Current Map Status

[gofaster]

I went home for lunch and checked the map.  There was a big furball going on with a base defense near the Knight capital, but the green bar was much longer than the red one, so I made some base attacks on A36 to get the red guys over there that were upping.  I generally got pounded by carrier flak on a couple of bomber attacks against an enemy fleet in the channel, and got killed by player gvs once I got to the base.  I think my only kill was on a PT boat, but that was it.  The rest of the time I was working the enemy carrier group and bases and getting chewed up by ground flak.

Knights lost the pizza map this morning around 9:30 or 10 am Eastern US.  By noon Knights were down by 15 bases in the island map (even though player numbers were even) and had made an unsuccessful attempt at capturing 38 (6 Knights foiled by 3 Bishops: 2 in gvs, 1 in LA-7).  An enemy fleet was steaming between the two Knight islands unmolested, and my flights of two A-20 and two B-26 raids were shot down by the carrier flak with no hits on carrier.

I've identified the main problem with Knightland: the pilots take fighters, but never bombs or rockets, and usually fly airplanes that really can't do much for a base-capture mission except shoot down other planes, and even then they are usually hung up in low-alt furballs over their own bases, while the enemy Mustangs, Me-110s, Mosquitoes, and Typhoons rain down death and destruction from perches over 10,000 feet up.  When the base falls, they move to another base.  When the number of bases can be counted on one hand, they switch sides or log off.

I attribute this to two things:
(a) the youthful nature of players who fly during the day; and
(b) a base capture requires organization and coordination, along with pilots willing to fly heavy and face certain death due to flak, ground vehicles, enemy fighters, or ground impact.  This usually takes a more mature approach to the game. See (a) above.

I know a lot of guys belly-ache about side A having more players than side B, and that being the contributing factor to game play being lopsided, but really, winning at this game is not just a matter of the number of players a side has, but the number of players who actually want to play the game strategically (base capture) rather than simply going Nintendo and popping off caps at enemy fighters.

So, if you're Bishop or Rook and looking for a quick map reset, Knightland is ready and waiting to fall. Again.

Just hurry up and do it so that I can write a mission using a fresh airfield.

[Shiva]

a base capture requires organization and coordination, along with pilots willing to fly heavy and face certain death due to flak, ground vehicles, enemy fighters, or ground impact. This usually takes a more mature approach to the game.

Just listen to lasz2; he'll explain it to you that the suicide jabo pilots are all talentless weenies. All it takes are a half-dozen people willing to nose-dive P-47s with 3x1000-lb bombs into the FHs, and you can close the field to fighter launches; that will let you clear the sky over the city and strafe/bomb it down so that the goon can come in to take the field. He will also rail on at length how this is the unutterable depths of unfairness, because it deprives him of the ability to furball wherever and whenever he wants.

[gofaster]

Unfortunately, nobody in Knightland wants to take down the FHs because it denies them the ability to vulch the airfield.  Too bad leaving the FH up causes the goons to get shot down!

[LePaul]

Laz is ranting against JABO loads now?  Wow.  Did he run outta buffs to whine about?

As for what GoFaster is saying.......I know what you are saying.  But its their $14.95 and cooperation is not mandatory.  My favorite is when a goon is approaching a field, with 20 guys nearby to offer cover, all 20 will take off after one con, leaving the goon exposed....



Its a game  

[J_A_B]

So everyone who doesn't try to grab land is an immature baby (more or less what he said)?


Bah.   Fighting AI doesn't appeal to me.  I can fight the acks and blow up hangars offline if I was inclined to do so.  

Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against the idea of base capture.  I just wish it was harder to accomplish--the way it's set up now promotes AVOIDING other players (NOE, milkrunning, surprise attack,whatever you want to call it).

J_A_B

[214thCavalier]

Jab his comment is referring to having an excess of fighter cover at a field your attacking and none of them being willing to carry Jabo loads on the way in, then dropping it on target and providing fighter cover for the goon.
He was not commenting on sneak field captures or milkrunning.

[J_A_B]

I know, I brought up the other stuff.   I'm just saying that a lot of us don't carry ordnance because we don't want to, not becaue we're immature or stupid.

J_A_B

[gofaster]

Originally posted by J_A_B
So everyone who doesn't try to grab land is an immature baby (more or less what he said)?

No, not really.  Base defense is just about as crucial as base offense.  I did base defense in a 109-G2 and got 2 kills for my time and effort.  But when the green bar goes from one side of a square to the other, and the red bar is maybe 25% of that, and its all over your own airfield with the enemy a good 10k overhead and dancing on your team's heads, shouldn't some of those guys be willing to haul explosive iron to a red base and pin the enemy down before its too late?

Originally posted by J_A_B Bah.   Fighting AI doesn't appeal to me.  I can fight the acks and blow up hangars offline if I was inclined to do so.  [/B]

Yeah, but you won't get the perk points for it.

Originally posted by J_A_B Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against the idea of base capture.  I just wish it was harder to accomplish--the way it's set up now promotes AVOIDING other players (NOE, milkrunning, surprise attack,whatever you want to call it).

