M3 Effectiveness.....

[lunatic1]

Lunatic,
I don't run many supplies, you're right there....but you are completely wrong if you believe I don't do anything with base captures...probably my most flown plane in my entire Aces High career is the FW190F8...and I use it strictly for porking fields.

When I'm on these pork runs, that's when I notice the actual effectiveness of field supply. I'll pork a field of troops and when I'm reupping my next sortie to hit the base that it can resupply...the troops are already back up....tell me, short of flying 2 hours to level the troops training base how am I supposed to beat that without having overwhelming numbers or a very coordinated attack which is hard with random players....

Fact is you can't, and you bring ZERO argument to the discussion by trying to discredit my knowledge of how the game works....

not trying to discredit anybody to my knowledge. I know you know more about about the game then I do. and maybe something needs to be done to the game but not resupply. in AH2 resupply town and strat was 4 mins per trip. AH3 hitech made it 10 mins per trip.
if they could keep strats at 10 mins per trip I would be ok with 4 mins on town supps. but when strats get they are down for 180 mins at 4 mins per drop will take forever. but since the horde here wants to do away with resupply I'm just going to give up defending resupply. but 1 last statement..
in the game tonight on 200chnl you said something about this game being a flight sim..
Yes it is. but on front page below the flight sim statement it says Engage in LAND, Sea and Air Combat. Land means gv's including M3's Sdkfz-251's  lvt's and jeeps and tanks. like I said before I guess tanks are next.  so I just give up arguing.
like I said the horde always win.

[Crash Orange]

Defense used to mean jump in a plane or tank and hold attackers off.. not circle in ultra ack guns and run boxes of supplies into a town.

Who wants to pay 14.95 to do the later of those two?

You're asking the wrong question.

The question you should be asking is "What effect will the proposed change have on player behavior?"

I submit that the answer is not "It will make combat-shy players get in planes and fight in the air."

Whether they SHOULD be doing that is a very different question from whether they WILL do that. If they are determined not to fight you air-to-air, there's no way you can make them.

What nerfing M3 resup will do, especially late at night (which is what we're talking about here) is make it much easier for a small group of players to WF and deack multiple fields along the front, wait an hour or more for defenders to stop babysitting the map room, and come back and sneak them.

How about this for a change: reduce resupply effects on towns, but if there's no enemy plane or GV within range to flash a base or town all the buildings and guns lose 10% of their downtime per minute - meaning if no enemy ever showed up they'd all pop in 10 minutes regardless of strat damage. That won't hurt opposed attacks at all, because you'll always have some attackers at the scene of an opposed attack, but it will cut down on people sneaking bases unopposed when they deacked and WFd them 2 hours before. It won't even stop most sneaks... just the ones that depend on waiting for the defenders to get bored waiting for attackers who never show up for an hour or more.

[Lusche]

A massive numerical superiority is needed either way, offense and defense.

Not necessarily as massive as it was needed there. Without town resupply (in this specific battle) there would have been a fighting chance to beat the defenders. Doe to the vegetation, the m3s had not even been visible from the air most of them time, especially not when fighting. Against those 4 players resupplying, the only chance would have been a massive assault more or less whiteflagging and capturing the base within a few minutes. Any prolonged battle was going to fail.

This morning there was a similar situation, over the same base. The attacker had bombed the town, GVs were rolling, two defenders upped in planes. I tried to deack the town, was jumped by them had to fight but got shot down. Just as I was about to reup to get back to the battle we saw the town downtime was already down to 10 minutes.
The battle was over that very moment.

And that's one of the things I miss, prolonged battles in AH.

But then again, just anecdotal evidence.

[ccvi]

Not necessarily as massive as it was needed there. Without town resupply (in this specific battle) there would have been a fighting chance to beat the defenders. Doe to the vegetation, the m3s had not even been visible from the air most of them time, especially not when fighting. Against those 4 players resupplying, the only chance would have been a massive assault more or less whiteflagging and capturing the base within a few minutes. Any prolonged battle was going to fail.

"Fail" is pretty relative. It may seen as a victory from the other point of view. From that other point of view, devastating air superiority is needed to take down incoming m3/troops from the air, in the same way attackers need to take down m3/cargo.

Typically, with a large number of fields and low number of players, there's no prolonged battle anyway. If a field isn't taken after half an hour, attackers move elsewhere, to a place where there's currently no defense. With up to 2 hours of down-time remaining, that leaves a field that needs someone to watch it, even without there being a fight.

[popeye]

"Fail" is pretty relative. It may seen as a victory from the other point of view. From that other point of view, devastating air superiority is needed to take down incoming m3/troops from the air, in the same way attackers need to take down m3/cargo.

There is a difference.  Defenders can focus on the Map Room to prevent capture, but attackers need to stop resupply anywhere near the town.  On some maps there is enough vegetation in the town to hide a defending GV who only needs to have a clear shot at the map room to prevent capture.  To prevent resupply the attackers need to cover a wide area, sometimes with multiple spawns.

[JunkyII]

not trying to discredit anybody to my knowledge. I know you know more about about the game then I do. and maybe something needs to be done to the game but not resupply. in AH2 resupply town and strat was 4 mins per trip. AH3 hitech made it 10 mins per trip.
if they could keep strats at 10 mins per trip I would be ok with 4 mins on town supps. but when strats get they are down for 180 mins at 4 mins per drop will take forever. but since the horde here wants to do away with resupply I'm just going to give up defending resupply. but 1 last statement..
in the game tonight on 200chnl you said something about this game being a flight sim..
Yes it is. but on front page below the flight sim statement it says Engage in LAND, Sea and Air Combat. Land means gv's including M3's Sdkfz-251's  lvt's and jeeps and tanks. like I said before I guess tanks are next.  so I just give up arguing.
like I said the horde always win.

