Time to go to the hanger

[1Cane]

This morning 8 vs 1
If a gv attacking he parks under tree while you loiter.3x
The capper was buffs rtb over my field upped on chance he was low he wasn't, I then see buffs from east continue climb turn east. Buffs immediately do 180 at edge of dar.It must of been freighting  to face the One nit in flight. Landed and logged when they won't fight 8 vs 1 they should sign off!

[eddiek]

Seen that a lot more often lately, at least it appears that way to me.
People log into the arena looking for different things.  Some just want to take bases, unopposed and as quickly as possible.  You can tell who these folks are by the targets they select, usually an undefended base.  And if failure looks imminent, or actually occurs, they find another undefended base to go after.  Rinse and repeat. 
Others seem content to up a set of buffs and venture off on a bombing run...you can usually tell if they are seeking action or just want to have a peaceful run over and back from where they take off from.  Altitude is their friend, as not a lot of players want up a fighter and climb up there and thwart a mission that most of the damage can be repaired before the buffs land again.
Others, myself included, want to log in and fight someone.  Win or lose, the action is what they seek.  Kill, get shot down, doesn't matter.  Combat is what they see as the game's biggest attraction for them.
It's frustrating when you encounter players who want their time in the arena to be something different than what you are trying to achieve. 
The other night, actually a pretty common thing to see, I upped from a base that was under attack, with a huge enemy dar bar next sector over. 
Once the enemy fighters showed up, all a lot of them seemed interested in doing was making high speed passes on you after you tried to engage an enemy, but extend(flee like a coward) once you maneuvered into a position to fight them.  Rinse and repeat, high speed pass, never go below 10K, run towards their friends, who would try and come in on your 6, and continue running til they were out of icon range.
I tolerated that for about 10 minutes til the boredom was too much, landed, logged, and tried again the next night. 
Sometime I wonder if they do that because their personal skills or ego won't let them risk actually engaging in a fight without overwhelming support from their buddies?  Or is it something else?

[Eagler]

That is why there should be a set strategy of which bases need to be taken and in what order..

It would concentrate the action by forcing the fight into the next known required area..

The bases need to be laid out hopscotch so you have all three countries around each base longer than they are now forcing 3 country fights not 2 like most are now..

Eagler

[CAV]

That is why there should be a set strategy of which bases need to be taken and in what order..

Something like that's been tried before, And as I recall most of us didn't like it.

Maybe something along the lines of what one of our competitors does... Limited number of Offensive attacks per side based on the current population. 
But that game has a player run chain of command per side That dictates strategy, most players have very little say in it. We do not have anything like that here.

I think the tricky thing here is to stop the two country versus one thing. Or a over populated team rolling a few players. (AM US time zone)

Option one
Let's say Bish take a Rook base, 
They have to take a Knight base next, And bish troops have no effect on the Rook Till that happens.

Option two
As a side loses bases once it gets to a certain percentage the number of troops needed to take a base increases.


I still think the key is limited attack options per front. Keep the fights focused, and the defender doesn't have to play whack-a- Mole Against small groups of people trying to sneak bases as the big fights is going on.

[The Fugitive]

That is why there should be a set strategy of which bases need to be taken and in what order..

It would concentrate the action by forcing the fight into the next known required area..

The bases need to be laid out hopscotch so you have all three countries around each base longer than they are now forcing 3 country fights not 2 like most are now..

Eagler

Its been tried before and was a disaster. Next time your in the game, right click the map and there is a selection that says "Field order". During that time that was the button you clicked to see what order the fields needed to be captured in. The fog of war was gone and you would find players at stupid alts waiting for the next attach.

 

Something like that's been tried before, And as I recall most of us didn't like it.

Maybe something along the lines of what one of our competitors does... Limited number of Offensive attacks per side based on the current population.
But that game has a player run chain of command per side That dictates strategy, most players have very little say in it. We do not have anything like that here.

I think the tricky thing here is to stop the two country versus one thing. Or a over populated team rolling a few players. (AM US time zone)

Option one
Let's say Bish take a Rook base,
They have to take a Knight base next, And bish troops have no effect on the Rook Till that happens.

Option two
As a side loses bases once it gets to a certain percentage the number of troops needed to take a base increases.


I still think the key is limited attack options per front. Keep the fights focused, and the defender doesn't have to play whack-a- Mole Against small groups of people trying to sneak bases as the big fights is going on.

Ive suggested something like that before, but I would set it at after taking 2 base from one country before you MUST switch fronts. This way you didnt know for sure if the attacking country was coming for yours after a take on the other front or they were going to go for the second before switching (fog of war), but in the end it forced the tag team to break up and "included" the lone country in the fighting.

I also think one team should NEVER be able to take more than 25-30% of another countries bases. Force a team to move to the other front to get those bases. Far to often you see one team rolling one front and once they hit 25% of bases captured they continue to crush that same front mostly because they got the "team rolling" and dont want to break that by switching fronts.

Smaller maps keep the fronts focused. Get rid of/ retire the big maps that dont do this.

I dont think these things are unreasonable, then again I didnt help write the coad for the game. Id love the chance to spend an afternoon with Hitech and just pick his brain on the game and his thoughts for the future. It certainly wouldnt chase me away, but Im dying to know what he thinks on this stuff and what is possible.

[Eagler]

Well you can see how much attention I pay to the game outside of fighters...

When it was tried, what was the average number logged in?

Eagler

[The Fugitive]

Well you can see how much attention I pay to the game outside of fighters...

