Knights can't win!

[matt]

 

Tomorrow evening... 9:30 EST. DA or TA...  You can fly any prop job in the plane set. I'll stick to just one type and model. I love it when people think all I do is fly a bomber... LOLOLOL Be prepared....

[DREDIOCK]

I'd rather have a few good days of epic balanced struggle over the defense or capture of a single base then a weeks worth of "winning the war"

[Bruv119]

I'd rather have a few good days of epic balanced struggle over the defense or capture of a single base then a weeks worth of "winning the war"

+1

seems like the defenders of any particular base can't react quick enough to stop a horde from closing the base.   

When the resistance is too tough they will look elsewhere and this just goes back to the path of least resistance when it comes to the war in AH.   

People would rather avoid the struggle or battle and achieve their objectives elsewhere.   How can the game change or evolve to stop that I don't know.

[Wildcatdad]

I would like to point out that the people complaining are brand new, while the people who are respecting HTC and the game as a whole have expierience and know what they are talking about...
 

[Lusche]

People would rather avoid the struggle or battle and achieve their objectives elsewhere.  

I'm thinking for a long time now that's because of the victory conditions and that every base is contributing absolutely the same to it. Central large airfield or remote little Vbase, they all contribute the same. This leads to the "whack-a-mole" type of battles with little (if any) 'strategy' involved.
If you don't get this base, you just get another. The war is not being won by an epic push to Berlin, but by doing a massive surprise raid on a remote Norwegian fishing village.

[Bruv119]

yep maybe reduce the % of vbases / ports compared to airfields. 

[fbEagle]

I knew Knights were pushing for A12 after being stopped at 18 and 6 repeatedly, because Knights were low key preparing A12. When I shot down members of FB over the town, I knew it's not just a random attack, especially when only 1 base was missing from war victory.

That being said, it only was naturally that the most probable strike was from A7 to A12 area. Being annoyed enough by my repeated warnings, several Rooks were patrolling A12 south and southwest (between A12 and A7). One of them was Afflux who did finally spot the noe raid. Had you chosen a different route, someone else would most probably have spotted you (I was myself covering a more northen approach and had to race back towards 12 when the raid was spotted).

Apparently we need to go incognito 

[The Fugitive]

I would like to point out that the people complaining are brand new, while the people who are respecting HTC and the game as a whole have expierience and know what they are talking about...
 

I am hardly brand new, nor are many of those complaining here on the boards. While I respect HTC and all that they do I can still see the decline in numbers. I personally believe that the "hordes" are what is slowly killing the game. In the over 10 years I have been here I can say we have always had hordes, tho back in the day they were called "combined squad ops" and were a "planned" thing that happen now and then. If you saw more than one a month it was surprising. Now the teams take turns as their numbers rise and fall all day hording first one then another strait on pretty much all the time.

I'm thinking for a long time now that's because of the victory conditions and that every base is contributing absolutely the same to it. Central large airfield or remote little Vbase, they all contribute the same. This leads to the "whack-a-mole" type of battles with little (if any) 'strategy' involved.
If you don't get this base, you just get another. The war is not being won by an epic push to Berlin, but by doing a massive surprise raid on a remote Norwegian fishing village.

I agree that something like this could help. In the old day battles for the "zone bases" were epic in that you didn't want to lose them AND lose the auto resupply of the attached bases, while grabbing one and deigning the enemy the auto resupply was a big help in the win the war action.

Attaching a "value" to bases might help in providing more strategy in winning the wars.

[Wildcatdad]

Fugi, I meant earlier in the thread, before anyone had an actual argument. I see your point and agree with it, but there were certain people(not you, im sorry if I gave that impression) that just rag on HTC and other players without taking into account what goes into this game and that HTC has to serve the whole player base. Also, earlier in the thread, the complaints being made weren't exactly warranted or well thought out. Yours, and those of other, more experienced players, I can understand and agree with.
 

[DREDIOCK]

I'm thinking for a long time now that's because of the victory conditions and that every base is contributing absolutely the same to it. Central large airfield or remote little Vbase, they all contribute the same. This leads to the "whack-a-mole" type of battles with little (if any) 'strategy' involved.
If you don't get this base, you just get another. The war is not being won by an epic push to Berlin, but by doing a massive surprise raid on a remote Norwegian fishing village.

One of the reasons why I very much preferred the old Zone base system. While all bases could play a role particularly in positioning to attack another. There was a reason for wanting to capture one base over another or for that matter defend. Why certain bases were more important then others.
Over all IMO it was a much better system then is now in place or then we have had since

[Randy1]

In War Birds back in the early days, wasn't a base capture possible just by landing your plane at the enemy?

[Widewing]

One of the reasons why I very much preferred the old Zone base system. While all bases could play a role particularly in positioning to attack another. There was a reason for wanting to capture one base over another or for that matter defend. Why certain bases were more important then others.
Over all IMO it was a much better system then is now in place or then we have had since

I tend to agree..

