Suiciding the CV en masse! -film, and <S> FrankB and AKPanthr

[Apache]

Originally posted by sax
Thats the final straw Toad , your membership in the TAS is in serious jeporady.

lol

[SlapShot]

"You have to scratch, scramble and squabble with your own kill-stealing countrymen to get credit for a vulch of the poor outnumbered and lower bastiges trying to defend their territory against hopeless odds. Some fun. Some ACM. Blah.

And of course, if you happen to be on the receiving end of the Massively Multi-plane Attacking Horde, you have the pleasure of fighting overwhelming odds in aircraft that are usually much lower and at a much lower E state than the attackers. You may shoot one or two down and then spend three or four minutes continually dodging the five guys chasing you before the six, seventh or eighth one gets you."

Wow .. "DeJa Vue all over again" ... this scenario is becoming the norm and I use to really enjoy the strat part of the game, but it is starting to suffer due to Toads exact observation.

I find myself looking to defend bases from 4 or 5 bogeys and hope that they will stick around to live/fight after the JABO run or come back to fight again.

Have to agree that the CV battles are the best fight in the game at the moment.

<> Rude, Toad, Thunder, and Co. for the CV fights Friday night. Heart pounding, adrenalin pumpin' fights. Was disappointed that I had to leave for TOD.

CrowMAW stuck around tho ...

[Yeager]

Ever see the LW guncam taken about 50 yards aft of a B17 that was obviously not firing back?  It was plain to see at least two different types of munitions impacting the heavy.  Bright flashes and large puffs of smoke where heavy rounds were tearing off chunks of the plane.  Little flashes and smaller pieces falling away where the MG rounds were impacting.

Tracers showed the trajectory of the projectiles as the pilot slewed his attacking plane left to right, then aft to front on the crippled Boeing.  Starting at the tail gunners position, moving up to and through the ball turret then over to the left wheel protruding from the nacelle then into the No. 2 engine starting a small fire.  Then the film stops.

In AH at least two of the three B17s would have exploded under half the bullit weight in less than half the time...oh, say about 4 seconds max.  Its all about gameplay and the typical AW dweeblet enjoying his 10 minutes online

[beet1e]

Bufo Marinus!

If that was the generic "you", you (specifically) need to work on your writing style.

Fair enough - I was in a hurry. I had to go to view a house I hope to buy in Ruscombe village - former home of William Penn, the bloke who founded Pennsylvania. (Maybe if I dig the garden, I'll find a gun buried under there - LOL.) Anyway, Bufo - thanks for replying at such length.

Jets and rockets are for kids. You don't see ME (specifically) clamoring for any of those.

hehe - busman's holiday!

After reading an awful lot about WW2 aviation, I just haven't found the big, long list of tank commanders that became aces by shooting down enemy aircraft with their .30 caliber ring mount pintle guns.

Oh, right! Does this mean that Mr. Toad is back in Realism Mode? Do please tell me which books you have read which gave accounts of buff pilots being shot down, only to rise as a Phoenix from the ashes, thence to fly again on a repeat of his earlier failed mission! I think the defence budget would get a bit out of control! And $6,000,000 Man did not exist in 1945 - lol. "She's breaking up, she's breaking up!".>  Think of all the hospitals that would have been needed to piece all those pilots together again. Selective realism, eh Bufo?

But theres' absolutely no question that the fight's the thing; that the fight is the raison d'etre for AH. As they say "High fidelity air combat is the heart of Aces High".

Everyone, it seems, knows the fight's the thing.

Kind of makes me wonder why HTC is going to so much trouble to develop AH2/Missions Concept. Also makes me wonder about the recent account cancellations, many of which cited unstructured gameplay/gangbang/steamroller as the reason for the cancellation.

[Rude]

Originally posted by beet1e
There have been many suggestions of late to tweak this, harden that, perk the other... -all suggestions designed to favour one particular style of AH gameplay - usually that of the author of the thread in which the suggestion was posted.

Well I have some views of my own!  I find that suicide runs to the CV can be quite exasperating. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with a side attacking a CV which threatens one of their bases. The real rub is the suicidal, one-way-ticket nature of these attempts.

I have always loved carrier ops, so last night went to the defence of the Bish CV that had dropped anchor perilously close to an enemy base! If I hadn't had my hands full, I'd have moved it myself. There were about three of us in planes, defending against wave after wave after wave of suicide B17/ju88/LANC formations. We killed them all - most of the CV guns were manned. So then there was a respite before the onslught resumed, and it came down to the usual AH1 scenario - the numerical supremacy smashdown. No real skills involved, just numbers.

The real issue is the re-uppage factor. Some guys made 3,4 or maybe more attempts. With gameplay like that, the outcome is inevitable.

I filmed the whole thing, and you can view my film. My question is: Should this gaminess be addressed in AH1, or do we wait for AH2? What other changes would you suggest? I make none here.

Click here to get the film.

Would you stop complaining and follow the advice of your CO and your own post in which you said, and I paraphrase, program away this or do that and also blah blah blah.

[Rude]

Kind of makes me wonder why HTC is going to so much trouble to develop AH2/Missions Concept. Also makes me wonder about the recent account cancellations, many of which cited unstructured gameplay/gangbang/steamroller as the reason for the cancellation.

That's BS.....what cancellations and by who?

