the new map from a strat runner's perspective

[LocoMoto]

Just figured I'd share the wonderfulness of the fact that everyone is qualified to build a terrain with no experience what so ever. All I did was open the program and started pushing buttons to see what broke. There are a number of ways to do it, and to enumerate them.

1. - This is how I created my first ever MA terrain.

Manually lay down large swaths of land with a 6 mile diameter brush on a 250,000 square mile(4096x4096 pixel) project space. I did that and it took me a month to get the gross land masses laid down and another month nibbling away the edges, while creating a new clip board map each time to check the results. It took another month to sculpt the finished terrain features, then a month to paint the thing. The rest of the time was tied up in laying done bases and spawns, then testing the whole assumption called the terrain. Fortunately those months of practice made the changes to the terrain that Hitech wanted take about 7 days. And adding the battleships only a few more days. 

2. - This is what I've been posting the latest screen captures of to kill time waiting for my temporary license from L3DT.

Create a PNG format heightmap in grayscale as a 4096x4096 art file. Massage it, then convert it to raw format, then import it into the terrain editor. Then create a clip board map to see how that turned out. Then probably massage the PNG file numerous more times. And generate clip board maps to check out your work. You can actually create the whole thing as a JPEG 4096x4096 file then convert that to a grayscale PNG file. I work faster in a JPEG art program called Paint.Net than I do in one called Krita where I do the conversion to PNG. It's probably because I used Paint.Net to create my gunsights all of these years. 

3. - This is the preferred method as recommended by Hitech.

Go to the L3DT webpage and submit a request for a temporary 90 day license to review the professional version of L3DT. It is an editor similar to the AH3 terrain editor in which you can create your 3D terrain and export it as a heightmap which imported into the terrain editor will produce a stunning MA terrain. Then you navigate it to perform touch ups, paint it and set in place all of your bases, fleets and spawns. A single license for L3DT is about $35 if you decide you like it.

Hijacking, naw, just trying to get you gents to stop whizzing at each other over ridiculous BS. If you want a terrain that does everything you want in the MA, fire up the terrain editor and create it like I did. Unless you "pay someone" to do exactly what you want, they will always build their terrain to make themselves happy playing on it in the MA.

hey bustr thats all fine and dandy but you shouldnt feel like you have to explain yourself. I mean I get it we all want love but damn. 

As for HT and you hijacking the thread well the thread is dead. If yall wanna carry secret squirrel transmission in public find another thread. Its rude to the OP

[bustr]

hey bustr thats all fine and dandy but you shouldnt feel like you have to explain yourself. I mean I get it we all want love but damn. 

As for HT and you hijacking the thread well the thread is dead. If yall wanna carry secret squirrel transmission in public find another thread. Its rude to the OP

There is a substantive theme to this for the game's health or I wouldn't waste my time on you gents. Building a terrain for the MA is easy, almost anyone can do it. Hitech is selling a game to a broad spectrum of customer ability versus a targeted high end group. This means the free content tools are scaled to allow the largest cross section of the community use them. I admit on user manual creation day someone went on vacation, still, these tools are simple enough you can push buttons and figure them out quickly like I did.

Hijacking this post, no, "showing and telling" that you have the solution to the OP's complaints in the Aces High III folder. Players with subscriptions build the terrains, I don't see any of you cutting a check so the few players who still build terrains will become the OP's construction robot. Since I've been adding to POSTS with screen shots and terrain building information, a number of players have started POSTS in the Terrain Editor forum asking for help with terrain building. 

So, how's your latest masterpiece going......

[Shuffler]

Bustr was bustin' his bacon on that terrain and it paid off in spades.

 

[Biggamer]

Fester built a map that made alot of fights and action of all sorts yet people ran it down in a thread and when he defend him self kinda like bustr is right now he got crushed even more funny how that works the big difference is though festers map was out for some time and was just old like any other map people was just tired of it like every other map this thread was started way to soon the map is still new to everyone give it time until everyone plays it enough they will find boring like all maps. and that is no disrespect to bustr either im just saying

[usvi]

Fester built a map that made alot of fights and action of all sorts yet people ran it down in a thread and when he defend him self kinda like bustr is right now he got crushed even more funny how that works the big difference is though festers map was out for some time and was just old like any other map people was just tired of it like every other map this thread was started way to soon the map is still new to everyone give it time until everyone plays it enough they will find boring like all maps. and that is no disrespect to bustr either im just saying

[Lusche]

May I get a bit back on topic? 

