Rail Yard Strat Target

[Mongoose]

A rail yard will never be as big as the city, and the city as it is reduced in capacity gradually effects the targeted country in the manner you wish, or sort of. Incorporating a rail yard into the city as part of the target package, then what does it effect?

Ok. How about if the rail yard is just part of the city, and affects the downtime the same as any other part of the city?  It still gives the bomber pilots something interesting to aim at, without making things more complicated.

[JimmyD3]

Other than the city effecting how fast the strats will rebuild, and it takes a lot of bomb tonnage, which then effects how fast objects rebuild on feilds, this moves into the realm of one guy with a bomber can shut down a country for x amount of time. You may have noticed Hitech does not allow that and why he changed the tonnage and down time for the HQ at the end of AH2 for being abused that way. Yes, it was his own oversight, but, our game was not so grifertastically focused years earlier when he set the tonnage and down time for the HQ. It may have cut into his bottom line, customers were that mad almost every night once that greifing act caught on.

A rail yard will never be as big as the city, and the city as it is reduced in capacity gradually effects the targeted country in the manner you wish, or sort of. Incorporating a rail yard into the city as part of the target package, then what does it effect? With my new terrain I will have to install a resupply path system. Fields get roads or river resupply, strats get rail resupply. Once you test setting it up it becomes obvious how Hitech wants these things to work for everyone.

Right now the city as an aggregate effects all strat equally in percentage as it is destroyed towards 0%. If all it takes is targeting one small area of the city to impact all of the strat rail resupply, once again you are back to one guy with a bomber dictating outcomes for a whole country. That did not happen in WW2 other than using a nuke. A box of bombers with 1000lb bombs is only a fraction of that projected force. Hitech is choosing to limit your ability to project force against a whole country. A box of bombers with 1000lb bombs is not equal to a nuke.

You are effectively asking for a country wide choke hold taken out from 30k with a single button press. In the past that is probably the core reason none of these repeated requests for targets like this were acknowledged. And the HQ debacle was a taste of how bad that kind of thing can be.

You could ask for each strat resupply rail to origin at a rail head strat kind of object. Right now you have to get up close and personal to destroy a train, it won't work from 30k in a bomber. That only effects the current resupply run during that 10 minute window while making you vulnerable to radar, interceptors, and the AI guns on the train. So bombing a rail head from 30k, would Hitech harden it so it would take a fully loaded box of B29? Or would he make it rebuild in time to launch the next train in it's 10 minute time schedule?

Based on the current functions and rules for the automated strat resupply, it gets sticky trying to shoe horn in this kind of strategic target for a 30k bomber and a single button press. With all of this species of wish, no one tries to fit it into the current model becasue they want a strategic choke hold result to replace the gradual degradation system currently in place. So it's generally they hope Hitech will pull something out of his yazoo. Try analyzing the current system so that he can fit a new object into it that works with the current rules.

Or outright wish for choke hold objects that you can bomb from 30k and impact a whole country with a strategic button press. Strategic bombing in WW2 took a large number of bombers, not one guy from 30k pressing a single button to shut down all rail function and resupply for germany. The current system reflects how little force a box of bombers can project against large complexes, versus how powerful they are against a town or an airfield.

Bustr reminds me of Sheldon on "Big Bang Theory".

on't worry Bustr, we still love  you .

[100Coogn]

Bustr reminds me of Sheldon on "Big Bang Theory".

on't worry Bustr, we still love  you .

Maybe that is more of what I'm getting at.   
No harm meant...

Coogan

[ezglider]

To be clear, I'm not advocating changing game controls so that bombers rule.  I think the mix we have now is spot on.  The strategic bombing of Germany's soft underbelly, which included rail yards, was crucial to the war effort however and took countless missions and bomber crews to accomplish.

The DHBG experiences it's fair share of losses in this game on every mission which is as it should be and we are ok with the current balance. 

Not trying to tip over the apple cart.  Just asking for a cool new target to hit which blows up with spectacular fireworks.

[27th]

Pretty sure you coulda just put a "-1" to the wish, instead of the lecture.