When it was tried, what was the average number logged in?

Eagler

Dont remember exact numbers, but it was better than it is now. We still had some of the big maps running in rotation. Even with the smaller numbers all it would do would be to put a number of players at stupid alts to pick and run. It would be like fighting the Rooks all the time   

[DmonSlyr]

Its been tried before and was a disaster. Next time your in the game, right click the map and there is a selection that says "Field order". During that time that was the button you clicked to see what order the fields needed to be captured in. The fog of war was gone and you would find players at stupid alts waiting for the next attach.

 
Ive suggested something like that before, but I would set it at after taking 2 base from one country before you MUST switch fronts. This way you didnt know for sure if the attacking country was coming for yours after a take on the other front or they were going to go for the second before switching (fog of war), but in the end it forced the tag team to break up and "included" the lone country in the fighting.

I also think one team should NEVER be able to take more than 25-30% of another countries bases. Force a team to move to the other front to get those bases. Far to often you see one team rolling one front and once they hit 25% of bases captured they continue to crush that same front mostly because they got the "team rolling" and dont want to break that by switching fronts.

Smaller maps keep the fronts focused. Get rid of/ retire the big maps that dont do this.

I dont think these things are unreasonable, then again I didnt help write the coad for the game. Id love the chance to spend an afternoon with Hitech and just pick his brain on the game and his thoughts for the future. It certainly wouldnt chase me away, but Im dying to know what he thinks on this stuff and what is possible.

I agree with a lot of this. No reason a team should be able to bring a team down to 65% bases while having 0 of the other teams. I cannot stand when I see that. And like you said they have the team rolling. Ive tried many of times to convince them to attack the other side and they dont because that side is also trying to defend causing a little bit of a fight that's not happening on the other side.

I think coding zones would be the better solution. So that based on %s of field on each team there would be other fight zones on the map that are worth more points/perks. This would incentivize rather than force players and it may split the hoard since some will want more perks and points. It will also provide an area where the main battle fight would be, so players know where the main battle is.

If we could just get rid of the maps from BowlMA - Oceania. It would completely have a great impact on the game. Those old maps are tiring, have really poor mid day #s, and dont build battles for the majority of the day. Small tiny dars with 30 players scattered all over with no battle direction really just has players log in, check the map, see little going on, and log off. Its all about keeping players logged in due to larger battles with atleast 5-10 players on each side fighting each other.
 

[molybdenum]

If we could just get rid of the maps from BowlMA - Oceania. It would completely have a great impact on the game. Those old maps are tiring, have really poor mid day #s, and dont build battles for the majority of the day. Small tiny dars with 30 players scattered all over with no battle direction really just has players log in, check the map, see little going on, and log off. Its all about keeping players logged in due to larger battles with atleast 5-10 players on each side fighting each other.

A negative impact, at least for me. Variety makes things interesting, I like a lot of the bigger maps, and it's easy to figure out where an attack is likely to go to and come from. People who depend solely on darbars for cues are missing out.
There is almost always a base take plan happening somewhere, and if there isn't, you can start one and probably get the action you want rolling. "Build it and they will come" etc.

[Lusche]

Well you can see how much attention I pay to the game outside of fighters...

When it was tried, what was the average number logged in?

Eagler

It started in November 2006:

We are testing out a new field capture system
in the LW Orange today.

This system should allow us to use large maps
with lower populations.


The new system only allows fields to be captured in
A certain order. Fields that are currently capturable
by your country are shown as larger icons.

To display the field capture order, right click on map
and click Field Order.

(Megathread https://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,193413.0.html  )


In that tour, the plane stats showed 5400 scoring pilots, nowadays it's slightly over 600

[Eagler]

Seems HT was trying to plan for his future...

Large maps with low numbers...

Eagler

[The Fugitive]

Seems HT was trying to plan for his future...

Large maps with low numbers...

Eagler

No he had split the MA due to over population. The problem was that as the map moved to the slower time, euro prime, there wasnt enough players to fill one map, let alone two. So "large maps with low numbers". He eventually had it switch from 2 arenas to a single arena for the slower times until he did away with the split arena idea all together and we went back to a single MA.

[LCADolby]

I have always thought we need to bring back zones, the zone bases with their strats.

[Busher]

Seems you Gents are seeking a solution to human nature.

[Animl-AW]

Seems you Gents are seeking a solution to human nature.

Pretty much how its been going. It’s kinda wanting catering to the habits instead of form habits to the game. Then you get people leaving who disagreed.

I dunno. Me thinks the current maps affecting game play might be more of an illusion. Unless distance between bases is changed it can hardly change the effect, except strat distance.

Strat distance matters because to be fair to buffs they should have the distance to achieve the alt they were designed for and used at.

The way I understand it, 1 base per sector. A sector is 25 miles? Like buffs, fighters should be able to reach the alt designed for and used at.

With less bases, smaller maps, they will just turn over quicker, game play itself probably won’t change much.

HOWEVER, that said, I think JimmyD/Kenai77 dwnunder map coming out is closer to what the masses tend to ask for.

IMO, which no one likes, ever, its not map size, its fighting land mass size that matters more. I think the smallest map size, next one down from 256 (128?) is vastly too small for proper MA game play. I think dwnunder map uses the single land mass size concept.

To attack every human nature with settings it will evolve to over-strict. That is a life long job of wack-o-mole. Massive doubts HT will do that wack-o-mole stuff.

Lets see how dwnunder goes over. Baby steps with causion.