Capturing Fields: Opinions Wanted

[Soda]

The strat in AH has devolved into a situation where undefended attacks are simple (just look at milk-running on Pizza as an example) and attacks on defended fields are impossible because you can never really shut off the supply of defenders or attackers EXCEPT by porking their supply/spawning ability.  5 defenders could shoot down 20 attackers and know they have lost because attacker #21 suicided into a fuel dump.  Now, all 21 will be back with the likelihood that more than 1 will get through and pork another fuel while the defenders have to land to re-arm since they ran outta ammo laying a whooping on the attackers the first time.

Skill simply isn't all that important right now.  You can make as much difference by adopting certain undesirable tactics as you ever can with skill.  Optimally, the 5 enemy you kill, or who suicided, would simply not be able to come back and attack immediately.  Their attack would fail without re-enforcements of new players and be over.

Lots of people have made suggestions based on this principle, spawn limits, spawn time limits, spawn supply limits, etc... not sure I like any of those but it would likely make the most difference to the tactics employed right now. Kwessas description was all too accurate unfortunately.

-Soda
The Assassins.

[BNM]

Originally posted by ManeDog
With AHII coming out why be concerned with what is now?  With AHII is the classic arena going to be exactly the same as the MA now?  Just curious

ManeDog

As far as we know..... yes.

[lazs2]

soda... good points but... even with spawn limits or whatever... the large insect squads would still steamroller and pork... they would simply mass a little bigger first.   The suicide guys would still go after the adoration in their dog like fashion.   The harder the field is to capture (and still be able to be made useless) the more "missuns" and the larger the attack/suicide group... the less chance anyone will bother to oppose.  Plus.... if you make the field harder to capture then it will simply remain porked and useless to anyone for a longer time period.

Any strat element that you add that makes "organization" even more important takes even more fun from gameplay.   The attacker is by nature and design very military like and has the full co-operation of his fellow attackers who, after all, have "bought in" and joined the "missun".   the defenders, on the other hand, have no such unity.   You can't say.. "ok, missun to defend A6" for instance and then not defend until you have a requisite number of participants.   And... while AH mimics WWII it by no means mimics the military (except certain insect squads possibly).... one man can't "order" the defense on the spur of the moment so... any defense is by nature sporadic and spontaneous and tends to evaporate under superior enemy numbers.   The attackers are playing with themselves for the most part...

Not so with "tour of duty"  attacker and defender will be on equal footing..That is how "tour of duty" will work... the attack and defense will be planned and neither will be allowed to start until everyone is on board and in place.

that sort of thing is unworkable and unfun in a spontaneous arena filled with individuals.

lazs

[SlapShot]

Maybe its me, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how making fields easier will abolish the "horde" & "pork/suicide" mentality.

I believe that with the amount of players that we have on at primetime, some group will always gravitate to creating a "horde", whether it be a small, big, or huge "horde" ... one will develop ... no way around it. The mission editor is there and it will be used to create a "horde".

My vision of easily captured fields ...

The country with the most amount of players will most definately rule the MA under this scenario.

So, as the "horde" approaches (pick your size), planes up and maybe the beginnings of a furball start halfway between the bases. While that goes on, 2 to 4 yokels avoid the conflict and capture the base. Base is not porked (full fuel - full troops) ... no need to ... capture has been made easier. Now ... those of us in eary war planes happily furballing, now have nowhere to RTB without having to fly 2 bases away.

Lazs ... the cry for closer fields to cut down on flying to the fight and flying back from the fight has just gone out the window with easier captures.

Once that base has been taken ... rinse and repeat and the "horde" grows bigger with momentum.

To surmount another defense against the "horde" would require those stuck without a field to RTB, will either have to auger (eary war) - run out of gas trying to RTB (eary war - mid war) or bring your favorite late war ride to the furball ... just what we want more of in the furball ... late war rides.

[Soda]

I can appreciate your concerns but I think there would be little appreciable increase in the requirement for organization.  Seriously, how many people are going to be willing to join a 50 vs 10 mission when they know the likelihood of more enemy targets showing up is low.  That'd be really boring so people wouldn't bother after a while.  It would only be the newbies who feel safety in packs who would join up, everyone else would look for a fight where they have a better likelihood of finding something to shoot down.  Besides, 50 guys is a waste of pilots for any one attack and opens up opportunities to exploit all those concentrated pilots in one area.

That said, 5 guys could come in and take on 10 and still succeed if they were good.  that would put a lot of squads back into the game who have low numbers of highly skilled pilots.  Even lone-wolfing would mean something, you could go out and shoot someone down and know you weakened a sector of the enemy.  You might even run some fighter sweeps to knock out some of the enemy before launching an attack in the area... all kinds of possibilities for new tactics show up.  Right now a fighter sweep is somewhat useless because all you do is wake up the enemy and the ones you knock down simply climb higher next time.

Same on defense, attackers would have to better protect their assets (C-47 and Jabo) because the loss ofany key element to even a lone defender could spell failure because the same guy couldn't simply launch another goon 2 seconds later.  You'd get some suicide defenses (diving into C-47) but at least the goon can try to avoid unlike a fuel bunker.