In particular on the topic of the rear / ridge strats. As I already mentioned, the large city makes now for a great long range target, especially for a big mission. Actually, because of the distance and in particular the Me 163 coverage, a B-29 mission would almost be mandatory for any serious mission (but then, few players would probably risk their perks in the face of swarming Komets)
But when you take into account the ease of resupply...

I just tested it , you can easily drive a M3 to the middle of the City in 5 minutes. (If you avoid ramming the occasional tree, even somewhat quicker  )

That means whatever damage is done to the city, it takes

1 player 60 minutes (= 1 manhour)
2 players 40 minutes (= 1.3 manhours)
3 players 30 minutes (= 1.5 manhours)
5 players 25 minutes (=2.1 manhours)

A B-29 run at altitude on this map takes about 2 hours to fly. Even when you are not instantly put back in the tower by the fierce ack or the Me 163s, it still rather pointless when just 3 players undo all your damage in just half an hour.


I would, at least, urgently suggest the removal of the GV spawn s to the city.

[popeye]

Or, wait for Buzzsaw where the city is a convenient 4 minute drive away.

[The Fugitive]

Fester built a map that made alot of fights and action of all sorts yet people ran it down in a thread and when he defend him self kinda like bustr is right now he got crushed even more funny how that works the big difference is though festers map was out for some time and was just old like any other map people was just tired of it like every other map this thread was started way to soon the map is still new to everyone give it time until everyone plays it enough they will find boring like all maps. and that is no disrespect to bustr either im just saying

Festers map was complained about for the same reason Bustr's is, uneven play.

Fester's issues was a single player could and often did knock out the radar for a whole country for hours on end. Bustr's issue is the opposite. A single player can undo the damage a buff can do to the strats much much quicker than the time it takes to do the damage.

Festers map would have to be rebuilt to add spawns, or maybe just change the time (tho having different rebuild times on different maps would really confuse everyone) plus being such a large map is what got it pulled.

This game is suppose to be basically "fair". For every attack option there should be a defense option. The "ying and the yang". If someone wants to take the time to hit strats it should take the same amount of time to repair it. It takes the same amount of time to defend it.... climbing to alt and laying in wait for the bombers. After all, that is one of the reasons for ENY right, to try and keep things "fair"?

[molybdenum]

May I get a bit back on topic? 

In particular on the topic of the rear / ridge strats. As I already mentioned, the large city makes now for a great long range target, especially for a big mission. Actually, because of the distance and in particular the Me 163 coverage, a B-29 mission would almost be mandatory for any serious mission (but then, few players would probably risk their perks in the face of swarming Komets)
But when you take into account the ease of resupply...

I just tested it , you can easily drive a M3 to the middle of the City in 5 minutes. (If you avoid ramming the occasional tree, even somewhat quicker  )

That means whatever damage is done to the city, it takes

1 player 60 minutes (= 1 manhour)
2 players 40 minutes (= 1.3 manhours)
3 players 30 minutes (= 1.5 manhours)
5 players 25 minutes (=2.1 manhours)

A B-29 run at altitude on this map takes about 2 hours to fly. Even when you are not instantly put back in the tower by the fierce ack or the Me 163s, it still rather pointless when just 3 players undo all your damage in just half an hour.


I would, at least, urgently suggest the removal of the GV spawn s to the city.

At the very least. Spawn to radar resup takes less than 3 minutes and I'm assuming troop training is the same (didn't check). The city is the least hit strat since it got hardened in AH3--a lot of players, like me, have apparently decided that the time to target/damage to strat ratio is unsatisfactory and choose to bomb something else; and so removing just the city spawn would have little practical value.
I can't agree with you that the strip strat (or whatever we should call it) makes a great long range target though, lusche. Even if the spawns were gone it'd have distance, flak towers, and 163s working against it. As things stand an noe jabo to radar or training is the only practical way in, and that only if you have time to kill.

[The Fugitive]

At the very least. Spawn to radar resup takes less than 3 minutes and I'm assuming troop training is the same (didn't check). The city is the least hit strat since it got hardened in AH3--a lot of players, like me, have apparently decided that the time to target/damage to strat ratio is unsatisfactory and choose to bomb something else; and so removing just the city spawn would have little practical value.
I can't agree with you that the strip strat (or whatever we should call it) makes a great long range target though, lusche. Even if the spawns were gone it'd have distance, flak towers, and 163s working against it. As things stand an noe jabo to radar or training is the only practical way in, and that only if you have time to kill.