Coogan

  

and yes I support the idea. More train action along with this :
Armored trains http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,386032.0.html   

 
27th

[bustr]

I have no problem with cool new targets, I'll shoe horn them in to my terrain if they are available. If they are static to simply go boom, Hitech won't bother. If they are so strategic they allow one player hour after hour to dictate the flow of the game, Hitech won't bother. If you want rail yards, help him see his own functions from a new perspective. By making the effort to understand the functions so you can speak to him from his perspective.

If you try to make it be a replacement for a block of percentage for taking down the city to zero, and you grant it a greater weight of effect on the total country as a one shot entity( juicy strategic target), you are giving one player an evening of dictating to a whole country with one finger. That is what happened with the HQ.

Consider how Hitech sees the strat system with the city as a giant hardened strategic target that then controls the rebuild time of all the lesser strats based on it's own health. That becomes your trains that run every 10 minutes. Right now you can destroy individual trains to impact that 10 minute window of resupply. But, that is only 1\6 of the trains running during that window. Hitech is not allowing you to impact all six trains in one strategic button press for a reason. You want a rail yard target that matters. The only trains are single dedicated runs for each minor strat once every 10 minutes that magically appear on the track end 5 miles from the strat. I've performed testing on the new system since I have to shoe horn it into my new terrain.

At this point I'm reminded of the old shed that the trains exited from that were indestructible in AH2. Some of you remember that and I bet sat on the track in a T34 shooting the train as it spawned. So is it a yard at the end of each track that a 30k bomber can orbit and single finger every ten minutes? That would give a single player too much control of out comes. The master control is the city. So is it a master yard in the city that makes wonderful eyecandy blow ups and only counts as part of the general degradation to 0% when you bomb the whole city? I bet that is not what you really want with a POST titled "Rail Yard Strat Target".

The urge here is for something eyecandy new and different, and then a real cause and effect for the effort opposed to hunting 6 single trains one at a time in remote locations. I doubt Hitech will go for that. So back to persuading for a single target that one player has no out sized effect on a country for the reward. Why bother to strategically bomb it with no out sized effect for a reward? Other wise, what real reason can you give Hitech to put in a new object with less effect than dropping all the hangers on an airfield? The current supply system is distributed to keep one player from dedicating his night to squating on two other countries every night. Remember the HQ problem at the end of AH2.

How do you help Hitech see his system from a new angle without having to touch that core resupply code to scratch this strategic itch?

[ezglider]

Sigh!

I'm not a game techno type so I leave that to folk who know how.

If a Rail Yard strat target is too hard to incorporate, so be it.

Tech -1; Wishlister - 0

[bustr]

Ultimately you want Hitech to go wozers wow wozers what a supercalifragilistic idea. Then code all weekend and pull that rabbit out of his special magic place. Then someone like me to figure out how to shoe horn it into a terrain. Players build terrains so they have to pre plan objects and how they will work with the theme of a given terrain. Hitech dropped the updated resupply roads and tracks on me right in the middle of my new terrain just at the end of the topography creation phase. I did not plan for them, so the new topography being  a realistic theme, I get to hand futz roads and tracks into the topography just like a construction crew in real life. Weeeeeee.......

I'm trying to help you get what you want but, you don't want to work for it. With the vast majority of this kind of a wish, no one wants to admit from the start that they want the object to have a strategic impact on a whole country with a button press. Hitech will have to change the fundamental way he has designed the overall distributed resupply system.

Do you want to bomb something cosmetic that gives little to no satisfaction for your effort to the country it belongs to? Destroying one of the 6 trains is about equal to that and why they are distributed. Not very glorious and satisfying for the time spent in a bomber.....

I'm not a heartless old poop, I work with the reality Hitech allows me. And I've thought lately that the strats need to be arranged in a more attractive layout to encourage bombers to make the trip. On my new terrain this is the layout for all three countries. The green squares are the Flak bases, the tan are all the strats. One of those two large squares will be the 163 base I'm required to put in for the HQ. Yes to build a terrain I have to create a blueprint in 1:1 scale and map everything I want to put on that terrain. Those place holder squares came first, then the topography around them. I have rules to follow for distances between feilds\strats and other things. So the term shoe horn is appropriate.