Overwhelming numbers are a fact of life, they are realistic and everyone tries to overwhelm the enemy if they can.  It would still happen, but it would also focus a number of resources in one area.  Even the suicide dweebs would have to think about their tactics a bit.  Sure, they could still suicide but to be honest that's impossible to stop and sometimes hard to detect in guys who get unlucky or have poor technique.  Once they did suicide though, their efforts on that attack end, they won't be back.  Battles would likely have starts and ends, unlike the ever-ongoing masses of now.  I think serious furballs would still happen but they would end with one side standing and one dead/running away.

-Soda
The Assassins.

[Apache]

Slapshot, let me see can I 'splain it.

Easier capture translates into less required pilots. Say, for the sake of discussion, 5. You as the attacking force have 10. Why use 10 on one field? You most likely will try for 2 simultaneously . I as the defender can up at either field with 2, 3 or what have you and the fights on. You take both fields. But guess what? I know I can take one right back, or back door ya. (Shut up Animal) You know this too. Fights on again.

The flow of the game and the fights are quicker and more intense. I know you're coming in quick and you should assume I am coming back just as quick. That alone brings the fights down, which then gives the buffs thier required altitude window. Obviously if I want to get the buffs, I have to go up to them and most likely would. I know they could hurt me more.

Wish I could explain it better.

[muckmaw]

Apache-

I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.

I think this may be one of those "Try it and find out" situations because I think we're trying to predict what people will do individually given a set of circumstances. I believe this is very difficult, if not impossible to do.

Personally, I am of the belief that tougher captures lead to larger packs of players on both sides, with massive furballs forming over  contested terrain.

As I said earlier, furballs take some time to develop as people land or kill, check the map, and see where the action is. The only time I've seen a spontaneous furball erupt is when 2 missions happen to collide, otherwise, the numbers grow over an hour or more.

Look at it this way. Last night, there was an enemy CV off of one of the knight bases. They lauched, we launched, and this continued for about 40 mintues with the pack getting ever thicker as time progressed. At one point, there must have been 50 planes within sight of each other.

Anyway, eventually someone came along and sank the CV...(No, not me.) If the CV stayed up, the result would have been an even bigger, longer furball.

Now imagine if someone sank that CV after the first wave lifted. 15 planes in the area...tops. Boom, furballs dead. People scatter and look for another fight. SOme go north, some go south, etc.

I firmly believe, and I can be wrong, that this is the scenario we would have if we watered down field capture. Small groups, bang, capture, move on..scatter.

Once again, my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

[Toad]

Made field capture tougher got steamroller attack modes. Many attackers fighting to get to the vultch first.

Made buffing tougher, got suicide jabo and low level suicide buffs.

... and the suggested solution now is make something, anything tougher.   So these dweebs will have to conform and play using "legitimate tactics".

But you're not trying to make them "play your way".

That's the view from the lawnchair so far.

[lazs2]

soda... they do it every night right now... 20 or so guys hit an undefended or very lightly (read newbie vulchbait) "defended" field... the "missuns" do it all the time and they never seem to get bored with it.   they have no one to fight and still they do it.

with closer more easily captured fields fights would break out on half a dozen fronts.   Even if a huge squad of insects decided to steamroll fields... so what?  let em or oppose em... there would still be plenty of fights and... if a steamroller got started it would just leave other close fields vulnerable.

that is the way it worked when the fields were easier to capture and not so many far fields.
lazs

[nopoop]

Originally posted by muckmaw
Apache-

I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.

Muck it does work, been there done that in WB's heyday.

Any beer left ??

[Apache]

Originally posted by muckmaw
Apache-

I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.

I think this may be one of those "Try it and find out" situations because I think we're trying to predict what people will do individually given a set of circumstances. I believe this is very difficult, if not impossible to do.

Personally, I am of the belief that tougher captures lead to larger packs of players on both sides, with massive furballs forming over  contested terrain.

As I said earlier, furballs take some time to develop as people land or kill, check the map, and see where the action is. The only time I've seen a spontaneous furball erupt is when 2 missions happen to collide, otherwise, the numbers grow over an hour or more.

Look at it this way. Last night, there was an enemy CV off of one of the knight bases. They lauched, we launched, and this continued for about 40 mintues with the pack getting ever thicker as time progressed. At one point, there must have been 50 planes within sight of each other.

Anyway, eventually someone came along and sank the CV...(No, not me.) If the CV stayed up, the result would have been an even bigger, longer furball.

Now imagine if someone sank that CV after the first wave lifted. 15 planes in the area...tops. Boom, furballs dead. People scatter and look for another fight. SOme go north, some go south, etc.

I firmly believe, and I can be wrong, that this is the scenario we would have if we watered down field capture. Small groups, bang, capture, move on..scatter.

Once again, my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

Muck,

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

You see, the state I'm talking about does work. It worked in WB and worked in the early days of AH.

