Tank Town GV bombing solution

[Lusche]

I suppose I could compress tank town enough to get the bases flashing immediately someone spawns. There wouldn't be a lot of room to fight though and there wouldn't be as much reaction time to prevent captures.

I would leave it the way it is. Right now there is plenty of room to maneuver, and as I said before I fear flashing bases alone wouldn't improve play, as then the most probable reaction would be just to sit on the base.

I also noticed how some maps always generate the same A1-A2 fights because of field numbering layout. On some maps it can sometimes be a waste of time logging into the country that doesn't have A1 or A2. Tends to make the maps get a bit stale IMO.

For that reason on my map I made A1-A3 the three uncapturable fields next to the strat cities. Players will always log in to one of those fields irrespective of the position of the frontlines and would normally have to switch fields to get to a fight. Ought to make for more variation in gameplay.

Makes sense

[TDeacon]

I very strongly suggest that we use a geometry guaranteeing that a base will flash.  That will bring in the players.  Lack of players is the current problem with Trinity TT, as you can't tell if someone is in there.  In the worst case, even if someone merely "sits on the base", it generates an interesting fight.  However, in Ozkansas, once people are in there, they typically go offensive and leave the bases, which is the ideal we are striving for.  

One way to do this, Greebo, is perhaps to put 3 Vbases in the center, identically spaced to what we have in Ozkansas TT.  (In other words, leave out  the center town).  The first player in will be able to generate attention by starting to capture one of these Vbases, which will cause them to flash.  Radiating out from this Vbase there should be a series of additional Vbases from each country, spaced as in the Ozkansas TT.  Leave out the Air bases, ring with mountains, and make the whole thing relatively distant from any air bases outside the mountains.  The Ozkansas layout gives plenty of "room to fight", and is quite interesting to play in.  I don't think it loses anything by leaving out the center town.  It's main problem is that it's too easy to fly AC to.  

[TDeacon]

As an example of the need for "flashing" behavior, I was in TT last night.  I went in there because a base was flashing, and there were no AC indicated.  Enemy GVs were attacking the base.  Leaving the base to another player, I spawned at the spawn point, past which the attackers had to drive, and was able to get fights.  These fights attracted other players (by sound I assume), and we had a decent GV environment for an hour or 2, until some idiot brought in a B25H. 

Note that it was the base flashing which started the whole process.

[TDeacon]

Hi Greebo,

I just downloaded your "craterma" map; interesting and attractive.  Some comments on the GV "TT" area:

1)  On my system (old ATI graphics), I can't see the TT water; it looks like normal flat terrain.  

2)  Make the center island round, so movement isn't so channelized.  This also leaves room for some small mountains.  

3)  Put at least one mountain on the center island, to allow the option of climbing it in order to see better.  This works well on the Ozkansas TT, where the mountains add an interesting tactical element, without totally dominating things.  

4)  It takes too long to get to the opposing vehicle bases from the center island spawn points, meaning that a single intial player can't present a credible threat to them in the time allowed.  I think we want a single player to be able to do this, in order to motivate other players to enter TT in GVs to defend.  Otherwise, the single player sits there by him/herself.  So, either move the 3 Vbases closer to the center island, or add a 4th captureable Vbase on the center island.  To compensate for cases where players capture all 3 or 4 Vbases during off-hours, I think we need to put the recapture spawn points (coming in from outside TT) closer to the Vbases to facilitate recapture.  Long drives are not enjoyable, and if long enough, make it impossible for a single player to capture/recapture a Vbase.  I think the current Ozkansas TT has the ideal spacing.  

5)  Are you sure the mountains are high enough?  You said 13k?  What about 30k?  Antisocial types will bring in bombers from time to time, and we want them to suffer as much as possible. 

[Greebo]

Hi Deacon,

Thank you for the feedback.

Your point about the rivers not showing up on systems with old style graphics is not something I had considered. I'll have to redesign tank town and other parts of the map simply because of that as it would be a definite reason for rejection for HTC. Shame really, because I quite liked the idea of GVs having to cross the rivers.

My thinking in channeling the player's into a narrow area of play on tank town was simply to make it easier for players to find one another. I tried to avoid big hills because it takes so long to climb up them. I'll rethink it all though in light of your comments and also have a look at Ozkansas for inspiration.

When I get time I'll draw up some diagrams of possible tank town layouts and post them for you and everyone else to look at before committing anything to the terrain editor. The spacing of the central fields and spawn points are going to have to be precisely laid out for this to do what you want and be fair to all three countries. I might add three more outer fields in the crater. These would have spawns near to the inner fields but there won't be any spawns from the inner to the outer fields. I might make the outer fields higher up as well to make them a real pain to reach.

I vaguely recall that HTC don't like stupidly high mountains on MA maps. Also I think it would look a bit silly and I have put a lot of effort into making the terrain look as natural as possible. I think the low cloud over the TT bases would be more of a deterrent to tanktown griefers anyway.

[dirtdart]

Greebo is it possible to put low clouds in without killing fps on less capable systems?

[jamdive]

The low clouds idea seems to be a good answer. TT spawns and the bases could be moved closer together also.

[Greebo]

It's only six clouds per V base, the bottoms of the clouds are about 1k above the ground. I've seen bigger low alt cloud formations in MA terrains before now so it shouldn't be a problem.

[W7LPNRICK]

or just up a wirble next time and when I get too close, if you can shoot, knock me outa the sky. One GV'er does it almost every time I bomb**** him more than once.      I like it 'cause it's a challenge to kill his wirble without getting towered myself. Don't get mad, get even. 

