Any Saturday Night Stuff Happenin'?

[Oddball-CAF]

Gents,
   I'm fillin' in as The 47 Ronin "Operations Officer" for the next few weeks
while "Awacs" is at Air Force NCO school.
  Anyway, I'm presently pretty burned out on the Late War arena and
was thinking of doing this week's "Squad Night" for us in the Axis/Allied
arena.
  Now, as I'm responsible for these guys having some fun, I don't wish
to commit to this unless there's going to be some action happening.
I don't care if it's furballing, bomber escorting, bomber intercepts, etc.,
so long as it's sufficiently "busy" in this arena to give my guys something
fun to do for an hour or two.
  Can you provide me with the number of pilots who usually show up in
the Axis/Allied arena at about 9PM, Saturdays Eastern U.S. time?
  I'm guessing I can bring about a dozen guys in on this.
  I know you guys are trying to build up some enthusiasm for it, so I've
got no problem committing to it for a Saturday evening. If there's no guarantee
of any numbers being there, perhaps you can put the call out to some
other Late War squads and we can set something up for the 26th.

Best regards, Oddball
The 47 Ronin

[jimson]

What we can do is advertise the heck out of it and try to get you some opposition. Stand by and we will get back to you here.

[jimson]

Oddball, we will start pumping it up. Shouldn't be a problem with lot's of advertising and when people see there are players here, they will pop in.

[DrBone1]

I will hopefully be able to bring over some of my Group on Saturday Gents we shall see. 

[USRanger]

125th Spartan Warriors will be joining us Saturday night.

[Oddball-CAF]

Sweet. I'm expecting a good turnout for this.
See you guys tomorrow night, then! <S>

Best regards,
  Odd

[Raphael]

you can count with the presence of one dweeb 

[captain1ma]

great turnout tonight, at one point i counted 33. thanks to everyone that came in!! maybe we should make this a regular saturday night thing?

[Raphael]

great turnout tonight, at one point i counted 33. thanks to everyone that came in!! maybe we should make this a regular saturday night thing?

Sounds good

[Oddball-CAF]

great turnout tonight, at one point i counted 33. thanks to everyone that came in!! maybe we should make this a regular saturday night thing?

I can't commit myself to it each Saturday night as that's The 47 Ronin squad night.
But, if you make it some other evening, I'd be more than happy to fly in there for
a couple of hours and try to flesh the numbers out.
  As I'm no longer in the chain of command with The 47 Ronin, I cannot
officially commit us as a squadron in there each week. But, from what I
heard on our squad vox tonight, most of the guys found it fun and a
refreshing change. That being the case, we'll discuss it and see if it's
something the lads would like to do on a rotating basis, perhaps every
other week or so.
   I had a lot of fun in there this evening, and we had some good fights. My only
complaint was with the icons for the enemy. When I flew in there last week, they
were -entirely- off regardless of distance, and I found that MUCH more immersive.
Given that the planes in use last week were more diverse, it made it much cooler
when you engaged one to try and discern just what it was you were dancin' with.
  Tonight with the NME visible, albeit at short range, that anticipation/excitement
wasn't there. Just my perspective from the peanut gallery.
  In closing, I'd like to thank ALL of the pilots who showed up tonight. I think we've
seen that the Axis vs Allies arena can be a viable alternative at times to the
goings on in the Late War arena.
  It is my opinion that given time and commitment of a core group of pile-its
that we can expand on its use and have some fun beyond the normal stuff
we all see on a daily basis in the LWA.

Best regards,
Oddball
The 47 Ronin
 

[jimson]

Staff tries to fly on Tuesday nights and we would also like to get some special missions going on Thursdays and on Saturdays at least between scenarios, because good nights on these days lead to some residual attendance on the other days and we get more folks in all week.

Icon and other settings are up to the staffer who is running that week, but we might be able to get the ok from that weeks staffer to adjust them for any squad that wants to bring 10 or 12 guys in for a squad night.

We will also gin it up and try to get some opponents in there for ya.

[Oddball-CAF]

  Well, there's a lot of squadrons in AH, thus there's lots of squadron "COs".
My intial suggest would be that you try to compile a list of COs for as
many squads as you can find; the squads listing has a number of
squadron rosters and in many cases, links to their respective websites.
  You could perhaps garner email addresses or contact 'em via
their website if they've an option to do that, or if you know their
handle here on the BBS you could shoot 'em a PM.
  I would suggest a standardized introductory form letter such
as "Hi, I'm Jaeger, one of the guys responsible for the Axis vs Allies
arena. We're attempting to generate more interest in this arena
and I am directly soliciting your help as a squadron commanding officer."
  Then you lay out the day (should be the same for each week) and the
time. ie: "Each Tuesday evening at 8PM Eastern, U.S." and give
them an overview of what the arena's about.
  In conjunction with the direct solicitiation of help from the COs, keep
posting in the general area of the website as well as your AvA area.
I'd post in the "Squads" area as well as it's news and of interest to
squadrons.
  I get the impression that there is a group of guys who "run" the AvA,
so perhaps designating one of 'em as the arena "Press Laisson" ,
(he being a marketer of the arena so to speak) might be an option.
  I don't see the AvA as being a viable option right now for guys
just loggin' in at anytime of the day or evening and finding a sufficient
number of guys to warrant their flight time.
  What I do see is a viable alternative at least one night per week
(set day and time) where guys log on, see that there's 30-40
people or more (down the road maybe) and decide to hop in
there and see what's happening.
  With a sufficient number of guys showing up steadily each week,
the introduction of small scale, coordinated attacks could begin
as guys get used to each other and develop towards working with
each other each week.
  For example, you stated there were 33 guys in there at one point
last night. We could have perhaps organized some strikes by the
Germans with escorts for their 110s and or Stukas with the
Brits intercepting 'em, and delineating over country or the special
arena moderator text, that takeoff were to be done only at field
such and such, thereby limiting the grids that had to be covered
and increasing the odds of both parties finding some cool action,
and knowing they were part of a dedicated mission, be it bombing
or intercepting.
  Similar to the "Snapshots", I think would be a good analogy.
But, always optional. ie: if some guy hops in there he's not "ordered"
to participate in the strikes/sweeps; that's left up to him.
   I'll say again that I enjoyed icons being OFF much better than
the setup we had last night. A lot of the immersion factor was gone
once we knew exactly what we were up against and just
how close the enemy was at some points during furballs.
  I'm a flight-simmer lite, but I rather enjoy the icons being off,
for events like that.

Best regards, and good luck building it up. <S>

Oddball
The 47 Ronin