Is the MA strat working? Possible tweaks?

[muckmaw]

Here is my understanding of the current Strat system in Aces High.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

The main objective of a Strategic mission is to disable to enemy countries ability to make war.

By launching a large mission of bomber, and destroying a Zone City, we eliminate the city's ability to resupply the HQ and the Zone Factories.

This mission would have to be followed up by a second mission to destroy the Zone's AAA, Fuel, Ammo, and Training facilities, thereby increasing the time greatly, that these systems are resupplied at the Airfield level.

A thrid Jabo/Heavy bomber mission would have to roll, to take out the specific targets at the airfield level. (Tactical mission)

Once these 3 missions are done, the enemy country should be incapacitated.

So why are we, the "Strat" players, not doing the above?

It seems to me, all 3 missions would have to be run concurrently, as city would be reupped by the time we were on mission 3.

Also, are not these targets easily and rather quickly resupplied by goons?

I ask these questions, as I want to learn more on the Strategic aspects of the game. I consider attacking fields, tactical missions.

The ongoing uproar of "Furballer" vs "Strat" had me thinking.

Some of THE BEST dogfight I have ever seen, centered around a large mass of Heavy bombers when their escorts duked it out with the interceptors.

I'd like to start planning and running more Strat missions, but need more info on whether or not it's even worth doing.

I think missions like these can benefit both camps, to some extent.

[Revvin]

Moving fields closer together is bad for the bomber, it means the suicide interceptor can re-up with greater frequency closer to the action and keep making their six o'clock suicide attacks on the buffs until they finally down them all, couple that with the ammount of jets in the arena's which was completely thrown out of balance by adding the 163 then you have a recipe for why bombers don't attack strat objects often despite HT saying in an interview some time ago that's what he'd like to see.

On the rare occassion where bombers have managed to get escort (most fighter squadrons talk the talk but don't walk the walk) it's been quite intense fighting for them, a rolling furball 4 sectors long until the jet's come along.

[muckmaw]

The jets are unbalancing, and a real pain in the prettythang.

Rev, you don't fly knights, do you?

If you did, you could fly with my squad. We fly about 10 bomber formations on a mission, and have our own escort squad. We also run join ops with 2 other squads. Escorts have never been a problem.

The 20 ME-163's coming to intercept...that's a problem.

[lazs2]

I have never seen a good fight around fluffs unless you count fluffs horning in on a good fight.... in that case... the fight was good despite the fluffs.
lazs

[muckmaw]

I've seen several, Lazs

We flew one just last week, on an HQ raid.

The Bish upped 190's and 163's.

We had escorts running the length of the bomber stream, even assigning escorts to cover the 2 flights that took damage and had lagged behind.

The extended furball was quite exhilierating. It was very intense.

I'll be putting one up tonight. I'll announce it over the country channel and you're more than welcome to fly escort.

[Revvin]

I used to fly knights but that was as a member of a Luftwaffe squad. I'll see if the guys in my squad fancy a change of scenery

[Innominate]

The reason nobody does it is simple,
It's a huge amount of work for very little gain.

So the fuel will take another 30minutes to come back up.  You could spend the same resources you used porking the strat to simply shut down and take the field.

Strat works in the sense that it behaves in the way it's designed to.

But it doesn't work in the sense that outside of HQ, it has virtually no impact on gameplay.

[LePaul]

Muck

I was craving some buff time so I upped some Bostons Saturday night.  Had no less than 9 Me163s on me and 3 262s.  With the limited range of fire the top turrent gives and the sheer number of high speed cannon-passes I was taking, I was pasted in a flash

Thought I'd try again, a bit further away, more alt but a B17 this time.  Just 2 163s this time and 4 262s.  Managed to get a few pings before going down

Last sortie of the eve was a Lancaster.  No super planes that time but had a yak clobber the lead Lanc, and all the damage carried over to the other planes (guns)

[Mister Fork]

Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.

But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.

If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar.  Etc. etc.

The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.

[muckmaw]

Originally posted by Mister Fork
Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.

But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.

If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar.  Etc. etc.

The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.

]


EXACTLY!

