I was talking to a friend and one of the things he didn't like about Aces High (he subscribed for about three months back in 2001) was the difficulty in finding a fight. I was thinking about another MMO we play, World of Warcraft (sue me, but that is the one my RL friends play), and I thought that perhaps the daily quest idea could be transposed to Aces High. They would not be structured like a player generated mission, but rather free form, bring your own tools and meet the requirement to get the reward. The reward could be some score bonus, perk bonus or both, but nothing so high as to require participation by those disinclined.
The way I envision this would be system generated "quest" missions every one or two hours, whatever is balanced. There would be a equal number of missions for each nation. For example:
Bishops: Take A1 (Take field A1 from the Rooks within 1 hour)
Bishops: Defend A2 (Prevent the Rooks from taking field A2 for an hour)
Bishops: Take A3 (Take field A3 from the Knights within 1 hour)
Bishops: Defend A4 (Prevent the Knights from taking field A4 for an hour)
Bishops: Attack Rook City (Bomb Rook city to below 25% within one hour {could even stipulate that the bombs had to be dropped from above 15,000ft or so})
Bishops: Defend Bishop City (Prevent the Knights from reducing Bishop City below 25% for an hour)
Knights: Take A5 (Take field A5 from the Rooks within 1 hour)
Knights: Defend A6 (Prevent the Rooks from taking field A6 for an hour)
Knights: Take A4 (Take field A4 from the Bishops within 1 hour)
Knights: Defend A3 (Prevent the Bishops from taking field A3 for an hour)
Knights: Attack Bishop City (Bomb Bishop City to below 25% within one hour {could even stipulate that the bombs had to be dropped from above 15,000ft or so})
Knights: Defend Knight City (Prevent the Rooks from reducing Knight City below 25% for an hour)
Rooks: Take A2 (Take field A2 from the Bishops within 1 hour)
Rooks: Defend A1 (Prevent the Bishops from taking field A1 for an hour)
Rooks: Take A6 (Take field A6 from the Knights within 1 hour)
Rooks: Defend A5 (Prevent the Knights from taking field A5 for an hour)
Rooks: Attack Knight City (Bomb Knight city to below 25% within one hour {could even stipulate that the bombs had to be dropped from above 15,000ft or so})
Rooks: Defend Rook City (Prevent the Bishops from reducing Knight City below 25% for an hour)
As you can see, these mission quests are all pointed at another mission quest to encourage combat.
How would it work in gameplay? While in the tower you would accept the mission you wanted to do, for example as a Bishop you could take "Take A1 (Take field A1 from the Rooks within 1 hour)". Once the Mission Quest timer began (there might be a clock counting down to the mission start and then counting up until the time ran out) you would launch as normal, selecting your airplane or vehicle, and heading off for A1 to participate in the Bishop attempt to take it. There would be no mass launching by the computer as in a player generated mission. To determine if you were eligible for completing the Mission Quest and getting the score/perk reward the program would need to do a few spot checks to make sure you were participating in A1's sector and inflicting damage on A1 or A1's defenders.
The goal of this idea is not to mandate new behavior for all players, but rather to encourage a meeting of opposing forces to fight it out for something. Players would be free to participate or not even without accepting the Mission Quest. They would be free to use whatever airplane, vehicle or boat they wanted in order to participate, though a tank might well fail to score a City defense mission due to not damaging the attackers. There should not be too many Mission Quests per iteration as it wouldn't be good to dilute the players interested in participating too much.
Concern:
A mechanism needs to be in place to discourage hordes. This could be done via the ENY system reducing the rewards based on side balance, enough of an imbalance and the rewards would be zeroed out.
