Manned guns and field supplies

[bozon]

AH is a PvP game - having a player at whatever is better than having AI. This applies to AAA as well as anything, but it is true that having a player in a field gun is one less in a plane.

Resupply is currently stupid:

1. The damage a single M3 can fix counters a huge bomb load on the town.

2. I don't know how close the M3s need to be to the town, but I have seem multiple cases in which the town was resupplied without any vehicle actually reaching to the buildings.

3. In some maps and bases the spawn points from the nearby base are so close to the town that it is a VERY short drive for the M3. All they need to do is keep spawning - soon the attackers will run out of bombs and cannons and will have to make a rearm trip, which will take much longer than it takes the M3 to reach the town, multiple times.

4. Vehicle fixing by resupply must absolutely go! For the same reason that a plane can rearm but not get fixed. V-supplies should give fuel and rounds, not a new armor and tracks.

5. vehicles should have a 10 seconds countdown before exiting. Enough with the wirbs on paved ground that exit the moment they are damaged or hear the bombs whistle, and then simply spawn again and can resume firing quicker than the attacking plane can come down for another attack. OK this one has nothing to do with resupply...

[Oldman731]

First, when a field is being vulched, a good shot sitting in an 88 or a 37 can mean that someone gets off the field

Agreed.  I often see enemy planes hanging around a besieged base, waiting for someone to up a plane so they can dive in on it with all the advantages.  I don't see how this is somehow more conducive to good fights than potting the circling planes with manned ack.

- oldman

[bustr]

It's pretty obvious who the sharks are in our fishbowl at any time on any day of the week with the numbers we are down to. Even if Hitech takes away all the manned guns, flack panzers and M16. The guppys being complained about will not up and feed the easy to recognize sharks. They will look for any other way to enjoy their $14.95 worth or quit.

If they wanted to learn how to ACM and become fighter jock billy bad arses, they would have made overtures towards the appropriate parties by now. You are stuck with them, and they don't want to feed you the easy kills they know they are. No one pays to play a game just to be clobbered 90% of the time except for the miniscule number who end up becoming the sharks in that game. Who end up starting posts like this to complain to management about the wussies ruining "their game".

Hitech is not going to keep track of who is a wuss by your standards and punish them or cancel their subscriptions. If Hitech sanitizes the game to your specifications and drives out the wussies, the company goes belly up. So you are stuck with Hitech making them feel like they have some kind of a chance to win in this fishbowl over stocked with sharks.

[Copprhed]

It's pretty obvious who the sharks are in our fishbowl at any time on any day of the week with the numbers we are down to. Even if Hitech takes away all the manned guns, flack panzers and M16. The guppys being complained about will not up and feed the easy to recognize sharks. They will look for any other way to enjoy their $14.95 worth or quit.

If they wanted to learn how to ACM and become fighter jock billy bad arses, they would have made overtures towards the appropriate parties by now. You are stuck with them, and they don't want to feed you the easy kills they know they are. No one pays to play a game just to be clobbered 90% of the time except for the miniscule number who end up becoming the sharks in that game. Who end up starting posts like this to complain to management about the wussies ruining "their game".

Hitech is not going to keep track of who is a wuss by your standards and punish them or cancel their subscriptions. If Hitech sanitizes the game to your specifications and drives out the wussies, the company goes belly up. So you are stuck with Hitech making them feel like they have some kind of a chance to win in this fishbowl over stocked with sharks.

[Blooz]

Guess I'll speak up for the 'wussies".

I like manned ack. It's something I can do to help defend a base that's under attack RIGHT NOW. No need to look at the map for a nearby base to mount a counterattack from. No plane selection, no climb out, just jump in a gun and start shootin'! It's quite fun actually. Like old video arcade days.

I like resupply missions too. If I'm not feeling it, if I don't like the map, if I don't see any "worthwhile" action going on I'll run supplies to bring up bases that have been porked or smashed to oblivion. It's lonesome, boring, thankless work but it helps my country out and gives me something to do while I keep an eye on the map for action that may develop that I'll fly a plane to.

[caldera]

It would be vulching 24/7 without field guns.  If you get killed by a field gun, it's your own fault - as the powers that be tend to say. 

