fix the strat game

[Hap]

As I consider these things, I think in terms of 10% of our "in flight" numbers as doable roster for high altitude bomber missions.  Eons ago, I did my best to rage against the "gamer machine."  All to no avail.  Now, it's like, Okay, given the # of players available right now, what's a number I think I might be able to recruit for a run?  And really, that 10%'ish number is sufficient to create fun and fight.  I think at night the largest group I had was 10, and the smallest was 3 or 4.  So between 30 and 9 bombers in the air counting drones.

Also, doing nothing in a hurry helps. 

And, should HTC increase the inducement to hit strats from a point persective and not a damaging the other side's ability to "gamer on," more opportunities will present themselves.

Oh, little maps.  We've had a few in succession where all the strat stuff doesn't fly with the exception of the "we dare you and double dare you" BIG mission 163's be darned.  That's fine with me.  Been finding some joy in the 250 lb B17 load out of late.  And fwiw, looked at the load out of the B29 in terms of gross weight versus bomb size.  I gravitate towards the 10K, 12K, & 14K choices: 500 lbers, 1,000 lbers, and 250 lbers respectively.  A funny note.  Last 29 run I posted last week sometime was with the fifty-six 250 lb bombs.  We get to alt on Military Power then reduce to Normal Power (been doing that on all my runs for better of a month now regardless of the ride; I like it.).  Well the group's salvo was anything from 4 to, I think some guys were salvo 8.  I got 2 hangars on one salvo: the one I aimed for and an adjacent one that I had no intention of hitting.  Can't recall the salvo . . . prob 6 or something like that.  Was sort of funny.

[Tilt]

grouping the depots together would create large player groups working together to bomb them.

Way back when we had depots .............. <sigh>

They were never fully or properly  implemented IMO.......just a few added to each map............. I would love to see a map where every town was replaced by a "depot" which served the local field no closer than a third of  a sector away. GV fields & ports placed right next to their own depots (on the edge of).

We could have had some fantastic battles over depots allowing capture without the need for total field porkage.... more access to conflict and more land grab.......

[The Fugitive]

You would think the towns would be enough to fight over, and in the old days they were. Many time fields would get porked or fighter hangers dropped, but it was a continuing battle and things were never down long. Hangers were out of sequences, people would run supplies in, fights would be pushed out to the dar ring and then close back in as the hangers cycled through.

Today, the capture is far more important than the fight. Now they just roll in and flatten everything, capture the base, and move someplace else. People don't defend like they did before because they is no way to defend against the large hordes rolling in, so most rarely bother.

The strat should be fixed, only to make it a juicy target. That way it creates another place for combat to happen. If HTC said they would add the name of the squad to the web page each tour that had the most damage points at HQ for that tour, would we see a bigger push towards HQ. I would think ya might.

[Dover]

exactly fugitive by makeing these targets worth value it makes a incentive for the fight over them and now having a huge horde going for the strats would be a aircombat on a bombing run and not a hoing or vulching mission on a base

i have had so many people since this idea came up go yeah if they where worth something to me in form of points and value of hitting (where in hitting a base gives you a base toward a map win) they would join

but like others have said on here most strat runs don't start till you cap so close its just a small flight or they are only a small group of people that won't really do much damage to them

make them bigger for all i care or increase the damage per building thats fine be me just make it worth while so we have that option to do it

i had 5 kills in b24's yesterday the combat on teh ma map was tight and close i had fighters on my tail coming and going i ran across 2 sets of bombers and had bomber to bomber combat it was a amazing 40 min run that ended with me getting shot down while trying to land with a pilot wound i wasn't upset about one person who attacked me in the air but to attack a guy trying to take off or land is just rude IMO but if you give longer range targets this could be a constant thing

how great would it be to up toward a enemy strat system and run across another countries set of bombers and escorts doing the same thing

this can be soem epic fights not to mention when the escorts find it worth doing then the 163's and stuff not only become less effective against the bombers but will have better fights themselves

[Tilt]

If our map builders put towns right next to bases then  porking the base and then covering it with a hard cap becomes a pre requisit to capture..............

As the town is placed further away then base porkage and the hard cap becomes less of a prerequisit for capture ........ and indeed less easy to maintain over both town and field at the same time

OK even given the above (I would agree) capture is easier if no one defends but so what? ..........hordes will always roll maps.......... but at least the chances are that anyone who wants to defend can at least get off the runway.........

If the town was over a third of a sector away then the linked field would benefit from a vehicle spawn to the town perimeter.......

Additionally all spawns would point to towns, GV fields and ports........focussing combat at the town or at a GV field........

I fully agree with the idea of bringing strat more into the game............... for me its too complex ( too vague in consequence) for many players (these days) to enjoy. I would just convert our present large city (with its various "industries") to a large set of "city" objects which are high scoring and affect rebuild times of every thing in proportion to the ratio of healthy "city objects" to total country assets.

[Lusche]

If our map builders put towns right next to bases then  porking the base and then covering it with a hard cap becomes a pre requisit to capture..............

As the town is placed further away then base porkage and the hard cap becomes less of a prerequisit for capture ........ and indeed less easy to maintain over both town and field at the same time

Years ago we had one map wich was very exceptional in asmuch as the towns were very far away from the airfields.
The outcome: Indeed there was less need to flatten the field (see the other extreme on Ozkansas where base ack covers the town even!), but the towns fell much more often to surprise raids, as the defenders couldn't get to the town quick enough...