So how do you get what you want without making Hitech change his supply system and not give you and your finger control over a whole country from 30k all night long?

[oboe]

With the vast majority of this kind of a wish, no one wants to admit from the start that they want the object to have a strategic impact on a whole country with a button press.

With all due respect, I don't think that's what the majority of the people who ask for more heavy bomber strat targets like rail yards, sub pens, etc are asking for.  At least not a crippling impact not like taking down HQ used to be.   Ezglider is right when he says rail marshaling yards were an important strategic target in WWII, so it seems reasonable to me to want such a target in the game.  I think we can take him at his word when he says, "Not trying to tip over the apple cart.  Just asking for a cool new target to hit which blows up with spectacular fireworks."

For the mechanics of implementation, how about something like:

For each cumulative 10% damage to the rail yard strat object, the duration between trains running increases by some fixed time amount, say, by 1 minute.  So if you completely knock out the rail yard (100% damage), the time between trains running increases by a total of 10 minutes, to 20 minutes between trains.    That hurts the enemy but wouldn't completely cripple it.   

Doesn't that seem workable?

[bustr]

You just caught yourself in the same trap everyone does becasue you think the answer is being elegantly complex and nuanced. Some years ago Hitech made something complex thinking that was what some of the community really wanted. Because it was complex no one bothered to use it.

Get the point of this.... Give him simple and he might go for it. Most of this community is out there for some piu, piu, piu. Not chess, or a head to head GO match with Cho Chikun. In 16 years, all of these strategic style of bomber target wishes are for a single finger button press choke hold to impact a whole country. The city is already nuanced as the core of the top down supply system. Very few people want to bother anymore. The want something that gives them a big payoff for right now, not three trips 2 hours from now.

The city already impacts the trains as it's reduced down towards 0%. Lower the city % then hunt the trains to interfere with the 10 minute windows they operate in. A rail yard cuts out the hunting and distributed part and gives a bomber driver a single finger salute to a whole country for flying to a single location. Why the city is so huge so there is a high value target but it does not allow one person to dictate to a whole country becasue it takes many more tonnes of bombs to reduce it to 0% than a single box of bombers can carry. Even with the city at 0%, strat resupply still takes place. This kind of wish wants to flatten the rail yard and make trains DOA to have a crippling effect on a whole country.

So back to yes, Hitech can incorporate a master rail yard into the city complex for the eyecandy. What is the point of destroying it as a special target if it is calculated into the city's core function for reducing to 0%? Then it's not a separate entity and does not choke hold all rail traffic as a master object. All rail traffic is only to the 6 other strats and not to country level feilds. So once again a terrain builder will hide the thing near the city and protect it like he does any strat along with Hitech will probably have Waffle put flak towers in the object. Not much fun at that point. And the unspoken part of the wish is for Hitech to change the existing game infrastructure to make this work becasue it would be neat to have??

How do you use what is there, not make it a game of chess for it to run, and use the existing system in a simple manner? Think about how the battleship was made operational. It needed a bridge, hanger, and officers club so you could get on it, choose guns, LVT, and PTs, and spawn into them. And be able to enter the O'Club like being in any tower which the bridge is. Only new 3D objects, the rest already existed becasue of the CV.

Hitech has a never ending todo list, we were introduced to that concept in the alpha\beta. This wish has been on the wish books for probably as long as I've been in the game. He already rebuilt the game from the ground up. And it appears he reuses his code everywhere he can. How do you help him see this is a good "something" without it giving one player control over 100 players most of the night. And not require him to create a whole new backend for the arena resupply program? Or require an AI to play high level GO with itself to control shades of nuance like roles of DnD dice for activity turns.

Simple is very hard.

I'm dissecting as much of the existing processes as I can to try and see it in small simple bites. You gents always end up building whole new games and ignoring trying to understand how the exiting structure even works before the post runs it's course.

[Mongoose]

Ok. I have an idea, but I need to make sure I have the right numbers first.

How many objects in the city can be destroyed?
What is the hardness of the city objects compared to normal town buildings?

[Groth]

 I kinda miss trains.....maybe we could have some nearish 'front lines'....even if they don't contribute alot to local 'strats'...if we're very good?!