Is HTC trying to reduce GV play?

[Greebo]

When AH3 went live CraterMA was made the default terrain, i.e. the terrain that is downloaded with the game itself. At that point HTC took over development of CraterMA and I no longer have anything to do with it.

[Bruv119]

I remember the MA Map that had the dueling arenas centre area.  Fights there were great! constant action, take off, clear the mountain edge and drop into a world of heaven. 

Then the base capture guys came along and starting trying to capture said centre fields!   Shock and horror.   The joint base capture efforts of 2 opposing sides to reclaim the field for the guys who had it taken it from them were also good fun.  Those were the days!   

[Greebo]

I remember that Bruv. CraterMA was originally designed with three airbases on the inner raised step of the crater but before I finished it HTC said they didn't want any "fighter town" MA maps so I took them out.

[Lusche]

I remember the MA Map that had the dueling arenas centre area.  Fights there were great! constant action, take off, clear the mountain edge and drop into a world of heaven. 

That was were I earned my first landed kills message... two 110's who were trying to sneak around the mountain next to the airfield to strafe it. They never checked their six, so an extremely excited n00b (sweaty hands!) was able to bring them down in his La-7 

What a pity you can't turn back the clock 

[Lusche]

I understand what your saying, and he cant possibly speak for everyone, however, you COULD add a poll for players as they log in asking if players would like the "old" style crater Tank Town back.

Such a poll would be a bad thing unless HT had such a version already at hand and would implement it at once
But then, I'm generally very sceptical about polling things like that.

[Randy1]

I would imagine running a game service like HTC is like walking barefoot through broken glass.  Still it is a business that lives or dies on majority customer satisfaction.

[hitech]

You have me confused...

I mixed up you and lunatic1s posts.

HiTech

[CAV]

From a combat simulation players point of view. And 24 years on various armored vehicles, the AH3 terrain looks much more realistic and typical of Central Europe. The old CraterMA map Combined with a totally unrealistic levels  zoom/Magnification  from what I call the commanders position, Led to a totally unrealistic arcade game. With some players having successfully engagements at over two kilometers in a WW2 tank.

You have to remember that post war research indicates that the average tank engagement range during WW2 was only several hundred meters. Shots from over 1 kilometer were either rarely taken, or rarely reached their target. Yes you can find events and stories where long shots did happen, but most of the time it was a bad ideal.

CAV

[Oldman731]

You have to remember that post war research indicates that the average tank engagement range during WW2 was only several hundred meters. Shots from over 1 kilometer were either rarely taken, or rarely reached their target. Yes you can find events and stories where long shots did happen, but most of the time it was a bad ideal.

Agreed.

We have the same unreality with air-to-air gunnery.

- oldman

[TDeacon]

From a combat simulation players point of view. And 24 years on various armored vehicles, the AH3 terrain looks much more realistic and typical of Central Europe. The old CraterMA map Combined with a totally unrealistic levels  zoom/Magnification  from what I call the commanders position, Led to a totally unrealistic arcade game. With some players having successfully engagements at over two kilometers in a WW2 tank.

You have to remember that post war research indicates that the average tank engagement range during WW2 was only several hundred meters. Shots from over 1 kilometer were either rarely taken, or rarely reached their target. Yes you can find events and stories where long shots did happen, but most of the time it was a bad ideal.

CAV

You are correct from a historical simulations point of view.  However, GVs in AH (and various predecessor MMO flight sims) were never even close to behaving in a historical manner, nor could they do so without entirely changing the free-for-all sandbox play style we all know and love.  Any realistic WW2 GV game, where players were constrained to operating only within military units, using real-world game tactics and pacing, would be profoundly un-enjoyable at the level of an individual GV. 

Personally, I liked GV combat in AH2; it was fun learning how to make those long ranged shots, then maneuvering over the terrain, and making that skill pay off.  IMHO, most of the objections to that play style were just sour grapes.  Instead of improving their skills, they whined louder than the rest of us, and won. 