It's a mixed blessing.

[bustr]

I fully agree with the idea of bringing strat more into the game............... for me its too complex ( too vague in consequence) for many players (these days) to enjoy. I would just convert our present large city (with its various "industries") to a large set of "city" objects which are high scoring and affect rebuild times of every thing in proportion to the ratio of healthy "city objects" to total country assets.

You were presenting some great alternatives to work with untill you fell back on what you would really like. Strategic choke points that globaly effect a country as punishment for not paying attention to them (your strategies to poofh their fun).

The success of the MA is due to it's unstructured chaos and serendipitous moments of quality fun. You cannot inject order to force the same players to have the fun you think they would enjoy the same as yourself. The moment you do that no one has fun but, they will all vote specificly against you for forceing it on them. They choose to sign up for special events after a long PR process. They come to the MA to not be bothered following any ones orders.

If you think strategic choke points are the ordered way to make the MA into a more fun place for everyone. Talk to the AvA guys about creating a test version of your strategic dream world and help PR players to sample it. Other wise you are asking HTC to shoot the goose becasue you have a dream an MA you think is better than theirs.

Equal ability to wage war at all times within ENY ( since Dover wanted to parse hairs over it).

When you stick to this princeple changes to the game seem narrow of scope and ineffectual to paradigm shifting. In the long run it allows time and the smallness of the change to protect the golden goose while players discover it's weaknesses and possibly evolve a new focus in the game play. The evolution is chaotic, organic, and player driven as a community. Not imposed by HTC as long as the primary rule survives it or we get ENY'd to control human nature.

Choke points are tools to "Force" players to play a certain way in response or loose their fun as a "punishment". All stick and no carrot. The MA tosses out stiicks and carrots equaly to everyone and leaves them alone.

Moving the towns sounded good. I was trying to understand how to keep Dover's crew from hoard NOEing your airfield and killing your hangers behind you while making you think the attack on the town was the real fight. Most players in the MA think in single moves and would fall for that for awhile.

[Tilt]

Years ago we had one map which was very exceptional in as much as the towns were very far away from the airfields.
The outcome: Indeed there was less need to flatten the field (see the other extreme on Ozkansas where base ack covers the town even!), but the towns fell much more often to surprise raids, as the defenders couldn't get to the town quick enough...

It's a mixed blessing.

Yes I remember this map........... the weird thing is that in some places the town was actually closer (or as close) to another field than it's linked field.....I think this is carrying it too far. Further the spawns on this maps still pointed at fields and not towns........  so there was a mix relating to the actual focus of battle....................any core philosophy of terrain game play can be poorly implemented.

which brings me to bustr

The whole point of my suggestion was to enable everyone access to combat...it does not matter (IMO) if a side is wining or losing as long as its players have access to combat. (indeed "equal" access to the war)

When a field is lost or gained the "front" would effectively move and the war would continue.............. no one is "punished" as you put it, one side wins bases the other loses bases .... each continue in perpetual conflict just as it does now until one side meets reset criteria. Rinse ....repeat.

Strategic targets should IMO play their part (in influencing the land grab)  without denying access to combat................

The detailia of this could work in many ways but I would like to see them greatly simplified

In one example


Where by strats are reduced to a massive city and city health has a  relationship to rebuild times which in particular would be town object rebuild times. Field assets could be modelled to rebuild (normally) quite quickly such that city health  did not disastrously make hanger/ammo/supply/radar  rebuild times extend to unplayable periods. Nominal town object rebuild times could either be set to the present #Min's or even have a different multiplier used for their ratio of proportionality. (the devil is in the maths detail).

Here the maths gets a bit more complex but the base concept of more city damage (less city health) = longer rebuild times remains the same.

using a ratio of 1:(1/#%)^.5   (#=%city health)

50% damage (50% health) = rebuild time x 1.414
66% damage (34% health)= rebuild time x 1.73
75% damage (25% health)= rebuild time x 2
90% damage (10% health)= rebuild time x 3.16
99% damage (1% health)= rebuild time x 10

You will note the relationship is exponential and the new Cities are actually massive and the above would apply to the whole city not just its present "factory" targets and the "inner city". In practice city rebuild times even as long as 3 hours would mean massive sustained raids would have to be required to produce a level of damage that is greatly over 75% However if this regularly occurs and becomes too unbalancing because cities suddenly become key gameplay targets then HTC could modify the ratio maths

using a ratio of 1:(1/#%)^.2


50% damage (50% health) = rebuild time x 1.15
66% damage (34% health)= rebuild time x 1.25
75% damage (25% health)= rebuild time x 1.32
90% damage (10% health)= rebuild time x 1.59
99% damage (1% health)= rebuild time x 2.5


So what you see above is actually a very simple strategic attrition model where  there is a relation ship between city attrition and rebuild time. A model that can be tuned to meet the gameplay that evolves from its implementation ( the proportionality integer being an arena setting (^.#) adjusted until the best balance is achieved in game. As above we could have two such settings in the arena settings being one for field assets (hangers etc) and another for town objects.

The above is an example of how such a philosophy could be implemented. Its not a thousand miles away from what we do now and it can be tuned to meet the requirements of gameplay.

[AceHavok]

ThunderEgg's bomber missions where probably the best fun I've had in this game.  We always found something to talk about.  The occasional skirmishes where really a blood pumper.