Strats

[NatCigg]

How about when one is damaged to a certain point it moves deeper in country?

Teams figured out if you did not take a enemy base near the strats , other fields could be taken and the strat would not move, allowing all city and factory to be surrounded.

In other words it was tried, flawed, scraped.

Fix the flaw, and bring back the big city target.   it was nice, reminded me of ww2 mission.

[bustr]

Terrains builders cannot make the strats move but, we do have control over where and how the the strats are placed. The red dots are strats, and on this terrain I moved most into the back feild near each other with no flak bases. Just the uncapturable feilds with one being the 163 field. And those are the final GV spawns so resupply will have to up c47's. This is a 10x10 terrain.





I'm behind schedule for completing the islands due to getting some medical issues under control. They are all volcanic mountain based, and I create each mountain and it's canyons by hand. Here is a CBM map of how far along I am. All of the white squares are locator spots painted on the terrain as a 1:1 transfer of the base and strat locations from the bule print map.





This time the barrier mountains boarder is only 20,000ft, so yes you can sneak around and game the game with your bombers to attack the strats. I should paint giant eyes on the sides of those 20,000ft walls and a message, you are being watched..... That would be a good use for a 25k air spawn to only launch 163 just off the map in this area to catch the 30k bombers who will come in from out of bounds. Or I could just put a 30k unbroken wall there, hmmmm, about 30 minutes of work.

[Zener]

The forum is filled with  complaints about lack of air to air combat players.  The strats being down grabs even more players from the combat list with auto ack being down for two hours.

To me, the number one killer of air-to-air is not bombing but horde vulching.  It's very difficult to find a reasonably fair dogfight or furball anymore because as soon as you engage you can count on some high pony or 190 flying in co-orbit with the ISS blazing down to pick you off.   I've no beef with the occasional time it happens, but it's becoming so widespread I'm to the point where I've had enough of that and if I encounter a pattern of it, I'm strat bombing or hitting a base.

The fastest way to kill air-to-air is to pretend it's an air-to-air encounter, then turn it into a pickfest.  Those who habitually participate in that sort of thing have only themselves to blame when they cry about no one wanting <cough-cough> dogfight.

If bombing at 30,000 feet could be less accurate due to wind layers and that kind of thing, it might help. Setting the rebuild time to be a standard 15 min would help.

What then would be the point of bombing them at all?  It would be like flying across the whole map just to hit a VH.  Judging by the average status of strats lately, there seems to be more than a little interest in hitting strats.  This is especially true on some maps where multiple V-bases spawn into one.  Why bother with a bomber when a single M4 can reduce the factory 70% or more and it takes 12 loads of supps to bring it back over 50?  A single bomb run does well to knock down 50% or more (flack factory can expect more).  Reducing that due to wind or other factor will just mean the bomber has to make two trips, keeping the player in a bomber even longer.

[bustr]

During the last 12 months of AH2 several squads and a few strat runner only bomber players abused the down times for the HQ, city and strats. They had it down to the second to keep a country without radar for hours at a time. Numbers were only a bit higher than today so everyone was busy playing the game before prime time ended and numbers dropped. No one was paying Hitech so they could sit in a tower for hours waiting for those greifers. Hitech added the Flak base object and changed the down time for the HQ as a response. I setup BowlMA to keep those very people from being able to do much of anything on purpose. I purposely setup the game to spawn M3 right next to the HQ, city and strats and a Flak base next to the most important strats.

What you have now is the results of people who knew better but, screwing the whole community because they could, almost every night. It ended up with posts in the forums as vitriolic as posts about ENY and side switching. And at least one by a strat runner bragging about screwing them because there was no rule against doing it. I suspect the extreme response by Hitech in adding Flak bases and lower the HQ down time to 5 minutes may have been to keep players from canceling subscriptions. For most players there is no point to staying logged in if they cannot see radar for the few hours they have to play. And it quickly became useless to try and resupply the HQ and city because it would take up to an hour of M3 driving or c47 flying. And then the greifers would drop them a few minutes right after they wasted their evening playing a forced resupply game and not shooting at things. Enough of them made that point loud and clear in the forums.

You can see from my blueprint map of my new terrain I've grouped the important strats together with no flak bases or GV spawns. It's been about a year since the greifers have bothered to try and screw with radar so strat runners need something and the 163 field is next door to the HQ. A moving strat complex worked on a 20x20 terrain with 300 or more players to deal with the numbers. On a 10x10 it's overkill. You just need a terrain builder to decide to group strats.

[Zimme83]

HQ was a serious issue yes and could be removed from the game. But central strats has nothing to do with it.

[Randy1]

To me, the number one killer of air-to-air is not bombing but horde vulching.  It's very difficult to find a reasonably fair dogfight or furball anymore because as soon as you engage you can count on some high pony or 190 flying in co-orbit with the ISS blazing down to pick you off.   I've no beef with the occasional time it happens, but it's becoming so widespread I'm to the point where I've had enough of that and if I encounter a pattern of it, I'm strat bombing or hitting a base.

When you see a big red dar bar, take time to look up down-times of the town.  A vulching horde rarely touches the town.  Then just go somewhere else.

If new to the game, ask for a trainer to give you some 190 avoidance lessons. 

[popeye]

Seems to me the problem with the Strat system is the asymmetric effect is has on gameplay.  One player with time on his hands (as Randy says, usually from the most populated side) can affect the gameplay of many other players for hours -- both by the direct effect on assets and by requiring a large investment in time to resupply.  On some maps (Buzzsaw) the Strat killer doesn't even need to invest much time.

Yes, move Strats away from front lines with GV spawns only from uncapturable rear bases (for resupply).

Maybe cloud layers at varying altitudes in the area around Strats to add some uncertainty for the attacker.

Maybe tie downtimes to side numbers so less time is required for the low-number side to resupply.

[Zoney]

Seems to me the problem with the Strat system is the asymmetric effect is has on gameplay.  One player with time on his hands (as Randy says, usually from the most populated side) can affect the gameplay of many other players for hours -- both by the direct effect on assets and by requiring a large investment in time to resupply.  On some maps (Buzzsaw) the Strat killer doesn't even need to invest much time.

If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.

[Randy1]

If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.

It is obvious you do not defend strats.

[Zimme83]

It is obvious you do not defend strats.

No, i have never seen zoney intercept high alt bombers..

[Wiley]

It is obvious you do not defend strats.

 

Yup.  One never sees Zoney waiting for bombers by the strats.  Nope not never.  All he does is low alt furball and GV.

Wiley.

[popeye]

If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.

One player with time on his hands.   

[Wiley]

One player with time on his hands.   

Yup.  The defender's at a bit of a disadvantage in some ways, but if it's 1 or 2 guys attacking in bombers, it only takes 1 or 2 guys defending to stop them.

That only applies to aircraft though.  When it comes to GV spawn ins like on Buzzsaw, that's a whole different thing.  That's going to require more defenders than attackers.

Wiley.

[Zoney]

One player with time on his hands.   

Less time than it takes a defender in a fighter to thwart him no matter what altitude the buff is going to come in.

[Zoney]

My point being, it takes me less than half the time to defend then it does for the bomber.

GV's are a separate issue.

One player, with patience and decent skills can defend the strats but you must be dedicated to it, just like the buff driver is dedicated to hit them.