That being said, the current AH3 GV game, though different, can still be fun, on the terrains which are constructed properly.  That includes terrain elevation differences you can maneuver over, and close spawns.  The more dense foliage on the trees helps a lot in protecting against planes.  OTOH, the more dense foliage, when combined with flat terrain, reduces the game to stationary GVs lying in wait for moving GVs.  My best GV mission so far involved 10 kills (before being bombed), and all were obtained while hiding near a town and ambushing moving attacking GVs.  Kind of like spawn camping, IMHO. 

MH

[bustr]

I watched the ambush thing on my terrain BowlMA. All of the spawns and the area around towns is a tile with villages and long pastures. Each GV spawn is into the center of a village to stop spawn camping. And it works, except someone remembered his history lessons from tank ambushing after D-Day. From one spawn everyone would run through to village screened by the buildings out into a long pasture which they could race at full speed towards the town. For about 30 minutes every time they did that someone picked them off. So they all spawned in and started yelling for air support to either bomb the hidden tank or spot it for them. They would not move their tanks in any direction......

I spotted it for them and it was a very simple ambush spot that everyone could have driven a larger circle and avoided. The very last house of their spawn village on the very edge of the long pasture was an "L" shaped building with the inside of the "L" facing away from the path they would run through the town. Where the guy sat his back was exposed if they had gone wide into the pasture behind him. So he would listen for them to pass, poke his turret around the building and rear end them from the direction they had just come.

I was amazed at the amount of hysteria this was creating, these guys actually refused to come out of the center of the village until someone took the time to spot the single tank for them. So on my new terrain I keep touching up the farmland with open grass areas to try and make things less easy to ambush people. In AH2 spawn camping was a problem because the clutter and trees was sparser. I think the center island tank crater on my BowlMA terrain stopped getting used because the country with the most dedicated storch pilot was a direct factor in making people feel like they had no way to hide. There is a paranoia factor that effects average tank players I witness all the time with the AH3 trees and clutter being more realistic. I'm not sure tank combat now is as fun for as many players as it was in AH2. It certainly separates the experts form everyone else along with everyone else needing air spotters more frequently.     

[TDeacon]

To clarify, the example I gave above wasn't at a spawn, it was on one of the hills surrounding the airbase's town.  This worked because it was a predictable destination for attackers.  But it was kind of like spawn camping, because instead of maneuvering against opponents, I was just sitting there waiting for them, which IMHO is more limiting game play. 

MY AH2 counter to people lying in wait to listen and ambush was to maneuver to a higher elevation off the the side, and then in, where I could often see them, and in addition often get flank shots.  Since they had their engines off to listen for their victims, I could often get several shots in at very long range before they noticed me, turned engines on, and started to move.  With several ambushers, one got even more targets.  I haven't generally been able to do this in AH3 due it being much harder to see stuff at long range, perhaps due to the much more dense vegetation, and perhaps due to flatter maps.  Elevations needed to be within sighting and gun range of the ambushers for this to work. 

MH

[Lusche]

I really don't think the Hostiles Detector in vehicles is helping ground combat either.

[TDeacon]

I really don't think the Hostiles Detector in vehicles is helping ground combat either.

Removing sound location without any other changes risks reducing GV tactics to blundering around in the trees.  Remember using this is a major skill element.  So I say keep it, unless someone reworks the maps to ensure elevations and fields of view as an replacement search enabler. 

MH

[Lusche]

It's a big combat avoindance mechanism, better than any we had before.

I can sit, engine running, in the strats taking them down. I don't even need to listen, I just watch the clipboard. The landing button goes red long before we both being in noise range. I can quickly dart away, either to land or, even better to go into hiding. When I do that under tree cover, even planes can hardly find me at all. And I know all the time if an enemy is still around or not.

In AH2, when I heard the enemy for the first time, he was already well inside my 'safe landing distance'

It's similar with capture of vehicle bases, once the enemy gets to approximetaly within landing range he will stop and  just check the detector. If red, he simply backs up a few hundred yard and tower out.