Author Topic: Limited Lives...what's your opinion for CT? (Read 1807 times)

Sandman · « **Reply #30 on:** January 10, 2003, 10:14:48 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Karnak
Its a neat idea, but like Eskimo I see some flaws. Eskimo ran through most of them, but he left this one out.

If you establish a high death penalty in the game you must come up with something that gives the player a real reason to fight now rather than once they are in a hugely favorable position. Without a real reason to engage, fights will be timid and far between. There is no real reason to defend a base. There is no real loyalty to a country or concern that it will lose.

What this will do is play into the "Speed is king" method of combat, and it will increase the imbalance against the side that hasn't got it.

This is an excellent point. What's the payoff?

myelo · « **Reply #31 on:** January 10, 2003, 11:22:48 AM »

I think it's worth trying for a few days, then assess the results. 6 per hour sounds good.

Would captures and/or ditches count as deaths? If not then this will encourage bailing out.

....Mmmmmm, more chutes to kill, mmmmmmmmm........

Oh sorry, was just fantasizing there for a moment.

Eagler · « **Reply #32 on:** January 10, 2003, 11:50:42 AM »

if the room has nothin but t&b planes the "speed is king" worry would not exist

anything is worth trying once, especially if its j for a couple of days

proper promotion should bring in the curious

Sabre · « **Reply #33 on:** January 10, 2003, 12:23:43 PM »

Regarding Karnak's salient point (i.e. incentive to engage the enemy), my thought is to try this in the BoB set up. I would ask Skuzzy to reset the stats to zero (i.e. a new CT tour would coincide with the first day of this set up), and track both attrition and bomb-tonnage on target to determine who is "winning" the war. The formula I'm toying with would count fighters and Ju-87's as as one kill each, and multiengine bombers and fighters as two kills each. At the end of the week, I would tally up the fighter and bomber losses for both sides, as well as the total points for bombs on target, and see who "won" the Battle of Britain as follows:

a) RAF losses lower than LW, LW drops fewer bombs on target than RAF = RAF win

b) RAF losses higher than LW, LW drops more bombs on target than RAF = draw

c) RAF losses higher than LW, LW drops more bombs on target than RAF = LW win

Or something like that. I have to verify that the stats page includes some indicator of bombs successfully dropped.

Sabre
CT Staff

ergRTC · « **Reply #34 on:** January 10, 2003, 12:31:21 PM »

The only thing that I need is to read shanes/lazs response and I am all for it.

besides, I have never hit 6 lives per hour and I suck. Course I think eagler and i had a little vulch exchange last week that would have exceeded that....

last tour I was 2.9 and this one I am running near 4.6

All power to ya. If only to piss of people that make statements like "i pays my money, i fly what, when, how, and how often i please. "

erg

Sabre · « **Reply #35 on:** January 10, 2003, 12:33:23 PM »

Okay, just checked and the stats page doesn't have a function to show object damage by country or a/c model. I believe the arena log function does, but I'm not sure leaving them open for 48 hours would be appreciated by HTC. I'll have to ask Skuzzy about that. If worse comes to worse, we could open them only during peak times, but it would be better if I could just open them for the whole 48 hour test period. I'll investigate this.

Sabre
CT Staff

Miska · « **Reply #36 on:** January 10, 2003, 04:56:40 PM »

First, I would advise 4 lives per hour.

Now Eskimo's objections:

The veteran players will prosper, the newbies will be out of luck: Unless the newbies fly with established squadrons or players (as they always should). Emphasize in the MOTD that this it is important in this setup to fly as part of a mission, with wingmen. It is up to us veteran players to get the newbies organized.

Balance will be an issue: Balance is almost always an issue, and it should be. I know that I am in a minority here, but I accept the fact that MOST historical situations were unbalanced and that it is equally interesting to fly for the outnumbered as for the outnumberers (for different reasons, obviously).

Slower planes for the underdogs, and all that: That is only an issue if everyone flies to furball. I think Sabre's idea of keeping a weeklong score (or turning on logging in primetime) will take care of this nicely. It will mean that people will actually want to fly realistic mission profiles in order to help their side win the week. If the side with the numbers and the faster planes wants to accomplish anything significant, they will have to commit somewhere at some time. If the underdogs fly smart, husband their resources, and hit at the right time, they can inflict some severe casualties on the uberdogs. The key here is (for both sides) to fly with a strategic goal in mind.

Base defence will be impossible: And about bloody time, too! Pick a setup in which there is no such thing as "base defence". Sabre mentions BoB and that would be perfect. The score at the end of the week would be straight Tonnage on Target - LW losses. The higher the score, the bigger the LW victory. Just like the old SPI (TSR) BoB game (board).

I think this absolutely MUST be tried. Get people to fly with a strategic purpose. Notice that when lives are limited, AND there is a clear goal for each side, sacrifice becomes meaningful. Risk becomes real, as always happens when there are stakes to be had. That creates tension, which for many (most?) of us = a great time.

Now this kind of setup would require a bit more investment than usual on the part of both the CT team and the major CT squads. Lets agree to turn on the logging for Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday prime time. Lets plan missions, lets try to get things done and win the game!

I am very excited at the prospect of a BoB setup which does not degenerate into a Dover Calais furball. This might just be it. I am also looking forward to a setup in which a flight leader decides to abort a mission because of unexpectedly strong oppostion. I have never seen that outside of S3.

But Sabre!! Be sure to give bombing the lion's share of scoring. No bombing, no score.

