My "Great Compromise" idea to fix the strat game. Opinions wanted.

[Lusche]

Theoretically, from my understanding, the current strat system (and past strat system) has a direct impact on airfields (down times mainly), meaning that we can already "cripple" the other countries to an extent.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Depends on how you defin "crippling"

Most of the time, players asking for strats that will cripple the enemy are asking for things that are really massive in effect, like plane factories, or taking down fuel to 25%... which would indeed truly "cripple" the enemies ability to fight and to defend. And I really doubt this will ever happen.

[bustr]

This post show cases and cellebrates the high levels of intellect attracted to Aces High. That makes it worth paying the monthly fee to be part of the community.

It's also why Chess is not the national sport of the masses in the U.S. or the EU. One of the hardest things to do is create a game for the masses while not making it unplayable for them becasue you are baselining it to entertaine your own sensabilities. HTC has only ever changed at most a single major game flow component at a time to this game and not very often. And some times had to back it out within a month.

This alters the game in such a massive manner that it would have to be released as a complete new game. Exercises like this have always been part and parcel of this forum's history. Much of the current exercise has been repeated over the past 10 years in variations. In every case no one has discussed to understand "why" HTC will only introduce "one of" structural game flow changes at a time. Instead of canning the current that you are bored to tears with and risk everything by imposing your bliss on the rest of the subscribers. Even with Beta's the Bug forum fills for months with ongong patches and pissed players after releasing general structural updates.

Who is the target player demographic of this change?

Why is this exercise supposed to be attractive to the "general" game population? 

Is it a large enough demographic to support the consiquential bad PR and problems with its rollout along with the ongoing  follow up problems to the general player base?

I know,

 HTC is supposed to fall head over heels for this and make sure to iron out the mirad of tiny obsticles only the game creator would know about to make this dream a reality. Then he would just ram it down the masses throats and tell them it's a good thing. Queue stage left, Martha Stewart selling the new Aces High as a good thing to the masses in 1, 2, 3, live..........

[SWkiljoy]

+1 

[Banshee7]

Depends on how you defin "crippling"

Most of the time, players asking for strats that will cripple the enemy are asking for things that are really massive in effect, like plane factories, or taking down fuel to 25%... which would indeed truly "cripple" the enemies ability to fight and to defend. And I really doubt this will ever happen.

That's what I was thinking.  I guess it all depends on the interpretation of "crippling." 

[Mister Fork]

I lik it Ranger. I like it a lot.

I like it because it addresses a basic concept of military warfare. An army travels on its stomach. Take away the rear support (the cities)and the forward bases loose their ability to operate. Battleline moves back to next field set. 

Throw in trains, roads, and supply routes, we have a strat dream!

[thndregg]

Good points, all.

Strategic resources need that tangible importance- vital enough for the offense to get at and destroy, and immediately valuable enough for the the opposition to defend against such attacks and keep their resources standing.

Base hangars already have this importance instilled foremost in everyone's mind. When their down, no launch. Up? Business as usual. Strat needs that most basic vitallity as well to fight over.

[Lusche]

What is also very important in my opinion: No matter what change wil be implemented, there has to be more "promotion", the effects have top be made more visibilty.
For example, while the general idea of the traditional strats functionality  (resupply chain City->Factories->Fields) in AH is a sound one, it's also way too cryptic for the average AH player. Yes, there is a percentage given on some clipboard sub-menue, but that's too hidden, and the meaning is nebulous as well.
Assuming a fixed strat system, I'd like to see arena message once certain thresholds of damage are reached, like "Rook City down to 20% - Factory Supplies severly limited" or "Rook Ammo Factory down to 50% - Ammo Bunker rebuild time increased". That should create awareness and maybe get the raiders a "WTG" similar to the ones for "A94 has been captured by the Bishops".

