Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: Zimme83 on August 06, 2017, 06:57:47 AM
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Again: Bring factories back to the city and place the city ~3 sectors from the front line. We lost a very important part of the game when the old strat system disappeared. Now its either way too easy to hit strats or they are out of reach. Back then you where pretty much guaranteed to face resistance during a strat run but the target was worth the risk, now its often not even worth trying because the factory you want to hit is on the other side of the map, or they are already killed by gvs or jabos because they are right at the front line.
I like strat runs, but the current system is a disaster.
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Bombing strats almost always favors the country with the largest number of players. This counters any side balancing eny restrictions.
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How is that better with the current system? Its way easier now to destroy a factory - if you are lucky enough to be in the country that can reach them
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nobody at any time ever has any trouble hitting Knight strats, most of the time it's our strats that are hit 1st.
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i like it.
current system is flawed for making one or more factories "unreasonable" for a player to destroy.
the movable central strat was good, well it was ok. fixing the problematic situation where teams gamed the mechanics of the movement would have been better than brash decision to the current, "old position, new rules" crux were in now.
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Now its either way too easy to hit strats
Defend it.
or they are out of reach.
Not always.
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Defend it.
I gave that up quickly, because it was mostly pointless with the decentralized setup. It was also the death blow to the last regular occuring long range/high alt missions.
So many things went wrong with the current strats setup...
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I gave that up quickly, because it was mostly pointless with the decentralized setup. It was also the death blow to the last regular occuring long range/high alt missions.
So many things went wrong with the current strats setup...
Exactly, you cannot defend the strats when they are at the front line. Centralized strats are easier to defend and it means that it will be more bomber- fighter action.
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I gave that up quickly, because it was mostly pointless with the decentralized setup. It was also the death blow to the last regular occuring long range/high alt missions.
So many things went wrong with the current strats setup...
:aok
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How about when one is damaged to a certain point it moves deeper in country?
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Defend it.
And they bail.
It would be cool if the 163 was perk free at the strats.
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That issue might also be solved w central strats, if you are more or less guaranteed to be intercepted then the bailers will do something else. As a strat runner i want to be intercepted, a decent bomber pilot will win over most fighter pilots anyway and the uber ones like 999 and Haver is pretty much impossible to shot down unless you are snailman..
But this is not just about making it harder or easier to hit strats, Strat runs should not be just something you do to make it easier to take bases. The strat run is (was) a part of the gameplay just like the furball but now i can do them offline and get the same amount of action.
Centralized strats gives the defender more time to react and its also more worth the effort to up and defend. And for the bomber guys it would give a target that requires not just heavy bombers but several of them. (today I almost never use the heavies since a medium bomber will take down enough of a factory and they are faster)
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The forum is filled with complaints about lack of air to air combat players. The strats being down grabs even more players from the combat list with auto ack being down for two hours. Again, start bombing favors the country with more players.
If bombing at 30,000 feet could be less accurate due to wind layers and that kind of thing, it might help. Setting the rebuild time to be a standard 15 min would help.
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It would be cool if the 163 was perk free at the strats.
Would be cool only if you never want to have any planes to attack the strats at all.
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I gave that up quickly, because it was mostly pointless with the decentralized setup. It was also the death blow to the last regular occuring long range/high alt missions.
So many things went wrong with the current strats setup...
I will acknowledge that, my friend. Much fun was had with the enormous AH2 B17 and escort missions we would throw at the opposing countries. Big central strat, big (very big) fights.. Really miss it.
Too be honest, I'm having a hard time sticking with AH3 having experienced the potential and momentum AH had before in 1 and 2. I've had many discussions with my 91st XO about this. They hit upon something that worked, and then "poof". :confused: :frown:
Not to detract from the original topic, but I'm still waiting to see what Steam does (as everyone else is, I know), and waiting some more to see what kind of player base it attracts. I hope it's more like what we "old farts" have experienced in 2, and not more of the "arcade kiddie" demographic.
Anyway, back to the strat stuff. Sorry.
EGG
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How about when one is damaged to a certain point it moves deeper in country?
Teams figured out if you did not take a enemy base near the strats , other fields could be taken and the strat would not move, allowing all city and factory to be surrounded.
