Combat Theater: How are we doing?

[oboe]

Are we successful?    CMs, what are the numbers saying?    I'm asking because last Sunday night during primetime CST, there were 441 in the MA and 8 in the CT.   I thought we had grown passed that level of imbalance.

Are there certain setups that are far more popular than others?

Do you guys think its the limited planeset or short icons that are keeping people away, or some other factor?

Have we ever done a full-planeset Axis v Allies on the  Perdonia map?   USA/RAF/VVS could be on one side, and IJN/JAAF and LW split into two halfs of the other side of the map.   All late war planes could be perked ranging from light to moderate, in lieu of a rolling planeset.    Crank up the icons to the MA level, promote the heck out of the setup and see what the numbers say.
Its only one week, and I'd be interested to see how the numbers change when the only difference in setup from the MA is that its a two-sided, Axis v Allies arena.   Perdonia is a fantastic looking map.

One issue that I think needs fixing badly is the frame rate in the Tunisia map.   I understand its a terrain problem.   With 1.10, we have a lot of the planes necessary, so I would think getting this fixed before a North Africa setup is a high priority.  Agreed?

all!

[gofaster]

I've only flown 2 set-ups: the recent Malta and the current Kuriels.  I enjoyed the Malta setup more than the Kuriel, and would prefer more of the early- and mid-war setups rather than the later war setups.  There are a lot of planes that don't get used in the MA that are a lot of fun to fly, but just can't compete against Spit IXs, LA-7s, P-51Ds, 190s, and N1K2s.

MA-level icons would make it easier to find the fight.

How about running an all-carrier battle setup with Zekes, F4Fs, FM-2s, SBDs, and Vals?

And for a mid-war setup, how about P-51Bs, P-40Es, Spit Vs, and Hurricanes vs Ki-61s and Dinahs?

The current Kuriel set up is too unbalanced with the Corsairs.

[Sabre]

Cheers, Oboe.  Actually, numbers are somewhat dependent on the set ups, or so it would seem.  The early war set ups like BoB and Burma seem to do well, with peak-time numbers being around 10% of MA (between 30 and 50).  As for the all Axis-vs-Allied planeset on the Perdonia map, we've done that exact set up several times before, with the only difference being the icons (short, in every set up we've done).  When we've done informal surveys in the past, the icon issue has never stood out as a major deterent to people.  The main deterant that seems to keep people from trying the CT is numbers, with radar settings next most prevalent, and limited planeset following in third place.  

This last one we can't really do much about if we're going to keep the basic premise of the CT the historical match up.  The first two are in my opinion linked to the fear (by those unfamiliar with the CT) of being unable to quickly find and engage the enemy.  Smaller maps, with well placed fields, do a lot to mitigate this problem, but if a person never jumps into the CT they don't realize that.  It is true that the time between fights is on average a bit longer in the CT...but not as long as most MA-goers think.  The thing of it is, that's part of the charm of the CT for many regulars, the fact that fights are more deliberate and less likely to be interupted by gang-bangers.  We do get furballs developing at times, but not as big and not as often as the MA.  Because matchups are usually historical (with the occasional "what-if" thrown in), immersion is higher.  Having said all that, we continue to look for ways to intice more people to try the CT, without turing it into a carbon-copy of the MA.

Gofaster, we don't have a terrain for CV-only action.  However, Wotan's New Guinea terrain is undergoing final approval.  It includes three fleets for each side, as well as plenty of landbases close together for those who like green and silver planes instead of blue and white ones.  Once it's released, I'll be doing a mid-42 to mid-43 PAC set up, complete with CV's.

Sabre
CT Staff

[eddiek]

How about a Pacific setup, early way planes only, extend the ID range to same as the MA?
I flew the CT a lot when it first came out, but low numbers and some of the planesets kinda made me stray away.  
With the low numbers, being unable to find anyone to tangle with because the icons are turned down is kind of self defeating IMO.
Just my thoughts...........

PS--FWIW, my thoughts are that the folks who detest the CT and try to put it down are mainly those who are fixated on flying one plane and one plane only.  Most folks that I have seen in the CT are those who are willing to give all the planes a try, not just their chosen steed.

[brady]

Certain set up's do draw more people thats a fact, the curent set up, has it's fans but it's not a big draw, the numbers do tend to run around 10% of the MA for most of our set up's as sabre stated.

 Icon range is generaly not a issue, at least to the vast magority who frequent the CT, frankely I can see the dot's in the MA well before the Icon's anyway, s o picking them up in the CT is never a problem for me. One thing it does is keep me on my toes. Radar ranges also are not as short as they once were in the CT, and the Sector bars are a good indacator of whear the enemy is. It is a little diferent thean the MA in that you half to look around a bit more, but that adds to the imershion I think. Heck I have some people ask me why we can't Just turn off the Icons, personaly I think that would be be a bit much:)

 A big problem we have in the CT insomuch as PAC set up's are concerend is the lack of a decent Japanese plane set to work with. We have only 2 early war Japanese planes, and we have at least 4 times that many allied planes from roughfly the same time perioud, so on papper it looks a little wacked, Playabality is thus an issue to some extent.

