Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: pellik on October 19, 2004, 08:45:10 PM
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I've always been a little bothered by the system of base capture we have. What good is destroying a church or apartment building to the little drunks? Why does the defending side just leave their map room open and undefended? In addition to the realism of this being bizarre at best, the balancing of how much work it takes to destroy the towns always seems to be a problem. In AH1 people whined that towns were too easy to knock down. People could just fly in with a n1k and knock down every building. In AH2 you can just about forget about destroying a town unless you've got a horde with you. In order to destroy the entire thing you pretty much need 5 guys to fly all the way there just to dump all their ammo and ordanence onto a town. The current balance practically requires horde flying, a scourge to the gameplay, in order to accomplish anything.
My sugguestion is to set up a model involving little defender troops. Make the towns nice and big, and let the little guys hide in the alleys and on the rooftops with their guns. When troops are dropped near the town they should move to within some pre-set combat distance if there are defenders left. The troops and defenders could both have little muzzle flash effects, and slowly kill each other off. This would allow for base capture by either dropping in a whole bunch of troops to fight it out, or by hunting down and killing all the defenders from airplanes or GVs. Imagine assisting in capturing a field in your panzer by rolling through the town killing guys with your pintle gun! To make it really interesting the guys could maybe shoot panzerfausts back at the tanks, but that might be too much.
So to recap: less killing buildings, more killing little men.
-pellik
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To add to the random infantry milling about, perhaps bunkers, AT guns, MG nests, etc, might also fill in.
That would offer a capture a little variability. I like it.
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Yeah! Imagine if the AA guns just shot at airplanes, and there was an entierly different set of defenses against tanks.
-pellik
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HiTech had mentioned a few times in interviews that he is interested in adding player controlled troops to battle it out and capture or defend the town. I don't know if he still has this in mind anymore since he announced ToD but I think it would be a nice little feature that would add some spice to the game.
ack-ack
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I think the AI troops duking it out would be fun. No serious "tactics" to code or develop.
-Troops could assemble, move together instead of the single file march to death. Perhaps two teams out of one goon-load. They would move in the general direction of the maproom objective, navigating obstacles and buildings, firing on enemies, etc.
-AI troops move around, every 10 "steps" to pause, search for a target, fire. Actually hitting something would depend on a "roll of the dice" type thing. Random. Like wind up toys or one of those electric vibrating football games.
-Several simultaneous troop drops (after ack has been taken out) could capture a town within a certain amount of time. The time it takes to capture a town depends on several factors: 1) the number of defenders (default or random #?). Maybe the number of defenders per town increases the further the front moves 'inland', requiring another load? 2) The "luck" of the roll that each AI component hits something when firing. 3) and anything else :)
The way I imagine it, in the end it would just depend on the ratio of enemy AI to friendly AI and a whole lot of randomness. Using the traditional high casualty attacker / low casualty, dug in defender idea, we could leave a lot of it up to chance. Of course, overwhelming odds would have a large effect ont he outcome.
I'm thinking of the 3D Mark 2001 demo - with the many 'dudes' walking around, turning, stopping, and randomly firing type of thing... :)
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LOVE IT!
plz make the handgun work :D
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:aok
MRPLUTO
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That would be pretty cool. At the least it would encourage massive airborne drops. It would also open up some really cool possibilities for the CT & scenarios in general. D-Day, Market Garden... sounds fun :aok
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:aok :aok
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infantrybot wars :)
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That sounds great Pellik! Not too simple, but not memory eating!
Battlefield Aces High 1942 :)
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Towns aren't tough to kill. A couple Me110's can take down at least 75% by themselves just with cannons. And "5 guys" does not a Horde make.
As for defender troops, would they survive a couple flights of Lanc's at 500 ft taking a dump on their heads any better than the current cities do? I doubt it.
Want AT defenses? Put a couple manable 88's at each field which can be swivelled down for ground targets. But these wouldn't last much past the first 6 or 8 pork-n-auger dweebs anyway, so there's no point.
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Great :aok
A la WWII online
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lol....An M3 could drop off say 3 x 3 soldiers whereever with Mortar fire to protect the base capture troops. The Mortar troops would automaticaly fire at the nearest NME ground vehicle.
`Mr Dropper to you'
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Originally posted by DoKGonZo
As for defender troops, would they survive a couple flights of Lanc's at 500 ft taking a dump on their heads any better than the current cities do? I doubt it.
The defending troops will be positioned in the surviving buildings, you can't destroy the whole town with 1 lancaster.
If the town is totally destroyed, there will be no defending troops, simple as that :)
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I do like this...... one option would be that freindly troops cancel out enemy troops.......... (they kill each other)
rather than all dissappear into the map room each trooper occupies a town building once more than #% of the town buildings are occupied then you win/lose the town.........
You would never really know how many town buildings were occupied until you achieved capture/loss..........
When defending you would have to release 2 troops to retake each town building occupied (one to kill the resident trooper one to re occupy the building)
Barracks now would have to be massively multiplied for local fields..........(the idea that a couple of straffing passes kills all local troops is pretty ridiculous any way.)
It would be credible if troops could be released a bit further out.
Straffing a building may kill the trooper inside.
Bombing a building would also kill any trooper. The building would eventually rebuild without a trooper. Buildings would be nerarly as tough to bomb as VH's.
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Originally posted by frank3
The defending troops will be positioned in the surviving buildings, you can't destroy the whole town with 1 lancaster.
If the town is totally destroyed, there will be no defending troops, simple as that :)
Two flights of NOE Lancs will pretty much wipe out the town - that's what happens now.
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Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Towns aren't tough to kill. A couple Me110's can take down at least 75% by themselves just with cannons. And "5 guys" does not a Horde make.
As for defender troops, would they survive a couple flights of Lanc's at 500 ft taking a dump on their heads any better than the current cities do? I doubt it.
Want AT defenses? Put a couple manable 88's at each field which can be swivelled down for ground targets. But these wouldn't last much past the first 6 or 8 pork-n-auger dweebs anyway, so there's no point.
So you need maybe 4 guys to fly all the way their entierly with the intent of just killing a town. Now, for the typical horde, maybe 10% of the people flying in it go to work on the town while the other 90% vulch like mad. So now for those 4 or 5 guys flying at the town by themselves there is an accompanyment of 30 guys to kill the fighters. That sounds like a horde to me.
Sure you could just fly over to the town with just your squaddie in 110s, but well before the goon gets there you're going to get jumped by an la7 or some such from the defending field.
Also don't forget the goon pilots.
-pellik