Furball Lake

[Max]

NRShida has resurrected the Furball Lake map and plans to host it as "Breakfast Club" ...a dogfighting arena only. Look for it morning-afternoon times US Eastern time.If it's up and running, you'll see it on the list of arena options. Please spread the word.

[DmonSlyr]

This is a great idea! Although, I think there are much better and smaller maps to use (steal the sheep map) for example, that would allow for quicker fights and have more of a cooler landscape to look at besides the barron sea.

Remember the old FFA maps from H2H? Those maps worked great.

The second part of this is to leave it up for a while and to have at least 4 people in there to spark interest for others to join.

Keep all the sides the same team with killshooter off. This prevents Gangs.

If you can add airspawns, even better.

I just think this furball lake map is too big and is confusing for new people right when they log in to see another huge map with maybe 2 - 3 people fighting on it if they can find out where too fight.

[nrshida]

Thanks for posting this Max.

So far player density has been insufficient for furballing so we've been doing rolling 1-on-1s. Everyone has been very friendly and classy with some edge-of-the-seat dogfighting already.

The spawn bases are the three by the lake and there seems to be the right amount of space to not get crowded and also find fights in quick succession. Averaged about one fight every ten minutes on the first day with five players which trumps the MA by some considerable margin.

My motivation is to offer a more fun alternative to the almost empty MA in the European daytime which roughly equates to something like 5-a.m. until about midday New York time (EDT / UTC−4). I don't think it's healthy for the game to have only one populated arena. This arena had a reasonable flow of players about that time once.

Anyone welcome to drop in and have a quick dogfight before breakfast.

Trying to host it most weekdays but I can't run it everyday. On the upside think of my electricity bill. 

TA57x also runs a similar arena at different times and sometimes at weekends.

[rvflyer]

Air spawn is the dumbest idea anyone has ever come up with. I will not play a flight sim that has air spawns.

This is a great idea! Although, I think there are much better and smaller maps to use (steal the sheep map) for example, that would allow for quicker fights and have more of a cooler landscape to look at besides the barron sea.

Remember the old FFA maps from H2H? Those maps worked great.

The second part of this is to leave it up for a while and to have at least 4 people in there to spark interest for others to join.

Keep all the sides the same team with killshooter off. This prevents Gangs.

If you can add airspawns, even better.

I just think this furball lake map is too big and is confusing for new people right when they log in to see another huge map with maybe 2 - 3 people fighting on it if they can find out where too fight.

[rvflyer]

Furball lake was one of the most fun maps that AH has ever had in its rotation. Throw in the PT boats and it was a blast.

NRShida has resurrected the Furball Lake map and plans to host it as "Breakfast Club" ...a dogfighting arena only. Look for it morning-afternoon times US Eastern time.If it's up and running, you'll see it on the list of arena options. Please spread the word.

[DmonSlyr]

Air spawn is the dumbest idea anyone has ever come up with. I will not play a flight sim that has air spawns.

It's merely for fighter practice and quick fights. Not trying to take 10 minutes to meet in the middle for a fight.

[DmonSlyr]

Not only that. Rolling from bases pushes the fight toward one side when the players get shot down. The winning team gets closer to the rollers in the base, they have alt advantage, ect. It causes vulching. It's just not great for furball arenas. Neither is having teams. If all of the players are green, there is no ganging and players can fight themselves if no one on the other side is rolling.

Thirdly, still didn't like the lake very much as per lack of scenery, and it also made a lot of furballers leave when Hitech made the change and the water had no depth perception. That was seriously the downfall of furball Lake. Then they made it so you couldn't roll on a open base, another downfall. Now in match play you can't choose who you want to fight. That's lame. IMO, the furball area should be a different map and arena, than Match play/1v1 arena.

[Max]

Maybe you should create a furball ffa map with all the bells & whistles your requesting.

[DmonSlyr]

Maybe you should create a furball ffa map with all the bells & whistles your requesting.

If I had time and could leave my comp on all day, I would.

Furballing and Free for Alls in H2H where the main reason I stayed with this game after the 2 week trial. It's what I like to do the most in this game, especially when I don't have a lot of time. So I just know a lot about it and what makes them successful.

[nrshida]

Just to correct a small misconception: The Breakfast Club is not a Free For All nor an especially furball-based arena. A limitation you'd know if you hosted a private arena is that the total player number is limitted to 16. There is no 'front' at all, no gangs and systematic picking is not allowed. It's just a friendly place to drop in and have a couple of quick dogfights with no results recorded anywhere meaningful.

Regarding the distance to the centre of the lake, I believe it takes me far less than ten minutes to get there in a middle-spectrum plane. Even if it was ten minutes, it trumps the usual hours of flying around in the MA chasing disappearing darbars and usually bailing with no joy.

Proposing & discussing the 'perfect arena' is another discussion beyond the topic of this thread and I would encourage others to get to work themselves rather than criticise working with what we've got right now and going to the trouble of setting it up (which is by no means a simple or intuitive task) and hosting it.

Yesterday I spent 45 minutes going over BFM with a new player who has pledged to buy a twisty stick and an MA subscription also.

Talking is easy. Doing something is another matter.

[nrshida]

'Logs' say nine different people flew in today's Breakfast Club. Two still there at the expected close of day so I'm leaving it open a bit longer.

The new player came back again too.

 

[TWCAxew]

I'll be home in 45 minutes, I will see if the arena is still up and have some fun with you guys

DutchVII

[bustr]

Nirshida,

Since 16 players don't need much space, you could engage your forum guests here with a Breakfast Club mini terrain baking opportunity. The smallest size terrain is a 64bit which shows up as a 2.5x2.5 sector play area. Or a 128bit which shows up as a 5x5 sector play area. Their ideas can become reality over a weekend and Easyscor or a member of the AvA\Special Events arena terrain teams can fill them in on the extras needed to pass the HOST upload requirements. Then all of these excellent ACM arena combat ideas can be put on the Breakfast table for your guests to sample. Who knows, you could end up hosting a contest for your fans.

Basic 2.5x2.5 or even 5x5 land masses are not very time consuming to pull up by hand with a 6 mile diameter brush. The rest, a copy of Easyscor and Greebo's guides and an aptitude for finger painting when it comes to the tree and clutter tiles. Someone could always export the heightmap from your Furball Lake and make available a copy of that so they can import it and have a basic functional land mass to start with. It does not take long, I created Mongoose's canyon terrain including his updated tweaks over about 3 hours spread out over a two week period. And I was still creating my latest project. It gave me a sanity break from creating and painting 625,000sq miles of terrain.

Tiny terrains for a few friends are not as time consuming and daunting as the monsters for the MA. I can create a basic heightmap file to import and popup in an instant a 5x5 sector 500ft high landmass and people just download it from my google drive or I can give it to you to disseminate. After that they just cut it into whatever or add and pull up mountains. And if they don't like the results, zero it out by re-importing the basic hightmap. I use a lot of those for testing ideas that eventually go into my MA terrains.

Kind of removes the time question.....and I'd like to see some of these ideas come to life.

[Shuffler]

It's merely for fighter practice and quick fights. Not trying to take 10 minutes to meet in the middle for a fight.

This is true!!!

It is not meant to be the full game...... just the FIGHT.

[Shuffler]

If I had time and could leave my comp on all day, I would.

Furballing and Free for Alls in H2H where the main reason I stayed with this game after the 2 week trial. It's what I like to do the most in this game, especially when I don't have a lot of time. So I just know a lot about it and what makes them successful.

I used to make small terrains for H2H. I was there for a long time.