Why the BIG Maps Don't Work So Well

[MRPLUTO]

Overlag,  Big Thanks!

About the map:  

* The light blue area is the size of a small map, to give you a sense of scale.

* The red dots are suggested airfield locations.  There are 37 of them.  Along with them I'd suggest 7 or 8 vehicle bases and 6 ports with 4 carrier fleets and 2 heavy cruiser fleets.  Plus 3 economic zones.

*  All the big islands and a few a the smaller ones are real islands.  It will save time in creating a map if existing landscapes can be downloaded, I believe.  In the upper left going clockwise are:  Iceland, the Falklands, Baffin Island (above it is Novaya Zemlya and below is Tasmania).  At three o'clock are Honshu (Japan's main island) and Cuba on the outside.  South of Cuba and Honshu are Jamaica, Haiti, the Domican Republic and more of the Carribean.  The large land mass in the south is western Alaska, and the one in the west is eastern Siberia (Kamchatka peninsula area).  The three islands in the center are New Guinea, Hokkaido (Japan), and New Zealand's North Island.

*  I hope the fields are close enough for furballers.

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Jackal,

CVs will have far more space to hide on this map than on our current maps.  I don't see CVs being hunted down and sunk in short order unless they get too close to a base.  Not many 40-mile sink the CV missions in AH, especially when enemy doesn't even know CV's location.

Why would this map produce a two-sided war?  Please explain.

MRPLUTO

[hazed-]

The only problem ive seen people complain of because of large maps is excessive flight time to action caused by large distances between bases. I dont personally agree with this being a problem unless its a constant occourance which I dont find it is in the Bigisles map.I really like bigisles, hate pizza and dislike trinity some. guess its 'horses for courses'

Another one is the excessively high mountains of trinity and the symetrical and uninspiring layout of pizza with its stupid mars like valleys etc.

So as i see it it isnt the scale of the maps its the features therein!

MrPluto i like the realistic look to your map but have you not taken notice that you have some places where there are hundreds of miles between bases? If you say that light blue area is a small map size , take a look at how much open ocean lies between even the central area: looks like at least 150 miles which is like 3 or 4 sectors.Far to distant for the majority of quick fix players.Laz would be horrified i think!

I would think this map would really suit a CT like arena IF it had the high numbers of MA or perhaps a scenario with a full compliment of players signed up. As an MA map it would cause many many whines of 'too long a flight'
What is good about it is that it has open areas for fleets but i think you need to have some areas where fighting could get intense and fight times are short AS WELL AS the longer/wider ones.

I'll post my idea for a map and you can pick holes in mine:D

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Jackal1
. The problem times are on the small maps.

i feal the same

its fine in the morning (here) when theres 120 players online. but when theres 100 per SIDE its hard work on a small map...

Why does everyone hate flying more than 10miles to a fight anyway?

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Overlag
problem is, that never seems to happen, people who command CV's seem to want them to hug the coast as if they will fall of the side of the earth once they cant see land

But if you take the CV more than three miles offshore, all of the kamikaze battalions who want to be able to dive into an enemy base and be back overhead with a fresh ordnance load two minutes later would get discouraged, because they'd have to fly five or ten minutes to get to their target -- they might even have to *GASP* coordinate their attacks so the field doesn't start coming back up before they can pork it again...

[hazed-]

ok ive made the picture and its not to scale or anything but its to show the general idea behind the concept: (As a guide to scale the small bases would average around 15 to 25 miles apart, Id like at least some small bases to be 15 miles apart for the furball guys laz in particular hehe)






heres a cut and paste of my previous desription (tried to explain without a pic)

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 10 to 16 capitals so that at any one time one country has the extra city and therefore better resources. (This keeps things unstable and encourages WAR hehe)

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(several 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). before this figure is reached resupply is fast and normal.(perhaps moderately affected by damage
(50% of your capitals factories destroyed? well guess what your whole surrounding bases/cities get resupplied 25% slower!!)
The point is to make sure there is a EFFECT felt by loss of production/resupply but until this is accomplished on a proper scale (75% or more) resupply is fast and efficient so as not to annoy players , i.e. porking fuel all the time at the small bases will be pointless UNLESS factories are down)

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.


what do you think? remember too that we dont have to have the 3 countries at each corner of the map.we could for instance have it so each ciuntry starts with say 4 capitals each, these could be all over the map at different places. As each capital and zone is like a small seperate country it doesnt matter where it is or what size it is. the border to the zones is where you have close short distance fights but in theory the border can be any shape or size.
Certain capitals might be preferable to others but this is a GOOD thing. If they were all exactly the same and layed out in symetrical patterns the gameplay would stagnate badly just like Pizza seems to.

I hope you all like it especially HTC , im gonna post this seperately too in the hope HTC sees it.

[Overlag]

Originally posted by Shiva
But if you take the CV more than three miles offshore, all of the kamikaze battalions who want to be able to dive into an enemy base and be back overhead with a fresh ordnance load two minutes later would get discouraged, because they'd have to fly five or ten minutes to get to their target -- they might even have to *GASP* coordinate their attacks so the field doesn't start coming back up before they can pork it again...

lol

[lazs2]

I never take ordinance.   I fight other humans not toolsheds.  I will leave the toolshed fighting to the insects.
lazs

[bfreek]

the simple reason the big maps are boring is because they are BIG MAPS.

many bases to babysit and milk.

cut the landmass by 30%.

