A few thoughts

[JB42]

Ive been reading a lot of posts about suicide dweebs, gang-bangs and lack of teamplay. I have a few suggestions that might help this:

1) Suicide dweebs.

In my opinion there are 2 reasons for suicide behavoir whether it be jabo, buff killing, or fleet attacks. One is becuase you can and the other is because other alternatives are either hard or near impossible. Let me break these down individually.

A)Fleet attacks.

Because there is no swaying and swelling of boats in the water and no recoil from the guns, fleet AAA is laser accurate. Whether your intention is to dive bomb and live or suicide, chances are your not going to make it out alive. I suggest for this cut the amount of ack or actually introduce instability in the gun platforms to simulate on the sea effects.

B) Buff formation attacking.

Again, no turbulance and recoil allows for deadly accurate fire. Also the fact that every available gun that can target you will. I suggest introduce recoil to buff guns and do away with all postions firing. If your in the tailgun, than only tail guns fire at you.

C) Suicide Jabos.

This next suggestion is long and covers many of the other aspects of what I mentioned before. As far as the short response format of the previous 2 parts I can say only its done because you can with little or no cost.

Two things I believe can help with a lot of the concerns I see posted are ord. costs and mission bonuses. Let me explain.

First, do away with 3 types of perks. Make only two, air combat perks (AP) and ground combat perks (GP). Then perk ord. I suggest 1 perk per hundred pounds, 2 perk per rocket, and 5 perks per torpedo. AP can be used for perk planes and ord. and GP used for perk vehicles and ord (torps and rockets for PTs). If someone wants to fully load their Typh to 40 perks and slam it into a fighter hanger, well they wont be doing that very often. Also I say go ahead dive your 420 perk formation of Lancs into my fleet, you just better hope no 5" guns get you first.
As for regular missions, namely bomber runs, one might say thats its not fair to make a formation of fully loaded B-17s 180 perks. It would be to easy to lose perks if bounced be enemy fighters. Well take escort. This adds to the gameplay realism.

Second is a mission perk multiplier. Lets just say 2x for fighter mission and 1.5x for attack. This also adds to gameplay by making it desirable to form coordinated attacks and defense.

So I offer this scenario:

A group of flyers want to do a bombing run over A18 on the NdIsle map. They decide to up from A8 and draw up an attack mission in hopes of a successful mission earning them some bonus perks. But the realization that each formation is going to cost them 180 perks makes for a risky mission. They then ask for some other flyers to give escort. These additional flyers agree and draw up a fighter mission to escort, again looking for perk bonuses.
On the other side, it's clear that A18 is going to get hit soon. The enemy has A19 and the next logical target is A18. A fighter CAP mission is drawn up to defend A18 from A17.
Eventually the 3 missions met and the outcome is undecided, but wow talk about realism, gameplay and well, in short, FUN!

I don't expect that all these suggestions willbe acted upon and I don't believe my thoughts are the only right ones. In return I do expect constructive feedback and viable alternatives. No flames please.

Thank you.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by JB42
First, do away with 3 types of perks. Make only two, air combat perks (AP) and ground combat perks (GP). Then perk ord. I suggest 1 perk per hundred pounds, 2 perk per rocket, and 5 perks per torpedo.   ...   Also I say go ahead dive your 420 perk formation of Lancs into my fleet, you just better hope no 5" guns get you first.   ...   one might say thats its not fair to make a formation of fully loaded B-17s 180 perks.

Why do I get the mental image of Lasz with his hand up a JB42 puppet making this post?    

Your proposal would make Lasz ecstatic beyond belief; your proposal would immediately castrate the air-to-ground aspect of AH, leaving the MA in eternal furball mode -- which would suit Lasz just fine. No 'fluffs', no worries about someone sailing in and ignoring the 'DO NOT PORK' signs he's put out around the field he's picked to launch his furball flights from, no worries about someone taking the field away from him, just the eternal furball.

[loser]

I dont really agree with your ideas, so i will try to offer some "constructive criticism" without flaming.

I dont really have much to say about your CV gun point, but i think maybe it would be a good idea if implemented correctly.

However in relation to the buff gun recoil and firing,  i I do have an opinion.  

Will some guns on buffs (say the waist guns on a B17) would have a considerable amount of recoil and "bounce," the fixed powered turrets would be fairly stable.  Difficulty in aiming would probably be more significant from the effects of turbulance and slipstream from other planes in a formation. (On a side note, this would also effect the accuracy of fighters too. If you are saddled up on some guy's six you can bet the air wouldnt be too smooth.) I just dont think it is feasible to put a blanket "bounce and recoil" effect into the game.

So adding a generic buff gun recoil to all gun positions on all planes would not be realistic.

Secondly, it is far from reasonable to expect only ONE gun position on ONE bomber to shoot at an attacking con.  On board radio comms were such that if one position saw a target, you can bet that any available gunner would have his guns aligned on that target. This while the other gunners would be scanning the sky for even more targets.

You cant tell me that if a con is attacking me from dead 6 (just for arguments sake,) that only the tail gun on one of my planes in my formation should be able to shoot.

Oh and taking on player controlled gunners for every position is not an option.  HTC has already stated this aint gonna happen.


