Construction Ahead... planning stages

[kvuo75]

i'm thoroughly confused on what is good for the game.. the game is fun..

fun is what's good for the game. 

[Volron]

Good Morning,

Again, just waxing out loud here - kicking out ideas, nothing set in stone.

In my head, the property lines / hedge rows would be more like sparse tree/shrub lines. Not like the current impassable hedges we have in the town now.

In regards to the spawns being not equal in distance to the map-room, I think that's really a moot issue, as currently it's the same way in game. You can spawn into a base from one way and be right on top of town, and some you have to drive over and across the airfield to get to town. It all depends on the luck of the draw on your countries spawn into a base when you're attacking a certain field.

As far as how hard it is to capture a base, we do have variables for the amount of town that has to be down in order to capture, which can be adjusted.
 
>One idea was to have less town buildings for the medium / small /vehicle bases. Currently there is around 100 buildings in the town, which is what I was planning on for the large airfield. So maybe have 75 for the medium field, 50 for the small field, and 35-40 for the vehicle base. That would set up hierarchy of difficulty on capturing fields, which is something I'm not sure we would want to do.<

We're still in discussion on how to do the road / rail system, So I really have no clue how that's going to turnout. The supply depot on the drawing was an idea on where to have the supply convoys terminate.

I'll tag this one as wishlist:

     One thing I would like to see done in regards to base supply would be to have a large rail yard / distribution center for a zone of bases. Trains would leave the city for the distribution centers, then convoys would truck supplies from the distribution centers to the airfields.  Destroying / damaging the Distribution center would slow down the resupply to the bases it supplies. If you kill a destroy a train heading to a distribution center, you would hinder the supply time for all of the bases that are supplied by that distribution center, as well as the rebuild time of the distribution center. Destroy a convoy and you hinder the supply to the field it was traveling to. This would make distribution centers and trains regional targets that need to be protected. I would also like to see dots for trains / convoys on the clipboard map when you have them enabled. Or maybe once a friendly gets within a certain range of train/convoy, it would show up as a dot for a period of time.

Another thought I had, is for base capture. if all auto ack / manned guns would have to be down, or just town guns. For this layout, I'm leaning towards town building only having to be down for capture. If you can get a goon or m3 in, and you or your troops don't die in the crossfire, you sir, deserve a medal. We'll have to discuss that one.

Like I said before, just kicking out ideas - nothing set in stone.

I always found it off that the amount of effort to capture a field is exactly the same (IE: It takes 10 troops for all fields; towns are the same size for all Airfields and all towns had same amount of guns).

[Stresser]

...I'll tag this one as wishlist:

     One thing I would like to see done in regards to base supply would be to have a large rail yard / distribution center for a zone of bases. Trains would leave the city for the distribution centers, then convoys would truck supplies from the distribution centers to the airfields.  Destroying / damaging the Distribution center would slow down the resupply to the bases it supplies. If you kill a destroy a train heading to a distribution center, you would hinder the supply time for all of the bases that are supplied by that distribution center, as well as the rebuild time of the distribution center. Destroy a convoy and you hinder the supply to the field it was traveling to. This would make distribution centers and trains regional targets that need to be protected. I would also like to see dots for trains / convoys on the clipboard map when you have them enabled. Or maybe once a friendly gets within a certain range of train/convoy, it would show up as a dot for a period of time...

  I love this idea.

Being able to attack supply centers, and disrupt the delivery of supplies within zones, will create a whole new set of possibilities for tactical strikes.

[Volron]

I love this idea.

Being able to attack supply centers, and disrupt the delivery of supplies within zones, will create a whole new set of possibilities for tactical strikes.

I sure hope shipping is included into this setup!  A guaranteed inclusion of the Beau!

[Vraciu]

With the new terrain in development, we're also kicking around ideas for airfeild layouts, ect....

I've attached a rough layout of a 4 mile by 4 mile "base" area. This one contains a large airfeild, vehicle complex, surrounding town, and possible supply depot.

Legend:
Dark green is forest / woods
Red lines are hedge / property lines
brown lines - dirt roads
Blue/White circles - town buildings
Yellow dots - supply depot?

Everything else is pretty much labelled.

The basic premise of going this way is to create a detailed centralized game area where most of the fighting takes place, which is normally within one to two miles of a base /town. We anticipate having a higher resolution elevations in these areas which will lend to more gentle hills /slopes and be very conducive for vehicle fights. Also it will allow us to alleviate some of the issues with taking off in heavy bombers, in which there will be longer runways, and clear paths for climb out.

Also, We would have different layouts for each type of base. So there would be more variance in towns/facility layouts, as well as strategies for base capture. Also, we just think that it looks more natural that a square mile airfield, with a square mile town next to it.

I just wanted to post this to you guys and get some feedback about it. It's still in very early planning stages, so the sky's not falling yet.

I love the map and the revetments add so much realism.