Wrong I said it was a combat simulator....Town resupply was one of the last things added to AH2 and I fortunately came back to the game in time to notice how bad it made gameplay....a lot of you probably didn't notice as much because you were still active...I came back and it was like a different game because of 1 thing.

Yesterday at A12 we engaged in combat in tanks....knights didn't have the spawn to run supps(even though they did run some with LVTs as the CV was respawning....so what we saw there was a defense of tanks and whirbs streaming to town and fighters upping to engage enemy fighters...limiting the effectiveness or removing Town resupply will do EXACTLY that...make defense have to be a legit one. Resupply is not combat.

[Lazerr]

Wrong I said it was a combat simulator....Town resupply was one of the last things added to AH2 and I fortunately came back to the game in time to notice how bad it made gameplay....a lot of you probably didn't notice as much because you were still active...I came back and it was like a different game because of 1 thing.

Yesterday at A12 we engaged in combat in tanks....knights didn't have the spawn to run supps(even though they did run some with LVTs as the CV was respawning....so what we saw there was a defense of tanks and whirbs streaming to town and fighters upping to engage enemy fighters...limiting the effectiveness or removing Town resupply will do EXACTLY that...make defense have to be a legit one. Resupply is not combat.

Yeah i have been involved with both offense and defense in this type of sitation and the fights are great.

I remember back in the good ole days squads i was a part of would do alamo mission.

Take a base way behind enemy lines and defend it as long as we could.  Some of the best battles ive been involved with came from these situations.

[JunkyII]

Today...a guy spawned an M3 at a field before a bomber even hit a town...tell me I'm wrong when that is the mindset of some players...kudos it is one of the best defenses but it shouldn't be for overall gameplay.

[ccvi]

Take a base way behind enemy lines and defend it as long as we could.

That's more related to the decrease of the radar altitude (possibly also increase in town size, and maybe increased ack strength) than resupply.

[Lusche]

That's more related to the decrease of the radar altitude

This killed off the vast majority of NOE attacks.

[Lusche]

Today...a guy spawned an M3 at a field before a bomber even hit a town...tell me I'm wrong when that is the mindset of some players...kudos it is one of the best defenses but it shouldn't be for overall gameplay.

^

But 30 minutes later, exactly the same base, the opposite result. I call out WF, many troops had already entered the maproom.
What happens? Three or four guys hop in M3s  to beat enemy Jeeps (called them out as well) to the town. Was the only one trying to stop them at that point.

The base changed ownership. 

[ccvi]

This is where I'm getting confused. Can a town be brought up all with supply deliveries?

Yes, like everything else (except those fixed to 15 minutes - everything mannable or needed to spawn).

If the drop range for supplies to the town is still 1000yds from the map room, M3 don't even have to be on the ring road that goes around the town. In the terrain editor I've set the ring tool to a radius of 1000yds(.57mile) in this screen shot. The same radius effects drops for airfield\port\vBase.

I have no idea what the ranges may have been, as resupply wasn't that much a useful tool as it is now. Today at least the supply-range seems to be determined individually for each building (dropping from the right distance can resupply part of the town), and that distance slightly exceeds the range of the 251 rockets at 23 degrees (some 1000 yards). In contrast to that, there's a loading/login/startup hint, which says something like "did you know supplies can be dropped half a mile from the target" (or similar).

[ccvi]

This killed off the vast majority of NOE attacks.

Did base-takes behind enemy lines ever happen regularly non-NOE?

[Lusche]

Did base-takes behind enemy lines ever happen regularly non-NOE?

Hmmm difficult question 

I'm sure they happened (ususally everything that can been done has been done), but I don't think I remember many of that sort...

[bustr]

Our game has a history of abused ways to hide your presence creating boring or none productive game play, or allow a few to dictate outcomes none stop to the many while risking very little.  Hoards of 30-60 players hiding themselves below radar until the last moment made avoiding combat easy while capturing poorly or not defended feilds. Our radar minimum got dropped to 65ft. Hitech even tried capture paths which created activity for about 2 weeks then captures stalled out into boring grinds bringing base captures to a stand still and using up hours at a location. Now we have M3's which only need one or two players to dictate outcomes to a larger number without having to risk as much as the group who got off their kesters to achieve a goal. I can understand why Hitech told me to make all bridges indestructible, other wise the greifing weenies will just drop the bridges with a single finger salute all night long screwing customers out of being able to fight and attack bases where ever bridges get used as combat area choke points.

When one or two players can dictate outcomes against superior numbers at will with very little risk or effort, that is a problem in our open world style of game play. The new clutter and terrain turns M3's into ghosts which almost gives them the ability to call up a cloaking device if the player has become experienced with the new clutter and GV icon view ability conditions. So yes, this new found advantage due to no one ever testing AH3 for these kinds of issues is loved by the single finger salute few who don't want their advantage and single finger control over the many modified or taken away.

Every time Hitech has made a change to address something like this, the forums erupted like planet earth was being invaded and scorched.

Any of you who have been here since ENY was introduced should be able to write the same list of things that came and went visa Hitech making a change that caused the forums to erupt. Almost all of them were unintended consequences no one had seen in some process that ended up being leverage in an unbalancing manner to game play.