If people lack an adequate fighting chance to complete a mission due to the environment of buff killing planes they simply wont fly them because like its been said, there is no reward for the risk.
As it is now, when strats are several sectors away from hq, the chances of landing successfully are high compared to having to fend off Me163's where the chances are slim.
I'm going to take a slight risk and speak for the old farts who have been around for a decade and who enjoy long bomber runs. Now obviously, what I say will not be agreed upon by all, but at least on the Bishop side, I've flown with these guys for years, and have come to know their likes and dislikes to some degree. I know of no one who has said, "Gosh, I wish B29's were cheap enough so we could fly them at 15K (pick your altitude if you like), and not worry about perk bank running dry when we lose them." So making them cheap is not a solution that would improve the game. If anything, it would make it worse, more gamey, arcade-like, and weird.
As to town center milking, well let's ditch that in favor of strat milking. I think that's the jist (not as an alternative to town centers per se) of these threads. And since B29 will continue to cost roughly 300 perks for a formation (yes, yes, depending on eny up or down), we're not going to see them much at cloud layer over strats should strat perk earning potential be greatly increased. What would transpire, I suppose, would be a greater frequency of high alt buff runs into the strat complexes that are out of 163 range. And also, an increase in #'s of those participating. In no way am I imagining the same large numbers that your average NOE let's club an airfield to death garners. 8 buff formations will fill a sector with dar. It's that dar moving slowly that get's the other side's attention, and creates a nice semi-historical fight. Even without 29's, whenever we see a rearward dar pop up, we know what's up: a big buff run. We don't know the target right off the bat. We don't know their terminal altitude or planes. But we know something's afoot, and it's in the 8+ pilot/player range.
Again, attempting to speak for guys like me the old buffers, I've never heard it bandied about that the game would be better if folks played like us. Never once. My best friends in the game are all over 40 years old and most over 50. It would be ludicrous to expect what trips our trigger to fire the imagination of twenty year olds and kids.
As things stand in the game right now, those sort of missions are entirely possible even without B29's. I don't fly them regularly because they aren't posted often. The last one I participated in was about 2 weeks ago. Certainly, during the peak hours, on country channel, someone will voice their desire to hit strats or hq. In other words, a deep run. And, not infrequently, that mission gets a few participants, let's say less that 5. And by the time they arrive, they are down to 3 players because I'm supposing the ones that quit found it tedious. Now the names associated with those missions aren't one's I know well. So, I figure they are newer guys excited by the notion of hitting our enemies industrial complexes. Well, it does sound good, right? And the attrition rate of those runs sounds just about right to me. It's more fun to do other stuff for them than a 45 min+ buff run.
As to the older set of players who buff, 45 min+ is not an attention span challenge, nor do we regard it as tedious or boring. However, with the results being so sparse, I cannot justify it from a in-game strategic point of view or from a personal, "Yup, that run earned all of us 50 perks" point of view." It's a time to visit, play, and have fun.
Now, if the point earning were shifted, and participants who landed did in fact earn 50 to 100 buff perks each due to that text buffer filling up big time, that would pull more of us into the air on those sort of runs more frequently.
I really don't see a down side at all. I don't think teenagers to that 30 year old still-a-teen-at-heart crowd could care less what we old ducks do. Unless, it's to shoot us down since we're milking their strats. And amongst the Bishops, I can think of two squads who'd likely be amenable to such a change, and I can think of, oh . . . somewhere around 10 guys to whom a strat milking high reward set up would appeal to naturally given our ages, personalities, and temperaments. Now . . . what I'm not adding in is the excitement factor that sort of "pulls along" other players into such a mix. Get some "name" guys upping such a run (and I'm most definitely NOT one of those name guys) then the #'s can balloon to 10 to 20 guys in a run. Sounds like fun to me.
Now I'll shut up after this. What was it, a month or two after the 29's were introduced, someone from Rooks or Knights but up a HUGE B29 run into the Bish strats. Very successfully I might add. Was way fun for the Bish who were unable to turn them back. We saw the dar, we tracked it, it's all we were talking about. Guys, lots, started upping, and it was a melee to say the least.
I do understand the arguments against making strats uber rewarding for buff strikes. As I see them they follow:
It's dumb and boring. Most players won't participate. You know, I think that covers the arguments opposing such a change. No buff pilots I know want "most players" to fly in such a run. Only need 8 to 15 to put up 24 to 45 planes. And there are during peak times 8 to 15 guys give or take who fancy such runs fun.
Now there might be coding problems that make such a change impossible. Or HTC might know that it would be a bad business move. Well, those would be the two deal killers in my book. Those are the only ones I see.
