.

This tires out ones enthusiasm for taking part in ongoing base attacks unless you are a 30 plus squad in the first place. Ports and Vbases not having towns are easier to take but, there is only so far you can move into another country without air support. Seems the only real difference between small, medium and large airfields is the number of auto ack. Otherwise the three objects by virtue of having the same town type object require just about the same maximum effort to capture.

Because the map making is left up to players there is often no real strategic logic to the layout of bases. But, then the game's current strategic logic is very simple. Capture 40% of the two other countries bases and hold 90% of your own and you win. Based on that logic there is no reason other than keeping the players from getting bored to have more than one type of airfield. The same town object being used with the three fields is the limitation. The size of the airfield exists for nothing more than its size. Location is irrelevant and there is no strategic purpose for the differing sizes.

One might argue the airfield sizes are to make it harder to simply sweep a country with a concerted effort. In AH1 the JSO's proved you could organise 300+ players and sweep country's anyway. I know this game is about the fight. But, organised groups of players for some time now have been sending the message that they want more than just the fight on land, sea or in the air.

Personally I've been playing so long it's an article of faith that the game is about the fight. But then I remember AW Small Europe map Fields as places to find fights and nothing else. So maybe after 20 years it's reasonable to believe HiTech has collected enough data and is ready to release his best work ever.

[Knite]

Just as a thought....


One of the problems with the old NOE raids, and one of the reasons towns were changed (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that there was a desire to give defenders a chance to up at a field, without just losing a field outright.

What if the capture process itself were both simplified, and delayed? Here's an example of what I am thinking...

Right now, seems it's really difficult to take a base with a small # of people, between the town size, radar changes and increase of ACK over the years.

What if, we "ease" some of those defenses, such as not needing 100% of town down... maybe 75%... and Radar is slightly altered (100ft, instead of 65)...
BUT captures themselves are NOT done the moment troop #10 enters the maproom.
Instead, Troop #10 starts a ... let's say 5 minute countdown. If, during those 5 minutes, the defending country can get their own #10 troops to the maproom, the countdown is reset, and the enemy must re-attempt. To assist defenders, the moment the enemy has 10 troops, the radar zone of the base flashes a transparent red on the clipboard map. To assist attackers, as I said, simplify town needs, simplify radar.
Would that concept be of any benefiet?

[The Fugitive]

.............It isn't doing that reliably.............

It doesn't do it reliably because some squads/people are "country loyal" to a fault. If that is how you wish to play, that is ok, but it comes with a price, much like having superior numbers. If some of the players, maybe a squad, switched from country X to country Y and attacked country Z it would help even eveything up as well as start another fight on another front.. "The only thing ENY forces people to do is make a decision." to quote a friend 

[Chilli]

  Knite's countdown idea.  It addresses both the concerns of the attacker and the defender.  From what I am hearing about smoke signals at the maproom, this could be a "colorful" idea. 

White smoke at the maproom = town is ready for capture

Green smoke at the maproom = your country has 10 uninjured troops in the maproom

Red smoke at the maproom = opposing country has 10 uninjured troops in the maproom

Maproom stopped smoking = town is not ready for capture

* note if you are the defending player, you will see green smoke when your troops were the last to go in, while the attacking players will see red.  This is important as there could be a third country who is attempting to capture the field as well.