It changed as more and more of the strat ilk became more vocal. I had no problem with it at first but it has gotten close to intolerable as the gamey players have taken over the furballers and the true strat players game. This is evident by suicide (and I believe it is intentional) jabo and 100 ft. buffs to name just 2. I of the furbal crowd can't stand such gamey BS. Do the strat players really condone such actions?

[Soda]

Hey Laz, I totally know what you mean, but my point was, you can't really stop 20 guys from showing up if they want to.  My idea was, let'm come but don't let them continue to come back over and over and over.  Often you see engagements in AH that simply have no end, its shoot away until you run outta ammo or get shot down.  The same guys over and over come back, that's what frustrates me.  It leads to no requirement for skill either, they simply suicide everything and don't care.  You can't change that sort of lemming mentality unless you make death a bit of a penalty.  If the suicide squad comes through and hits the field, well, every guy who died isn't coming back anytime soon, that's my point.

I wouldn't make fields tougher and think they are actually pretty easy right now.  Moving the fields closer might be ok but I don't think that alone would address the issue.  I also don't think forcing someone to spawn at some spot they don't want to is a way to go.  Let them spawn, if they die then they simply have to find somewhere else to go for a while.

I think the big missions hope to find guys who will spawn in a vulch 20 times each and that's often the case.  This would eliminate that too making any hope of that happening pretty rare.  I think some of the really big missions wouldn't attract anybody to join if that were the case.

On the flip side, people could actually run things like fighter sweeps to knock back the enemy concentration for a bit to prepare an area to be attacked.  As it is now a fighter sweep gets kills but it means nothing.  All the guys you kill simply re-up and climb higher the next time.

-Soda
The Assassins.

[Bullethead]

Toad

You agree that making buffing and capture harder led to a huge increase in dweebish gameplay.  So, your suggested solution is to make capture even harder.  Is there a niggling little doubt in your mind that this might only make things worse?

Good point, but what would you do instead?  We've already had easier captures and the documented bad effects of that have led to the increasing difficulty over time.  Which in turn we agree has led to an increase in kamikazes.  Quite a conundrum (however you spell that).

You could look at it as 2 issues.  If you accept that kamikazes are a minority, then the bulk of players need harder captures.  The question then becomes how do you deal with kamikazes, and the answer to that (at least as far as map-makers can go) is a greater number of and/or harder field strats along with tougher captures.  That way, 1 kamikaze would have very little chance of making a dent in field strat.

OTOH, you could look at it as direct cause and effect, where increases in difficulty of "legit" captures always spawns a correspondingly greater number of kamikazes.  In which case, continued changes making things tougher would eventully result in pure kamikaze attacks by everybody.

It could therefore be that HT's suggest was the only really viable one.  Start a timer when you drop eggs and have them not explode if you die within X seconds afterwards.  I was against that proposal, but at the time I was only thinking about myself and how often I get gacked by FPs right after bombs away.  Does HT's idea look any better now in light of this discussion?

[Toad]

I disagree with your hypothesis that "easier captures and the documented bad effects of that have led to the increasing difficulty over time."

What are the "bad effects" of easy field capture? An ebb and flow in the battles?

Look, when bombing was easy enough for anyone to grasp in a real short time and when field capture didn't require 39 guys to mob the defenders, we still had resets and all that. We also had fast and furious air-to-air battles. What we DIDN'T have was these "suicide jabos" and "low level buffers" that seem to bother some folks to the point that they want to force them to "play my way" or leave the game.

This was true in "easy capture" AW. It was true in "easy capture" WB. It wast true in early "easy capture" AH.

The "dweebery" that is being complained about now started when things were made more difficult. So we'll just make it MORE difficult. THAT will show them.

Make it so hard that they'll rarely have a chance to survive the effort. THAT will make them want to live.

Oh.. wait... we already tried that. They figured they weren't going to live so they just didn't worry about it at all.

rrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKABOOM!

[Grizzly]

In the first of two posts I would like to dispense with the suicide jabo issue.

The suicide jabo thing isn't going to end. It's an option that will be used, whether as routine or desperation. I believe the only thing that can be done to slow it down is to impose a penalty. In real life the penalty was death... pretty affective. Hitech and others talked of a time fuse on the bombs which would not explode if the guy who dropped them got killed. Others talk of bomb perks. I would like to see a form of the real life used... death.

If a guy drops his bombs and augers shortly after, he can't get another load of bombs for a while, at least in the same area. As with death, this would prevent him from returning to do it again. If a guy wants to die for his country, who's to stop him. It's the repetiveness that's hard to accept.

I fear bombs that don't explode right away or damage that heals itself if the pilot augers may appear a bit lame in practice.

Perks? Well, that reminds me of a game where everything costs money, the plane, the  ammunition, the bombs, the fuel, etc. If you couldn't afford a mission, you had to economize. It was a mersonary type game where you and your crew got hired for a mission, the greater the success the more pay you got. This financed future missions. You could make it big time or go bust. An interesting concept it was. One of those things that makes you go, hmmmmm.