Pizzle sent me a message on this, which I replied to. Since he mentions it here as well, I will post my response here as well.
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Hello, Pizzle.
First of all, thank you for giving frame 1 a try. I'm sorry you didn't like it. Player fun is the most-important thing, and we try our best to achieve that.
Secondly, with regard to player numbers, I'm going to go through things in detail in a way that I hope will cause you to think, "OK, I see how all of that plays out with real-world limitations. It's reasonable how Brooke tries to deal with that. I'll give another frame a try."
In a perfect world:
-- Players would make sure to get their side's registration filled.
-- All registered players would show up every frame.
-- Walkons (unregistered players) would all wait in Rooks; be OK with flying for either side in any role (fighter, bomber, or attack) and any plane; and wait for me to assign them in perfect ratio to each side.
In the real world:
-- Players don't always get their registration filled.
-- Players randomly don't show up.
-- Some players don't show up until way after start time, after I have already assigned walkons.
-- A random number of walkons show up.
-- Walkons sometimes go to a particular side on their own; or sometimes won't fly a particular side, or plane; and are generally not easy to manage.
The real world makes the actual numbers in a frame variable and impossible to perfectly balance.
If we get (allied fighters):(axis fighters) ratio to within a few pilots of perfect, that's about as good as it gets.
In frame 1, the allies had 15 registered pilots show up (too low -- I wish allies filled their side), some walkons went straight to allies, and I sent every rook walkon to allied, which gave them ultimately 23 pilots. One more than design. The axis ended up with 26 fighter pilots (I sent no walkons there, so extras were because guys went straight there). 4 more than design. So, in total, axis had 3 more fighter pilots than allies. But that is about as good as fighter balance gets in practice.
For bombers, if they go over design, that gives more bombing points. But I can adjust scoring for that. So, in a scoring sense, it doesn't matter that much. But for action and play balance, it is actually better for the intercepting fighters. Because bombers are air targets for the opposing fighters. More bombers means:
-- More tail-end charlies
-- More bombers outside of escort protection
-- More bombers straying around
-- More bombers are easier to find
-- More bombers are harder for bomber lead to coordinate (so execution is sloppier)
In frame 1, bombers had 4 walkons: Three low-time 14 year old girls (my two daughters and their friend who had about 4 hours of flying time prior to frame 1) and one bomber expert (Sku) who showed up and wanted to fly. These 4 extra bomber pilots generated in total +2 points for axis ((bombing points they got) - (kills on them by allies)). I will advocate adjusting bomber points to be, if more bombers than design, (adjusted bomber points) = 12 / (number of bombers in frame) * (nominal bombing points). In this case, frame 1 (adjusted bombing points) = 0.75 * (nominal bombing points).
I understand your frustration with numbers. I wish that all players worked to recruit and filled their side, showed up on time, stayed in rooks if a walkon waiting for assignment, would be OK as a walkon flying any side, any role, any plane. That's not reality, though.
The alternative is that I lock the doors to the arena at start time, strickly enforce walkons to side and role of need. Sounds good, but it would result in us getting about zero walkons, and less regular players, as they would get pissed off when they show up late and can't play or can't have a squaddie or buddy show up and still fly with him. Result is that player participation in scenarios would be reduced, and we wouldn't have enough players to continue running scenarios.
These are the realities I deal with as best I can and still keep scenarios running with the number of players we have in the game these days.
If that sounds reasonable, please consider flying another frame. If not, that's OK, and I hope you will give the next scenario a try, as they are all different, and player balance is different scenario to scenario.
Best regards to you, and whatever you decide, thanks again for giving it a go for frame 1.
-- Brooke
