Capturing Fields: Opinions Wanted

[Zanth]

People already do missions for simultaneous capture of two fiuelds.  Make it easier and you will see missions for simultaneous capture of 4 or more fields at a time.  

Placing bases closer together under such a scenario further reduces mission/goon flight times (which coincidentally also reduces defender warning/preparation time) and you will see resets of the small maps in under 1-2 hours with minimal organized effort.

[Toad]

Ok, I'll get up out of the lawnchair a sec.

The game will always have those who "with little skill, or regard for survival". It had them at the beginning and it has them now. Same for AW and WB. In the early, simpler days though, they didn't have as much an effect on the game. It was easier to work around them because their antics had much less effect.

Your theory is that making things MORE difficult will some how frustrate them and possibly make them leave?

Consider, just for a moment, the actual "history" of "making things more difficult" to "inspire these people to change their gameplay".

NONE of the changes to date have inspired this group to change their gameplay. If anything, the changes have inspired them to find more "new" ways to "game the gameplay", suicide jabos being a pretty good example.


Lastly, two points. The "make it more difficult" line of reasoning has an ultimate ending point, ie: uncapturable fields. The closer you get to that end of the spectrum, the more obvious it becomes that "capture the flag" really isn't working. Yet, isn't that what's being proposed? Moving towards nearly  "uncapturable fields" that will take even more than the "30 plane steamroller of strat" to capture? 2 VH's? More ack? Bigger caliber ack? So what's next? "The 60 plane steamroller of strat?" Maybe it IS time to rethink the entire "capture the flag" thing?

Point 2: I find it just a tiny bit disturbing that I get accused of trying to "make people play my way", something I have never espoused or requested. True, I've repeatedly asked for room to be left in the MA for me and other like me that just like to fly and shoot. But I've always said I hope you guys get all the strat you like as long as I can do my thing too.

I also hear the denials from the "strat" side of the house that they are not trying to make anyone play their way.

Then I read:

Muckmaw:

I can only think of ways to try and prevent these people from succeeding, and thereby frustrate them. I'm not very good at figuring out how to inspire these people to change their gameplay.

How about just letting them play their game too? Is there no room in your heart or your MA for divergent gameplay goals?

[Zanth]

There has to of course be a balance, but from reading through all of this people are so polarized to one extreme or the other that I can see it is a very very good thing that it is not we who decide how AH is designed and operated.  

[AcId]

Originally posted by Toad
Ok, I'll get up out of the lawnchair a sec.

The game will always have those who "with little skill, or regard for survival". It had them at the beginning and it has them now. ......

And this groups numbers have probably grown alongside total MA numbers, so way back it wasn't really an issue because there wasn't that many of them. I remember when primtime numbers totalled 120 now thats numbers for the low country at primetime.

Every aspect of this game effects another, it's like a dna strand, pull out one segment and your left with a pile of twitching flesh, I feel for HTC it's tough to make smart changes and tougher if not impossible to predict their outcomes.

[muckmaw]

Toad-

If you perceieved my post as saying you are trying to get people to play your way, I either misworded it, or you misread it. That was never my intent.

I don't see suicide jabo's as a legitimate tactic, and therefore, nothing more than gaming the game, so I have no qualms about changing their "style" if it can even be called that. I personally think this particular group is a scourge to both furballers and strat players alike.

You say we've always had suicide jabos and we always will. Does that mean we just give up and let them run amuck, or do we come up with idea's to try and eliminate them. Even HT agreed that this type of gameplay has no place in AH. Why else would he have pondered the concept of having a clock between when bombs hit and when a player dies? Remember that thread?

I don't want uncaptuarble fields. Last night, after a long fought furball, the bish captured one of our bases. I had no trouble saluting them. They earned it. I just honestly believe a more difficult to capture field will make the acheivement that much more meaningful to all sides in the struggle.

If we're not doing capture the flag, what is the alternative? I assume your not considering making AH one giant furball arena, so what are you thinking?

Finally, I have no room in my heart for divergent gameplay when that "Style" is that of skill-less suicide dweebs whos one goal is to pork fuel and die. I don't consider this a style, not do I consider it fair gameplay, so I have no qualms about eliminating it. Simply saying "it's their 15 bucks, let 'em do what they want" does'nt fly when they existence adds nothing but grief to the game experiece for the bulk of the community.

[SlapShot]

Originally posted by Toad
Ok, I'll get up out of the lawnchair a sec.

I hold your beer for ya and watch the cooler !!!

[muckmaw]

Originally posted by SlapShot
I hold your beer for ya and watch the cooler !!!

And people say the BBS is a waste of time..

Hell, I've won 3 argument with my wife in the past month because of the arguing skills I've learned by watching some of these guys.

Now the score is 3 wins, 168 losses....WOOOHOOO!!!

Now where the hell is my feather duster.....

[Charon]

A condensed version of my $.02 on the problem.

