thnx for replies guys.
To add a little to my idea of a possible change in the way the strat is handled I had a thought today about how to change the way the strat affects areas.
I got to thinking about how games like Risk work and i suddenly thought of how this could be applied to our game.
The idea is to have zones where you have a capital city,local factories to that city, local large bases close to city and as you get further away you have smaller bases where defences steadily get weaker.On a single map you place FIVE capitals so that at any one time one country has the extra city and therefore better resources.
The idea here is to make it possible for any country to own JUST one capital zone in order to be able to wage a decent war.
If you capture 2 or more capitals this rewards your country (perhaps more aircraft models available or better fuel supplies or even new weapons like V2 Rocket bombs or whatever )
The capitals would require total destruction in order to be open to attack and capture.This would mean in order to capture the capitals you literally have to use bombers to do it.However the much smaller and less defended bases and small towns further out from the capitals are easily taken and so change hands more often.This will hopefully mean the quick fix guys fight around the capitals and can essentially ignore the big picture war but at the same time they can help(by keeping enemy forces busy) the strat types who are trying to close down industries and take the capitals
Industry at these capitals is of utmost importance and is HEAVILY defended by AAA .It should require a large number of bombs to damage but AT THE SAME TIME once its hit it STAYS hit a long time. These factories should be placed in areas where they are easier to defend than to attack, ie on high mountainsides/hills or in valleys where to approach them you are FORCED to fly over many bases and AAA.
This is how a capital capture will work.
First you must capture a high percentage of bases in the capital city zone.(remeber there would be many zones on each large map)
You now need to subdue the population by destroying the capital in order to take it BUT the local factories running at full speed will resupply damaged city areas VERY quickly.Basically this will result in damage done by bombers to the capital quickly being repawned because the industries are running full speed.
SO as attacker You then will need to damage local industry in order to slow considerably the resupply of the capital.Now this should be a hard and dangerous job (due to static AA defence let alone enemy pilots)
BUT and this is the big but, ONCE you have hit these factories you will have a LONG time(hours even) to make further missions and finnish the job rather than the present way it is (where by the time you land everything you did manage to bomb has respawned.) The idea is to make the destruction of industry a highly difficult task but one that has a great deal of reward in that when you damage it it takes a damn long time to repair and leaves local enemy cities and bases vulnerable to capture.
Once Local Factories are all destroyed or are 75% or more damaged this causes resupply to SLOW or even STOP to the capital (and local bases).
(50% of your capitals factories destroyed? well guess what your whole surrounding bases/cities get resupplied 50% slower!!)
The point is to make sure there is a EFFECT felt by loss of production/resupply.
Now the Capital city is not resupplied at full speed bombing of the city causes a much more perminant affect to the respawning of buildings.
Now as the attacker you have a capital which , when you bomb buildings, they no longer respawn in 5 mins but instead stay down fo much much longer.You now have to destroy 80% or more of the capital and once that is done you can send in the troops.
The result i would hope for is this...
All maps can now be NON symetrical. Each capital would in effect be like a little self contained country and so surroundings wont have to be the same at each capital.
If you are not into strat play there should in theory be Plenty of small base captures and fights in the areas furthest from and between the capitals.Allowing people to fight AROUND the capitals freely even take all the bases surrounding the capital but unable to capture the capital itself and its larger local bases totally, plus the large capital bases wil be hard/impossible to close for long.(fuel/ammo/hangers wont stay down long unless factories are also leveled.)
If you ARE into strat then as a bomber you can try for these industrial targets but to go in alone would basically result in an almost garenteed failed run.If you send in the big bomber missions you can drop on those factories and EVEN IF you only cause 10% damage it wont be a total failure because you can set up ANOTHER attack to ADD to your first missions damage.It might take 5 or 6 major assaults to knock out that factory enough but not even a small drop is worthless.
Once the strat guys have damaged the factories enough suddenly a capital is a possible prize. Then the emphasis of all players will be the big push for the big prize
The whole thing should be a struggle to control the MAJORITY of capitals.
Countries with the most will receive bonuses to resupply or special weapons.(or if prefered the country with only 1 capital that is almost down receive a 'desperate' bonus and they receive the vengance weapons)
Maybe a country with 1 capital resupplies at 100% , with 2 capitals it ups to 120%(or gains 20% more AA empacements) , 3 = 140%(or 40% more AA emplacements) (obviously depending on the state of their factories)
do you see what i mean? you end up with 2 differently paced capture games.
the small towns and bases remain similar to what we have now but a NEW much slower progressing game of CAPITAL city captures progresses in the background.
It opens the possiblility of using REAL maps like europe or mediteranean or asia because basically you have a war for each 'capital zone' and the loss of one capital DOES NOT affect your ability to use another to wage war from (if you have more than one capital of course
).zones can be all sorts of sizes too.we could even have capitals which are easy to hold onto but have less industry and then very tricky to hold capitals that have massive industry areas (perhaps at lower alts too).The more industry at the capital the harder it is to slow it down enough to capturel because they require greater amounts of bombing.We could really have some wildly different areas whilst still not unballancing the whole arena. Holding each zone would in effect be a seperate battle and so holding the better territory at one capital doesnt mean its any easier to take the next capital. Also even a capital that is undefended is quite capable of surviving on ai AA defence alone(unless attack is determined) but the surrounding area and small bases/towns can be overun as normal.
if you dont like the loss of fuel at bases meaning 25% limits to fuel loads it merely means you move to the areas between capitals where there are more bases and youre closer to other enemy bases. Capture of these is still usefull but it doesnt really affect the big war.If you dont care about the big picture you can fight at these bases all day long furballing away! but if you want to win the 'War' you concentrate on the capitals
like it?
