Towns with no ack for vbases.

[Tracerfi]

Manable town Ack?? Is that a good idea

[Chalenge]

Just get rid of the flags. Flags have killed the game. Give us strategy instead. Deep thinking strategy so we get rid of the early war perk farming and so that there is always a way to stop the map resets. Force people to fight to win instead of hide and sneak and camp. Maps should be hard to reset and not easy.

[Lusche]

Sometimes I wonder if people explaining the game are actually playing it...

[Tilt]

There is practically zero relationship between how we implement the AH strategic game and historical WWII operational or strategic reality.  As I mentioned in another post, the purpose of the AH strat game is to add game play interest and facilitate individual fights between aircraft (and latterly GVs).  

Now if you support towns for vBases because you think it would make the game more fun, then I could respect that.  But arguing for it on the basis of historical realism indicates that you need to buy a few history books.  No offense intended.  

Well yes it would be more fun to be a little more historically accurate in terms of combat "routine" and strat objectives................

clearly there is considerable role play in the game and (with the overriding principle in place that it has to add fun) enhancing game play should follow history where ever it can be applied positively IMO.

and I have plenty of history books..............

re caldera's point I would fully concurr that towns might be better further from airfields but added to be close to gv fields............. gv spawns would target towns and so not approach air fields.......... air fields would have a single gv spawn to its town..................

capture battle is moved further away from the airfield
air fields have no offencive gv role
gv fields are close to towns so spawns join towns to each other across the map

OK it wont kill off air fields being horded, porked and "over" capped  but it would reduce the tendancy. IMO it would draw battle away from the air field and place it over a town............ some of which would have GV fields attached

for the rest leave the town as it is.................it's pretty neat compared to where AH started from in terms of towns and capture IMO

[bustr]

Would we still capture airfeilds? And if so what will be the capture mechanism? Flatten the base in one pass while never letting defenders off the feild then drop troops? Other wise NOE missions to capture a town next to a GV base will succeed almost 100% of the time.

The airfeild and town capture relationship promotes the large congregation of plane to plane combat  in a small area while ensuring all of the tools for a reasonable defence are on hand. It's simple and dosent require the majority of players to spend time watching the map for signs of an NOE to a town 10 miles away with the hopes enough players can get scrambled and at combat alt in time.

If you add to the GV base capture its own local town, then it will be steam rolled by carpet bombing lancs unless you increase auto ack density and lethality to super levels. If you pull the town out between airfileds and GV bases with spawns to have hide and seek fights. NOE missions will show up before a sufficient air defence can be mustered and flatten the town and your GV hide and seek fight.

Or do you really need a new class of town, factory and structure objects to which you can create custom towns that are GV battle freindly on a micro grid and plop them into maps next to or between GV bases? All buildings are destoryable for the immersion factor but, you don't capture it to win anything. You can blow a big hole through a building to see the tank hiding in the street behind it.

Just use it for GV furballing on a cross roads between major feilds and put up with tank busting jocks in their Ju's and Il's. With a custom town creator for tank furballs you can plop down a small city with roads between two close GV bases and fight through the rubble or flank the whole thing to capture either feild. Think Stalingrad but the buildings auto rebuild every 20-30 minutes.

[Chalenge]

Sometimes I wonder if people explaining the game are actually playing it...

I realize I posted a rather incomplete thought but I can elaborate in more detail. This indefensable town concept is only going to make vehicle fields easier to capture and we do not need easier at all. Instead I would like to make fields uncapturable unless there is a fight over it. Say a certain amount of kills or percentage of kills for that sector to one team or another or a completely dominant flattening of the base over a longer period of time. Smash and grab is too easy and the flags even though they are a good indicator are part of the simplicity problem.

[Tracerfi]

Manable town Ack?? Is that a good idea

how about my idea man-able town ack

[Lusche]

Smash and grab is too easy and the flags even though they are a good indicator are part of the simplicity problem.

Base/Town captures with the flag addition are far more difficult than it had been for like 90% of AH's history. Far less fields get captured since the new towns were introduced, both in absolute numbers as well in relatives (captures per manhour played, captures per individual pilot.The belated introduction of the flag changed thad only by a small margin. Bases change ownership much rarer than they had for most of the time AH is running, including the often cited "golden age".

Just get rid of the flags. Flags have killed the game.

The flags hadn't changed anything to the worse.

[Midway]

I got to do some fighting in the town and I wish they had these towns at vbases. I remember the towns didnt have ack at first. given the nature of how hidden the acks are id prefer a town without acks for vbases since they are rediculously hard to find for ground vehicles.

the towns are just plain fun.

GVing in the strat cities is awesome fun too... so many bridges, buildings, factories, roads, hiding places, etc...

[Chalenge]

Base/Town captures with the flag addition are far more difficult than it had been for like 90% of AH's history. Far less fields get captured since the new towns were introduced, both in absolute numbers as well in relatives (captures per manhour played, captures per individual pilot.The belated introduction of the flag changed thad only by a small margin. Bases change ownership much rarer than they had for most of the time AH is running, including the often cited "golden age".

The flags hadn't changed anything to the worse.

Wrong. We have three sectors worth of cons at every field capture. I dont remember seeing that when I started playing. I can see that since the hangar count and gun count has increased for vehicle fields that captures would go down but the gangs (hordes) have increased since it became capture the flag. Small maps are often times reset in a matter of hours.