As to you wondering why HTC is doing anything, should give you a warm and fuzzy feeling as I'm sure most of your life has been spent just wondering.

Nothing personal meant here...just can't stand blatant make believe BS...list those who have left this game for your above stated reasons....I'll go to lunch so as to give you lots of time.

[Grimm]

Originally posted by Yeager
Just increase the cost of subscription back to $29.95 like it was early on.  That will get rid of alot of that cheap crap and bring the fun factor back to a worthwhile level.

Hey,  Why not raise it more yet... like a hundered Bucks a month.   That will do even more to eliminate dweebs.    

Ok... maybe not,  but my point is,  how much money a person can afford doesnt relate to how decent a player they are.  Id venture a guess that Rich folks can be the same dweebs/jerks as poorer folks and vice versa.  

Changing how much AH Costs will not change the types of players.  

I guess I missed your point Yeager

[Hooligan]

Good war-making does not equal good game-play.  The recent adventure in Iraq is an example of good war-making.  i.e. the victors took minimal casualties and rapidly steamrolled the defenders.  Good game-play occurs when battles are prolonged, the sides have some parity and the end result is in doubt.

It boggles the mind that some of the "realistic strat" advocates can't grasp this.  The end result of more realistic strat is the prevalence more realistic tactics:  i.e. massed attacks against lightly defended targets.  The “suicide jabo” element in all of this is really inconsequential.  EVERY mission type in the MA has a suicide element to it.  As long as the game gives free respawns, players will be perfectly happy to repeatedly die on suicidal jabo/vulch/field defense/low level bomber sorties to accomplish their goals.

For good gameplay the “strat” system needs to funnel players into intense small scale fights, where some satisfying small objective (like a field capture) can be rapidly gained.  Likewise the system needs to make it impossible to cripple the defense so that these battles do not (as they frequently do in the MA) typically degenerate into huge one-sided gangbangs or endless boring operations against undefended targets.

In this particular case, the problem is not that the CV was sunk but that the strat system ended the fun when this happened.  Any number of possible solutions to this problem exist:  multiple CVs in a task group, CVs that respawn in the center of the task group (if it isn’t completely destroyed within a set time), instant capture and respawning of a task group once the CV sinks (which potentially moves the CV fight instead of just ending it).

Hooligan

[Ripsnort]

Funny,  a Bish complaining about numbers...

[Grimm]

Ill try to get a word in between the Toad/Lazs/Beetle show

Perhaps CVs need some tweaking...

The AAA is very intense, so its pretty much fatel to get inside range of any CV group.   So even attempting a Jabo run means very likely death.    This lends itself to a mindset,  "Im going to die anyways, might as well get in as close as I can before dropping bombs"

Perhaps if the AAA on CVs were less a threat,  maybe turned down or less guns were installed a person might be more likely to survive an attack.  

Then of course CVs would have to hardened to make up for that and keep gameplay at a reasonable level.    

It would be interesting to work with the settings more in the SEA for scenarios and/or SOPs to see what might be a better answer.

Just a thought.

[beet1e]

Hooligan!  Excellent post - the best I've read today.

Good game-play occurs when battles are prolonged, the sides have some parity and the end result is in doubt.

I agree, and that's why the steamroller ruins the fun. I don't know if you viewed my film. As Toad points out, it probably wasn't any different from 100 other CV battles. The only variation is the numbers, and that factor alone determines the outcome.

Of course, I enjoyed working with AKPanthr and FrankB (and the gunners) in our somewhat vain attempt to save the CV. I don't even mind that we were outnumbered, except that with the same guys re-upping time after time after time, we had no chance. We simply could not be in every place we needed to be to halt the onslaught.

Rude, I'm not going to do what you can so easily do for yourself. The account cancellations may take the form of whines, in whose analysis you are a specialist. Plus we suffered two account cancellations in our squad - for the very reasons I have given. Details on our squad board. Tough if you're denied access.

Rook doing a preflight check prior to bombing the CV

[Ripsnort]

*Ahem*
A bish complaining about steam rolling, and numbers...irony at its best!

[ccvi]

Originally posted by Yeager
Ever see the LW guncam taken about 50 yards aft of a B17 that was obviously not firing back?  It was plain to see at least two different types of munitions impacting the heavy.  Bright flashes and large puffs of smoke where heavy rounds were tearing off chunks of the plane.  Little flashes and smaller pieces falling away where the MG rounds were impacting.

Tracers showed the trajectory of the projectiles as the pilot slewed his attacking plane left to right, then aft to front on the crippled Boeing.  Starting at the tail gunners position, moving up to and through the ball turret then over to the left wheel protruding from the nacelle then into the No. 2 engine starting a small fire.  Then the film stops.

In AH at least two of the three B17s would have exploded under half the bullit weight in less than half the time...oh, say about 4 seconds max.  Its all about gameplay and the typical AW dweeblet enjoying his 10 minutes online

What you wanted to say was that buff gunners in AH are too difficult to kill, correct?

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
*Ahem*
A bish complaining about steam rolling, and numbers...irony at its best!

Rip! Yeah, the Bish are bad at that... and that's why I never join those onslaughts organised by the Mission Editor.

An old friend says Hi to Ripsnort

[Ripsnort]

LOL! How's lem these days? He still got the smell on his breath of Adidas soles?