In other words it was tried, flawed, scraped.
Fix the flaw, and bring back the big city target. :old: it was nice, reminded me of ww2 mission.
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Terrains builders cannot make the strats move but, we do have control over where and how the the strats are placed. The red dots are strats, and on this terrain I moved most into the back feild near each other with no flak bases. Just the uncapturable feilds with one being the 163 field. And those are the final GV spawns so resupply will have to up c47's. This is a 10x10 terrain.
(https://s20.postimg.org/gelrtez9p/oceania155.jpg)
I'm behind schedule for completing the islands due to getting some medical issues under control. They are all volcanic mountain based, and I create each mountain and it's canyons by hand. Here is a CBM map of how far along I am. All of the white squares are locator spots painted on the terrain as a 1:1 transfer of the base and strat locations from the bule print map.
(https://s20.postimg.org/jz90fluz1/oceania179.jpg)
This time the barrier mountains boarder is only 20,000ft, so yes you can sneak around and game the game with your bombers to attack the strats. I should paint giant eyes on the sides of those 20,000ft walls and a message, you are being watched..... That would be a good use for a 25k air spawn to only launch 163 just off the map in this area to catch the 30k bombers who will come in from out of bounds. Or I could just put a 30k unbroken wall there, hmmmm, about 30 minutes of work.
(https://s20.postimg.org/csq3sl5zh/oceania109.jpg)
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The forum is filled with complaints about lack of air to air combat players. The strats being down grabs even more players from the combat list with auto ack being down for two hours.
To me, the number one killer of air-to-air is not bombing but horde vulching. It's very difficult to find a reasonably fair dogfight or furball anymore because as soon as you engage you can count on some high pony or 190 flying in co-orbit with the ISS blazing down to pick you off. I've no beef with the occasional time it happens, but it's becoming so widespread I'm to the point where I've had enough of that and if I encounter a pattern of it, I'm strat bombing or hitting a base.
The fastest way to kill air-to-air is to pretend it's an air-to-air encounter, then turn it into a pickfest. Those who habitually participate in that sort of thing have only themselves to blame when they cry about no one wanting <cough-cough> dogfight.
If bombing at 30,000 feet could be less accurate due to wind layers and that kind of thing, it might help. Setting the rebuild time to be a standard 15 min would help.
What then would be the point of bombing them at all? It would be like flying across the whole map just to hit a VH. Judging by the average status of strats lately, there seems to be more than a little interest in hitting strats. This is especially true on some maps where multiple V-bases spawn into one. Why bother with a bomber when a single M4 can reduce the factory 70% or more and it takes 12 loads of supps to bring it back over 50? A single bomb run does well to knock down 50% or more (flack factory can expect more). Reducing that due to wind or other factor will just mean the bomber has to make two trips, keeping the player in a bomber even longer.
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During the last 12 months of AH2 several squads and a few strat runner only bomber players abused the down times for the HQ, city and strats. They had it down to the second to keep a country without radar for hours at a time. Numbers were only a bit higher than today so everyone was busy playing the game before prime time ended and numbers dropped. No one was paying Hitech so they could sit in a tower for hours waiting for those greifers. Hitech added the Flak base object and changed the down time for the HQ as a response. I setup BowlMA to keep those very people from being able to do much of anything on purpose. I purposely setup the game to spawn M3 right next to the HQ, city and strats and a Flak base next to the most important strats.
What you have now is the results of people who knew better but, screwing the whole community because they could, almost every night. It ended up with posts in the forums as vitriolic as posts about ENY and side switching. And at least one by a strat runner bragging about screwing them because there was no rule against doing it. I suspect the extreme response by Hitech in adding Flak bases and lower the HQ down time to 5 minutes may have been to keep players from canceling subscriptions. For most players there is no point to staying logged in if they cannot see radar for the few hours they have to play. And it quickly became useless to try and resupply the HQ and city because it would take up to an hour of M3 driving or c47 flying. And then the greifers would drop them a few minutes right after they wasted their evening playing a forced resupply game and not shooting at things. Enough of them made that point loud and clear in the forums.
