HTC new terrain PLEASE

[Vulcan]

Great work on 1.10, but this terrain is just wrong. I know the AKs are gonna hate me for this.

The terrain is to high on average, and seriously works against many aircraft that operate in the 5k - 15k altitude range (eg, Tiffie, La5, 190A5/A8 etc). The layout is confusing, cluttered, and generally hard to figure out whats going on.

I logged on tonight, and after spending some time squinting at the map on my 21" monitor trying to figure out where the fight was had the choice of two fields near fights. One was being hit by an 11k enemy field, the other was already overwhelmed and isolated. So I choose neither. I logged off to play another game (SoF2, or WC3).

Neither 3 aircraft I prefer to fly (tiffie, la5, A8) would operate well in the fight space above 11k (11-25k).

Please, either redesign this pizza abomination to some realistic altitudes or give us our old maps.

I'm not the only one that feels this way, its a rare moment when I decide NOT to play AH.

[Fester']

I fear change

[DarkglamJG52]

Originally posted by Vulcan

Neither 3 aircraft I prefer to fly (tiffie, la5, A8) would operate well in the fight space above 11k (11-25k).

  Great new for my Bf 109 G10... bye bye beach boys with La 7. I love the mountains, I love the mountains!  Although the textures are a little bads.

[AKcurly]

Originally posted by Vulcan
Great work on 1.10, but this terrain is just wrong. I know the AKs are gonna hate me for this.

The terrain is to high on average, and seriously works against many aircraft that operate in the 5k - 15k altitude range (eg, Tiffie, La5, 190A5/A8 etc). The layout is confusing, cluttered, and generally hard to figure out whats going on.
 

No sweat, Vulcan ... cannot please everyone.  However, to address your remarks:

1) Perhaps 50% of the fields are well within the la5/typhoon comfort zone.  If you want to fight near a high alt area, switch rides.

2) The clipboard is the neatest piece of software I've seen in some time.  When AH starts, perhaps 25% of the map is displayed, sufficiently zoomed so that you can readily see if the area is hot.  If you see no activity, move to another zone and zoom the map again.  Repeat the process until you find an area of activity.

If you display the entire map and turn on the spawn points (or radar areas or zone maps), yeah, it's a gigantic blaze of confusing color.  So, don't do that.

If there is one fault I would name about the clipboard, it's this:  Frequently, I zoom the map so I can clearly see what's going on in my local area.  When I do that, I'm blind so far as the rest of the map!  I wish I had a toggle switch that would let me flip back and forth between current zoom and the entire map.  In that way, I could respond to threats in different sectors.  Maybe the field icons need to be reduced in size?  I dunno.

We're all going to be sick of this map soon, even if you like it now.  All of us are addicted to a steady diet of change.  Surely there are a few of the naysayers busily preparing maps!  Surely, there will be a few historical maps - like zeros and n1ks over the baltic.

curly

[Snorkey]

Vulcan pretty much nails it on the head.

Don't be afraid to add the La-7 to the list. Theres nothing to be ashamed of its capabilities at low alts. Thats what it was designed to do, sweep ahead to support and escort the IL-2 fighters as they provide close air support for ground troops.

IL-2 suffers from these high alt fields as well, making it more of a hangar queen then it already is.


What I want is a game that has fights over land that looks like and has similair elevation values of the Steppes of Asia, Farmlands of Western Europe, or Chain Islands of the South Pacific  - not the mountains and canyons of Tibet & Nepal.

Snorkey

[easymo]

Just put it into the rotation.  Hi alt boys should have their turn to.

[Karnak]

I just took off in my Mossie and was wondering why it was such a dog.  I was thinking:

"Well now, this is hardly better than that U.S. hunk o' junk I was trying earlier (A-20) and noted would be eaten for lunch by a Mossie 6."

Then I thought:

"Heh, how silly of me.  I loaded 2k of eggs.   There, that's solved!"

A bit latter I went:

"Hmmm, strange.  Still seems to be climbing like its stuck in mud.  I don't remember my Mossie stuggling for altitude like this.  I wonder what is up?"

Then I happened to glace at my altimeter:

"16,500ft:eek: No way I reached 16k in 5 minutes!"

So I clicked on the ALT button and looked at the base I'd taken off from.

The base was 11k up.


Mossie reaches peak climb capability at 4k.

Mossie reaches peak speed at 13k

Mossie loses all WEP capability at 15k.

Mossie is a low level beast.


All told I don't mind a whit though.  It was just a surprise.  But now I know to look for that.

Had a fun fight in a canyon in which I bagged a P-47D-30 and a F4F-4 later on the same flight.


NOTE to AKs:  I like the textures.  They seem higher rez and work well together.

[gatso]

I have no problem with the terrain whatsoever. I think if you look hard enough there is something for everyone.  This BS about the alt of some fields is stupid, what I hope it's going to do is push people into flying stuff they normally would'nt bother with and we'll see a more varied bunch of aircraft flying around.  You want a low alt fight there's loads of fields near the coast with low altitudes, go fight there.