Now the 88s, they should be scrapped IMO.   You can be fighting well away from the field and some griefer has to try to ruin your fight because he's afraid to fly.



The resupply should be limited to fields only.  Bases are often too difficult to take without massive hordes killing all the hangars.

Eliminating the opposition is a bad thing in a combat game.

[Randy1]

I have never, in my three years of playing, seen the reds deack a field so they could have an equal advantage to the greens taking off from the field.

The 88 is the only weapon to push vulchers and pickers back far enough from the field to at least give a player a chance to get some kind of E.

What a load of crap it is to hear someone on vox say a player is staying in the ack to hide when there are reds holding a cap over a field.

[Kingpin]

Agreed.  I often see enemy planes hanging around a besieged base, waiting for someone to up a plane so they can dive in on it with all the advantages.  I don't see how this is somehow more conducive to good fights than potting the circling planes with manned ack.

- oldman

Exactly right. 

The guys deacking or circling a field waiting for someone to up aren't looking for a fight, they are looking for easy kills. (And the players capping a field for a base-take, a legitimate part of game-play IMO, aren't the people who complain about manned ack).

The best dogfights are found between the fields not over them.  If you are really looking for a good fight, then loiter just inside the dar circle where you can be seen and let someone get some E to come fight you.  You'll never be hit by ack and you'll likely get good fights.  When you bomb/strafe the dar down and then circle the field looking for uppers, you're the first guy I will shoot with the 88.  Can I kill you in an airplane? Yes, I likely can, but don't expect me to fly several minutes from an adjacent base (if there is one) only to hope you are still there when I arrive, when I can end your loitering over the field in 10 seconds in the 88.  Then I'll up and meet you on your return trip between the fields.

The risk you take for capping a field closely is getting someone who can shoot back at you from the field.  That's YOUR choice to fly there.  Don't blame the guy shooting you for deciding not to up into your vulch.  Frankly, I think it requires more skill to shoot someone with the 88 then it does to kill someone taking off.

I'm all for HTC to GREATLY INCREASE the amount and effectiveness of auto AAA at airfields, so that manned ack isn't necessary to push the fights away from the fields.  Until then, manned ack is a necessary part of the game.

My two cents and eighty-eight millimeters worth...

<S>
Kingpin

[Wiley]

I am not a fan of the fact that resupplying a base is a better way to keep it than defending it.  To me, that is wrong.  Some form of combat should be the best way to hold a field, not to wait for them to level the town then resupply.

Wiley.

[JimmyC]

M3s resupply a twn or base might draw vulchers away from the field..
Thus encouraging combat as uppers can up

[Lazerr]

Reference this thread in about 1 year.

[Lazerr]

M3s resupply a twn or base might draw vulchers away from the field..
Thus encouraging combat as uppers can up

Guess we are just hoping for a fight in a game where they happened quite freely before all of this garbage was introduced, right?

[The Fugitive]

I don't have a problem with the field guns a few passes can clear them all if a few guys want to. The resupply on the towns is another thing.

If you want to save your town DEFEND IT! Even if its in a GV! The game is about combat, NOT resupply.

[Oldman731]

Guess we are just hoping for a fight in a game where they happened quite freely before all of this garbage was introduced, right?

Manned ack and resupply have existed for quite a long while.  Haven't they?

- oldman

[wil3ur]

Resupply takes some sort of risk and puts you in play. Manned guns (specifically 88s and 5') are the equivalent of a benchwarmer tripping a player running the ball down the field IMO.

+1

Though occasionally when there's no one online and there's a milkrunner bombing, or a horde attacking, I'll jump in an 88 to throw up high fire because even if I do catch the planes after 30 minutes, they'll just bail before I get within 2K so they don't give up a "kill" or I'll just be hordebait and even the best pilot can only do so much by themselves...

That being said, in a carrier raid, I'm usually one of the only people trying to take out a SB, and at any given moment when people are acting like scared little girls and manning an 88 rather than getting in a plane, I'll make it a point to dive through even the heaviest of large field ack to take out an 88 just to put those pansyass mofos back in the tower.