Announcing the October Scenario "The Battle Between the Darkness and Light"

[Brooke]

Fudgums, out of the scenarios you've flown in, which have been your favorites?

[Molsman]

There are 2 Events that stand out to me. I forget what they were Called but the One was where we had Air and Ground Fights. People signed up to fly or others signed up to be in Ground Vehicle. This was done with a winter time Theme in Germany somewhere. The other one was Where ROC was in a pt boat picking up pilots who were shot down and bailed in the Channel that was one of the Britain battles. Between FSO and Special Events there are alot of smaller Battles that could be done and all. maybe some unknown battles ,I will be researching some in my free time and post here to see if they would work.

<S>
Molsman

[Dantoo]

Just popped in to gently raise an issue with last setup.
Concept, rides all ok.  Close enough to great IMHO.   Respect, as that is a difficult balancing act.  Well done.

I would recommend a review, for consideration of arena settings,perhaps, going forward to the next and beyond.

It is a major responsibility for the side leaders to do two things:

Respect the scoring system as that is the guide that the author provides to steer you through the scenario.
Operate your team in a manner that exposes them to meaningful action, whilst still paying respect to point 1.

This one became very difficult for the Axis side.
It was clear that the main effort had to be against the Mosquito attack force per design.

The problem with complying is that for much of the play time is that they remained completely invisible.  Base flashing warning set to 3 miles meant that after setting it off, the first guns were firing 40 seconds later.
With targets narrowed to 3 choices (2 was much healthier), and a target choice spread across more than 50 miles there was never a chance to join battle if the attackers were not detected before the target.  The settings also allowed unlimited paths to the targets and from the targets without detection.  Tail chasing Mossies in the LW rides was not effective.  They couldn't run them down once at the same altitude.

The Axis was reduced on too many occasions to having to choose between just reacting to high fighters, (not in line with designers intent or description) or just hovering about for an hour avoiding combat.

You really, really don't want that if you want these guys to come back.

NOTE:  I am not following my own rules here which require me to offer a solution and not just a problem.
I admit I haven't been able to come up with one.   You need to provide the Mosquito force with a real chance to get to the target, attack, and then live.
At the same time you need to acknowledge and respond to the difficulty of the Axis group to follow the designer intent and also provide immersion and action.

Hope you can find a way through that!  Again, there were a lot of good moments in that scenario for both sides.  Just a problem trying to find work for the Axis side rather than have them sitting on a perch singing for an hour.

Rgds.

 

[Brooke]

I think soon I will have a large enough team who routinely fill non-fighters so that we can have two groups.

Going forward, I don't think we'll have attackers only on one side.  Because -- while fighters and bombers vs. fighters works fine -- fighters and attackers vs. fighters is too difficult to satisfy everyone.

Basically, there is a conundrum.  Axis pilots don't prefer having to focus mostly on things sneaking around.  But if attackers don't sneak around, they tend to all die short of target.  That conundrum exists independent of points and settings.

For example, this scenario score was a draw, but -- Overall attacker death was 65% (frames 1 and 2) and 94% (frames 3 and 4).  So not best for attacker pilot satisfaction.  And axis pilots wanted to find and kill attack planes more readily.  So not best for axis fighter pilot satisfaction.

To solve this, I think attack scenarios will be fighters and attackers vs. fighters and attackers now that we can.  Or if the axis regulars want it sometimes, fighters, attackers, and bombers vs. fighters (with scoring that allows for fighter-only side to focus mainly on fighters and bombers, which they can see coming).

[Eagler]

MOTA was fighters/bombers against fighters and I found it a bunch more fun than this last one

Appreciate you guys putting these together  <S>

Eagler

[Brooke]

Yep, fighters and bombers vs. fighters works fine.  Because defenders can see the bombers coming.

It's specifically fighter and attackers vs. fighters that is hardest to balance.

[Eagler]

Seems the flying to action ratio could be tweaked..not sure how but there's alot of just flying around imo

Eagler

[Brooke]

Seems the flying to action ratio could be tweaked..not sure how

There are some ways to measure action.  One course way is Missions/frame (as most pilots get into a combat in a mission), where "Mission" means the launch of the bombers or attackers toward target.  Also battle area (as smaller battle area means more concentrated action) and kills/pilot (measure of how many combats are going on).

Prior to Dnieper (2016), missions/frame were often 1-2.  Battle areas were large (40-70 sectors^2).  Kills/pilot were 1-1.8 or so.

From Dnieper onward, we made an intentional change to make things significantly more active:  3-5 missions/frame, small battle areas (6-10 sectors^2), kills/pilot 2-3 or so.  So like 2x or 3x the action of most pre-Dnieper scenarios.

For Battle Between, we had 4 missions/frame (good), battle area of about 9 sectors^2 (average for modern scenarios), and kills/pilot avg. about 2 (not horrible, but at the lower end for modern scenarios).

BUT --

The style of play had more flying around, avoiding fighter-fighter fights, while looking for sneaky attackers, chasing attackers, etc.

Which isn't what folks prefer.

Overall, action is a product of missions/frame, battle area, and a setup that does not incentivize avoiding fights.  This scenario is OK on the first two, and did not succeed on the 3rd point.  We solve that by what I talked about a couple posts above.