You can see from my blueprint map of my new terrain I've grouped the important strats together with no flak bases or GV spawns. It's been about a year since the greifers have bothered to try and screw with radar so strat runners need something and the 163 field is next door to the HQ. A moving strat complex worked on a 20x20 terrain with 300 or more players to deal with the numbers. On a 10x10 it's overkill. You just need a terrain builder to decide to group strats.
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HQ was a serious issue yes and could be removed from the game. But central strats has nothing to do with it.
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To me, the number one killer of air-to-air is not bombing but horde vulching. It's very difficult to find a reasonably fair dogfight or furball anymore because as soon as you engage you can count on some high pony or 190 flying in co-orbit with the ISS blazing down to pick you off. I've no beef with the occasional time it happens, but it's becoming so widespread I'm to the point where I've had enough of that and if I encounter a pattern of it, I'm strat bombing or hitting a base.
When you see a big red dar bar, take time to look up down-times of the town. A vulching horde rarely touches the town. Then just go somewhere else.
If new to the game, ask for a trainer to give you some 190 avoidance lessons.
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Seems to me the problem with the Strat system is the asymmetric effect is has on gameplay. One player with time on his hands (as Randy says, usually from the most populated side) can affect the gameplay of many other players for hours -- both by the direct effect on assets and by requiring a large investment in time to resupply. On some maps (Buzzsaw) the Strat killer doesn't even need to invest much time.
Yes, move Strats away from front lines with GV spawns only from uncapturable rear bases (for resupply).
Maybe cloud layers at varying altitudes in the area around Strats to add some uncertainty for the attacker.
Maybe tie downtimes to side numbers so less time is required for the low-number side to resupply.
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Seems to me the problem with the Strat system is the asymmetric effect is has on gameplay. One player with time on his hands (as Randy says, usually from the most populated side) can affect the gameplay of many other players for hours -- both by the direct effect on assets and by requiring a large investment in time to resupply. On some maps (Buzzsaw) the Strat killer doesn't even need to invest much time.
If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.
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If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.
It is obvious you do not defend strats.
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It is obvious you do not defend strats.
No, i have never seen zoney intercept high alt bombers..
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It is obvious you do not defend strats.
:rofl :rofl :rofl :aok
Yup. One never sees Zoney waiting for bombers by the strats. Nope not never. All he does is low alt furball and GV.
Wiley.
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If it only takes one player to effect the game that much, then it only takes one player to stop him.
One player with time on his hands. :D
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One player with time on his hands. :D
Yup. The defender's at a bit of a disadvantage in some ways, but if it's 1 or 2 guys attacking in bombers, it only takes 1 or 2 guys defending to stop them.
That only applies to aircraft though. When it comes to GV spawn ins like on Buzzsaw, that's a whole different thing. That's going to require more defenders than attackers.
Wiley.
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One player with time on his hands. :D
Less time than it takes a defender in a fighter to thwart him no matter what altitude the buff is going to come in.
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My point being, it takes me less than half the time to defend then it does for the bomber.
GV's are a separate issue.
One player, with patience and decent skills can defend the strats but you must be dedicated to it, just like the buff driver is dedicated to hit them.
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i wish we had the old system back aswell. including the lay outs the new strat layouts i dont like for some reason
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It seems to me that rather than having the extreme mechanic we currently have (i.e. No country dar and short effects times) that a more limited impact with a longer duration might be a better solution.
The concept of hitting HQ and affecting perfect intelligence is good. What if it only affected remote radar coverage on your map? It seems that you should be able to get intelligence reports from a local base regardless of HQ status as long as the local base radar is up. A similar thing might occur with bar dar. The observer corps reports to a local base which reports to HQ. As long as there's a local base in your sector, you get that info. You only get to see bar dar for other sectors if HQ is up.
Next you degrade remote sector info gradually as HQ is degraded. Random sectors would no longer get their information disseminated as their communications lines to HQ have become degraded. This might show up on the map as remote sectors with hashed lines through them. Your local sector would never be hashed assuming you owned a field there for the observer corp to report to.
Another possibility instead of removing the dar and dar bar info would be to delay it over increasing lengths of time as HQ degrades.
