Strat Effects...

[Wolverine]

I think strat is prolly one of the more important things in the game and was wondering what you guys thought of the following suggestions.

Plane, Ammo and Fuel Factories
  Throughout the country would be factories.  Damaging these factories would have an effect on supplies for that particular country.  There would be factories for the following:

• Each aircraft.
• Fuel.
• Each type of ammunition.

Damage Effect
  Damage to a factory would have a realtime effect on certain things in the arena.  For instance...

• Plane factory: If you bombed a 109 factory deep in enemy territory, there would be a limit of 109s available until the factory was fixed.  During that time, every 109 destroyed in combat would subtract from that number until there were no more and that plane would not be available to that country until that factory was repaired.  The more damage, the less the number of planes available of that type.  Each plane would have a factory.
• Fuel Factory: There would be say, 3 fuel refineries for a country.  By damaging or destroying one, you would knock out or limit fuel supply for a section of the country.  Not just one base.
• Ammo Factories: Each ammo type would have a factory.  By damaging the 30mm shell factory, you would see that no 30mm shells would be available for loadout in any aircraft until that factory was repaired.

Etc etc.

Perhaps, if you damaged a factory and then managed to get troops to it, you could take it over.  What would then happen is perhaps that factory's AAA would then fire on any aircraft not friendly to the country that captured the base.

There are a million different things that could be modeled.  I just want to get some viable ideas flowing so that HT or Pyro could sift through them and possibly use one or two.

Anyone?

[wlvrn]

[Downtown]

I believe that HT has said that is the basic idea behind their strat.  Though he didn't do an aircraft factory.  I would like that added.

Where is Glars and the MAPS.

I definetly want the Airfield Maps.  Hard to determine which is the Acks at 20K.  I could identify the Hangar, Tower, Map Room, and Bombed the Bejesus out of the Barracks, but I couldn't see the Acks.

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG
lkbrown1@tir.com
 http://www.tir.com/~lkbrown1
Very Opinionated Person.

[Vermillion]

One thing I would like to see isn't necessarily a "109" factory or a "spitfire" factory, but more like a "primary" aircraft factory and a "secondary" aircraft factory.

So basically the primary factory is where your most "popular" type is built, so if in one version the Fw190 is most popular, killing that factory would effect 190 production. If the plane de jour is the Spitfire, then Spitfire numbers would be effected.


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Vermillion
WB's: (verm--), **MOL**, Men of Leisure,

[Stiglr]

All for the ideas in this discussion.

While i respect the intent of the original AW idea of "no way will we limit choice for paying customers", we can see that given all the choice in the world, as a group, we create dweebery. almost everyone flocks to a few ueberplanes (or whatever happens to have the most unfair advantage over others at the time). This has the effect of limiting choice itself, and detracts from the flavor.

The few things that have been done to limit choice (like RPS) have arguably, been successful.

Next, we need to do even more "belt tightening" to help players form more realistic flight profiles: e.g., some sort of mission planner. You get some choices, you give up a few others. Example: if you *choose* a P-51D, chances are 50/50 that you'll be tasked to escort some buffs; or maybe you'll get your druthers and be tasked with flying low and fast and shooting up whatever moves.

Fact of the matter is, in WWII, few people chose their plane, their mission, or even who they flew with. They were *told* what to do. Now, I don't think the sim needs to be *that* martial, but I think that, in the interests of play balance, "realism" and flavor, we should explore this route.

I hope you can all see my line of reasoning here.

[This message has been edited by Stiglr (edited 11-01-1999).]

[Mr.ED]

I hope straifing is addressed as well, it was a big part of WWII air/ground operations
(and fun as heck)

Mr.ED
327th FG
"Coming to an arena near you"

[Rojo]

Some good ideas here, no doubt.  In addition to being able to turn off the material pipeline at the source -- by bombing the factories/refineries -- we MUST have physical lined-of-communication (LOC) leading from those sources to the fields. Specifically, rail lines, roads, bridges, convoys, and ports. You might also have such infrastructure connecting the refineries to the factories.  Let's say your rail line from your munitions factory to your main airfield in sector 3,4 was cut by the enemy (they bombed the railway bridge over a river, for instance).  You might choose to make a cargo run with a Dakota to bring ammo forward, or wait for the repair crews to fix the rail line.

Another area I think we must get rid of is field capture via airborn troops.  It simply didn't happen in isolation, but was always followed up by conventional ground forces. True, the odd commando raid was made to temporarily paralyze an enemy facility; however, they could not hope to hold territory for any length of time with air-dropped troops alone.  No, we have to find a different way to effect the exchange of territory.  Ideally, this should involve air-to-ground action, i.e. bombing.

By making the heavy bomber the principle means of deciding the war's strategic outcome, we incentivize people to fly buffs more often.  Jabo attacks would be used primarily to cut an enemy's LOCs, or temporarily nuetralize his airfields, but only massive bombing would cause territory to change hands.  This has the advantage of still allowing those who simply want to "cruise for kills" to pursue that single-minded and narrow objective.  The other possiblity is to create a land war (A.I. controlled), that would cause the FEBA to ebb and flow based on one side or the other's success in supporting their army while inhibiting the enemy's.  This comes down to a campaign engine similar to Falcon 4.0.

I guess the real challenge is that war is SO dynamic, it's difficult if not impossible to design a strat-system sufficiently diverse to encourage inovative war-making, without making it so complex and convoluted as to allow players no real control of the course of the war (Whew! Long sentence, eh?).

Rojo (a.k.a. Sabre)
The Buccaneers

[This message has been edited by Rojo (edited 11-02-1999).]