I'm sure I'll think of more to say later:D

eskimo2 · « **Reply #37 on:** January 10, 2003, 04:57:09 PM »

If it could be set up so that the death limit only applied to fighter and attack aircraft, I think that the death limit wouldn't have as much of a negative impact on the CT numbers. Especially if it the war war was won by bomber tonage delivered. The fighter war would revolve around escorting friendly bombers, and killing enemy bombers... Now that would be realistic!

In fact, would you even need a death limit if the war was totally based on bomb tonage delivered? Players interested in "winning the war" would want to fly and escort bombers.
The big question would be, would winning the war be enough of an incentive to get players to... play to win the war?

eskimo

Miska · « **Reply #38 on:** January 10, 2003, 05:30:25 PM »

Maybe if there was a webpage which tallied the score and announced a winning side at the end of the week? Along with some individual scores for top bombers, escort, and interceptor (vs bomber only) and CAP (vs escorts only) pilots?

That's what I meant when I said it would require a bit more investment.

Another good idea would be to get major squads to commit to a side and specific plane for the week. I can't speak for 880, but in a BoB, I am sure I could talk the guys into flying Hurris for the week

Britain stands alone and all that.

Miska · « **Reply #39 on:** January 10, 2003, 05:32:13 PM »

In fact, if you're flying proper missions, 4 lives per hour is VERY generous. But given the bomber formation = 3 deaths constraints, it would work.

eskimo2 · « **Reply #40 on:** January 10, 2003, 05:40:01 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Sabre
Okay, just checked and the stats page doesn't have a function to show object damage by country or a/c model. I believe the arena log function does, but I'm not sure leaving them open for 48 hours would be appreciated by HTC. I'll have to ask Skuzzy about that. If worse comes to worse, we could open them only during peak times, but it would be better if I could just open them for the whole 48 hour test period. I'll investigate this.

Sabre
CT Staff

Sabre's right about the stats pages not having any kind of object damage by country or a/c model. I don't know what the "arena log function" is.

An alternative would be to make all object down times 24 or 48 hours. Damage to each side could be counted by hand by someone... such as... Sabre?

A realistic effect to this would be that bombers would end up flying deeper strikes as the war went on.

The one thing that would suck about this is that once the front line bases were destroyed, players would have to fly further and further to get to the action, and enemy objects. Unless individual objects such as hangers were hardend to the point that they were unkillable, then players could always get a fighter with 25% gas...

Here how I would suggest scoring the war: ( a twist to Sabre's)

LW aircraft (engines) lost . . . . . . German objects lost
---------------------------- X --------------------------
RAF aircraft (engines) lost . . . . . . British objects lost

This way there could not (likely) be a draw. There would be a fraction to represent aircraft loss, and another to represent objects lost.
If one side had an aircraft K/D of 2.0, but lost 3X as many objects, they would lose to war.

Both elements would be just as critical to winning the war!

eskimo

eskimo2 · « **Reply #41 on:** January 10, 2003, 05:50:33 PM »

BTW,
It looks as if there are 2 ellements to the death limit thingy:

DeathTimeMin... Range of 0 - 1440

&

DeathTimeMult... Range of 0.001 - 200

What exactly does each one do?

eskimo

Shane · « **Reply #42 on:** January 10, 2003, 10:46:30 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eskimo2
BTW,
It looks as if there are 2 ellements to the death limit thingy:

DeathTimeMin... Range of 0 - 1440

&

DeathTimeMult... Range of 0.001 - 200

What exactly does each one do?

eskimo

you misread... you have deathtimeMIn = 1,440 max = 24 hrs

and deathmaxcount = 100 max = 100 deaths...

so you could set it to be deathtimemin=60
and deathmaxcount= 6

which would be 6 deaths per hour.

alternatively, you could say 1440 and 100 which would be 100 deaths in 24 hrs which works out to slightly less than 4 deaths per hour if one played a continuous 24 hrs. variations on this could be say 4 deaths per hr for a whopping 10 hrs of play = deathcountmax 40 and deathtimemin= 600

you get the idea? no idea how the "clock" would work.

the deathtimemult, is actually DownTimeMult which is the thing that got some of you all torqued a few days ago.

one thing for sure, i could see no effects of setting it at 6/60 in offline mode.. i could t/o after a 6th death for my 7th flight.
maybe works online only?

Oldman731 · « **Reply #43 on:** January 15, 2003, 12:14:01 PM »

Was out of town, just now getting to this thread.

I appreciate Eskimo's reservations. I have them myself. There can be little doubt that the Oldman will end up spending most of his time in the MA this week, simply because he'll run through his lives really quickly (yeah, you all know who you are, you dogs).

Having said that, I like to think that the CT should be the first place to try out new ideas. This is an idea that has been talked about for a long time, in a lot of different contexts. Let's give it a go for a couple of days (please....not for the whole week...?) and see what happens. We aren't going to reverse the long-term fortunes of the CT in that short a time span.

- oldman

Naso · « **Reply #44 on:** January 16, 2003, 03:42:07 AM »

I am not entering so many times in CT as I have been used in the past, but I guess we can give it a try.

I promise to spent all my lifes in CT every time i log, and then wait the time limit expire in Main.

A question, the life limit apply to the gunner role?

Maybe the "exausted" pilot can use the waiting time to have the 2 seat planes at full strenght (where present)

(I remember very funny flights with gunner on board or as gunner in me110s, or il2s)