Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Bullethead on July 22, 2003, 11:30:27 PM
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While I was at the Con, quite a few people (Grimm, Slapshot, and Ghostdancer that I recall--there were more but I was drunk) said they believed that capturing fields was too easy. This bothered me because I try to make arena maps, and help others with their maps, and of course I want to make a quality product. I'm concerned enough to ask you all for your opinions on the matter. Not just whether you think it's too easy at present, but what can be done about it, and what the long-term effects of any corrective measures would be.
Before you all sound off, let me start the ball rolling with my own opinions.....
As AH has evolved, HTC has made field captures harder and harder. That's why fields have gotten more acks over time and we now have towns at airfields, etc. And at first capturing fields with towns was more difficult than before. So why is it now "too easy" when HTC hasn't changed the system recently?
I believe I can answer that question. The changes HTC has made have all been along the lines of requiring more people to take the field than before. There are more acks and more hangars, and the town requires you to control a larger volume of airspace, etc. So IMHO, since the last round of changes, the AH population has simply learned what needs to be done, and to band together into attack groups large enough to have a reasonably good chance of quick success in airfield captures. And now we've been operating that way long enough that it's become routine, so airfield captures appear easy again.
In considering the above, there are some important issues to take into account. IMHO, the most important is the organization of the attackers. If you have a squad of guys divided up amongst the various tasks that need to be performed, and they have the discipline to do their jobs and not sneak off to steal vulches, you'll usually find field captures relatively easy. OTOH, a much larger number of disorganized freelancers might not ever capture the field vs. the same opposition.
I think this will always be the case, no matter what changes are made to the system. No matter what's done to make field captures harder, the organized pilots will figure out the optimum attack method and go do it routinely, so that it eventually seems easy to them. They're organized now and no changes to the system will make them lose their organization.
Thus, IMHO, tweaking the difficulty of field captures will only affect the disorganized rabble. In 2 ways. First, and most likely, increases in capture difficulty will cause corresponding increases in the size of dweeb herds mobbing fields. Every level of difficulty can be overcome by throwing enough bodies at it. Second, some of the rabble may join squads or form their own, and thus achieve the organization necessary to make captures fairly routine.
So at the bottom line, increasing field capture difficulty creates a Darwinian force that compels pilots to form larger and more organized groups. This means that a greater percentage of the arena population will be engaged in field captures than before, leaving fewer for other things like furballing, battles in the GV areas, and lone wolf fodder. Now combine that with the big maps and their huge frontages. That gives you an even higher likelihood of large forces doing unopposed landgrabs, because the pilots must be more concentrated than now, but have the same huge area to cover.
Having said all that, let's assume that somehow increasing capture difficulty is still desirable. Without a major overhaul of the system by HTC, there's only so much that map-makers can do. We can't change the basic system with towns and all that. All we can do is add more work to do, and/or make it more dangerous. Basically, we can redesign airfield layouts, add some buildings and acks, and sometimes make individual objects harder to kill. But we can't make really substantial changes or the strat system won't work right.
Here's an incomplete list of some possible changes, to show those of you who don't make maps what I'm talking about:
- Have 2 or more VHs at each field, and give the GVs a spawn right near the town(s)
- Have more acks and/or more mannable acks
- Have more town buildings, or multiple towns in different areas (still only 1 maproom however)
- Require more drunks to capture a field (although I don't really like this one)
- Put fields about 10-15 miles apart instead of 20-30, so reinforcements can arrive sooner (although this gives you about Pizza's number of fields on Baltic's area)
Of these sorts of changes, my preferences start at the top and go down. I think having several VHs would be a very good thing in general. A few more acks would be OK as well. But beyond that, I think we start running into trouble. NOTE: on a related issue, it would be easy to add more fuel, ammo, and barracks to fields to make them harder to pork.
Anyway, that's how I see it. I'd like to hear what you all think.
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Here's some tinder and a few sticks for the bonfire that's sure to come.
