About the Strats

[Zoney]

Snailman, the word you are looking for is:  Mega-ultra-no.  It's the only double hyphenated word in the English language and is used a lot in these type of expressions.

[waystin2]

Snailman, the word you are looking for is:  Mega-ultra-no.  It's the only double hyphenated word in the English language and is used a lot in these type of expressions.

Gargantu-hyper-no? 

[Hetzer7]

IMO There needs to be 3-5 of each strat type, somewhat dispersed. one strat could be wiped out but still only effect 33%-20% (for example) of the total amount of "output" for each industry type. Maybe have 2-3 strats of different types grouped up to represent heavy indutrial areas. Dont have to change the models and would also make resupping 3-5 times more challenging. <S>

[Chris79]

I like the idea if dispersed strats on the larger maps, but IMHO the old mega strat complex seems more suitable for medium and small maps. It seems odd to me that on certain maps vital strat factories sit right at the front.

[bustr]

Ya know, if we are lucky. Waffle will load up our maps with all kinds of nonsense to nowhere, to run useless jabo missions at, so evil baby seal clubbers can pad their kill streaks and perk banks. Marshalling yards, factories, roads and tracks all connected that accomplish nothing but attract GVers to hide from each other and jabo. But, constantly run trains and vehicals so 2 weekers and baby seals can feel like they are accomplishing something jaboing them. While evil vets in GV and fighters hunt the baby seals.

Kind of like the eyecandy overloaded arenas in FPS games that the players run around in slaughtering each other and blowing up everything around them gratuitously for grins and kabooms.

Things to make go boom for the kaboom of it. The illusion of activity. And the off chance of someone trying to put a round or two in your kester that you can shoot back at or run away from going neener neener to on ch200. While half the country is hiding making irrelevant things go boom. Someone is stealing their undefended bases and going neener neener on ch200 back at them.

Pretty much what happens at TT in CraterMA and guys spend hours doing nothing but that.

[Zimme83]

The strats main task is imo to add a strategic part to the game, by conducting long range bombing missions a player is able to help his country by making base taking easier. The factories should be located out of reach for JABO:s or at least they should not be able to inflict any significant damage. I suggest that the factories are moved back to the city and that more cities with strats are added to the maps. With 2 cities the strats will be at 50% even if one city is flatten. In that way a lone bomber cannot take down 95% of a factory. It gives bomber guys more targets and it prevent that a country become completely crippled by having 2 hours down time on guns and ords.

[EagleDNY]

I have to agree that putting strats near bases so they can be milkrunned by the other side is terrible.  Take me back to the mega city with all the strats around it, give it some hellish ack, and put the 262s and 163s right there.   
I fly big bombers - I want action before I rain destruction down upon your strats.   I want to get together with my entire squad and we all come over, rain destruction down upon your strats, and punish you for your sheepshagging.

I am here to chew bubblegum and drop bombs - and I am all out of bubblegum.

[tuton25]

I think the separated strats are more of a pain than they are worth, especially as a tactical bomber pilot like me....
I like to lift out of a forward base in my Mossie 16, come in at high speed, slam something, and run like hell. But as soon as the Ord strats are overrun, people pork a lot of the bases and I have to fly several sectors to hit a target....
If it were me, I would have 2 sets of strats, one forward and one centralized in the rear. It would be easier to knock down the forward strat, but I think it should only do a fraction of the damage (maybe 25%). The rear strat would account for the rest and be better defended....

[SmokinLoon]

The central strats had been a great mass mission target. Now every target left takes only 1-2 bombers to be smashed thorougly.
My only hope is the current setup with it's many flaws will be significanlty corrected after the next update. That's the only reason I'm still here.

The "flaws" in which you have labeled are a matter of opinion. Forget showing any pie charts, bar graphs, or other such information tool. As we all know, we can make numbers say anything we want them to.

As it stands now, there are far more variety of planes being used to hammer the strats.

If HTC were to do anything, I'd suggest to take the epicenters they used to have (ammo, barracks, fuel, radar, AAA, and city), and have the ENTIRE complex represent a single factory typce. It would increase the size of the factories, but it would also still allow for single attack planes to be useful and also allow for massed bombers to be a thing to contend with. 

[Lusche]

The "flaws" in which you have labeled are a matter of opinion. Forget showing any pie charts, bar graphs, or other such information tool. As we all know, we can make numbers say anything we want them to.