Back in the days of AH1, the zone system worked well most of the time. The other thing was that you didn't just need a relatively small percentage of bases to win the war. This aspect, I feel encourages the hording. Remember 70 or 80 defenders flying from just a few remaining fields? Remember the constant stream of trains, resupplying the zone bases? You had to watch out for those trains. I saw an NOE shot up badly when they overflew a train at low level in some hills. Was rather funny....

Last evening, there was a massive Knit attack on two Rook bases (P21 and A19 on ndisles). About 8 Rooks had time to get airborne. I lost count at 45 dots on the radar. There were more than 45. Bomber formations had previously hit both bases. FHs were down, the VHs were down, but they missed A19's radar and one bomber hanger. I upped an A-20 to do what I could. I shot down two P-38s, and assisted on another. They had brought multiple goons. Faced with an impossible task (only two of us remained that I could see), I made a quick gear-up landing before I was vulched. It's no fun to defend against those numbers. I would think that there's not much fun on the other side either. A similar attack later on A12 was defeated because the Rooks had advanced warning. There were less than the previously mentioned raid, but there were still about 30-35 Knits involved, with a large number of goons. Still, I noticed several Lancaster formations that bombed and bailed over the town.

This is the stuff that drives many away from the game these days. It doesn't matter which country is doing it (they all do).

[Lusche]

The other thing was that you didn't just need a relatively small percentage of bases to win the war. This aspect, I feel encourages the hording. Remember 70 or 80 defenders flying from just a few remaining fields? Remember the constant stream of trains, resupplying the zone bases? You had to watch out for those trains. I saw an NOE shot up badly when they overflew a train at low level in some hills. Was rather funny....

But there was a hording issue on a totally different level. The old victory rules required getting one country down to 5(?) bases and the country having captured the most of that bases was declared winner.
While that created some fun situations for the few of us who liked defending against superior odds, it overall kinda sucked for the majority of players, because it meant that for the longest time the two bigger teams were just dogpiling on the smaller one, with no real interest to fight each other.

And yes, it's very much different these days where they do have really to fight each other at some point, and thus it's not longer one country suffering from being attacked almost exclusively by two countries all the time. In the last months before the system was changed to what we have today, it was Rooks and Bish dogpiling on Knights and just racing each other to reset from the moment the map came up. Though I personally loved flying on Knights for that very reason, that's not a particular great gameplay for the arena and the majority of players either.

And we can't just simply push the percentage of territory required up to 80 or even 90 %, because that would mean the war would be almost impossible to win. That thought might please some of the "old furballers" amongst us, but would remove a big motivation for many players to engage in battles as well.

[ghi]

 The map reset system is the worst ever in this game; designed only for boring large maps without any action to dominate the MA 90% of the time;
I don't see anything brave from any team pushing for quick reset a small fun map after a week stuck on large one. Imo, no map should stay up for more than 36-48 hours, won or not HTC should reset it, refresh the gaming.

[Widewing]

But there was a hording issue on a totally different level. The old victory rules required getting one country down to 5(?) bases and the country having captured the most of that bases was declared winner.
While that created some fun situations for the few of us who liked defending against superior odds, it overall kinda sucked for the majority of players, because it meant that for the longest time the two bigger teams were just dogpiling on the smaller one, with no real interest to fight each other.

And yes, it's very much different these days where they do have really to fight each other at some point, and thus it's not longer one country suffering from being attacked almost exclusively by two countries all the time. In the last months before the system was changed to what we have today, it was Rooks and Bish dogpiling on Knights and just racing each other to reset from the moment the map came up. Though I personally loved flying on Knights for that very reason, that's not a particular great gameplay for the arena and the majority of players either.

And we can't just simply push the percentage of territory required up to 80 or even 90 %, because that would mean the war would be almost impossible to win. That thought might please some of the "old furballers" amongst us, but would remove a big motivation for many players to engage in battles as well.

Well, we can surely agree that neither system was great. We need something to discourage vast hordes.

It could be local sector ENY auto adjustments (ENY is increased within the sector, decreasing perks gained, and increasing cost of losing perk planes or vehicles) to discourage massive attacking hordes.

It could be by perking some ordnance.

It could be by perk penalizing bomb and bail players.

It could be by greatly increasing base ack lethality and/or adding auto 88s.

Drop the radar height to 50 feet at the radar ring.

Move GV spawns closer to towns (that were part of the map's original country base allocation). That will make it harder to capture and harder to keep.

Redesign towns, dispersing buildings around the area, not just concentrated. The town should not have enough buildings to change to white flag. Make them get the outlying buildings too.

One thing I would like to see is turning on friendly collisions while airborne. Be careful how you take off, because once the wheels come off the ground, collisions can occur. This will result in much slower massing of hordes, and lots of deaths in the process (until players get smarter).

Surely, there is some way or ways to make horde flying far less profitable, and encourage creative solutions to base capture rather than just mass attack.