Author Topic: Some thoughts on what I'd like to see in the Combat Theatre... (Read 1806 times)

hblair · « **on:** December 03, 2001, 09:56:00 AM »

- We need the baltic terrain, or something similar (no bigger than 256X256 for sure), in there with an early war plane set.

109G2's / FW190A5's / FW190F8's / 205's / JU88's
-vs.-
P51B's / P38L's / Spit5's / Spit9's / B26's

or something like that. Don't even know if all these served in the same theatre at the same time. But some kind of equally competitive planeset.

- Tower only radar.

- Short Friendly icons. No enemy icons.

- Scoring. On the same page as the main arena scoring. Is there any way we could just make fighter/bomber/vehicle categories? Rather than putting them all together and averaging them out? Some people don't care to fly fighters, and others don't care to fly bombers. Besides, this is a historically slanted arena and fighter jocks didn't pilot bombers, nor vice versa.

- Field capture enabled. With the use of the C47 for each side. (we need a JU52)

- I'd also like to see the GPS go away, just a clipboard map to pull up, no little plane on there showing you where you are or where you're going. From takeoff you'd use your compass, and after airborne you'd need to look at the terrain to see where you were. With a 256 X 256 terrain, I don't think it would be a challenge, I tried it offline and was able to find my way around easily. The compass would really serve a purpose. I guess checking of strat conditions in-flight would be okay.

I think it would be nice if we could have a 128 X 128 map to start out with, with about 8 or 10 fields or so. This way the arena wouldn't dwarf the population there, although it might be too small...

I know the CT prolly won't ever be HTC's bread and butter, and it might hard to justify much programming time on it, but man I'm ready for this kinda thing. I really miss the WB's historical arena in the days of old. I used to love flying around the ETO in my 109 having to constantly kick my rudder and check six, because you didn't know what was there unless you looked. And the dogfights were just awesome. I know it's not everybodys cup of tea, but getting in the cockpit of a P38 and playing dick bong for a while or getting in a 109g6, and kinda thinking like you're Erich Hartmann vs. some yaks, that's what this is all about to me. It's hard for me to do that in the main arena these days. Sure, I can have fun in the main, but the immersion's just not there.

Sorry for the rambling.

Anybody got anyhting else to add?

[ 12-10-2001: Message edited by: hblair ]

Zigrat · « **Reply #1 on:** December 03, 2001, 10:47:00 AM »

sounds real good hb. the only thing is in CT i think it should take multiple goonies to capture a field. mabye 4 or so to prevent off hour grabbing by solo guys.

hey if htc doesnt wanna make the main arena hard core okay. so lets make the ct hardcore

that way we can try out different stuff and if it works, great, if it doesnt work, great too, you can just goto the MA

38isPorked · « **Reply #2 on:** December 03, 2001, 11:14:00 AM »

Sounds good. Put a P-38F in the game to make it fair *G*

K West · « **Reply #3 on:** December 04, 2001, 12:47:00 PM »

What Zigrat said. If I have two hours to spend online I'd prefer the CT although with improved setup.

As for planeset? I could careless if the planes set starts off late war or early. Just don't let it get stale by being the same for too long.

Also, ditto for what Ripsnort posted in the topic "Time for Plan B"

Westy

Ripsnort · « **Reply #4 on:** December 04, 2001, 12:50:00 PM »

I like Zig's C47 suggestion for preventing 'low-attendance' times. hell I like almost all the suggestions I've seen for the CT.
LETS DO IT!

LePaul · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2001, 02:34:00 PM »

Can I hazzard a suggestion?

I hear a lot of great talk in here about early plane sets, late plane sets, etc etc. I know *I*, for one, like a lot of what many of you mention. But let's try one more variant, if I may dare suggest it.

How about one of the Main Arena maps (yes, not as big as you guys like) but with the mods that Rip has mentioned? For one, the radar, make it be tower only. See how many are drawn into an arena where the realism is up a notch. No reduced planesets, just more realism.

I'm all for the radar to pretty much go away. I'd like to see recon take over that role, as well as people leaning a bit more on the communication buffer for reliable data, as we do when attacking fields (is ack down? gvs present? city down? etc etc).

I think that will draw your diehards, weary of the furball fights that NDIsles draws in the Main.

And, rotate the weather/winds aloft and many of the other things people have talked about.

Let me have my Lancasters and Yaks....and some more realsim. Or, make a "Hard Core" arena and apply everything above to it....I dunno! I'm easy!

Sabre · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2001, 04:04:00 PM »

Like all the ideas except I'd keep the in-flight bar-dar for A/C above the arena radar alt, and for GV's. This is a good representation IMO of what 1940-1945 radar coverage could do. That way, if you lift off and stay below the radar alt, they never know you're there. Good balance between the need to find fight and need to practice SA.