I'd say make the field capture way easier. Make it like it was back in beta.
Make it so easy you don't need a horde to steamroll a field. Make it so a small squad could do it with a little jabo practice and goon escort.
I think that would make it so that you'd need a horde to defend what you took, all along the front. Leave a base untended, you'd lose it.
Maybe the tide of battle would ebb and flow much more violently, with much more fighting. End runs and rear field sneak attacks might become more prevalent and add interest.
Just a thought.
I will now grab a lawnchair and a beer.
I'm sure this will turn out to be an interesting thread.
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When HTC first brought out the town with the map room off the base, I thought it was kind of a neat idea...however, I did like the old style of field capture more and I still do.
SOB
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How about making it necessary to capture the field within so many minutes of taking down the town otherwise the capture will fail.
I'm sure you remember that in AW, you had a 5 minute window to capture the field once it was made ready. If you didn't make it with in that window of opportunity, you had to start all over again. Made for some epic fights at the big pond for those N bases. Or there's also the route that AW3/MV took and that was dropping 12 drunks within 5 minutes to get the capture.
But I do like your idea of having 2 vehicle hangers and a spawn point to the town. Maybe also adding a manned ack gun in the town as well. I also think there should be mannable 88mm acks that can fire both AA and AT rounds at each field to compliment the existing 37mm manned acks. Maybe even add a few .50 cal machine gun emplacements in addition to the 88mm and 37mm gun emplacements.
Ack-Ack
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*Make Airfields req 20 troops
*Be able to man town ack positions
and/or create some of them bunker ack positions in town like some strat areas have, or even create an Ack tower w/ mannable 5inch gun that needs 1k ord to destroy
* Bump VH hardness up so it needs 4k of ord
* AI/Drone Civilians from town try to kill troops with Pitchforks
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I like Toad's idea.
Making it too hard simply enforces the overwhelming gangbang horde tactic and eliminates any finesse tactics.
Personally I'm sick of being one of a few defenders trying to hold a base against twenty plus attackers or being among the twenty plus attackers and vying for a kill on one of the few defenders.
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too much to read... let me know when it comes out in Cliff's Notes.
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I prefer Toad's idée !
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Arm the sheep around all of the towns with 50 cals.
a few more acks and some manable guns at the towns would be nice, along with a extra vh on the small maps.
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Originally posted by Toad
Here's some tinder and a few sticks for the bonfire that's sure to come.
I'd say make the field capture way easier. Make it like it was back in beta.
Make it so easy you don't need a horde to steamroll a field. Make it so a small squad could do it with a little jabo practice and goon escort.
I think that would make it so that you'd need a horde to defend what you took, all along the front. Leave a base untended, you'd lose it.
Maybe the tide of battle would ebb and flow much more violently, with much more fighting. End runs and rear field sneak attacks might become more prevalent and add interest.
Small squad? Who needs a squad? We used to be able to do it with two guys. One guy would grab a C-hog or something of that nature, strafe out the 8 ack, maybe bomb the VH (if people even noticed and were upping), and the goon would land on the runway, kick the troops out right next to the map room, and Bingo! Field was ours. But sneak attacks and end arounds died the day they put in the flashing base icons on the map. 2 guys or 20, you can't get near a field without the other guys knowing it, so if you want to get it taken quickly, you need to have 20.
If they were to put it back to where a small group of people could grab a base while the other guy wasn't looking, they'll have to either can the town idea and move the map room back on the field, or can the flashing icons and air raid sirens. Personally, I'd like to see the flashing icons go.
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Agree with Toad. Would like to see fields easier to capture and a "little" closer together. Also fuel underground as in 'out of the picture' as to not limit plane choice.
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spawn point near the city is bad - it will mean that once the attack has been spotted you'll have dosens of osties suddenly spawn in the town. let them drive a bit a give the attackers a chance to kill them.
mannable acks at the city is a good idea to prevent from a single ostie + m3 to steal the base.