[MRPLUTO]

Hazed,

Thanks for your comments.  I know that in some directions the distances between bases are kind of large...but "hundreds of miles"?  And if you go in some other direction you'll find a base fairly close.  There are some large seas that are 75 miles across or so, but there are many, many bases 25 miles apart or even less.  Look at the central islands:  there are quite a few close bases.  The bases might be a little thin in the middle of "Plato's Republic", so maybe each country needs a couple more fields.

The most isolated fields are in the northeast, on "Novaya Zemlya"; all those fields are isolated from other fields, but very vulnerable to fleet attack.   I think it's good that way.  

I was thinking of lazs and wanted to make sure that no matter where the front was there would always be someplace with nearby bases.



MRPLUTO

[Bullethead]

Originally posted by Jackal1
IMHO, with just 50 miles of outer ocean the CVs would be hunted down and sank in short order. The map shown above would produce a definite two sided war.
  I don`t know at what times you are playing, but again, IMHO the problem is not with the big maps, they are a solution. The problem times are on the small maps.

As you can see from MrPluto's pics, the idea isn't to confine CVs to narrow seas like on Pizza, but to allow them to hit any point on the map from any direction.  This is an idea I really like, and it illustrates my only real problem with Trinity.

[NoBaddy]

Originally posted by Bullethead
As you can see from MrPluto's pics, the idea isn't to confine CVs to narrow seas like on Pizza, but to allow them to hit any point on the map from any direction.  This is an idea I really like, and it illustrates my only real problem with Trinity.

BH...

I seriously considered more water on Trinity. The problem is I didn't want to make it too easy for the "hide the CV" crowd. It is one of those things that I don't disagree with, strategically speaking. However, I sure as hell didn't want to make it easy either. With the map that Overlag posted, there would be a time when the hidden CVs would probably out number the CVs in use.



Hazed...

Looks like you are thinking about something similar to what I talked to HT about doing. Having clusters of close fields and then separating the clusters with a pretty good distance. One thing, would you show who owns what at the start of the map? With no indication of ownership at the beginning, it's a little hard to look at the map with an eye for balance

[Bullethead]

NoBaddy said:

I seriously considered more water on Trinity. The problem is I didn't want to make it too easy for the "hide the CV" crowd. It is one of those things that I don't disagree with, strategically speaking. However, I sure as hell didn't want to make it easy either. With the map that Overlag posted, there would be a time when the hidden CVs would probably out number the CVs in use.

I don't know exactly what you mean here, probably because I don't fly enough to see it .  Do you mean guys will see a port about to fall and drive the CV way out in the boonies where the nme can't hurt it and thus can't take it?  If so, you'd think HTC could make a couple of changes that would help in that regard.  Such as, putting a timer on a port capture and have the CV change ownership shortly after the port is taken (if there isn't one already--I don't know).  Also, what about a "waypoint too far from land" check?

Still, that's something I hadn't thought about.  The corners of the map in a MrPluto-style map would be great hiding places.  So I guess I'll have to put some land there simply to prevent that from happening.  

Hmmm.  Too bad you have to capture so many bases to win a reset.  Otherwise, these corners would be great places for furballer bases.  No buffs, no bombs, no troops, no DTs, and too far away to affect or be affected by anything else.  But that would make them uncapturable.

Looks like you are thinking about something similar to what I talked to HT about doing. Having clusters of close fields and then separating the clusters with a pretty good distance.

That's an idea I've been considering myself.  I was thinking like a number of relatively large islands with a bunch of airfields and GV bases, and a few ports as well.  Then you'd really need the CVs to get from island to island.  Problem with this is, it would make factory placement a challenge.

[Jackal1]

Originally posted by MRPLUTO
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Jackal,

CVs will have far more space to hide on this map than on our current maps.  I don't see CVs being hunted down and sunk in short order unless they get too close to a base.  Not many 40-mile sink the CV missions in AH, especially when enemy doesn't even know CV's location.

Why would this map produce a two-sided war?  Please explain.

MRPLUTO

  With just 50 miles the CVs will always be within 2 sectors (50 miles) of land when in the corridors. Like I say I don`t know at what times you are playing so were probably seeing this differently, but the CVs would be a piece of cake to find at all times. As to the "40 mile sink the CV missions" , they are more than frequent, that`s less than 2 sectors to get alt, just about right.
  Sink one countries CVs quickly and Vavoom you have a two sided war.

[Overlag]

what about the CV's surrendering... you know. When the Allies landed in Italy, the Italian fleet surrenderd (once the Italians surrenderd)..

So, if there home port is captured, they sail back to that port and once there (or within a certain distance) change to the owners country?

I dont want the CV to instantly change sides, because that would never happen...

I too, hate the people that capture CV's just to hide them. Id rather use the valuable source to do some more capturing.

[lazs2]

for me.. a cv that is 2 sectors away is worthless anyway.
lazs