What exactly do you maen by this. What charts you are referring too? I can't remeber having posted anything like that, so what are you really trying to say?

[DubiousKB]

a Newb's perspective:

I came into the game JUST before the strategic factories became spread out (at the communities request I believe); I was lucky enough to be on the offensive and defensive sides of the "strat raid", those dedicated pilots who are willing to spend the time,blood,sweat, & tears to get to the strat factories.

It actually what hooked me on the game; seeing so many aircraft with a common goal and even looking good in their formations of bombers and escorts.

I get why the strats were dispersed; but the unfortunate side effect was also dispersing the attackers. Not the end of the world, but certainly not as fun as seeing that huge dar bar creep towards our land...  I'd like to see larger maps with centralized strats but with added defensive ack significantly beefed up for the de-centralized strats...    be gentle...

[icepac]

I killed knight hq last night and it was up in 5 minutes.

[SmokinLoon]

What exactly do you maen by this. What charts you are referring too? I can't remeber having posted anything like that, so what are you really trying to say?

Your quick to pull up charts, graphs, and other such tools to try a prove a point of yours. Pick a stat of any sort and you've likely charted it.  No offense intended, just an observation. 

[DREDIOCK]

What is needed are 3 kinds of strats.

Local - Move strats off the field but separate from the town and make it take more to take em all down effects local individual bases only.
Defense. - Short GV drive from field  Auto defence The same as field and town auto ack with perhaps a couple of man able howitzers

Regional or zone - Harder to take all the way down resupplys local or zone  strats (2-3 bases). Larger targets that when downed reduce resupply time  unless resupplied manually
Defense - Gv spawn into general area. Full auto ack  puffy ack about the same scale as a CV

National strats - located in the deepest parts of a country. Very large target areas on the scale of what the big city strats were before. Effects resupply and type of supply available to regional and local strats
Defense- GV spawn ins from uncapturable fields, and within range of 163s. Massive amount of autoack the kind of the storied "you can walk from one to the next". This should be a real and dangerous challenge for even missions. not a milkrun. Even if you make it unopposed when you're done you should be saying "Wow."

Local and regional strats would make nice short  to moderate range targets for bombers and battlegrounds for GVs Think tanktown with a reason for being there other then to just be there.

All strats should be resupply-able from a supplied base with local strats being the easiest to resupply. Zone strats moderate. and national most difficult
Also scoring should coincide with the targets and difficulty level. Lowest scoring should be local. next highest regional. But the really big score is on the national target.

Likewise you should also receive a higher score by shooting down attackers over a national target area

This provides a reason for both sides attacker and defender alike to fight over everything

[BaldEagl]

I was a big advocate of disbursing the central strats, posting my thoughts on the matter on several occasions.  What had been lost in centralizing the strats was diversity and spreading the fights across the map.  With the central strats you were no longer able to use attack aircraft or GV's to attack them.  There were fewer viable targets for rocket use, both from PT boats and Skd's.  Bombers, unless willing to spend hours trying to get to the central strats had no targets other than fields.  And the fights to defend these outposts had evaporated, concentrating even more people into the games hordes.  I still believe in these and other ideas I posted on de-centralization.

That said the implementation of de-centralization was far from what I'd expected.  Rather than a return to the old zone strat system with one of each type of strat supplying a select number of bases and multiple zones located throughout the map, thus multiples of each type of strat, we wound up with one of each type supplying the entire country and often located in indefensible positions.

I've also come to the realization that the large central strat complexes did serve a purpose for those interested in large bomber missions.

At this point I believe the best solution would be a combination of the old zone strat system combined with the large central strats, each supplying 50% to the respective zones.  Thus, if the central fuel is down to 60% countrywide supply is at 80% (60% x 50% + 100% x 50% = 80%).  If a zone fuel factory is then taken down to 50% then that zone's fuel supply is reduced to 55% (60% x 50% + 50% x 50% = 55%).  I could even see the central strats supplying slightly more, say 60% of total supply with zone strats supplying the rest.  I'd also make the central strats heavily defended by puffy ack with zone strats left as they are.

This would allow for more variety of fighting throughout the arena while bringing back the need for larger, more organized bomber raids and introducing a more complex strategic element to gameplay.  At the same time I would not reintroduce the "mobile strats" we saw in the prior implementation of the central strat system.