 The same can be said for the late war Japanese plane set, while it is not as bad clearly as the early war plane set, since it has a Great Bomber, A Great Fighter, and two Decent fighters, it still could use some fleshing out.

 So untill we get more Japanese planes we will have to make do with what we have.

 The historical matchup's in the CT are what it is realy all about, but we have as sabre has said run the Perdonia map several times with all allied vs all Axis, the numbers were down on it the last time we ran ran it so we gave it a break, but I am shure it will run again:)

[cajun]

I like Icons low, infact I think it would be really interesting to reduce Icon range to like .800-1k, no Icons would be going a little too far though, cuz it'd be hard to see if your shooting an ally

I like Earlywar setups the best, wich is why I think less people are flying this map, most fly there to fly early war planes they cant fly well in the MA like me, and I think the other reason is there isnt as many ppl there, Most people just see theres no1 in the combat theater,so they go to MA therefore numbers hardly ever go up.

I'd love to see the BOB setup in the CT! Only setups I've played were Burma,Malta & This one, My favorite has been Burma, loved dogfighting in Vals & actuelly getting kills! Malta was my 2nd favorite, but would have been Really fun if we had Gladiators, Cr.42's and an earlywar italian bomber of some sort.

[Makofan]

Last night (Tues Jul 23) I had 7 squaddies in the CT and no opposition.  We did some Val divebombing while we waited for more players.  Eventually we gave up and left (we wanted to fly with each other, not against each other)

[Löwe]

Makofan.
Vf-27, FAA880, and 27th Sentai, all fly every Tuesday night in CT usually at 10:00 PM EST if thats any help. Vf-27, and 27th Sentai also fly every Thursday night at 10:00 PM EST, regardless of set-up.
Hope you guys can hook up with us.

[oboe]

I think the CT peaked last night around 9:30 - 10 pm CST, with 20-30 flyers on.  Sorry we missed you, Mako!

Interestingly, this setup seems to favor the Japanese.  We had a 2 to 1 advantage in pilots at one point.

This is a much better setup than I thought it would be, and the addition of the USN (yes, even with the F4U-4s) makes it even better.

Brady, I stand corrected.

[Dukebro]

I think one thing we need to consider concerning the low numbers right now in the CT is the fact that it's summer.  Historically, in the online sims I have flown in...during the summer months, numbers have always been low.  Nice weather, vacations, etc give people more things to do than other than getting online to fly.

Before any drastic plans are made to change the CT, lets just wait and see how the numbers are after summer ends, and people begin looking for something to do with colder days and crappier weather.

My $.03 worth

to the CT and all who fly there!

[gofaster]

So Sabre revealed that
Gofaster, we don't have a terrain for CV-only action.  However, Wotan's New Guinea terrain is undergoing final approval.  It includes three fleets for each side, as well as plenty of landbases close together for those who like green and silver planes instead of blue and white ones.  Once it's released, I'll be doing a mid-42 to mid-43 PAC set up, complete with CV's.

Hey, a New Guinea setup would be a lot of fun. Zekes and Vals vs Wildcats and P-40(B or E, I can't remember).

If I had any terrain-making skills, I'd build a Midway terrain: 1 atoll with a lot of water.  The great thing about carriers is that players can move them closer together for reduced flight times.  I do plan to eventually make a 2-island setup to resemble a couple of island-neighborhood developments in my hometown for H2H play.

[Durr]

I first started playing AH a little over a year ago.  At first I loved everything about it except the price (at the time roughly $30/month), the fact that the MA didnt feature historical matchups, and the icons.  My two weeks expired and I stopped playing.

 However, I soon realized that I was addicted and was going to just have to come up with the money.  Right about that time they cut the price to its current level, and they also opened the CT not long after that.  The only problem was, I didnt like the early CT setups, icons remained on in the CT, and there was never anybody in there.  

Now, with a dedicated CT staff and changing setups, and the much larger player base, it is not uncommon for me to log on and see anywhere from 10-30 people playing in the CT.  I also like most of the setups I see these days.  The addition of many new early war planes in the last two versions of AH has gone a long way to aid the CT as well.

The icon issue has been long debated and I had come to the conclusion that they will never go away so I might as well try to learn to live with them, then I learned that you can actually turn your own icons off.  I frequently do this in the CT now.  I also usually dont bring up the clipboard once I am in my airplane, navigating and finding enemy manually.  This has contributed greatly to my enjoyment of the CT without forcing everybody else to give up their beloved icons and gps map.  

