Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Furious on February 21, 2002, 05:05:05 PM
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Originally posed in September, but thought we could discuss it agian.
Change from 3 countries to 4 with two countries being allied on a rotating and random basis.
rough map example #1:
B R
K P
Bish and Pawns are alligned
Knits and Rooks are alligned
after reset:
K B
R P
Knits and Pawns are alligned
Rooks and Bish are alligned
The amount of reset perks points would be tied to the health of your ally at time of reset. Ally would recieve some percentage of reset points.
Change side switching to make it more restrictive, time or perk wise, to change to country that is winning the war and less restrictive to change to country that is losing the war.
You can't capture an ally's base for your team, but you can take it back for them. Also, you would be able to safely land at an allied base, but not refuel/rearm.
Seems to me this would prevent alot of the gang-banging as you would have an ally to help you. All four teams would be competing for the reset, but you have to keep you ally healthy as you fight for the win.
F.
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nm Misread your post.
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Not to rain on your parade,but...
If two teams are allied, isn't that a 2 sided war?
If you can reclaim a feild for your allied, how would you EVER win a reset?
Best you could hope for is a tie with your allied. Well not really a tie, but I can see where the backstabbing would come into play, and WTF would you want to help your allied regain fields if your trying to beat them to the punch?
IMO i think this would further split the community, I can really see no advantage this would give over the current setup. ( unless your trying to push HiTech further into Coding HELL)
NUTTZ
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I like it. It would be nice to work with some other squads/players from other countries instead of fighting them all the time. And with the rotation, you'd get a chance to fly with everyone sooner or later. I think the 4th country should be the Queens though...plenty of squads who would fit right in. :D
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I have never played any other online sims before. Didn't other games try the multiple country approach?
If so how did it work?
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Nuttz,
If two teams are allied, isn't that a 2 sided war?
Not really, Each team is still attacking and being attacked by two other countries. A country could choose not help their ally or the enemies could make cooperation impossible. Lotta variations possible, but not truly a two sided war.
If you can reclaim a feild for your allied, how would you EVER win a reset?
Theoretically, if there were 20 fields total, Your team could have 15 (wins war), your ally 1 (reset), enemy one 3 (took ally's last base) and enemy two 2.
In this situation the Winner would get little to no perks for reset. Gotta keep the ally healthy.
WTF would you want to help your allied regain fields if your trying to beat them to the punch?
The healthier your ally is a reset gives both you and the your allies more perks. Also, if an enemy country is winning and your ally was 2 bases left, your team can capture your allies territory for them to help prevent the reset.
It helps by providing whichever team is in the bucket with an ally, a team to help them have a chance.
F.
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Four country is actually a fantastic idea. Countries could pick on one country and by leaving the same victory rules in place, it would make strategy a lot more interesting.
But as for names, maybe Kings or Pawns would be better for a fourth country name - don't want players developing a complex... :rolleyes:
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(http://members.shaw.ca/vruth/vruthsig.gif) (http://www.13thtas.com)
http://www.13thtas.com (http://www.13thtas.com)
vruth@13thtas.com
Dem's fighten words!
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My experience flying in 4 country or 2 country systems (and this proposal is really for 2 countries since it has 2 pairs of allies fighting each other) was that is sucked compared to 3 countries.
This will worsen the problems it proposes to solve. In a 3 country system if A and B are picking on C then eventually they have to run into each other as C compresses.
In a 2 country system if A outnumbers B then A is just destined to live with fighting against superior numbers. This happens to a lesser extent in a 3 country system but the system is somewhat self correcting. It just happens a lot worse with only 2 sides. With 4 sides you often get big A picking on little B while big C picks on little D. The 2 big countries satisy themselves with pounding a small neighbor and never expend any effort against each other. It is not self correcting like a 3-country system.
Hooligan
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That could be one of the best ideas I've read on the boards. I like that you can get to fly with players from other countries without having to change countries.
Another suggestion to this might be that if one country is undermanned, after reset, they get paired with the country that is overmanned.
-Ding
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4 sides you often get big A picking on little B while big C picks on little D.
ahhh, but Hooli in this case big C starts attacking Big A to take the pressure of little B because they are allied and it is in big C's best interest to keep little B healthy.
Every country gets a friend.:)
F.
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I like it.
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Furious:
From my observations of the MA, most people don't care if their country wins of loses. So I really doubt that a significant number of players will come to the aid of their ally. In the current MA setup when Knights are pounding Rooks and about to reset, then it is in Bish's "best interest" to come to the Rook's aid and prevent the reset, and not "lose". But if this ever happens I have never seen it. I don't expect it will happen in your scheme either.
4 sides you often get big A picking on little B while big C picks on little D.
You think C will attack A. But it is just as likely that C and A are allied as that C and B are allied.
You will always have the problem of the 2 big countries being allied. There is no guarantee that the 2 sides of the alliance will be balanced any more that there is a guarantee in the current MA that all 3 countries will have roughly equal numbers. Think how much worse the gang-banging will be when one team outnumbers the other team. However in the 3 country system, the 2 big guys do end up running into each other at some point because there is nowhere else to go.
If most players cared about winning or losing the war the current 3 sided system would work very well at solving the problems you want to solve. If people cared and knights had 30 bases, Bish 20 and Rook 15, then Bish and Rook would immediately turn on Knights until the balance was restored. But they don't. And in your scheme they won't either. Did you ever see the effects of the 4 country system in Warbirds? It sure doesn't seem like it. I played it with 4 MA type countries and with 2 pairs of allied countries and the gang-banging in both setups made the AH MA look like perfection in terms of balance.
