I think of myself as someone who's learned all the various aspects of playing Aces High, and I can offer a few reasons that come to mind for me. These are not complaints just my own personal reasons for not playing this part of Aces High much. They are listed in decreasing importance to me.
Reasons for not attacking the current strat system
- Usually it takes to much time (it's nice when you have the example above but that is a rare occurrence)
- It takes a large amount of ordinance to have an impact (fine when you can gather a lot of people but hard by yourself)[this is good for balance but discourages strat play]
- The current fuel burn rate limits the choices of escort fighters
- It's not required as part of "win the war" for map reset. Since it has no impact on the actual win requirement why bother with it, just go attack bases
- It's rather easy to spot a strat attack inbound therefor they are almost always defended
- Strat defenders are usually in good interception aircraft which makes penetrating to the target difficult (ie ENY seldom impacts the ability to defend strats)[this is good for balance but discourages strat play]
- And finally, the individual reward doesn't justify the effort or time
Thanks to everyone who answered.
Many of you have stated the reasons for not attacking the strats in general, which range from very understandable reasons of personal preference "aka bombing is boring" to gameplay issues. Baumer summed it up best to me:
I think of myself as someone who's learned all the various aspects of playing Aces High, and I can offer a few reasons that come to mind for me. These are not complaints just my own personal reasons for not playing this part of Aces High much. They are listed in decreasing importance to me.
Reasons for not attacking the current strat system
However, the example I gave was different in as much as the strats were in easy reach, and crippling town and one or two factories would still have a profound impact on the enemy.
This fact, and many answers I have read here as well as I got from players in game, reinforce my belief that this is in huge part due to a change in player behaviour. (No, not another "xbox generation" rant):
Every new player who joined in the last two years, asking about bombing the strats has heard "not worth the effort". And that's how the strats completely moved off the player's radar (witty pun, eh?), resulting in the current situation. And that's the similarity to Tank Town. I'm afraid even if the role of the strats would been boosted somehow, they still would not been attacked without some further, highly visible incentive (to bring it back in the player's minds).
I think your right Lusche...
We need someone to lead
A single leader would change nothing. We would literally need dozens if not hundreds of them. Think how institutions like the 'MoM', or other similar efforts, rose and fell with the commitment of a single player.
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I have to admit that this was maybe the first time in my long AH career that I was sorry not to have a squad at my disposal. While flying my first, high alt sortie I quickly devised a plan for a small but nice lil raid that could have smashed the strats without creating too much attention too early ;)
I now have spend many hours during the last days, testing bomb loadouts and rebuild times in the "Gastropod Proving Ground" arena as well as flying actual sorties. Surprisingly, even on small maps with 163's next to the strats, the defenders reaction was rather limited.
And the B-29 turned out to be very survivable even against Kometen :devil
I came to the conclusion that on a large map it's even possible to effectively hurt the strats under normal circumstances, with a very small number (2-8) of experienced, disciplined and perk equipped players.
Large raids do often 'fail' (technically only, as they still generate lots of fun) due to the attention they generate (multi-sector darbar) and, most importantly, due to the 'n00b factor': A gaggle of bombers not able to keep formation, 90% wasted bombs due to a lack of clearly defined targets and bombsight calibration issues, and escort fighters that are greedy for kills instead of doing their job.
If I just wouldn't hate so much being a leader... the sortie planning part is quite fun. And you bet I have some resources for that... ;)