[earl1937]

  While building a custom strat setup for my latest AvA terrain, the thought occurred to me that this would be a good idea for the AH strat game as a whole, bringing it into the fight like never before. The huge mega city strat complex, while jaw-droppingly beautiful, took the strat game out of the overall game worse than it was before.  There are probably 50 threads on the subject, so I won't bother discussing it here.  My idea to bring the strats into the overall fight is this:



   Each strat factory is contained in its own mini-city.  When a map loads, all these small strat cities are located 2-3 sectors behind the front line(s), making them instantly worthy causes for attacking & defending, i.e. promoting combat.  If a strat factory is reduced to 0% or the field closest to it is captured, then that individual strat factory moves back 2 or 3 sectors.  This way, instead of all the strats being grouped in a small cluster that all moves to the rear together, we would get more of a leapfrogging chess-like strat game, where the factories are always near enough to the front to make them points of conflict.  Bomber pilots would now have more to do than ever before & wouldn't have to fly for an hour to reach the strats.

   To avoid splitting up the factories to cover both fronts for a country (and denying enemy countries from half the strat targets), we could slightly go back to the zone system.  Each country would be split into two zones.  Each zone would have its line of factory mini-cities on its corresponding front.  Let's say the Bishops blast the strats of the Knights on the Bish/Nit front.  The Knights would suffer the downtime effects on Bishop front, but the half of the country facing the Rooks would not be effected, since that front has its own strat factories.  The Bishops would be rewarded for their efforts without giving the Rooks a freebie advantage against the Knights.  Each side would have to earn its reward.

So that's my idea.  A compromise of all the strat systems we've had mixed with some new ideas.  The factories would always be 2-3 sectors from the front, providing continuous targets and points of conflict besides over airfields.  Each factory would be pushed back independently, and attacking these tagets benefits your country only & doesn't give the other opposing country a reward they did not earn.

Sorry I did not have time to make a clipboard map to show my idea, but I think you all can picture it in your melons.

I'd like to hear thoughts on this idea before moving it to the wishlist forum.  Please try to keep it on the topic of this particular system.  Do you think it would work as well as I do?  See more benefits or any drawbacks that I have not considered?  Let's hear it.  I just feel this would finally bring the strat game into the overall game & make it more important than ever before.  I think it also gives the terrain a more populated look, instead of a barren world containing nothing but airfields.  It gives each country a more realistic look. 

I spend 90% of my time in bombers, as that's what I flew in the USAF. This is one of the best suggestions I have seen to improve the game since I have been visiting the forum pages and viewing comments and suggestions. Hi Tech really needs to take a constructive suggestion like this and do everything he can to implement it into the game. I realize he is interested in mostly "stick and rudder" guys, but there is a lot of us in here like the bombing raid aspect of the game. Attacking airfields and towns is getting a little boring to say the least....I find myself spending less and less time in the game because of lack of interest. How about the B-25J and the B-26C invader series, would certainly give us bomber guys some more interesting things to do

[thndregg]

What is also very important in my opinion: No matter what change wil be implemented, there has to be more "promotion", the effects have top be made more visibilty.
For example, while the general idea of the traditional strats functionality  (resupply chain City->Factories->Fields) in AH is a sound one, it's also way too cryptic for the average AH player. Yes, there is a percentage given on some clipboard sub-menue, but that's too hidden, and the meaning is nebulous as well.
Assuming a fixed strat system, I'd like to see arena message once certain thresholds of damage are reached, like "Rook City down to 20% - Factory Supplies severly limited" or "Rook Ammo Factory down to 50% - Ammo Bunker rebuild time increased". That should create awareness and maybe get the raiders a "WTG" similar to the ones for "A94 has been captured by the Bishops".

Agreed.

[JimmyC]

+ 1 from me
I`m not even a Buff guy....
but I see a different style of combat here
 ..more variety is definitely good
good job
<S> Jimmy

[HGBuck]

I spend 90% of my time in bombers, as that's what I flew in the USAF. This is one of the best suggestions I have seen to improve the game since I have been visiting the forum pages and viewing comments and suggestions. Hi Tech really needs to take a constructive suggestion like this and do everything he can to implement it into the game. I realize he is interested in mostly "stick and rudder" guys, but there is a lot of us in here like the bombing raid aspect of the game. Attacking airfields and towns is getting a little boring to say the least....I find myself spending less and less time in the game because of lack of interest. How about the B-25J and the B-26C invader series, would certainly give us bomber guys some more interesting things to do

I spend 99.9% in Bombers.........and I totally agree with you! 