HQ is currently too easy to take down, so it would need to be hardened a bit and the amount of damage it has taken would cause progressive degradation of intelligence.
This kind of HQ mechanic brings it more in line with the strat factories mechanic, but still allows local mechanics to prevail.
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The current strat system favors guys who fly off map to suddenly show up at a strat with very few defensive guns as compared to the older city system.
If you showed up at the old city at low altitude, you only got one run on a target where a couple of guys in ME410s can fly off map noe, show up at a strat, and almost zero it before any defenders can reach them.
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You could always ask Waffle to put a 30k wall around the boarder of a 10x10 terrain or even a 20x20 terrain like I did with BowlMA. My new terrain has a 20k wall incorporated as the edges of the terrain. So first your 410's will have to climb above 20k just to finally go NOE. They will be visible for quite some time as a DARBAR. I decided not to do 30k so some genius wouldn't spend the next year whining about being kept from gaming the game by a 30k wall.
Waffle can make changes to terrains years after their owner leaves the game only if you can convince Hitech it is worth paying Waffle to spend the time doing it. Otherwise, players create terrains, so far it's only been Waffle and myself with AH3, and Hitech sanctions what the player dreams up. Along with a few suggestions by Hitech you will never hear about so the terrain will be accepted into rotation. A 10x10 terrain is too small for a movable strat complex, and with my latest terrain I bunched the HQ\city and "some strats" together as the terrain permitted.
You guys do this same thing on any given subject ad naseum. You get a small sampling group consensus which you then try to present to Hitech as a validation of your assertions. 99% of the time he ignores what your consensus polling group wants. Each of you has always had the ability to solve this specific issue. You can build a terrain and stuff all of the strat into one location as long as you keep them 8 miles minimum from each other. they won't move since that function has been eliminated but, you have the three uncapturable feilds you can place around them and Flak feilds if you want. Or completely leave them defenseless unless Hitech asks you to modify the area. It is this simple if you want a change in the current implementation of the strats. Otherwise, have you gotten Hitech to agree with you since he separated the super strat complex?
(https://s20.postimg.org/csq3sl5zh/oceania109.jpg)
Red dots in white squares are the strats, the two large ones are city and fuel which are 2x2mile objects. HQ and other strat are 1x1mile objects. I've decided not to put Flak bases on this terrain and just let the 163 field do the defending. If there is an off the map arrow, everyone will know the con is above 20k and to get ready at the HQ. Creating mass mountain range topographical features across a 10x10 is a creative pain in the pooty. And then you have to paint them. All the white squares are the base locations, once I put them in, then I have to paint the local area and do any terrain tweaking for GV's like adding streams with bridges to cross. Oh! strat resupply is strictly a c47 thing on this terrain which means no GV camping out on the strat all night keeping them at zero. Though two of the strat in each country is in 16in range and there will be three battle ships per country.
See how easy it is to build a terrain and solve most of your strat problems..... :O
(https://s20.postimg.org/9gmfnd4i5/oceania192.jpg)
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1- Harden the strats. The City strat is 2.5 x's stronger then everything else. That's where all the strats should be baseline.
2- Remove GV spawns to strats.
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I like the walls and also feel having vehicle spawns should be at least half a sector from strats but that enemy and friendly spawns should be the same distance.
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I like the walls and also feel having vehicle spawns should be at least half a sector from strats but that enemy and friendly spawns should be the same distance.
That I could live with. Make the vehicle work to get there.
And harden all the damn strats man. City strength minimum.
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I would rather just have a 200mph wind traveling away from the arena off map.
That way, if you accidently went off map in a fighter, you might have a slight chance to get back on while burning a bit of fuel to do so.
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I'm moving the GV focus on this terrain away from camping in a strat for the night with a GV and keeping everyone screwed. Only a c47 can resupply, and the nearest airfields make it worth the trip. All strat are reasonably condensed so strat runners and large bombing initiatives don't have to wander all over the place to hit enough things to do some damage. While there are airfields near enough to all of the strats to make things competitive for both sides.
