Preon1: Salute! You've got me thinking (a dangerous pastime, no?), and I've come up with an alternate proposal. Here it is:
The concept laid out here has been heavily influenced by the on-going debate on the AH strategic system. When HiTech chimed in the other day in Eskimo’s thread, I was at first disappointed on his views on the subject. Re-reading them however has lead me to better understand both sides of this whole issue. The central issue as I understand it is how do you change the strategic game system to provide more game-playing fun for the strat/immersion crowd without negatively impacting the enjoyment of the A2A purists? This is the acid test that any change must pass. I’ll start by laying out restrictions and assumptions. I ask that the reader give them careful consideration, and frame responses with them in mind.
Restrictions:
1. Any change in the strat system must be no more restricting to the individual pilot in the cockpit than the current system. By this I mean the ability to choose an aircraft, take off, find a fight, and engage the enemy in A2A combat. This is the toughest restriction, and may require compromise. However, any compromise should be weighted towards the A2A crowd.
2. Any wide-scale impact (action at point A effecting operations at point B) must require more than a couple players to accomplish, and must be of limited duration. The idea is to create a window of opportunity for the offense, rather than open up a gaping whole in the defense. I used 10 people as a base line figure when defining “more than a couple.”
Assumptions: These are the things that have already been announced by HTC as coming down the pipe in the AH development cycle.
1. Larger Maps will be the norm in the MA, with more fields and objects allowed in the TE.
2. The newly eluded to “Attack Warning” system will be in place, allowing changes to radar coverage in the MA without hobbling the defense too much.
3. Bomber enhancements implemented. Particularly I mean the addition of bomb dispersion, multi-aircraft option, and (hopefully) a fix for the “firing through your own plane” bug.
4. The re-arm pad code would be changed, such that re-arming on the re-arm pad would be tied to damage at that base. Example: if base fuel is down to 75%, then you could only load 75% fuel by hitting the re-arm pad.
Concept:
Rather than the “Proxy War” idea put forth by Preon1, we instead divide up each of the three countries’ territory into three “strategic provinces.” Each strategic province, or SP, will have it’s own organic strategic infrastructure (HQ, city, refinery, troop training camp, ammo factory, flak factory, depots, and train stations). Attacks against these facilities will only affect rebuild times and resupply in that province. The nature of those effects will be similar to what they are now, but with some important differences. Arena reset would occur when any country completely looses two of their three provinces (i.e. all bases and depots in those two provinces captured by enemy forces). This localizes the impact of strategic strikes. Kill a regional HQ – let’s call it the Provincial Air Defense Center, or PADC (pronounced “pad-see”) – and you affect radar only in that province, in effect creating a hole in coverage. The attack warning system would be completely unaffected by HQ damage. Strat target size and hardness would be such that approximately ten B-17s would be required to completely destroy it.
Rebuild and Resupply – This is the meat of the changes. First, you totally eliminate the player resupply (via goons and M-3s) of strategic targets, including depots and train stations. Each strat target would have a maximum down-time, assuming no convoys or trains reach them earlier. For a city (now a provincial capitol, rather than the country capital) we make that, say, 120 minutes. Now, for every train that reaches the city 15 minutes are subtracted from the down-time. So, if a city is completely destroyed (and assuming a train arrives every 15 minutes), the city would normally be rebuilt in one hour (2 hours – {4 x 15 minutes/train} = 1 hour). Kill the first train feeding the city, and the rebuild time will be an hour and fifteen minutes; kill two trains in a row and the rebuild time is an hour and a half. The point is, the city will rebuild no later than two hours, and could rebuild 60 minutes earlier if the enemy ignores the trains and/or train station. Other strat targets like refineries would have maximum rebuild times that would be dynamic, that is, the max rebuild time would be affected by the status of the provincial capitol. Again that maximum time would be shortened by timely arrival of their trains.
How would all this affect rebuild times at the pointy-end of the spear, i.e. the airfields, ports, and vehicle fields? Hanger down-time would remain 15 minutes as it is now, and would be unaffected by convoys or goons/M-3s. Other field objects (fuel, radar, barracks, ammo) would have a maximum, un-supplied rebuild time just like strat targets which would be at least a half hour to an hour. There are two ways to speed up rebuild: convoy/barges or goons/M-3 resupply. We’ll deal first with the first method, convoy/barge resupply. Arrival of a convoy or resupply goon/M-3 will immediately (within 3 minutes that is) rebuild field objects. The difference is that the level they can rebuilt to will be dictated by the level of damage to that province’s like-item strat facility. Taking fuel as an example, let’s say field A20’s max fuel load-out has been reduced by enemy attack to 50%. The provincial refinery complex for that area was also attacked and stands at 75%. When a convoy arrives, the fuel will be immediately restored to 75%, the maximum that can be supported by the provincial refinery. Ammo would have to be subdivided to allow for a gradual loss of offensive weaponry, rather than the all-or-nothing availability we have now. A possible correlation between ammo bunker status and ordnance availability might look like the following:
Ammo Bunker Status-
0-25% = MG/cannon available
26-50% = MG/cannon and rockets available
51-75% = MG/cannon, rockets, and light bombs available
76-100% = All ordnance available
The second method, goon/M-3 resupply would work somewhat differently. Resupply by goon or M-3 represents a redistribution of supplies between front-line bases, rather than resupply by the province’s strategic infrastructure. Goon/M-3 load-outs would be changed such that instead of selecting “field supplies” as a load-out option, the pilot/driver would be able to select up to two “cargo pallets,” similar to how Jabo pilots can select load-outs for multiple hard-point. There would be fuel pallets, ammo pallets, radar pallets, and barracks pallets. Successfully delivering a pallet by goon or M-3 (oh, and LVT’s…almost forgot those) would completely restore that resource at the field. HOWEVER, each type of pallet would only be available from fields where that resource type is undamaged! In other words, you couldn’t select a fuel pallet to load in your C-47 if the field you’re launching from has damaged fuel tanks. So each goon/M-3/LVT could only rebuild two types of damage per trip.
The above system works fine until you start talking about captured enemy bases. How does rebuild/resupply work for bases you capture in enemy provinces? Well, in all cases any base will eventually rebuild on its own, regardless of whether they receive resupply via convoys or goons. Resupply by goon/M-3/LVT would work exactly like the same, too. To re-establish automatic supply by convoy/barge would require you to capture the enemy depot feeding that base. Depots would be dynamically assigned to a province (the closest friendly one) upon being captured, to insure rebuild limits for newly captured bases would have the same restrictions as home-country bases.
Conclusion: The above system would allow a reasonably sized strategic strike to create a window of opportunity for the capture of bases. Yet the effects on the individual defending pilot’s freedom of action would be no more than they are now under the current AH system. Less so in some ways, as they would only affect things on a provincial level, not the entire country. The key is that damaging strat targets would not impact the current status at any bases, only the rebuild times of things already damaged there. The player resupply system would still be there to speed repair, but only to the level dictated by the current strat targets in that province. No more spawning a C47 on the runway or hitting the re-arm pad repeatedly at a damaged base to speed rebuild it. No one or two players could have much impact by attacking strat targets, either. Why? Because in general one or two players could not do damage fast enough (fly to target, drop bombs, rtb or auger, repeat) fast enough on their own to keep up with the train resupply.
I invite your comments and critique. I also ask that when you review this you remember that strat used to have more impact than it does now, and this simply seeks to redress that loss of impact. For the A2A purists (I dislike the negative connotation that the term “furballer” has acquired), I ask you that you be honest with yourselves when deciding if the above suggestions would truly spoil your enjoyment of AH, or simply inconvenience you a bit.