Thank You for your service earl1937   

[bustr]

The concept of heavy bombers was crippling effects at the source of a resource opposed to medium bombers for mission specific targeting of the resource in route to, or at it's destination. The only way heavy bomber players in the game now can have immediate feed back and reward for their efforts is to attack the resources in play at the location of the "mini war" hot engagements scattered around the map.

Immediate feed back is sinking CV's, dropping hangers, ord and troops. Flattening town centers and carpet bombing spawn campers. Strategic efforts to drop the strat then the HQ to achive the poorly understood master effect HTC occasionaly reminds us about. Generaly takes too long and is too vaughly unrewarding for the amount of time bomber pilots either have to invest each evening or want to invest for the reward achived. Then the area fills up with 163 and many times the heavy bombers hours of effort goes down the drain.

Granted this game has some scaled very long distances to run long term efforts across. But, by the design of insuring every single airfeild, GV base and port is it's own self generating "mini war" towards the 20% war win goal. Heavy bombers logicly cannot be given their true potential of being able to cripple strategic resources at the source to deny the enemy it's full potential to wage war. So AH heavy bombers are reduced to the medium bomber tacticle role of milk running localised resources to kill the localised "mini war" furballs, GV fights and CV actions.

Hitech mentioned that as the game programer, when you come up with an idea, you have to then think about how it can be abused. The single greatest strategic abuse would be to implement a new game objective that allowed heavy bombers to cripple one of the countries for any longer than a HQ raid makes the loss of country DAR irritating. Or deny paying customers globaly or regionaly the equal ability to wage offensive or defensive war outside of ENY or feild specific strategic efforts. You then give a minority of players control over the game play happiness of the player population of one of the 3 countries.

Once the expectaion of being able to login and wage equal war is gone, what is the point of playing this game? Any of you remember AH1 and what it was like to login to find your country was down to a single base to defend from? Anyone remember JSO and how it felt to be the targeted country by 300 players? Making it possible to strategicly impact a country's ability to wage war by a minority of heavy bombers is no different than JSO by 300 players. What does the first wave of day crew do when they login to an arena where the sparse numbers late night milk run crew has left them a crippled map?

This is why the game model for war is fought one feild at a time until you capture 20% of the other two countries feilds with the localised short term ability to deny war resources. Keeps the game from becoming one player one button press your country is screwed. The vTards would love that ability.

Why don't you guys with these dramatic game play changes ever ask your audience to specificly help you completely tear the idea apart to find every conceivable manner in which all of you will game it if Hitech agrees to use it? It's no different than a zoning code review for new home blue prints or FAA review approval for an experimental design or selling a plan to your company you want them to sink thousands of dollars into. That's ultimatly the review process Hitech will have to go through privatly to consider using any part of your masterpeice.

[USRanger]

Well excuuuuuuuuse me!!!  It was just an idea for discussion.

[thndregg]

Well excuuuuuuuuse me!!!  It was just an idea for discussion.

And it's a good one, Ranger. Well thought, well articulated, well intended. <S> 

[bustr]

Well excuuuuuuuuse me!!!  It was just an idea for discussion.

In 10 years of this ongong almost verbatum group attempt to change the game only the upsides are ever rigorusly discussed. Everyone loves the chance to add some finger paint of their own to this mural. No one actualy wants to deconstruct this sacred cow and see why and where it will fail in the face of how collectivly we know we will beat it to death learning how to game it to everyone elses disadvantage.

No one attempts to define the rational upon which the game is being presented and why it is presented in that manner. Then using that as the operational boundaries perform the postmortum you are dumping on Hitech's shoulders after you have all the fun at the white board showing your variation of AH the Avatar MovieII. Very few of these grand constructions will survive contact with the average player's desire to seek any advantage however miniscule to game the game. They are always intoxicating and intelectualy complex with more holes than fresh baked bread dough.

If you want to change this monstrocity, first honestly define why Hitech limits it to how it currently operates. Then for every idea you come up with to change the game, figure out how to game it in the worst ways possible.