[Lusche]

Wrong. We have three sectors worth of cons at every field capture. I dont remember seeing that when I started playing. I can see that since the hangar count and gun count has increased for vehicle fields that captures would go down but the gangs (hordes) have increased since it became capture the flag. Small maps are often times reset in a matter of hours.

Why would the flags have increased the hordes?
What increases the need to have a horde is making the capture more difficult. The flags made it easier, trying to rectify the huge increase in capture difficulty by the introduction of the new towns. That worked only to a small extend.

Small maps are often times reset in a matter of hours.

As did they before we got the new towns.  Far more base captures both absolute and relatively, quicker basetakes and more won wars.

[Tracerfi]

Man-able Town ack will solve the problem why am i ignored   

[bustr]

Recently Hitech expressed a point about simplicity and focusing on that going forward. Complexity dosen't get used in this game if players have to expend too much effort.

Simplifying the capture system again at first would see maps rolled because we are currently geared to do everthing as hoards just to take feilds. But, with time as small groups of players discovered they could take bases without the need of 30 freinds again. Human nature would cause small groups of players to spawn more small actions spread out while coinciding with large actions to take advantage of the general focus on the big darbar to sneak bases on the quick under the cover of the large action.

Granted this would create a different kind of Whack-A-Mole game akin to the early days of the old style towns. But, simplifying base capturing would reduce the emberassing spectical of knights (from my perspective) spending hours blowing the timing every 30-45 minutes on a small airfeild capture while being picked by an eveh higher hoard of enemy fighters who won't come down and fight. We have become so dysfunctional and lazy at base taking, no one bothers to attempt interdiction against the nearest airfeild spawning the high altitiude hideing fighter hoard. The planning for that is too complex and removes a few fighters from the safety and conveinience of the base vulching hoard.

Heck, knights wont de-ack unless it's a mission and FBDred orders them for fear of not having enough 20mm left to vulch easy kills. This is one of the kinds of dysfunction long drawn out stalemate base capture attempts with hoards devolves our game culture to. We become timid looking for easy kills. As always there are exceptions to this. But, even they must be getting tired of this timid "herring shoal" centric style of ACM currently in vogue.

The current hoard needed to mill around trying to take a small airfeild for hours is producing a secondary negative effect of higher altitiude fighter hoards not willing to mix it up, and never learning ACM skills beyond the HO or picking and running. This is with exception for the squads and individuals who know how to run fighter sweeps and want to mix it up with the lower enemies playing fudgeball with the feild ack for hours.

Our current capture process seems to produce stalemates and a propencity for fighters flying around with altitiude timidly avoiding the fight unless numbers are on their side. In response it favors organised fighter sweeps to push them to the deck and kill them but, the organisational part of that begins to reach the complexity problem opposed to simply being able to just up and get into fights. On any given night the 20 or so guys willing to scrum it up in the bushes in the MA are the same 20 or so guys who regularly try to kill each other in the DA for the most part.  Thye are always the exception to the general rule of MA play culture.

I know, just fly stright and level. Eventualy that high hoard will come down all 12 of them versus you. By that point Fester and his 262 coalt aginst my Poni is a fairer fight.

[Chalenge]

Why would the flags have increased the hordes?
What increases the need to have a horde is making the capture more difficult. The flags made it easier, trying to rectify the huge increase in capture difficulty by the introduction of the new towns. That worked only to a small extend.
As did they before we got the new towns.  Far more base captures both absolute and relatively, quicker basetakes and more won wars.

No. The reason we have hordes is because the mentality of players in AH now is to go in low and attack one ack and auger. If you see a plane vulch it. And by all means knock the dar down so they dont know we are coming even though three sectors of cons are already overhead. Its not about flying. Its about using a cartoon device to get from A to B and fire everything you have at C. Occasionally this style of play mutates into someone capable of going from A to B while gaining something called altitude and HOing the first airplane they see. If they live then they return to A as soon as possible and if not then thats been taken care of and its time to repeat. If they get shot but dont die its time to dive to the deck so that their friends can have an easy lunch. Bombers come in now at 3k and fighters at 5-8k. No need for altitude because they have enough bombers to lose half and still kill the field and town. The fighters can protect the bombers long enough to accomplish the smash and grab. To stop the smash and grab you have to dive into sixty planes or more and get the goon before he drops but wait! There are four to six goons so just dont bother.

I dont know what game you are playing but it isnt AH.

[Lusche]

No. The reason we have hordes is because the mentality of players in AH now is to go in low and attack one ack and auger. (...)

I said "What increases the need to have a horde is making the capture more difficult." I didn't say anything about other possible or probable reasons. Don't try to put things in my mouth.

It all started with your statement "flags have killed the game". All my staements and explanations are targeted at that single statement, which is totally incorrect. Flags have not changed the game at all. As I pointed out before, they had just made cpaturing an arifield a tad easier, which was made much more difficult by the new towns a few tours before. That was, in some way, a 'game changer'. That massively reduced the base captures, and the introduction of the flags was just a minor(!) corrective to that effect. Even with the flags, we have much less base captures than we had all the years up to the introduction of the new towns.

The flag was just a minor corrective without any direct impact on game culture and gameplay compared to all the years before.