My preference for the CT is as follows:

--keep doing what youve been doing, we are slowly winning converts, and as more and more people learn to love it, the numbers will slowly grow

--dont let numbers be the sole criteria of success.  The aim of the CT is more focused and by its very nature, there will be less people that want to play it.  There are many of us that like it though.  

--keep changing scenarios every week or two.  I like that.  It means that if there is a scenario that I or somebody else doesnt like, it will soon be gone.  

--stick more with the historical scenarios, and keep the fantasy ones to a minimum.  I dont mind seeing a little deviation from history at times, but just out and out fantasy setups dont appeal to me at all.

--no plane substitutions unless absolutely necessary, such as with the C-47.  

--dont succumb to the urge to try to add additional aircraft to a setup just to get more planes enabled.  I hate seeing Spitfires on every map.  There have been East front and Pacific setups that had the Spitfire enabled when it shouldnt have been. (yes I know that the Spit flew in the pacific theatre, but it shouldnt have been in the setup I am referring to).  The same goes for allowing the US planes in the current Russia vs Japan setup.  This was a setup that fascinated me enormously, as I have never seen it before in AH or in any other game.  However, with the addition of the US planes, very few flew the Russian planes.  The fight consisted mainly of the US CV vs. whichever Jap island it was near.  While this shows the poplularity of a basic USN vs IJN setup, it wasnt what this setup should have been about in my opinion.

--keep settings like the fuel burn modifier and radar as realistic as  possible.

--try to keep these as realistic as they can be within reason (no CVs in the English Channel if its a BoB scenario for example).  While I obviously can only speak for myself with these suggestions,  I believe that most of the people that prefer flying in the CT are much more realism freaks than the people that prefer the MA.  Keeping things as real and historical as possible in the CT will help keep the numbers up.  If I dont think a setup is realistic, than I just go back to the MA to play the wargame there.  

I think the CT is doing well, and I much prefer it to the MA.  It seems to me that the numbers are slowly picking up over time, and I think that is a trend that will continue.  

AH is my favorite flight sim of all time.  I have never played WW2OL although from what I have read about it, the concept behind the game is closer to what I would prefer to see in a game than is AH, given the more historical Allied vs Axis setup that it has.  General bugginess and reports of slow frame rates have kept me away from WW2OL.  Also the fact that I have really come to love AH.  I like almost everything about the game, I like the people that play it, and I like the company and designers.  I like the way that the game is free of bugs (mostly) and when bugs do come up, they get fixed quickly.  I like the way that the owners and designers seem to care about the game and the fact that they enjoy it enough to play it themselves in their free time.  This all keeps me paying for AH despite my little gripes about such things as the wet compass turning the wrong way. The truth is I couldnt quit playing now if they raised the price to $50 dollars a month (please dont HTC!).  

The CT is the ultimate arena in AH to me, second only to the scenarios and TODs.  I just wish that there could always be found at least 20-30 people in the CT.

[Toad]

Brady: Icon range is generaly not a issue, at least to the vast magority who frequent the CT,

No kidding? Did you also find that Axis V Allied is generally not an an issue amongst the majority of those who frequent the CT?

Perhaps that flying in the CT is not an issue amongst the majority of those who frequent the CT?

That eating a MacDonalds hamburger is generally not an issue amongst those who frequent MacDonalds?




Anyway, this whole CT issue may have just become a moot point with the announcement in the news section. Sounds very appealing as an alternate to the MA... at least to me.

[brady]

Durr, ty for all that u said above.

  I never intended to add the US to the curent set initialy. I too was very facinated by this often overlooked pice of history. I got lucky when NUTTZ argead to make this map for me and CT, and what a job he did it is very beautiful. He asked if I wanted a CV added to the map, and I said yes but it was just a "future" use tool, to eneble someone or myself to add a diferent dimenshion to the gameplay later if they liked. After runing the Russian vs Japanese plane set on perdonia, and seeing the numbers were low I figured maybe it was the map, it was a bit stale at that time, although a great map it had been over used. I thought that the new historicaly correct map and the same historical plane set would make for a better draw, when I ran it. The week I first ran this map was a bit of a mess it was a late start do to a schedualing eror, and 1.10 came out, so it only ran for 3 days, but the numbers were low. At this point I decided to add the US CV to help bring people in and because we have a couple CV squads who would appricate it. A premise we try to keep in mind is, never sacrifice game play for historical accuracery, I felt that it would help some to add the CV.

[Karnak]

The icons are the single biggest reason I don't fly in the CT much.

If we had icons from 1000 yards out to 6000 yards and no icons when closer or farther away, that would be by far the best.

We need icons at the distances we would be able to make out reasonable detail in reality, but cannot in the game due to technological limitations.  Once we get to short ranges where the game can give an approximation of the data our eyes would see in reality, the icons can be eliminated.

Icons at short range only is the worst possible idea from a realism standpoint.