I suggest adding a spawn for fighters at every revetment.....modified with damage.   You know...

[Greebo]

I wouldn't mind adding single airstrip, maybe tucked away in the woods somewhere, for the vehicle bases. They need one for the Fi 156, and if need be by the map maker, they could spawn the ju87g, il2, hurri2d tank killers. Maybe just have one or two ordnance bunkers near the airstrip. Plus it would make a good place for wounded birds to land if you can't reach a friendly main airfield.

The main thrust of the idea was to have an airfield with no ord or barracks to restrict it to a mainly defensive role. From an MA map designer's POV this opens up some new possibilities WRT field layout. The designer could place some of them across the front line in order to funnel an attacking country into attacking certain fields that do have barracks and ord. Or he could put one on an island as a low-risk CV attack target. Or as I said before use them to defend TT, other fields or strat without them becoming a major threat when they change hands. Currently all the airfields have exactly the same capabilities, they only vary in size. Having this type of field would add variety to the game and some interest to MA map design, as would the bridge base.

WRT the supply roads and railway lines, would it be possible for the Terrain Editor to automatically add a bridge wherever the supply road or line crosses water, rather than having the random bridges that are scattered along their length now?

[Rich46yo]

Its new, it exciting, Im already scheming up approach angles to bomb it to hell.

[jtdragon]

Look's good so far Waf, BUT STILL WANT A WINTER MAP

[ghi]

Also, We would have different layouts for each type of base. So there would be more variance in towns/facility layouts, as well as strategies for base capture.

Make the base capture at least 50% easier to capture than it is now,( reduce town size, eliminate some acks, 2 VHS are plenty at Vbases not 4 and downtime(town) without Ninja m3s resup option 30 min);
IMO  is way to difficult to capture bases for this game and the number of players this days, this is the reason the same boring maps stalled for 6 days in MA . Let players have the satisfaction to capture trade bases and win more often, more dynamic strategic gameplay and refresh maps.

[FLOOB]

Look's good so far Waf, BUT STILL WANT A WINTER MAP

I think that would be cool but it will never happen. One time there was a desert map in the MA and people FLIPPED THE F OUT! All because of the color of the terrain. People would say that the color was actually causing them physical pain, I'm not kidding. And numbers dropped when ever that terrain was in the MA so it was taken out of rotation. I may be mistaken but I think they just changed the terrain textures to green and put it back in rotation. Never underestimate the democratic power of stupidity.

[Sunka]

I think that would be cool but it will never happen.

I think you might be wrong ,their was alluding to by HiTech about having different session maps.
I think this would bring many players that find our world very very very boring.


EDIT ,btw anything HTC has ever done or changed ,we have people that complain non stop,this is no different then 200  

 

[FLOOB]

Yeah but they voted with their feet. That's why we don't have night time and that's why we don't have MA terrains that aren't green.

[The Fugitive]

I think that would be cool but it will never happen. One time there was a desert map in the MA and people FLIPPED THE F OUT! All because of the color of the terrain. People would say that the color was actually causing them physical pain, I'm not kidding. And numbers dropped when ever that terrain was in the MA so it was taken out of rotation. I may be mistaken but I think they just changed the terrain textures to green and put it back in rotation. Never underestimate the democratic power of stupidity.

Wrong on several counts.

A few people did complain that the coloring gave them headaches, I think it was more the game play  

People did NOT "flip out" as it was a pretty popular map as it had these huge unrealistic canyons which made for great air combat. It also had lots of GV bases around the outside edge of the map where GVers could play pretty much unmolested from the air. With wide water ways splitting the map it made for lots of CV to land battles.

I don't remember the "numbers dropping" when the map rolled around in rotation, as I said it was a popular map. It was taken out of rotation because HTC did an update to the terrain and the master files for the AKDesert map were lost so it could not be updated.

NHawk did make a new map called SmPizza which had the same basic shape but didn't have the water ways nor a sand/desert texture.

So it wasn't an issue with the "players" as posted, it was a technical issue.

As to getting a winter map, email HTC and ask if they would accept one and then get to work making it. I don't see where it would be as big an issue as it use to be. File size was a big issue due to transfer/download times, but with the vast majority being on high speed internet I don't think it would be as big an issue. The problem with a winter map or a desert map is the number of tiles that would have to be reworked increasing the size of the download. You'll never know with out asking tho.

[Sunka]

Yeah but they voted with their feet. That's why we don't have night time and that's why we don't have MA terrains that aren't green.

The current stuff I am working on has a 660 Foot vertex res, AH currently has 2480 res. I doubt will will go denser then this.

The new system has 16 + 4 base texture types the 16 are base types like rock grass snow ext..




HiTech









 

[FLOOB]

People did FLIP THE F OUT. The numbers did drop, and the map is no longer in rotation. The terrain files got lost despite being downloaded by thousands of players.