Who is having the numbers - subjective survey

[Max]

You can also instantly tell bombers from fighters regardless of size, so a TBM taking off from a CV will instantly have a "come and get me" sign lit. Or you can tell a Mossie XVI from a Mossie VI by just looking at the map. Goons can't hope to evade detection by skillfully hugging terrain when the enemy can just fly around with his map open.

Let's not forget Cybro doing his darned best to announce the presence of the enemy fleet. 

[LilMak]

There is nowhere near not people playing this game to return to the old dar system. What we have now is just fine. This complaint needs to be put away for good.

If there are 10 players in the MA, there are enough. I will never give up on this argument. Even if it’s 2v1, it gives a large advantage to the side with the greater (local) numbers and is leading to a nearly constant seal clubbing of one side. It’s intuitive without even having to fully understand it. If players can’t comprehend that this is more of a detriment than a feature, it’s my job to point that out continuously until it changes or the game fails completely.

Coming back to the game around 2020, I was very surprised on the dar feature. Thought at first it was pretty cool and the concept did encourage folks to jump into battle. I honestly think that this was put into effect for the good intention. As usual, folks will find ways to dummy down the game (Like the unseen GVs that park hours in a bush just to flash a base).

Players can still jump into fights if they have access to AWACS in the tower. They shouldn’t have it in the cockpit unless they’re in a friendly radar ring. The GV issue especially rubs me the wrong way because that player asleep on the couch or eating Cheetos in the kitchen isn’t just flashing the base. They’re painting me on radar showing my type, direction of travel, and that I’m not particularly high to players inbound who are not even in my sector yet.

[DmonSlyr]

Problem with the  current radar is that we never got any way to make suggestions. It was either this way or the old way. I completely agree a lot with what LilMak is saying. The DOT dar is extremely noobish. The only thing that really needed to change was the radar tower strength. That is why the dots never showed up in the previous way. Everyone killed radar first thing with a couple of cannons. Make the radar 5-10k to take down and youd have your dot dar most of the time.  IT WAS THE SIMPILIST SOLUTION. For me, I like some indicators to know where the fight is and how many enemies there are, but currently its very tough to be sneaky or not get ganged once you appear on their screen. You can say, well that "encourages a fight"  but it also disincentivizes people to want to fly such long distances to get jumped by 3 yak3s, 2 190Ds, and Spi16 just to make sure you have no chance at all. These things do have to be considered. 

[LilMak]

Problem with the  current radar is that we never got any way to make suggestions. It was either this way or the old way. I completely agree a lot with what LilMak is saying. The DOT dar is extremely noobish. The only thing that really needed to change was the radar tower strength. That is why the dots never showed up in the previous way. Everyone killed radar first thing with a couple of cannons. Make the radar 5-10k to take down and youd have your dot dar most of the time.  IT WAS THE SIMPILIST SOLUTION. For me, I like some indicators to know where the fight is and how many enemies there are, but currently its very tough to be sneaky or not get ganged once you appear on their screen. You can say, well that "encourages a fight"  but it also disincentivizes people to want to fly such long distances to get jumped by 3 yak3s, 2 190Ds, and Spi16 just to make sure you have no chance at all. These things do have to be considered.

This proximity radar (also so-and-so killed so-and-so) was intended for it to be easier to find the enemy and make the arena seem more busy/populated. I get it. It worked. Too well. It really didn’t have much to do with radar towers themselves (which are too soft). The unintended consequences are it absolutely decimated defense in the game which is reactive. If you’re up against a larger force, it no longer matters what direction you come from. Altitude is a factor but how much altitude can you gain if you’re reacting to an attack where a squad has already been climbing for 10 minutes? Then, the SECOND you come in icon range with any of the attackers (not even made a turn to engage yet), every aircraft on the enemy side is instantly aware of you. Bombers change course to avoid you, fighters pick up perfect vectors to intercept you. Where you could have had couple passes to let a dogfight mature before magic radar, you might have one (if you’re lucky two) turns before the entire enemy force is barreling down on you now. There’s little incentive to defend if you’re just relentlessly getting swatted down before you can even close the distance and get guns on the first icon on your screen. So you end up with what we have now. A cycle of players attacking with fewer and fewer defenders even attempting to stem the tide. Then you have two sides just beating mercilessly on one and it has very little to do with which chess piece you fly for.  Team 1 and team 2 are beating up on team 3. Team 3 can only muster any kind of defense against team 2. Meanwhile team 1 is just rolling bases and any token defense is just obliterated. Players on team 1 are getting bored, and team 3 is getting beat so bad it’s frustrating. So logging ensues. It’s also starting to resemble a middle school dance when two decent sized forces meet. Both are standing against their own walls waiting for a single player to cross into the middle. The first player who crosses the dance floor is bait for their own team and ruthlessly bounced by the enemy.

If the goal of proximity radar is/was to make it easier to find a fight, the tower is the place to do that. If you can see all the proximity targets from the tower (and only the tower) then you launch in your preferred location and start looking out the glass instead of at the clipboard.

[Lazerr]

I think the fix here is to have the proxy radar in tower only.. as stated previously.

