I am posting this because I want HTC to see and hopefully consider the merits of the following ideas. My goal is to come up with some changes to the MA design that increase player satisfaction for almost all players. I’m trying to propose changes that make it easier for the “action guys” to get into satisfying fights, and for the “capture guys” to capture fields and win the war. Frankly I am pretty happy with the MA as it is, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get better. Ideally, an improved MA design would allow almost anyone to get online and have some fun (whether this means furthering their country’s immoral territorial aggressions or just having one good dogfight), regardless of if they have only 20 minutes to play or several hours. Ideally losing or winning the war should both be fun and interesting. Doubtless my ideas are imperfect, however maybe they will stimulate some thought at HTC that leads to good things.
The underlying principle of a lot of what follows is to increase player vs. player conflict. We are playing AH and not playing European Air War because we want to pit our skills against real humans, thus this is a primary concern for the MA. This means that in some sense it is preferable if the MA design encourages strafing GVs more than it encourages bombing VHs.
1) Fields should be closer together, close enough to be mutually supporting.
Why take off from a vulched field when there is another friendly field very close? This makes field defense more feasible and more attractive. Maybe fields should be arranged in close clusters of mutually supporting fields.
2) Fields should be easier to capture.
Easy field capture draws people into the action. It requires a very active defense to hold a field, and an active counterattack can retake it quickly. It provides motivation both to defend and attack fields: i.e. the "action guys" can count on field attacks usually being quick/decisive and action filled and the "capture guys" can count on support from the action guys and the possibility of a quick capture. Much less of this "partially damage a field and mill about for 30 minutes" phenomenon. It’s harder to ignore enemy attacks because a serious attack will take half your fields rapidly if they fall easily enough. Also quick field captures will mean that the combat doesn’t usually stay in one location for a long time. One side or the other is probably advancing. If combat does concentrate in a locality it probably means rapid field capture and recapture and this is probably as good as games like this get. In an ideal arena, when somebody says “we are attacking/defending A1”, most of the players would want to get involved at A1 ASAP. If the fight at A1 in our ideal arena is likely to satisfy most players’ desires then this will happen.
3) Fields should be harder to disable.
A fight draws a crowd. Making fields easy to take and hard to disable ensures a steadier supply of combatants from both sides. Isn’t it better to potentially have the same field exchange sides 6 times than to have a field disabled for 30 minutes and never taken while 20 players circle it hoping for something to do?
4) Fix the freaking GVs.
The open top AA-vehicles should die easily to aircraft strafing attacks. Maybe they wouldn’t blow up but even a good burst of rifle caliber AP/I into the open top of an Osty or M-16 would certainly remove all anti-aircraft capability. In addition to this, there is currently an imbalance of power between AA-GVs and fighters. When a fighter rolls from a capped field it is hideously vulnerable as vulch-bait for about 1 minute. THIS IS GOOD!!!!! Defenders have an intrinsic strength in supplying combatants to the fight. If a defender dies he can immediately respawn at the location of the fight. An attacker takes a certain amount of time after respawn to get back to the fight. So defenders can supply combatants at a much higher rate than attackers. This doesn’t make defense impregnable for fighters because they are vulnerable for a short time after respawn and this offsets their proximity respawn advantage. Imagine how hard it would be to take a base if defending fighters respawned at a random altitude between 5K and 10K going full speed. GVs suffer neither the respawn vulnerability nor realistic vulnerability to aircraft weapons and both of these need to be fixed. Perhaps GVs (and PTs for that matter) should have their weapons disabled for about 1 minute after respawn? Keep in mind that nothing about respawning is realistic so game balance modifications to respawn behavior should not be a surprise. Solutions to the GV respawn/vulnerability problem that reduce the player vs. player element (i.e. just killing the VH) are clearly less preferable than solutions that let the players engage each other. IMO the MA will be better if it easier and quicker for players to get into the fight in any type of vehicle/craft. But playability problems like the GV respawn problem need to be addressed.
5) Rethink the buffs and their targets
I know the bombers have some concessions to simulation in their makeup. I am not aware of the extent and exact details but I am aware that they have tremendously accurate bombsights that allow them to do pinpoint attacks on airfields when in reality they would often miss targets by upwards of half a mile under the best of conditions.
Make the buffs realistic and give them meaningful targets they can hit. Here is one possibility. Give each side 15 “strategic complexes”. These complexes should be very large and densely populated with target elements. Anti-aircraft defense should be extensive and very effective up to about 10k or 15k. Possibly these complexes should be remotely located also. The idea behind this is that the complexes will not be suitable targets for jabos and that it will be a much better use of time to carpet bomb them with buffs that have taken the time to climb above 15k than to just repeatedly send suicide jabos over. These complexes should never repair damage. i.e. if you don’t defend your strategic complexes they only come back after a reset. So now we have targets that are large enough that buffs can hit them with realistic bombsights. Furthermore they are densely packed with target elements so each buff bomb-load will kill a lot of buildings/ack etc… Like real strategic targets, they can only be slowly reduced by concentrated effort over time (in AH this translates into a few days of continuous buff attacks). These complexes could be the key to resets. Suppose each country had 15 strategic complexes and 15 airbases. A country loses the war when it loses 15 bases. But damage to a complex is counted as equivalent to a base capture. This means that if enemy buffs have pummeled your 15 complexes and caused 60% damage to them, that is the equivalent of losing 60% x 15 or 9 bases. This means that instead of having to lose all 15 bases to be reset, you now get reset if you lose 6. The numbers of complexes and bases can be tailored to create the desired relative importance of each. One of the main points is that damage to “strategic” targets is permanent and as more damage accrues, preventing a reset may become impossible. This gives strategic bombers strategic import. This also gets rid of the end of game single-field vulchfest. When a reset is imminent, perhaps instead of being a repugnant vulchfest for the defenders that drives players offline, it becomes a vigorous multi-area counter-attack as the defenders try desperately to retake fields. This endgame sounds like a lot more fun than the one we currently have.
The MA is supposed to be enjoyable and since we don’t want to violate our “increase player vs. player conflict rule” it would be a very bad idea if killing the strategic complexes made gameplay repugnant for the defenders (limited fuel, ammo, aircraft choice etc…
. It should certainly make defense more challenging but in the interests of fun and higher player participation, the strategic underdogs should continue to have full access to weapons and support so that they can mount a vigorous defense and not be forced into seriously unfair fights (because then a lot of players are just going to log off).
As I stated earlier. I just hope my imperfect ideas give HTC some food for thought that leads to a more satisfying MA for all.
Hooligan