J_A_B [/B]

I hate the NOE milkrunning stuff that enable sneak raids, too.  We lose too many bases that way.  What I'd like to see are radar icons that are different for bomb-laden aircraft than for straight-up fighters, or at least have radar icons for larger airplanes that are different from dots for smaller airplanes.  That way, it'd be easier to see where the Quake Unreal tournament is being held, and where the real base capture game is being played.

But ideally, I'd like to see more organization amongst the troops, with a better use of pilots, with more of them willing to get their faces muddy from time to time.    In the big picture, Spits, N1K2s, and LA-7s are good for furballing, but furballing won't move the front lines.  

Like Clint said in "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" - "I've never seen so many men wasted so badly."

[J_A_B]

What you need to do is go out into the arenas and locate the players who agree with you, not make a complaint here on the BB (though I can understand your frustration).   I agree that some of the things people do makes little sense, but the "anything goes" mentality is what makes the MA so appealing IMO      

In Airwarrior there were a few squads in the country I flew for who were "allied" with each other.  They still had their separate names and squadnights, but in day-to-day arena activities they more or less worked together and were pretty effective at getting things done.  Maybe something similar is the answer for Knightland.

J_A_B

[gofaster]

What fostered cooperation in the AW arena was the fact that, on the radar screen, if you saw an "L" marching across the map, you knew it was a bomber.  A lone bomber coming across the river would cause at least 3 or 4 fighter guys to grab alt in a Bf109 like there was no tomorrow.  If you saw a lone "-" marching across the radar map, you knew it was a lone fighter just looking for a quick fight, maybe gonna drop a couple bombs on a hangar or pork the fuel or ammo - a nuisance but nothing that's going to shut down an airfield and you could ignore it.  Back then, fighters carried, at most, about 1,000 pounds of ordinance.  To do any sort of real damage, you either needed to grab a B-17 (the only heavy bomber available), or a couple of A-26s, or handful of P-51Ds with bombs.

So, it was in the interests of the bombers to band together because they knew they needed the advantage of numbers (and because they needed guys to man the guns), because a bomber was meat on the table by itself - the radar told all.  And the fighters loved to escort the bombers because they knew "you get more flies with honey".  A lone fighter typically drew up 1 to 3 fighters to intercept.  A lone bomber with maybe a couple of escorts could draw more.

But with AH, all you see are dots.  Maybe its a lone fighter, maybe its a Lancaster (or a trio, as the case may be).  6 guys will go up to intercept the lone dot, only to have it turn out to be a Spitfire out for a stroll.  That's 3 or 4 guys who are going to be spending their time circling around the fight trying to find a shot but hitting friendlies or getting in the way, because they just spent 10 minutes to climb up to interception range and getting psyched for the kill thinking they were going after a bomber flight and don't want it to be a waste of their time.  Now the enemy sees 6 dots in a square.  Is that a bomber wave or jabo fighters?  Now some red guys go up to intercept the interceptors, and the furball cauldron is boiling.

As a mission planner, you could always count on having at least 3 bases to launch from.  If a front-line base was down, you go to the next one back.  It wasn't unusual to get squadron missions by email well before logging on to the server because the planner knew the map and knew it wasn't going to change.  I could literally sit at my desk during lunch and plan a mission, send out an email to the guys when I got home, then log on during squad night and roll as planned.  The guys had time to read the mission, get excited about it, then go do it.   In AH, there's a bit more effort involved with a lot less notice, because the front line is extremely fluid and the map can change drastically in just a few hours.

Maybe tonight I'll whip up a mission on the quick from a rear base using the mission planner and see what sort of enthusiasm I can generate.  I'm not holding out much hope.  Its kind of hard to get guys interested with only a few minutes notice, but I just wish more guys would get interested.

[john9001]

Bish take bases and get resets, Knights furball and Rooks complain about being outnumbered.

[gofaster]

Last night was most impressive.

We Knights actually had more players than the other countries, and managed to dig ourselves out of the base-count hole to parity.  

The highlight of the evening was the massive ground attack from V26 to A27 (I think those were the numbers).  About a dozen Knight Panzers, Ostwinds, and M-16s began the run along the beach and were met by P-38s, Yaks, Typhoons, B26s, N1k2s from the airfield.  We could see the town, but it was always just out of reach of our guns because we got the crap beat out of us by the Bishop air force.  Knight armor lay wrecked and burning the full stretch from the spawn point to the edge of the air base.  I think we finally got the town when we got a fighter cap on the runways, and by then the airfield vh was up and Bishops were grabbing flakpanzers and racing to the town to intercept the falling troopers.

Meanwhile, the Rooks were working the northern fields we had captured earlier in the evening, and a carrier battle erupted in the gulf that cost us the Yorktown.  But we had managed to repel three waves of Typhoons and P-38s and were setting up a cap over the enemy land base.  On my last mission, some guys were hovering over the enemy carrier, waiting for our bombers to come in and take the carrier down.

I was even inspired to write my "Poke'Em With A Stick" carrier mission, but didnt have any takers as there was already plenty of action going on two fronts.