Bozon
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Several 5" mannable ack positions at the airfield will defend it quite nicely. This, along with 2 vehicle hangars and spawn points at the towns will make it a challenge.
As it stands now, if you don't notice a sneak attack until they are at the field, you are almost helpless: 1) They will shoot the field ack down and you can't launch. 2) By the time you get a vehicle to the town, it's too late.
curly
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Mr. Toad! Got another lawn chair and another beer so that I may join you? Hehe, quite good ideas - especially for European/Australasian prime times when fewer people are online.
As to whoever suggested "Hardness" changes, be off with you. Whenever I see that, I see a hidden agenda: Folks wanting to annul the effect of bombs, because they can't defend their base against them and don't like the effect the bombs have. How about if I called for bullet "hardness" to be reduced, because I don't like being shot down and don't like the effect my enemies bullets have on my plane? No. These would both be changes to alter playing style. I object. Refer to Skuzzy's quote in my sig.
As for ease of base capture, it's already quite easy to capture a vehicle base single handed - assuming the map tweakers have left us any vehicle only bases - LOL. P38 - 10 rockets, 2x500. 8 rockets will kill the VH - start the clock as soon as it goes down. Fire remaining rockets on to auto ack, and strafe the mannable ack. Dump the 2x500 if no GVs came out, or use them if you have to. Bail. Grab M3 and drive in...
Mr. Toad - do we have a marquee in which to take shelter from the salvo of rotting vegetables? ;)
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I do like the current system of capturing towns, it encourages the lack of porkage at the fields.
However, if (and I think Zanth said this) they increased the size of the town 2-3x with appropriately numbered ack, it could give tactical aircraft a nice boost. A single fighter wouldn't be able to drop an entire town...
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Well, I want it harder to capture a field. If you need organization or numbers to capture a field so much the better.
Make the town 4 times the size it is now.
Put a GV hanger at the town.
Put manable acks at the town.
Have the fields closer together.
It may promote the steamroller but it will also keep the base in friendly hands longer and possibly promote a better longer furball at the right fields. It also may give the furball a chance to survive the base capture a bit longer. Bishops (was knights) 214 was a good example on Trinity last night.
It was the best fight around but someone was finally able to capture it, I’m assuming, by sneaking a goon in because there were multiple cons at the field. Had it been more difficult to capture the fight would have continued longer.
I see beetle’s seeing black helicopters again.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
While I was at the Con, quite a few people (Grimm, Slapshot, and Ghostdancer that I recall--there were more but I was drunk) said they believed that capturing fields was too easy. This bothered me because I try to make arena maps, and help others with their maps, and of course I want to make a quality product. I'm concerned enough to ask you all for your opinions on the matter. Not just whether you think it's too easy at present, but what can be done about it, and what the long-term effects of any corrective measures would be.
Before you all sound off, let me start the ball rolling with my own opinions.....
As AH has evolved, HTC has made field captures harder and harder. That's why fields have gotten more acks over time and we now have towns at airfields, etc. And at first capturing fields with towns was more difficult than before. So why is it now "too easy" when HTC hasn't changed the system recently?
I believe I can answer that question. The changes HTC has made have all been along the lines of requiring more people to take the field than before. There are more acks and more hangars, and the town requires you to control a larger volume of airspace, etc. So IMHO, since the last round of changes, the AH population has simply learned what needs to be done, and to band together into attack groups large enough to have a reasonably good chance of quick success in airfield captures. And now we've been operating that way long enough that it's become routine, so airfield captures appear easy again.
In considering the above, there are some important issues to take into account. IMHO, the most important is the organization of the attackers. If you have a squad of guys divided up amongst the various tasks that need to be performed, and they have the discipline to do their jobs and not sneak off to steal vulches, you'll usually find field captures relatively easy. OTOH, a much larger number of disorganized freelancers might not ever capture the field vs. the same opposition.