Most player's have their own agenda. They might only have 30 minutes to play and they just want to shoot something down before they log. If observing the MA teaches us anything, it teaches us that most players don't give a crap about "the war" and don't care if their country wins or loses. I don't care about this and I don't think anybody in my squad cares about it either. And you can't make player's care. We all do this for fun. HTC might be able to make the strat more fun and that will cause more interest in the "war" but I've never seen any system capture the interest of any but a small minority of players. And you can't penalize players for not caring. The play it for fun, and if you try to coerce them into some style then it is no longer fun and they just log off (or switch from WB to AH).
Hooligan
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Good points all Hooligan, except one.
I disagree with you that only a small percentage of any team care whether their side wins or losses. While it may be true that you and your squad doesn't care, when it comes down to those last 2-3 bases the fighting (from my obseravations) is the fiercest and most fun.
If you have ever listened in to the lil' generals on the knits side you would know that ALOT of folks very much care about winning.:D
...anyway, its an idea that would take the pressure of teams with chronically low numbers. Each country is prosecuting a 3-way war and if one team is being beat down, then at least it has a "big brother" to help protect it.
F.
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I have never played any other online sims before. Didn't other games try the multiple country approach
Yes FA had a 5 country setup (i don't know how it is now). I liked it when I played FA (2 years ago). It also had a more eleborated strat system (more AI).
Anyway, I like Furious idea, why not give it a try.
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Aside from the fact we're squaddies, I'm with hooli on this one. WB had the 4 country thing. It didn't work nearly as well as 3 country.
It usually came down to a 2v1. The 2 being the heavies beating on 1 little guy. The other was of no help because they were so far away from the little guy, clear across the map and were no threat to the big guys anyway because they had just gotten beaten up by 'em.
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I never played WBII. Did it have 2 allies Vs. 2 allies?
F.
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Furious:
when it comes down to those last 2-3 bases the fighting (from my obseravations) is the fiercest and most fun.
Of course. The defenders have no where else to go. It's not like they can roll from a rearward base and look for an easier fight elsewhere. If a large percentage of the team cared about "strat" then they would get interested in the war before they were down to 2 or 3 bases. As it is they become interested when they have no other choice except to log off. And my observation on that is a lot of defenders do log rather than stick around for the bitter end.
To answer your question: In one of its incarnations, the WB MA had 2 pairs of allies fighting each other. A pair of allies would be diagonally located from each other. It was an axis verses allies thing with the 4 sides being US/British, German, Soviet, Japan. Every time the US/Brits and Soviets would immediately gang up on the Japanese and crush them. Not many German players seemed dedicated to taking the lightly defended allied bases. I guess (like in AH) most people just wanted to engage in fighter combat. The Germans could have attacked the allies, taken bases, and caused the Allies to defend and prevent a reset, but I never saw it happen. Axis numbers plummeted because the German players couldn’t find a fight and the Japanese players always had to deal with 3-1 odds. So it generally became 150 allies against 50 axis (mostly German), and the Allied bombers would repeatedly milk run the Japanese for a quick reset.
WB “fixed” this by making 2 sides. The way this works is that whichever side has better aircraft during that part of the RPS has a significant majority of players and gangbangs the side that has weaker aircraft. It seemed like about 50% of the players were dedicated to either Axis or Allied (and more to allied). The other 50% would switch sides if it starts getting ugly for them. I suspect that in no small part, this is why there is a time delay requirement before switching sides in AH. A lot of people just won’t fly if the odds are stacked too much against them. They will switch sides if they can or otherwise log (and go have their fun where they actually would be having fun).
Hooligan
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I know I am belaboring this point, but I quit smoking 4 days ago and have no ability to concentrate on my work.
Hooligan,
The problems with the WB setups seem to lie with the restrictions of the plane sets involved.
In the AH MA w/4 teams, all teams would have all planes availabe, so team make-up would be largley dependent on where your friends and squad flies and team loyalty.
Also, a side benifit would to fly on the side of folks who are normally bitter enemies.
F.
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I certainly never saw any benefit to the axis vs. allies component. But the 4 country (no axis vs. allies) arena in WB was always far worse (in the things that you hope to fix) than the 3 country arena here.
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4 Country war - Been there, done that.
WB had it for years.
While I had no big problem with it, I dont think it would improve much.
dago
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Hooligan,
You're forgetting the most important one word element of this suggestion: ROTATION.
Your country would rotate who you were allied with each map victory so it eliminates that problem.
Round 1: Nits & Bishes Vs Rooks and Pawns
Round 2: Bishes & Rooks Vs Nits and Pawns
Round 3: Bishes and Pawns Vs Nits and Rooks
Sounds like a whole latta fun to me.
V.
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Originally posted by Dingy
That could be one of the best ideas I've read on the boards. I like that you can get to fly with players from other countries without having to change countries.
Another suggestion to this might be that if one country is undermanned, after reset, they get paired with the country that is overmanned.
-Ding
My thoughts as well,
Great idea!
Furious
eskimo
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what's the difference in reality? NOTHING!
in WB, four contries, able to 'ally' with each other..
does'nt work.
as it stands now.. each country can still ally with any other country.. does it happen ? no.
when the odds are uneve.. does it happen? no
many people will change to the side that's 'winning' regardless of the number of countries.
many others will not change countries regardless of the situation.
making more or fewer countries won't change a thing.
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Vruth I am not forgetting that. I just don't believe it would work that way.
Hooligan
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how would you do killshooter? If killshooter were not enabled then it would be a blast to kill your "allies" fluffs and a lot of newbies or unskillled would kill "allied" fighters. If killshooter were enabled then you would simply have a two sided war. two sided wars don't work.
lazs