Was a conscious decision made to...

[8thJinx]

...not have the ability to up vehicles from the flak bases around the strats on Riftval?  Or have the ability to man an 88 to defend the strats?

[iikie]

I believe it depends on the map creator in regard to the GV availability.  Some maps have GVs and limited aircraft available, some just have GVs. I dont know of any who do not have GVs though, unless the GV hanger is dead. Talk to Keani77. He does a lot with maps now.

[popeye]

The map designer controls which vehicles and aircraft are available at each base (within HiTech's guidelines).  Since Bustr seemed to be very meticulous about his maps, I'd guess the Riftval setup was intentional.  Not sure about the 88's.

[molybdenum]

Older maps did not have the GV/88 options built into them at flak bases near strats. Some of the newer maps do. One of which permits C47 uppage so you can resup hurt strat in literally less than a minute if you want to.

[mERv]

Older maps did not have the GV/88 options built into them at flak bases near strats. Some of the newer maps do. One of which permits C47 uppage so you can resup hurt strat in literally less than a minute if you want to.

Which goes against everything strats stood for across 2 decades and is a slap in the face to the attackers time investment vs reward

[icepac]

Long distances to resupply strats mean people would actually defend strats.   

It should.

[The Fugitive]

Long distances to resupply strats mean people would actually defend strats.   

It should.

People use to do a lot of stuff back when we had numbers. Now, you find a fight, or base take mission going nobody wants to leave it because it is hard to get them going. Dont want to waste time "defending a strat". And to defend takes almost as much time as an attacker hitting strats.

15 minute climb out
5 minute to build speed at that alt
make an attack run.....
5 minutes to recover speed
another attack run
so on and so on.

On top of that it is a pretty boring type of fight as well.

Then there is the usefulness of hitting a strat. For most players, they dont care or notice until they are defending and an ammo seems to take forever to come back up. Even then a quick M3 run or two and its back up...... supply runs after all are the number one way to defend. 


I can see why the changes were made to make resupplying the strats easier. My squad is one of the few I see who do resupply runs. We take a base, we resupply it. Strat gets crushed, we resupply it. With 10-12 squadmates on it hardly ever takes more than one run, and then we are back to the fun of fighting for bases again.

It is just another thing that is accented by low numbers.

[JimmyD3]

Long distances to resupply strats mean people would actually defend strats.   

It should.

Agreed, but lets look at how it happens. The Reality is Bomber pilot climbs for 2 to 3 hours to an altitude of 30k for a strat run, which equals same in man hours. Hits on the Strats are down for 180 minutes (3 hours). The overall impact depends on the percentages of structures destroyed. If the Strat is reduced to 0%, down time of related systems is 150 minutes (2 1/2 hours).

For the defender, ideally, the goal is to stop the Bomber before it reaches the strat. If that fails and the strat is hit, the defenders now have three defensive priorities:
1. Defend/mitigate related system damage at each base.
2. Re-supply damaged strat, typical M3 run time 3-5 minutes depending on the map. No change in strat damage level,  until down time on a structure is reduced to 0.
3. Re-supply damaged related systems at affected bases, typical M3 run time 3-4 minutes depending on the map. No change in related system damage level,  until down time on a structure is reduced to 0. Affected bases will vary.

The overall impact on the Defenders, is the effort to re-supply the damaged strat, which will require a typical 15 to 16 re-supply trips. The effort to re-supply the damaged systems at each base, which is dependent on the level of the associated strat damage and the number of bases hit.

Any successful hit on a strat is an offensive victory, with the reward ALWAYS out weighing the defensive re-supply efforts. Re-supply of a strat, is  an attempt to minimize the overall damage of the attack. 1 pilot, 3 bombers affected the overall game play, of ALL the players of the affected country. I would suggest, overall, it balances out in favor of the strat attacker, and I can live with that as long as the current re-supply option is available.

[CAV]

I do think the downtimes is one of the things we need to look at. We're basically still using the same times that we had when we had a thousand person arena. But nowadays our arena only has about a tenth of that, and even then only for an hour or so each day.

CAV

[molybdenum]

I do think the downtimes is one of the things we need to look at. We're basically still using the same times that we had when we had a thousand person arena. But nowadays our arena only has about a tenth of that, and even then only for an hour or so each day.

CAV

Go into detail what you mean, please?

My primary playtime is early AM, when there are few people on. The bishops tend to have a huge numerical advantage and its primary squad (Jokers) likes to hover over base they want and dare ppl to up.
At that time of day, resup is king. And I've killed lots of bad guys who realize that and think I'm resupping but I'm really a wirb.

Minor digression. What specifically do you think ought to be done with resup time? If I didn't have that arrow in my quiver, I'd play a lot less that time of day. One less of ~12, etc.

[CAV]

Mostly I'm just surprised that the down times have never been looked at as the population declined. 
We've done a lot of changes, that happened trying to make fights easier to find, some bad, the current radar settings. 
We've thrown out many of the larger maps for the same reason, to make it easier to get to a fight. Personally I'm kind of okay with the downtime settings as they are now. I mean I am not a furballer I'm more of a win the war type guy. So if we let somebody fly across the map and bomb our strats then you know, we deserve what we get. I think the things that irritate me more about the current settings is that a bomber pilot can fly there, drop his bombs and bail so he can re-up and go do it again and have no consequences for it. (Video game type moves)

But the said same could be said for the c47 resupplyers.

I personally would be more interested in changes in the settings that would affect gameplay, back towards more of a simulation and less of an arcade.
But that is just me, I don't see it ever happening.

[Easyscor]

When I first started playing, a good night in 'prime' time was 100 players. Between 2am central time and dawn, I was lucky to see 2 other players.

The current downtimes, iirc, are the same today as then. Back then, the only way to resupply strat, and even some fields, was to use a C47.
Now, map makers have started adding GV spawns everywhere from what little I've seen, and bomber guys back in my day would have protested bloody murder about their effort compared to current GV resupply efforts. The argument back then was that you could always spend the same two hours in a C47 to resupply it.

When I created cvwar (waiting on the a fix for the feetdry issue before pushing it for rotation) I yielded to the current terrain builder’s pattern of adding resupply possibilities. However, me being an SOB, it may not be obvious how you can do it.

[fudgums]

Resupply hurts the game more than it helps.

[mERv]

This is what happens when you try to fix something that isn't broken and dont beta test it first. What is broken is the population numbers of the MA. On certain maps the strats have been rendered pointless to attack due to changes regarding resupply. There wasn't testing to see what would happen. Things were changed and its here for good. What was meant to bring better balance has swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. 

Zero accountability for shade play, growing issues with balance, connection issues that give certain players an advantage over the general population, 3rd party programs used to enhance visibility from the air to spot gv's and the list goes on and on...

[mERv]

Resupply hurts the game more than it helps.

Reupply negates offensive attacks. If by hurting the game you mean it takes people out of the air which drives action in this game you are correct. That does not hurt this particular game. Resupply is a critical game mechanic that works extremely well in a more populated MA. The MA was never intended to be a fighter based combat flight simulator. All elements of ground, air, and sea battles require diversity of play.

I know im captain obvious to say this again but the issue is a dwindling community. A player like yourself is working with 10-30 minute windows to achieve short term objectives in the air. Some of us are working the map and changing the way a map plays out over 6-12 hours at a time. I call it the game within the game. If resupply hurts offensive efforts you go bomb the strats and increase the amount of effort it takes to resupply a town/base Or go drop the VH/BH/Barracks from the FOB the enemy is using to launch the attack.