So are you saying your looking for an easy target to hit that will do maximum damage to another team?

[bustr]

When you gents can figure out a way that one guy's single finger salute won't screw 50-100 guy's evening, since we know it won't be one guy once a night if it's easy to do. Remember the Fester map and Hitech had to intervene and change the HQ settings for all terrains just before AH3 went live? I will build that rational so single finger salute griefers can plaster the HQ\city into oblivion and not screw over the majority of the paying customers who you want shooting at each other and creating activity. Group activity has a tendency to inspire more group activity.

I'm prototyping a 6 layer 4096x4096 PNG template right now so I can rapidly layout 2D land masses and bases, then adjust for 19-25 mile placements. This will result in a 1:1 blueprint I can submit to Hitech for proof of concept and subsequent building of the terrain. Bowlma supported my observation that the "current generation of players" with numbers occasional up to 250 at prime time will engage in activity if the majority of air bases are 3\4 of a sector and below 2k. They stop hiding above 15k and race to capture feilds with the subsequent furballing and tankballing that activity generates. I'm building for the masses to keep them active since activity by the masses is attractive to new players.

Now I'm looking at the Micronesia island chains to give the CV and BB task groups more places to get in trouble and promote activity out of the current generation majority who wants "quicker action". That's what bowlma does for them with their smaller numbers and they happily generate activity. The one downside, they happily go through that map like a goose eating too much grass with the end result. So now I'm looking at Micronesia to give them some more grass to eat.

You can complain or open your terrain editor and put an end to your complaint.

[molybdenum]

You can complain or open your terrain editor and put an end to your complaint.

And you can stop hijacking the thread I began.
The issues I and others have brought up re:strats are legitimates ones. Please feel free to offer up your opinions on my comments, but don't try to change the topic into something it's not.

Spawns need to go away at the "chain strats" (semi-centralized? got to work on the name for it). AT MINIMUM.

HT put strats in the game for very good reason. If you want to essentially make them non-existent by putting them waaay in the back and far more heavily defended than they are on any other map, that's your prerogative, though I'm very much hoping HT realizes you went a bridge too far and adjusts that. But you don't get to try to stifle legitimate complaints by changing the subject. That's #2 in HT's list of non-nos for thread discussion.

[bustr]

I'm not, I'm giving you the fastest way to get what you want without demanding Hitech force players who build content for the game to be "your slave". Hitech does not pay us anything for the work we do to provide content for the service we pay him to access.

I'm almost finished with my Micronesia research and hopefully L3DT will e-mail me my 90 day license this week to use their terrain building application. Supposedly that will speed up my production time. And I'll happily provide you the master PGN project file Ive created so you can rapidly 2D prototype your terrain design in a 1:1 format. You sound like you know exactly how to build strat runner centric terrains to suit your idea of the perfect AH3 arena, and the group in the Terrain Editor forum will help you with everything terrain editor. The addition of your strat runner centric design will help keep the community from getting bored and most likely not be a BuzzsawII. You win and the community wins.

[Biggamer]

Strats being out of reach just pushes more people to log off. the strat runner guys dont like it so why play, the base taking crowd dont like it so why play. if your a fighter pilot or GV guy great you are gonna have a good time. if you are a base taker or strat runner enjoy that single finger salute. 

[molybdenum]

I'm not (hijacking the thread), I'm giving you the fastest way to get what you want...

Of course you are, "If you don't like it, build your own" would have sufficed, instead of many posts and several paragraphs on terrain building and what you are yourself currently doing in that regard. Make your own topic on terrain building and entitle it "Terrain Building! Join Me In This Noble Endeavor!" I hope it gets a big following from people (unlike me) who know how to use computers and cell phones beyond the absolute bare bone basics. That's not hyperbole--ask my wife and squaddies. 

Anyway, back on topic, I'm clearly not the only one who feels the current strat layout is (ahem) less than optimal. You've done everything HT would let you to make the strats as much of a non-issue as possible and apparently tried to do even more (making strats covered by impenetrable clouds 80% of the time). I get it that your reason for this was to try to create a more dynamic game play atmosphere, but if the buff pilots and base takers are less inclined to play, have you helped or hurt in that regard?