On to the issue of perks.  While I feel that it would be cool to add perked ordinance, I dont think that perking our current ordinance set up is a good idea at all.  2 perks per rocket?  So if i take a tiffie loaded with 16 perks worth of rockets to a vehicle base and wipe the thing out i will return how and if I manage to safely land I will hope to get....at best....1.5 perks or so.

See how the math just doesnt make sense? Yes i know that with our current set-up most perk planes dont really pay.  (how many perks can one expect to get from an Arado mission for eg.)

And as for a 420 perk point Lancaster formation? Maybe you are just being excessive to make a point, I dunno.  But anyway...  I have a fair number of perks but this extreme.  I could only manage to pull about 8 on these sorties and be down to little or no perks.  And i have been building the things (with the usual losses of course) since the perk system started.  A newer player or even an average player that doesnt fly bombers much could not hope to even fly one.

Add to this the fact that last night around midnight if you were bish this formation would actually have cast you around 600 points!!!

This of course leads to how you would fly in the first place with anything but cannons and machine guns (or is this your sneaky, underhanded goal!   )  I assume you have thought of some sort of perk gift at the start of each tour or whatever to allow people to "get off the ground."

One quick note on "realistic escorts" making things better and bombers having to take escorts to survive.  This doesnt really work as is.  Just as some players will fly through tons of CAP to vulch a field to get a few quick kills then die themselves, I will dare to say MOST fighter pilots will fly through escorts to kill the bombers only to be shot down themselves after one or two passes.  It is a simple matter of "going for the candy." The inherent ability just to re-up another plane is probably the greatest cause of so called "suicide tactics." Excessive perking and buff gun nuetering will not stop this, it will make it worse IMHO.

Eg.  A lone or small group of cannon armed fighters (free from perks) can fly through half a dozen escorts and pick off a bomber or his entire formation knowing he himself will die, but also knowing he is going to rob the bomber pilot of hundreds of perk points.

Again, I hope I am not flaming you, as that was not my intention, and of course the community and game itself benifits from all constructive ideas.  Sometimes another point of view just clears things up a little bit.


loser111

[JB42]

Some clarification and questions to most recent replies:

When u load up your plane with perked ord. it becomes a perked plane. If youland successfully you don't lose those perks. So you land your 16 perk typh and gain whatever perks you earned from the raid. And if you were part of a mission, you get the added mission multipier.

Second, there would have to be a pop in the hanger that allows you to choose your ord. Not the generic this is what you can have option. If you want to load or can only load your B17 with 4 500 lbers you could.

There is already recoil built into the fighters. Take a fighter up and trim it to level but dont use auto pilot. Squeeze a burst into the pop up target and see the diversity in target hits. Why not have that for bombers? there is recoil deflection in evey gun no matter how well its mounted. Some more than others as you pointed out. But just one degree of different trajectory between two bullets can mean one hits and the other doesn't at certain distances.

I see your point about gunner positions. Maybe that could be left alone.

As for shivan's response, I still don't see how this affects A to G warfare? It makes it more organized and perhaps the need to have it tought out in advance, but I don't think it "castrates" it.

Please keep the level headed and honest feedback coming. Thank you.

PS. 420 perk Lanc formation? 1 Lanc loaded with 14000 pounds = 140 x 3 in formation = 420. I did the math

[Pongo]

Buffs are too easy to kill allready
16000 ton cruisers and 40000 ton aircraft carriers sway very little. quite stable gunner platforms.

I sort of like the perk bomb idea.

[Karnak]

I can kind of understand arguing to perk bombs and rockets on fighters, but perking bombs on bombers is a terrible idea.

It is just as reasonable to suggest that machine guns and cannons on fighters should be perked as bombs on bombers should be perked.  The guns on the fighters are the only reason that they exist.  In exactly the same fashion, the bomb load of bombers are the only reason they exist.

Lancasters (your most expensive bomber) are incredibly easy to shoot down.  The only thing they have going for them is their huge bombload.  Your system would take that away.

Why fly a big assed target (especially a neutered one) that is inaccurate when you can fly a P-38, Bf110 or Mossie that is faster, cheaper, vastly more survivable and will inflict just as much damage?

[ccvi]

Perk the 3 cannon version of the La7.
The 30mm of the 190a8.
The 8 .50s of the P47.
...

[JB42]

Really Pongo? Ask any pilot who tried to land on an aircraft carrier how much sway and swell one of those huge stable platforms have.

[Sakai]

Originally posted by JB42
Ive been reading a lot of posts about suicide dweebs, gang-bangs and lack of teamplay. I have a few suggestions that might help this:

1) Suicide dweebs.

B) Buff formation attacking.

Again, no turbulance and recoil allows for deadly accurate fire. Also the fact that every available gun that can target you will. I suggest introduce recoil to buff guns and do away with all postions firing. If your in the tailgun, than only tail guns fire at you.

Well, some guy said that it sickened him that a feller would crawl up a tail just to die while taking out a buff.  Look, the alternative is often:  let teh enemy go his merry way and frankly, when they are near a base that is often enough ot get the surviving bombers to miss tehir run, and gives your team a chance to finish them.

Saying it is suicide is whining, it is a useful tactic.  I am always on the receiving end of this, by the way, and it often screws up my drops.  But hats off to those guys who die trying, I say.  

Sakai