1. Building upon the current zone setup, have strategic targets deep in each country’s territory that influence the strenght of the ground facilities in that zone as to how resistant they are to bomb damage. 100 percent strength of strat, extremely low damage values. As the strat target received a certain amount of damage, the fields in the zone would be increasingly damagable.  The strat targets could not be rebuilt by resupply, but the damage would revert after an alotted time. The map interface would indicate zone damage values.

The strat targets could be designed to highly encourage the use of real strategic warfare -- heavy bombers -- with more physical area, heavy low altitude AAA and their distance from the front lines earlier in the “war.” This would give the heavy bomber guys a real war-winning role without shutting down the furballs. Bomber mission(s) would have to be organized, planned and escorted to open the drive into enemy territory. Conversely, the LW guys could hitch on the leather underwear and spend time flying high altitude anti-bomber patrols with some assurance of actually seeing regular action.

2. Once the strategic target is hit, the airfields could be made less vulnerable again if a truck convoy, barge or train reached the airfield. These would have to be stopped at any cost, leading to an attack mission where some of the jabo horde would have to fly interdiction. Elements at the airfields like fuel, etc, could be rebuilt by a c-47 or M-3 as now.

At some point, You could also add a marshalling yard (trains), barge port (barges) or supply depot (trucks) at a size and distance and adjusted AAA that would make them primary targets for medium bombers where speed, load and lower altitude accuracy would count. You could also add bridge targets for divebombers, with some increased bomb dispersion for fighter jabos in general and actually give someone a reason to fly a JU-87/88, Val or Dauntless (A-24). Dropping a bridge could block a river from barge traffic or cut a road or rail line. These should be heavily defended (AAA) as they were in real life. Bridges of Toko-Ri anyone?

3. How about a land war? Required a land assault to take the large airfields, but leave the small bases open to land or C-47 capture.

Obviously, the maps would have to be readjusted. I would imagine that the strictly jabo guys would always be able to find a vulnerable zone to attack, the bomber guys a zone in need of hitting, and the furballers as much if not more opportunity to find a fight. The milkrunners on a Pizza or Trinity might be out of luck more often, but there’s always offline play.

Charon

[Toad]

Originally posted by AcId
Every aspect of this game effects another, it's like a dna strand, pull out one segment and your left with a pile of twitching flesh,  

So very, very true. Add in the Law of Unintended Consequences, where changes you make to do one thing actually result in something quite different, and you have a very interesting situation.

Originally posted by muckmaw

Toad- If you perceieved my post as saying you are trying to get people to play your way,

[/b]

No, I didn't attribute it to anyone. However, any scan of recent threads on stuff like this will show somebody telling me I'm trying to force a certain play style. I'm not. I just want to also be allowed to do what I like to do in the MA. Pretty much like every other player, n'est pas?

Originally posted by muckmaw


I don't see suicide jabo's as a legitimate tactic,

[/b]

What gives a tactic legitimacy? Is there an official Board somewhere? Or, does HTC, by allowing certain behaviors and techniques in the game give "legitimacy"?

Originally posted by muckmaw

 Does that mean we just give up and let them run amuck, or do we come up with idea's to try and eliminate them.

[/b]

While I'm sympathetic to a very small degree, I think you're ignoring the major point here.

As I pointed out previously, just about every attempt to "make things harder" so "those dweebs will have to learn some skillz" has simply resulted in either a) dweebery on a much more massive scale to compensate or b) the discovery of new "illegitimate tactics" quickly adopted by the great unwashed.

I just don't think the "make it harder" method has shown any success, nor do I believe it ever will. Until you get to the extreme end of the spectrum.. the "uncapturable base". I'm sure no one wants that, right? So how close do we get to it? And why go there at all if the concept has never worked so far?

Really, that's what you're talking about. Making base capture so difficult that suicide jabos and such are not a factor. Where is that point?

Originally posted by muckmaw

If we're not doing capture the flag, what is the alternative?

[/b]

I have absolutely no idea. Nor have any been offered so far in this thread. No, I don't want it "one giant furball"; I'm aware that not everyone would like that and I'd never try to force that on anyone. I do think there should be options available. You like to "strat" in the MA. Fine with me. Just let me "fur".

Again, I don't see "making it harder" improving your strat or removing "illegitimate tactics". Things will change but there's that Law of Unintended Consequences to consider. I think the "Law" is show by the suicide jabos and the suicide low buffers. I doubt those were results anyone imagined from the change to buffs to make them harder.

 

Originally posted by muckmaw

Finally, I have no room in my heart for divergent gameplay when that "Style" is that of skill-less suicide dweebs whos one goal is to pork fuel and die. I don't consider this a style, not do I consider it fair gameplay, so I have no qualms about eliminating it.  

Gotta tell ya, this bit sounds awfully like "play my way or get out".

Sorry, but it does.

Now, dang it... my Pale Ale got warm. I'm back in the chair. Anybody bring a grill and brats?

Thanks for the civil discussion though.

[midnight Target]

One basic rule of business is "You get what you reward".

If the field is hard to take, you will see more cooperation and larger hordes.

If the field is easy to take, more indivual or small group action.

Take your pick.