[vorticon]

during the free month i went on one of them hq raids...after flying about 1 hour to get to hq i calibrated my bombsight about 3 seconds to late then immediatly got snuffed by 163's...

[OIO]

The problem is that enemy buffs do not show up on radar until its too late (aka 1.5 sectors from friendly field and 25k), so no fighter other than maybe 109s and Me163 and 262's can get up there to stop HQ porking (which can be accomplished by just 3 people flying buff formations).

I think a better solution would be to make buffs appear on dot dar as triangles rather than dots when they go above 20k. That way a raid can be seen coming and give defenders enough warning to scramble the prop fighters for defense. I remember Zigrat's HQ defense missions when in the NDISLES map, we usually saw a mass of dots  SW of 19 (CV dar would give dot dar) and knew they were coming. He had the time to get 12 of us up in the air, fly and position us for the buff attack, and then the fun began as 109s and p51's tangled it up there at 30k with the b17's.  And this was before the buffs had formations. It was a blast when we DID get a warning. Many times we would fail to stop the buffs and 4 or 5 lancs got through and porked HQ (most of the times thanks to the escorts), and some other times we were able to stop the buffs altogether.


So IMO , the solution is to create rear-only buff-only bases at hi alt (10k alt) so buffs can launch and not waste time climbing, and 20k+ buff dot dar so defenders can scramble and have a shot at defending the strats.

'cause right now theres no way to know if the incoming mass of dots that pops up outta nowhere is just a furball gangbangfest at 10k, a NOE milkrun at 500ft or a 29k HQ run.

[BNM]

Originally posted by Mister Fork
Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.

But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.

If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar.  Etc. etc.

The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.

Better yet lets just have a botton in the control tower, push it and all enemy fields are reduced to Hurri I's for 3 hours!

[Hap]

as to why it's not done in a manner to take full advantage of the strat system, i.e., a field is without an strat element for 5 hours instead of 2, it incredibly difficlut to get people to pull in one direction.  also, the never ending quest that causes a new pilot to up from a hot field time after time thinking "this time i'll get that so & so."

your question, i think, goes to the heart of the furball v strat discussion.  your layout, to my understanding is how the game should be played.  why isn't it, i think the difficultly level pulling it off because you need, 2 to 3 to bomb city, 2 to 3 to bomb facility, then 4 to 6 to jabo effectively.  don't quibble on the #'s, you get the point.  that sort of mission requires timing something unheard or relatively so in aces high.  at the least its a degree of ops precision that is rare.

all the skills necessary to pull off what you suggest fly in the face of the new pilots joy in getting off a field & looking for somone to nail.  paitence isn't necessary to find an a2a con.  not a landable set of kills, just to find one.

the new bombing system has made strat bombing more realistic, i.e. more difficlut compared to what we used to have.  many deem the new system so difficlut that we see low level bombing & low flying 262's in a frequency we never had prior.

the hardest achievement is to get 6 to 20 people doing it. lol.

what a game it would be if strat bombing routinely targeted city & factories simulatenously followed a min later by a jabo raid. wow.  that would be something to behold.  sort of sounds like ww2 doesn't it?

[lazs2]

muck.. you and I have a different idea of what is a "good fight".

I do not consider climbing to 15K or so in late dee 9's or pee51's in order to attack escorted ack wagon fluffs a... fight... much less a furball.

I think that is the real problem... the real missunderstanding.  The furballers only have an hour or two to play and they want to fight other guys and they want to see a lot of planes but.. they want pretty even fights.

strat, by it's nature, is a steamroller or it is bad planning..  what you consider excieting (all the prep and anticipation) is boring to us..  Late war planes are pretty boring also.  Missuns well done are missuns that are boring.

I hope that the new missun area will work out well for the building battlers and that the MA can then get back to what it has allways been... air combat between players.

We don't like to come on to get our AH fix for our 1-2 hours only to see that you can't take off from this field or.. this field only has 25% fuel or this field has 20 vultures over it and no ack... or fly 2 sectors to see that the red bar is nothing but a useless field full of osties and m16's..   The "war" is meaningless to us except for the fact that your "war" has made it difficult to find any fun place to fly to or from for our allottec couple of hours.  

this does not endear you to us.   We do not admire you for it.
lazs