My one niggle is the clipboard map, finding fields is VERY hard now simply because they are so close together, the base icons also obscure the radar dots which is annoying.  I'm going to experiment with the colours used for radar dots and see if I can make it a bit clearer for myself.

A suggestion.  On the ground now I have started using the .move ### command just to find bases.  How about creating a .highlight ### command which would put a big arrow pointing at the base in question, friendly or enemy, on the ground or in flight.  This would make finding the base when the shouts of "### is under attack!!!!!!" or "We're all fighting at ###" a lot easier.

Nice job AK's BTW and ty HTC for the A20  

Gatso

[bigUC]

I gotta say i like the high alt bases...  It's nice to have maps which favors different kinds of fighters in circulation.  Maybe I don't have to see the quakish swarm of LA-7's everytime i log on, and maybe it will lead to a more diverse use of planes.

However, I would like a more natural layout of the land.  I get a strong "Pacman"-feeling when i log on.  Something like the baltic would be preferable.   But all in all, its a welcome change.  

Thumbs up, AK's

[Soviet]

there are some low level area's too.  See if you can find a fighter over there.

The map is great, just get used to it, a lot of people never like change.

[Vulcan]

The problem is the map is consistant over larger areas. IE, the old map might have had one sector of really high terrain with a fight going on over it which spills onto some lower areas, this new map has 4-8 sectors of hi alt terrain with no spillover of the fight.

Why not lower the terrain? Is there a reason for it being ridiculously high? I'm not asking for a 'historical' map, just something a little more like this planet earth.

Why do we need 11k airfields?

Its not producing a map for the hi-alt guys, all its doing is scaling the abilities of the aircraft down, leaving the hi alt aircraft the only choice for most of the map.

Originally posted by AKcurly


No sweat, Vulcan ... cannot please everyone.  However, to address your remarks:

1) Perhaps 50% of the fields are well within the la5/typhoon comfort zone.  If you want to fight near a high alt area, switch rides.

2) The clipboard is the neatest piece of software I've seen in some time.  When AH starts, perhaps 25% of the map is displayed, sufficiently zoomed so that you can readily see if the area is hot.  If you see no activity, move to another zone and zoom the map again.  Repeat the process until you find an area of activity.

If you display the entire map and turn on the spawn points (or radar areas or zone maps), yeah, it's a gigantic blaze of confusing color.  So, don't do that.

If there is one fault I would name about the clipboard, it's this:  Frequently, I zoom the map so I can clearly see what's going on in my local area.  When I do that, I'm blind so far as the rest of the map!  I wish I had a toggle switch that would let me flip back and forth between current zoom and the entire map.  In that way, I could respond to threats in different sectors.  Maybe the field icons need to be reduced in size?  I dunno.

We're all going to be sick of this map soon, even if you like it now.  All of us are addicted to a steady diet of change.  Surely there are a few of the naysayers busily preparing maps!  Surely, there will be a few historical maps - like zeros and n1ks over the baltic.

curly

[DarkglamJG52]

Originally posted by Vulcan

Neither 3 aircraft I prefer to fly (tiffie, la5, A8) would operate well in the fight space above 11k (11-25k).

  Great new for my Bf 109 G10... bye bye beach boys with La 7. I love the mountains, I love the mountains!  Although the textures are a little bads.

[Duedel]

THe Terrain is greeat. Thx and AK's must be really hard to make it! There's enough for everyone but yes for now it's confusing:
Field 241 has been captured by knights

Field 241??? Where is it?

I think a time goes by I'll get more experienced with this huge terrain and this zone thing.

[Vulcan]

Thats a contradiction, the new terrain prevents a variety by promoting hi alt aircraft. Plain and simple.

Originally posted by gatso
I have no problem with the terrain whatsoever. I think if you look hard enough there is something for everyone.  This BS about the alt of some fields is stupid, what I hope it's going to do is push people into flying stuff they normally would'nt bother with and we'll see a more varied bunch of aircraft flying around.  You want a low alt fight there's loads of fields near the coast with low altitudes, go fight there.
 

[Dinger]

It's a good terrain,b ut two things can be improved:

A. Altitude.  If half the fields are under five thousand feet, half are over. 11000 feet is a Dueling arena altitude for a field.  I understand wanting to make it harder as you move to the interior (or edges), but the altitudes are exaggerated.

I mean, I went ona b26 run from an 11k field to a 9.6 k field.  That means you need 17-18 k just to stay above ground fire!  The B26 doesn't like to climb that high.
Likewise the canyons.  Canyons are fun to fight in, but if neither plane is able of "popping out" of the canyons, forget it.
If you took the current elevations, and halved them, I'd be happy.

B.  The default arrangement of fields.  currently it's set up to make use of the maximum number of fields at any one time: each of the three "slices" has each of the three countries, so each country starts with seven fronts.  That'll be great when we have 2000 players on line, but not with 500.  The effect is that people who log in "looking for a fight" are frustrated, while field capture becomes less of a challenge since there's always some undefended field to capture.
For now, I say make the default: one slice, one country, and see how that plays out.