K West · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2001, 05:15:00 PM »

I definately agree Sabre. Although I wonder if even bar indicators range could be limited somewhat. Not sure if it can be set that way. What I mean is if I really shouldn't see any colored bars for aircraft forming up over Denmark or Norway if I am at a base near London. OR is that going too far? Either way, colored bar indicators are generally a good representation of contact information.

Unless ....there was something more realistic that HTC could develop to replace bar indicators like a RadarOPs radio channel we could tune to and get text based reports of reported enemy contact. Too much?

Westy

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: O'Westy ]

Aiswulf · « **Reply #8 on:** December 04, 2001, 05:30:00 PM »

All these ideas are great.
You can guarantee that my plane will be in this kind of CT.
I'm all for getting rid of inflight radar all together JUST to see what the immersion would be like. Give me a high "pucker factor" dude!!

I can just imagine stumbling across a major raid while scouting around a bit...
"the frantic calls for backup, trying to vector in friendlies all the while trying to avoid/stay above the fighter escorts"

You want a new name for CT just call it HCC - Hard Core Combat

Zigrat · « **Reply #9 on:** December 05, 2001, 07:13:00 PM »

i agree, i differ frommy hard core compadre hblair in that i think bar dar inflight is okay within a certain distance of friendly terr (ie over friendly or neuttral territory) to simulate ground vectoring capabilities -- getis you in the area but doesnt tell you that theres a bandit on your low 6

Achttag · « **Reply #10 on:** December 07, 2001, 09:10:00 AM »

Not nearly wise enough to come up with any coherent thought, anyway my contribution to the CT discussion. So here goes with some ramblings maybe supporting someone elses good idea, possibly dissagreeing with another or just my own wishful thinking. All IMHO of course.

For starters big v. small maps. Historically, a bomber mission was a long flight over large tracts of occupied territory, harried by fighters most of the way - I don't see how this squares with a small map.

Air warfare. Seen a lot of lets get this airplane set v. that airplane set blah, blah, airplane, airplane. As I understand it at the time airpower played a supporting role to the ground war. If we want to be historical then we need guys dukeing it out on the ground. Like we need an allied tank or that can't really happen.

Winning the war. A natural enough thing to want. We do that by using troops to occupy the other guys backyard, just like in RL. Pretty sure everyone agrees we need land capture in the CT. But, its difficult without all the opposing powers having the equipment to do that (an Opel Blitz truck then, but what did the Russians and Japanese use?).

Radar. Anyone ever play Dune and remembers how the dar coverage would advance as you explored the enemys territory? Something like that would be nice.

One of the biggest issues I guess is defining axis and allies, and their shared equipment. Things like will the Brits insist on a Bedford 2 tonner instead of the Mxx series USofA vehicles for instance? Probably not, but I guess the IJN are going to be seriously unhappy about using the JU88.

I suppose the point is do HTC have the resources to add the extra kit (I know it doesn't seem much - a couple of vehicles, a couple of bombers but I'm pretty sure in reality its a whole ton of work for them) to make a CT possible?

Just my 0.2, no disrespect guys.

Achttag
<< Dragon Hawks >> Armored division
Tiger tank? Please? an' a Sherman for my buddy over there.

hblair · « **Reply #11 on:** December 07, 2001, 09:29:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Zigrat:
i agree, i differ frommy hard core compadre hblair in that i think bar dar inflight is okay within a certain distance of friendly terr (ie over friendly or neuttral territory) to simulate ground vectoring capabilities -- getis you in the area but doesnt tell you that theres a bandit on your low 6

I can go along with this.

hblair · « **Reply #12 on:** December 07, 2001, 09:30:00 AM »

Thanks for the reply Achttag. Good points.

oki · « **Reply #13 on:** December 09, 2001, 10:12:00 PM »

players? ITISAGHOSTTOWN

Wotan · « **Reply #14 on:** December 10, 2001, 05:40:00 AM »

Maybe you can talk nuttz into doing a new med terrain that way we can get italian birds in on the mix.

Also I would recommend the new BW terrain fer ct over Norway. We tried Norway at 1st in the ct before switching over to the euro map.

It proved to large and the flying times were just as bad.

I like the euro map its just so buggy with the way strat targets are assigned that it would take a major overhaul.

But with the small number of fields in the BW map do you think it would be playable?

As fer the rest of the suggestions bar dar is great idea until we see what numbers we get in the ct. Scoring would add a major draw for folks but it may add to the dweebiness (gangbanging base rape etc.) so I'm 50/50 on it.