[Kweassa]

It's nice to have a civil discussion about strat concepts for a change

 I tend to agree with Mini - the fundamental problem lies in the fact that capturing individual airfields is the method for expanding territory. It's basically more of an army/infantry type of strategy, rather than what you would expect from an AF, that runs the show - WW2 planes are put into the roles of a ground soldier.

 Ofcourse, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that as long as fields are the objective - the place where the "flag" stands in FPS games - ultimately, people will target fields.

 The harder it is to capture a field, naturally more people are put into the task. Concentration of power is inevitable to get your job done. That's not a bad thing - it means more intense fight opportunities, target rich environment for both sides, and insurance that you'll always be able to fight someone, somewhere.

 However, a by-product of this concentration of force, is that in such concentrated environments, the competition to survive and deal effective damage to each other, gets even tougher.

 People rarely have any luxury to choose to do something that would not prove dearly effective - since it is so hard to get the upperhand in the fight for local air superiority, "getting the job done" in time often becomes crucial.

 Guess what happens when a fledgling newbie/dweeb meets the sense of duty in an epic struggle - that's how the kamikaze were born, in history, and AH alike! They are voluntary warriors that get the job done, who makes a difference by taking down important stuff with their lives.

 But in a strategic perspective, the kamikaze dweebs, are virtually like a fail-proof "smart bomb" with human level intelligence on board. Basically, they are to be viewed as not as "fighters" or "people", but rather cruise-missiles launched from one field to the other. They ARE the V-1!

 So, it's like two sides are fighting each other, and the competition level is high and hectic.

 So, one side decides to save the time and effort of putting experienced ground attackers in attack runs - waiting to get them to alt, having fighters dig a way through enemy defenses, executing safe attack runs, having to rtb.. and etc.

 They develop a V-1 rocket, and start launching them en masse. Not as deadly accurate as human attackers in attack planes, but as long as they launch plenty of them, eventually they will knock an enemy field out.

 We have to do away with these human "V-1" rockets. Or, drastically limit their effectiveness.

[Kweassa]

Another advantage of limiting late-war fighter-bombers with a perk, is that the enemy GVs will become very, very hard to deal with.

 First of all, taking down the VH itself isn't all that easy. If everyone's flying free mid-war planes with 500lbs, then you'll need to put at least four consecutive hits, right on target - that's not easy! People will be really surprised how much they really suck in dive bombing, when they try out 500lbs bombs. (I know I do)

 Secondly, M-16s are deadly, but easy to kill. However, doing a direct hit against an Ostwind with 500lbs bombs, is not going to be easy. The ground defenses will rarely fail, if the attackers aren't really skilled enough to quickly disable the VHs and stop what few Osties spawned during that time. The attackers are going to have to call in more fighters, or jabo planes again to the field. By then, the defenses could push back the 'steam roller' quite a bit.

 The "steam roller" may be able to knock off something in the air, but they will find it difficult to crush something on the ground. Only a new, ground version steam roller(massive GV attack), or a band of deadly efficient attack pilots, will be able to finally do away with a field's defenses.

 Or, maybe the people will choose to kamikaze the Osties in that situation... who knows?

[muckmaw]

Am I the only one that really liked Charon's ideas?

Toad-

I respect your opinion, and I hope you do mine.

The idea of Suicide Jabos not being a legitimate tactic, is of course, my opinion. I doubt it's a noble art, as you don't see many folks hoping to volunteer the protection of the suicide dweeb as you would a strat player or a furballer.

Regardless, it is my opinion, and I know I'm not alone in my feelings about this topic.

Meanwhile, as for the law of unintended consequences, what ever happened to trial and error? So we try something and if it does not work, we return to the old way. I've seen this as an accepted method for testing the distances of fields.

Some of our greatest discoveries are from trial and error.

*shrugs*

Oh well, I'm off this topic. As much as I would love to sit in an easy chair and watch the fireworks, I need to get my daughter to bed.

Cya's up.

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by muckmaw


If AW, and WBs were so great....why did they lose so many customers?

First of all, AW had close to 38,000 paying customers when EA pulled the plug on it, not too shabby for an aging game that hadn't seen any significant upgrades in close to 7 years.  WB suffered the same problem with long and slow development times and bad business practices.  To say that field captures in some way was part of the demise of AW and has contributed to the decline of WB is just silly.

If you ask most of the ex-WBers in here, they'll pretty much all tell you it was the slow development, not listening to the players and bad business practices that drove them away from the game.  I doubt one will say it was because the field captures were too easy.  Nor do I think you'll find an ex-AWer say the same thing.  You'll probably hear them echo the same feelings the of the ex-WBers.


Ack-Ack

[fullback]

fullback... escorting bombers is like watching paint dry. you will never get the majority of simmers to want to do something so boring. (by lazs2)

Sorry, but I don't agree. A majority is not required and I've yet to see bombers fly unopposed into, or out of, a target. Escorting bombers takes no more time to target. You couldn't possibly be thinking that escorts fly the entire route of bombers?

If you think it's like watching paint dry, escort my 15K Lancs into a contested field and see how boring it is.