[-gg-]

Yeah, great points on the radar issues. When I asked, I was assuming there was a technical problem - but I agree that the god-mode radar is too much.

I played in my first ever FSO the other night. No radar at all and icons visible only within 1k yards. That was fun! I really liked that. I think I even ducked into a cloud once and got out of a hairy situation.

I think there needs to be some radar so people know where a fight is, in general - that's it. I would love having very limited radar.

[xanax]

Yeah, great points on the radar issues. When I asked, I was assuming there was a technical problem - but I agree that the god-mode radar is too much.

I played in my first ever FSO the other night. No radar at all and icons visible only within 1k yards. That was fun! I really liked that. I think I even ducked into a cloud once and got out of a hairy situation.

I think there needs to be some radar so people know where a fight is, in general - that's it. I would love having very limited radar.

I think the radar settings in FSO are just about perfect. You gotta have your head on a swivel and you have to really look around which to me, seems more realistic and adds some excitement. I like the kill shooter setting as well as you need to watch out for friendlies when you are prayin' and sprayin' like me.

Last week in FSO I re-upped along with some AK's and a couple squad mates and we headed back to where the big fight was. We were gaining alt in the puffy clouds and I was surrounded by friendlies. I figured it'd be safe to take my eye off the sky for a bit and watch a second of the ball game on the TV across the office. Sure enough, 4 seconds into doing that, one of the AK's is yelling for me to break. Of course I was late in doing so and Finny had deftly jumped me and sawed my tail off. Settings that lead to perils such as that along with the camaraderie of folks flying in such conditions is why I'm still here.

[Wiley]

Mak and Lazer have it about right on the radar settings I think.

Keep the bardar in the air, just not the dots from prox dar, only ground dar.

IMO GVs don't need any further help hiding, leave it as is, but that's just me.

Wiley.

[JimmyD3]

With all due respect to all, this talk is all great, but impotent. You still have to convince Hitech to get any changes.

[Animl-AW]

With all due respect to all, this talk is all great, but impotent. You still have to convince Hitech to get any changes.

This ^^^

The MA is for practice, it's game based. If you want more reality, the sim based, it's in events, so it IS available. Move

I'd be fine with Dot-Dar. But it really doesn't bother me at all.

I have zero idea how numbers matter in any dar, other than used as a vehicle for a repeat.

60-70 fly FSO, it has zero negative effects, in fact it has positive effects, as were just posted.

We roll over the same subjects weekly. It's become agonizing.

As I've said before, many times,... if the game were gone tomorrow, you'd wish it back with all it's flaws.

[nrshida]

With all due respect to all, this talk is all great, but impotent. You still have to convince Hitech to get any changes.

The solution is obvious, we must sentence Dale to actually play in the MA for two weeks on a trial-basis 

[LilMak]

Let me put this another way. In the context of the game, attackers can be thought of as predators and defenders prey. Proximity radar has upset the balance of the ecosystem which now heavily favors the predators. This translates to fewer prey animals. Mostly because there isn’t tall grass to bound around in. Predators will continue love it until the prey dries up completely.

There’s evidence this is happening by the way the MA is playing out with a virtualy continuous two sided beat down of one side. There is probably some metric HT used to determine whether the radar change had the desired effect (sorties/kills per hour?) in the MA. This probably verified his results. But the quality of the MA as whole went down significantly. And those qualities are mostly intangible and hard to quantify. Players quit because of it. It’s documented on these message boards.

For the record. I’m not asking for Dale to revert back to dot radar. The icon radar (bomber/fighter/direction of flight) is something that I can live with…within active radar rings or in the tower before launch. What sucks is every single player is an individual radar tower in flight and it’s an arena setting. Not code. If the argument is that the MA should be gamey, then let’s even up the score. I want every single GV was displayed on my radar the same way they show me if it’s within my icon range. I’m sure nearly everyone reading this can understand intuitively why that’s is a bad idea. It’s the exact same thing for aircraft. Zero difference. None.

[Twizzty]

Some great points made in this thread. Maybe we should report all the good ones so Dale has to look at them as it seems that's the only way he'll notice them. 

[Wiley]

With all due respect to all, this talk is all great, but impotent. You still have to convince Hitech to get any changes.

The same as it has always been for the entire life of the game.  He's the only one you have to convince, the rest is just noise.

The solution is obvious, we must sentence Dale to actually play in the MA for two weeks on a trial-basis 

How do you know he doesn't?

Wiley.

[Oldman731]

currently its very tough to be sneaky or not get ganged once you appear on their screen. You can say, well that "encourages a fight"  but it also disincentivizes people to want to fly such long distances to get jumped by 3 yak3s, 2 190Ds, and Spi16 just to make sure you have no chance at all.

These are good points, and I think they once again show the difference between the group that wants to capture the map, and the group that just wants to have dogfights.  The ganging certainly is nothing new; if anything, it is not as bad now as back when we had those massive squad nights (anyone remember the name of the one that was held once each week?).  The ability to "sneak" or "outwit the other side" is important to the first group, and seems counter-productive to the second group.  I like the current radar system because it makes it easy to find fights, but I respect the people who want to defend (or attack) bases as part of The War.  We need both groups.

- oldman