[TDeacon]

Guys, are you sure clouds will work?

1)  Unless they are thick, you can see the GV icons down through through them, especially since you can change the color and size of the icons. 
2)  Even if you can mask GV icons, the IL-2s and B25Hs can fly around at low altitude. 

I think we need a different/additional mechanism than/to clouds.  The best one is making it very time-consuming for someone to get to TT in a bomber, meaning very high mountains and distant airbases. 

[68ZooM]

after all this are you going to make it safer to keep the GV's away from Airfields, i dont want them shooting our planes as they take off,  it will wreck the flying aspect of the game for people who just want to fly and not be hassled by those peskie Wirbles and Osti's and Armor who just want to shoot my plane up, sense Tanks don't want to be targeted by planes then please keep them away from the airfields......... thank you..... that is all 

[dirtdart]

after all this are you going to make it safer to keep the GV's away from Airfields, i dont want them shooting our planes as they take off,  it will wreck the flying aspect of the game for people who just want to fly and not be hassled by those peskie Wirbles and Osti's and Armor who just want to shoot my plane up, sense Tanks don't want to be targeted by planes then please keep them away from the airfields......... thank you..... that is all 

Please read the entire thread. 

Guys, are you sure clouds will work?

1)  Unless they are thick, you can see the GV icons down through through them, especially since you can change the color and size of the icons. 
2)  Even if you can mask GV icons, the IL-2s and B25Hs can fly around at low altitude. 

I think we need a different/additional mechanism than/to clouds.  The best one is making it very time-consuming for someone to get to TT in a bomber, meaning very high mountains and distant airbases. 

I hope so, 25Hs and IL-2 will get crushed by fighters looking for easy kills over the middle of a TT.  I just wanted to create a singular place where it was inherently difficult to bomb GVs without creating entirely new maps.  If the map editor just placed a blob of clouds over TT, that might be enough to deter guys there. 

DISCLAIMER:  THIS THREAD IS ASKING FOR LOW CLOUDS ON A SINGLE PLACE ON THE MAP.  NOT THE ENTIRE MAP.  NOT ALL SPAWN POINTS.  NOT ALL VBASES.  JUST TT. 

[W7LPNRICK]

GV Dueling arena! just like the fighter arena, but no lake and lots of obstacles.     

[W7LPNRICK]

I very strongly suggest that we use a geometry guaranteeing that a base will flash.  That will bring in the players.  Lack of players is the current problem with Trinity TT, as you can't tell if someone is in there.  In the worst case, even if someone merely "sits on the base", it generates an interesting fight.  However, in Ozkansas, once people are in there, they typically go offensive and leave the bases, which is the ideal we are striving for.  

One way to do this, Greebo, is perhaps to put 3 Vbases in the center, identically spaced to what we have in Ozkansas TT.  (In other words, leave out  the center town).  The first player in will be able to generate attention by starting to capture one of these Vbases, which will cause them to flash.  Radiating out from this Vbase there should be a series of additional Vbases from each country, spaced as in the Ozkansas TT.  Leave out the Air bases, ring with mountains, and make the whole thing relatively distant from any air bases outside the mountains.  The Ozkansas layout gives plenty of "room to fight", and is quite interesting to play in.  I don't think it loses anything by leaving out the center town.  It's main problem is that it's too easy to fly AC to.  

With more obstacles. 

[Greebo]

I did some offline testing on Ozkansas and CraterMA. It takes 4.5 minutes to get an Il-2 with NS-37s to the centre of TT from the nearest airbase on Ozkansas and 15 minutes on CraterMA. A heavy jabo would probably do it a bit quicker in both cases. I think the time delay per sortie would put a lot of people off, particularly those intent on amassing points. Those who are doing it just to annoy other players would still do so, but maybe less often. Also darbars would often make it fairly obvious that there was someone climbing over the crater rim. It takes 10 minutes or so to get over the rim heavily laden. I can see "anti-griefer" sorties being flown in fast climbing interceptors to combat this.

I've had a look at the Ozkansas TT layout and laid it out in the upper diagram below. The dotted circles represent the enemy player flash radius of 3 miles from the centre of the base. The base numbers are not accurate and are simply for reference.

The advantages of this layout are that as TDeacon pointed out, anyone spawning will almost immediately make one of the other bases flash (the nearer of the two bases if you are in range of both). The other advantage is it makes spawn camping difficult. A camper would have to knock out all the base defences and camp the hangar. He'd be vulnerable to attack from adjacent bases and eventually from base guns respawning. The main drawback is that a GV horde could take the whole of tank town fairly quickly.

My suggestion in the lower diagram is to have the same inner layout but make the outer fields harder to take. The outer fields each have three spawn points for the field inboard of them. These spawn points are within both the outer and the inner fields' warning radius. The effect of this is to make it harder to take a field outboard of yours than inboard of yours.

Imagine you were trying to take V4 from V1. You have to travel about 5 miles if you go through the spawn area or more to go around it. Once past the spawns you have to worry about enemies spawning behind you as well as ahead. If you camp one of the spawns the enemy can spawn at one of the other two. If you and two friends camp all three that's three more GVs needed for a field capture than before. Also the enemy will be warned you may be camping because their base will be flashing.

Taking V1 from V4 is much easier. You have just under 3 miles to go and will be warned if anyone is camping the spawns. Even a triple camp can be broken from the V base fairly easily.

Also I'd probably make the trend of the land slope down into the middle of tank town to give the outboard fields another advantage.