Those two strats sitting alone on those long islands out in the open, I might put in a flak base next to each since they are so vulnerable, especially if the enemy gets a foot hold airfield to launch bombers against the HQ\city. That single airfield on the tip of each island exposed to passing task groups will act as early warning radar because the shore batteries will flash. Since there are three ports per country, each will have a CV\BB task groups, 6 task groups per country. On this terrain all the airfields on the water get shore batteries and PT spawns. Each country will probably park a BB group in the slot under their HQ to act as an AA barge and flash as an early warning radar.
But, everyone has a 4-5k super large uncapturable airfield to launch a bomber box, or a raid from and be 20-25k by the time they get over another country's strat. It's not like you can hide on this terrain other than going NOE. And I suspect from how NDisles gets played on, the center island on this terrain will be where many spend their time in GVs and fighters. The play area is about the same as the arenas in WT and probably why so many furball and tank fight on the center island of NDilses.
The rest will have condensed strats, multiple task forces, and regular capture the field win the war kinds of things within easy distances on the rest of the terrain.
The three rings are GV spawns out of the single airfield I'm using to test bridges, and that I'm not dropping GVs into the water when they spawn. I don't know if Hitech has code in the spawn to keep GV's from doing that. When I start laying down the bases and strats, there will be three airfields 13miles apart with the same GV spawns to the center.
Building a terrain is far more satisfying than spending years fighting with Hitech, getting nothing for it, while trying to convince him you are smarter than he is concerning game design. Still wonder if I should put one PT spawn for each country into those channels.....and you will be able to camp those side spawns from one of the bridges that will connect the ends of those strips in a ring between them all. Those bridges make good high ground sniping spots if you are willing to expose yourself...... still, they make for another option in the GV game that has never existed before. Oh well, got more mountains to pull up on the last islands before I can build in all the feilds, port, strats, spawns, task groups, and put some life into this terrain. And then clouds...... :O
(https://s20.postimg.org/9duqv60wd/oceania193.jpg)
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Looks pretty cool.
Any PT spawns planned?
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All the fields on the ocean will get a PT spawn, I'm debating those canals in the center island screen shot. I wonder if anyone would up a PT and try to shoot at tanks and planes, or even get a PT fight going like a Miami Vice speed boat chase. LVT4 would have the advantage of crossing the canal where it wants to.
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I remember when missions for strats was a common thing, now its just solo player going at them easily. Most maps seem to have them within a half hour flight for a bomber to hit them at 20k+, its just Buzzsaw that I can think of that has them directly on the front line with enemy vehicle spawns into them at the start of the game. I imagine the creator was trying to come up with some dynamic vehicle combat there, but with the way proxies work it just allows vehicles to spawn in, do as much damage as possible, then land when they see or hear something coming for them.
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All the fields on the ocean will get a PT spawn and those canals in the center island screen shot. I wonder if anyone would up a PT and try to shoot at tanks and planes, or even get a PT fight going like a Miami Vice speed boat chase. LVT4 would have the advantage of crossing the canal where it wants to.
that's a good idea, help make the pt useful. All rivers should flow to the ocean. boats can launch anywhere, especially rivers.
Also, the wall on your map is a nice touch to fix hitechs game. I still see a problem with the strats tho, 30 minute down times make the gameplay unplayable, only fixed with long distance flights to a target that is easily repaired, a very uninspiring HQ, and low numbers in a increasingly stale environment.
The central strats created a hub of activity. High value targets were in reach of attackers and defenders alike, one guy - ten guys, all the same sand box. It was fun.
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Lately all the activity on NDisles has been on the center island which is about the land mass of a WT arena. On the rest of this new terrain, bases are close enough the war win players won't spend all night in transit. And there is a capture path to get launch feilds to hammer the main strats with impunity if no one wants to defend them using the three un-capturable airfields clustered around them. There are at least 15 airfields that will have a river between the GV spawns and the airfield which means crossing and defending bridges. I'm not cutting out the rivers until I'm laying down the feilds and spawns. It's one of those custom kinds of things, it isn't worth the effort until you are laying down that field and customizing the local terrain for GV combat.
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rivers will be a good day. imagine the rapids!
:salute
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rivers will be a good day. imagine the rapids!
:salute
.....dueling banjos playing in the background...