GVing in AH3 PR

[Randy1]

Tank battle player numbers are way down in AH3 PR.

Too many trees?

[Chalenge]

It won't stay this way forever.

[Lusche]

Too many trees?

Despite the current number problem due to having two versions up at the same time, I do think the new terrain will have a massive impact on places like the crater & ndisles TT areas.
Remember the great terrain update in late 2006 or early 2007 (would have to look up the exact date)? Suddenly hedges everywhere (and more distant spawns) and players simply walked away from it in large numbers.

[The Fugitive]

I like the trees at this point. May learn to hate them later but..... right now, they seem to give a bit of a chance to survive a bit longer. Just that little bit to be able to spot enemy tanks. Close up tree force you out into the open a bit more to take a shot, but trees hiding tanks don't seem any different. Have killed a few shooting in between trunks and under the foliage.

Spent a few hours Saturday playing and it was fun. Did some spotting in a jeep on a ridge with zoom calling out targets.

[JunkyII]

The trees do make it hard to see enemy tanks but I will say the towns make the tank fight another game entirely, hills surrounding town and the bridges add a lot to the ground game.

[Easyscor]

Yep, GVing has changed. You can get lost or distracted navigating to the enemy maproom and get snipped along the way. Stone cold killers like gyk and 715 have adapted and are deadly in anything I've seen them in.
Notice though that the driving distances to the maproom is 3 miles now instead of the 5 miles in AH2. I don't know if that will stay permanent, but that's what I'm seeing right now.

Also, some terrain sets are more open then others. In the Beta/PR I would judge ETO as the most dense, followed by PTO and MTO in that order.

If the people coming into the New AvA for our events are any indication, then the GV war is going to take off after people try it for awhile.

[redcatcherb412]

I bet GVing will come back fine.  The long range sniping will be reduced with the terrain foilage, but that just needs changing from a camping mode to  cat-n-mouse hunting mode.  Looking at old Normandy hedgerow pics with just a cannon poking out from the shrubbery can be reproduced easily in these forests.  I would love to see a tweak on cannon shell detonations on foilage.  Shooting 5 to 10 feet over a palm tree in plainly clear area free of foilage should not detonate your tank shell.   NDISLES current map tank area is great, the hills and valleys and smaller more numerous building areas are great for GVing, really requires the DR7  shoot-n-scoot method.  The last few maps are good too, but the lack of hilly terrain made the trees the only areas suitable for keeping a GV out of the open.

[8thJinx]

I like the cat and mouse GV'ing in AH3.  You need to get up close and personal in order engage and get a kill.  I need a heck of lot more stop-and-listen's than I did in AH2, but it is great gaming.  I can foresee the need for the GVers to communicate a lot more in AH3, do a lot more slow probing, and rely a lot less on the 4,500-yard kill shots.  One thing you may never see again are 2,000 yard kill-shots while motoring full speed over terrain.  Maybe on a beach, but not in the woods.  In fact I haven't engaged another tank out beyond 1,800 yards, simply because I couldn't see any.

PS - This morning I was trying to shoot up a town with an M4, and AKAK was defending in a panther. He got me the first sortie before I entered town, and I never saw or heard him. Just, wham, I'm in the tower.  Second sortie I went wide and entered town on the side without the bridges.  I had plenty of good cover, and rolled around town leveling it.  I heard him trying to find me, but I still got the town down.  At the bitter end, I saw him cross a bridge into town, and nailed his tread to successfully track him. But slewed his turret around to find me and got a kill shot off before I could get moving.  My guess is that if I had kept my engine on and stayed mobile, I could have kept myself hidden and still tracked him. So my lessons learned are: 1) cover is king, 2) stop and listen but don't leave yourself exposed, and 3) the bridges are choke points / kill zones for both sides.   

[bustr]

This is why I've been adding more static tanks to my gunnery training terrain to help a player learn to anticipate ambushes or see hidden tanks in the trees. I even got lost testing it trying to get to the town through farmland I updated. It was demoralizing how close I had to get to the tanks I hid in ambush spots before I was aware of them. Putting tanks down in the terrain editor after flying through the trees with the keyboard to setup ambushes is not like spawning into that same area offline and trying to find the ambushes in a tank.

After getting shot at a few times delivering troops online, I'm updating static tanks to create as many logical ambush spot as I can after getting whacked online. The new tree and terrain clutter is a GV ambusher's heaven. And the town itself is one big GV ambush. So I've hidden tanks in my town in ever logical ambush spot.

When stampf first drove his panther into the tank town trees during the closed alpha and refused to do anything but GV. It was obvious what would happen when the game went live. Other testers complained that they had driven within 600yds of his tank and never saw it. That is why I ended up using a lancaster with 1000lb bombs as a spotting plane to find him.

If you are in commander mode and not slightly zoomed, you will not see some tanks 600 and closer sitting under trees because of the shadows. My gunnery terrain is good for training your eye since the static tanks have no icon or engine sound. 

[Randy1]

What caught my attention most was the Crater map.  In ah2 the crater tank play would just about suck air combat dry.  Canon fire just about constant during prime time.  In ah3, tank battles in the crater are nearly zero.

I agree with Redcatcher,  the M18 is well suited for all the trees with its speed.

One point though, graphics setting have a big effect on the trees.  Too much effect.  The perfect setting as it is now, would be slide the sliders to the left to find the red tank then back to the right to shoot to avoid hitting hidden trees in the low graphics settings.

Time will tell.  Who knows, ah3 might lead to some of the best tank battles ever.

[captain1ma]

Who knows, ah3 might lead to some of the best tank battles ever.

already has in the AVA!

[Chris79]

The M8 likes AH3

[popeye]

Last "night" I was able to navigate my M3 to the town using the stars.   

[Slate]

  What is going to aggravate tankers is getting stuck in trees and not being able to back out, Happened to me last night, you drive for 10 minutes and think you can make it through 2 trees and wammo your stuck with no damage to GV buy unable to turn right or left or back up. 

  Also BEWARE of the CABBAGE!  Instead of making the Rocks strewn across the ground obstacles there is a cabbage little plant that stopped me dead in my tracks so an aircraft could pick me off while I was 1000 ft from resupping a town. 

[Mano]

AH3 is a different ball game for GV'ing and for the positive. I am looking forward to the challenge when everyone is in there.