Idea For Htc To Ponder Over ............

[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 , maybe even 10 miles, for the furball guys laz in particular hehe) its just a pictorial guide not an exact plan but it should help visualise the concept.






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.
Also any player who gets annoyed that his bases are starting to fail to resupply (after its factories are almost destroyed) and if he doesnt want to be involved he can SWITCH to a completely new capital zone and carry on furballing. The strat players would continue with the other capital capture. BOTH types of players would be happy

I hope you all like it especially HTC

p.s. ports would be dotted around too of course. their position woulnd really matter and the huge ocean areas would be cool for sneaking CV's around in

[SlapShot]

Sounds like an interesting concept. Definately a change.

Are there any current gameplay architecture issues that would prevent this concept ? Would HT have to do some coding to make this work ?

[SKurj]

With 3 teams... who gets which zones?

This is the weird thing with pizza...  I dislike the dislocated zones..


SKurj

[hazed-]

skurj there is nothing to stop HTC making the maps 'dislocated' as you say or indeed keep the 3 counties/teams at the corners and putting their zones together in bunches.

BUT the point of this is that each one of the capitals zones with its own factories and large/med/small bases would actually be usable as an independant area. A country could lose all but one capital zone and they would still have an area (their last capital zone) from which to fight/wage war.

With pizza map those 'dislocated' areas are not independant and are affected by factories or the HQ hundreds of miles away. They tend to be ignored in favour of protecting the main HQ area and I'd agree with you it doesnt seem to work too well.Players tend to let those seperated areas get lost in favour of holding the main area or island.

With my idea each capital would be , as such , a seperate war as you dont need to own more than one to fight on.BUT when you manage to get 3 or 4 capitals together they protect their own borders by being buffered up against each other.

Obviously this idea can be built upon by HTC, I think theres a lot of scope here for experiment , I just would like to give them a way to have a longer down times for destroyed targets/buildings that doesnt penalyse that countries entire map. If for instance the knights have 3 capitals and one of them is 100% destroyed, only that zone and the bases in it are affected. the other 2 capitals sustain themselves independantly. They have a chance to start a renewed attack from the other 2.

You could if you wanted start the map with knights in the top right 3rd of the map with say 5 capital zones together and rooks in the bottom 3rd with 5 capital zones and bish in top/middle left with their 5 capital zones much in the way maps like isles or trinity are now but the good thing with this way is this isnt set in stone. Its actually quite flexible.

perhaps we can have one week with the startup like this and the next time have the zones mixed up randomly. its up to HTC how they start it.

slapshot i dont think it would need much more coding but im no programmer. I cant see why it would need adaption in the code.bases would still be the same as now, only the capitals would be a new object (kind of like our big cities we have now only capturable).

The HQ i was thinking could be incorperated into each zone, i.e. if the radar building were in the capital city it would control radar for that zone alone. This may require some adaption but then if this is indeed a problem theres nothing to stop HTC keeping the present system of one HQ to control all radar and just putting the HQ building in one of the bigger zones, maybe the ones in the far corners that are equally spaced far apart from each other.
As far as i can guess, all im doing is using the present system they use for factories and resupply but just adding a few more than we have at the moment.more targets for us

Just thought: although i have suggested a large number of capital zones it could be a lower number too. say 6 zones per map so each country starts with 2 large capital zones each.However I think a larger number would work better imo.it means more places to attack or defend, less likelyhood of one attack affecting an entire countries players, Instead it affects one area

[hazed-]

by the way skurj that map is a representation not a finalysed map. Its merely to show theres no need to have perfectly symetrical and rather dull looking maps and to give you a visual idea of what im explaining(it isnt to scale for instance). each zone will be either desireable or not so desireable to own and defend (or attack). This will keep the war shifting much more than the present way which seems to me, once one side(say knits) falls behind and loses all its HQ and factories and most bases they seem doomed to lose the reset and players tend to leave before its finnished so defence gets worse as things get tougher. In my idea i think this would only tend to happen when its(knits) down to its final capital zone and has lost over 75% of this last capital's resources/factories and 80% of the capital is destroyed. the countries have a far better fighting potential with this idea right up to almost the very end.

Plus its much more like the real war where Europe fell country by country (just in AH it will be capital zone by capital zone.

[bfreek]

,
BTW that landmass SE that where the Easter bunny hides his eggs?

[hazed-]

no one like it?

[Swoop]

Nah, it's just cos it's all written in italics, I quit reading after about 4 lines cos my eyes hurt.  I'll try again later after the first 4 cups of coffee of the day have sunk in.

[SirLoin]

Where are the CV's?

[Vipermann]

Those 3 islands in the lower left could be used for Lazs idea of an early war only area.

[Red Tail 444]

Originally posted by Vipermann
Those 3 islands in the lower left could be used for Lazs idea of an early war only area.

LOL yeah, I can see every DT carrying dora pilot heading over there to go duck hunting, free of charge

Gainsie

[hazed-]

guys! the concept not the shape of the map!

Its the idea behind smaller more independant 'segments' or 'zones' of the map being usable. Tere will be NO constraints on the 'SHAPE' of these .

I made the map in that way to show how it could be used in various ways. The altitude of bases isnt mentioned either.


What do you think of the way the strat guys will be fighting a long term war whilst the furballers will have an ENDLESS supply of small base fights VERY close together?

I solved quite a few things i thought here. I brought strat and furball together. Giving strat guys a worth while target that doesnt insta-respawn. YET doesnt affect furballers UNTIL the final fight. Defence is easier , Attack requires organisation. Players can choose to ignore capitals OR capture them. Even when 1 country is down to ONE capital he still has a fast respawning set of bases to use. Only when their factories(heavily defended by ack) are down to 25%, THEN he sees resupply affected.In AH now by the time we are down to last few bases all the factories are already flat and usually HQ is long dead too. Not in this setup. You may lose parts of your radar but if a capital is working away it has radar.

thats loads of improvements! well you kno what i mean , it tackles some things quite nicely, like having targets that stay down a while without making everyone move away from defending.stuff like that.

[bfreek]

how about a map with only like 12 bases . and with 6 huge bases. where combined arms will be the best tactic to capture.

[bfreek]

How about a map with only 3 bases.

[hazed-]

well i tried;)