I think this will always be the case, no matter what changes are made to the system. No matter what's done to make field captures harder, the organized pilots will figure out the optimum attack method and go do it routinely, so that it eventually seems easy to them. They're organized now and no changes to the system will make them lose their organization.
Thus, IMHO, tweaking the difficulty of field captures will only affect the disorganized rabble. In 2 ways. First, and most likely, increases in capture difficulty will cause corresponding increases in the size of dweeb herds mobbing fields. Every level of difficulty can be overcome by throwing enough bodies at it. Second, some of the rabble may join squads or form their own, and thus achieve the organization necessary to make captures fairly routine.
So at the bottom line, increasing field capture difficulty creates a Darwinian force that compels pilots to form larger and more organized groups. This means that a greater percentage of the arena population will be engaged in field captures than before, leaving fewer for other things like furballing, battles in the GV areas, and lone wolf fodder. Now combine that with the big maps and their huge frontages. That gives you an even higher likelihood of large forces doing unopposed landgrabs, because the pilots must be more concentrated than now, but have the same huge area to cover.
Having said all that, let's assume that somehow increasing capture difficulty is still desirable. Without a major overhaul of the system by HTC, there's only so much that map-makers can do. We can't change the basic system with towns and all that. All we can do is add more work to do, and/or make it more dangerous. Basically, we can redesign airfield layouts, add some buildings and acks, and sometimes make individual objects harder to kill. But we can't make really substantial changes or the strat system won't work right.
Here's an incomplete list of some possible changes, to show those of you who don't make maps what I'm talking about:
- Have 2 or more VHs at each field, and give the GVs a spawn right near the town(s)
- Have more acks and/or more mannable acks
- Have more town buildings, or multiple towns in different areas (still only 1 maproom however)
- Require more drunks to capture a field (although I don't really like this one)
- Put fields about 10-15 miles apart instead of 20-30, so reinforcements can arrive sooner (although this gives you about Pizza's number of fields on Baltic's area)
Of these sorts of changes, my preferences start at the top and go down. I think having several VHs would be a very good thing in general. A few more acks would be OK as well. But beyond that, I think we start running into trouble. NOTE: on a related issue, it would be easy to add more fuel, ammo, and barracks to fields to make them harder to pork.
Anyway, that's how I see it. I'd like to hear what you all think. [/B]
Many hours of wasted time on a subject that few Quakers care about....
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Yep.. make em a lot easier to capture and closer together.
This would make the battle flow more. People would be funneled into the fight by choice and there would be choice. If the fields were closer you could take off from further back if you wanted to defend... fights would develop between fields.
vultching would actually be less... it would not be smart to vultch if the next field back was launching fighters and they were coming in above you.
more sense of "community"... as I have said in the past.. closer fields that are easier to capture are the ONLY way that the strat sissies and noble furballers can co-exist. If I am in the thick of the fight then the strat guys think that I am "helping" them with field capture...
New players will have an easier time of it and enjoy the game more since they can get lost in the crowded fight and maybe get a lucky shot or two in rather than be either vulch bait or go on long, boring, missuns to now where to do nothing like they do now.
lazs
Public Relations Officer for the BK's
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tojo... Are you talking about the religion or the game? If it is the religion please tell me how it has to do with the suject. If it is the game then.... as I understand it... the "quakers" are the strat sissies? Isn't quake a game about teamwork and capture the flag with things like power ups (rearm refuel) and lots of Ai objects to kill and blow up?
lazs
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let me give you a diff. view.....
we are 4 guys fighting our way to a rook base.....
as usual Crooks like there 20k alt. adv......
so we go under said Perchers...and kill the low flyin crooks....
deacked the base....but didn't touch any fuels.
now 20k perchers come down and die....we rtb
now coming back....we see crooks taking off from the base 1 sector away.....NO ONE WAS VULCHING THERE FIELD...no fuel was porked.....
guess what I did on my next run.....yes yes...I porked there 'allow me my 20k perch base':D
Some gotta learn how to defend before even suggesting what we can do to make it harder or easier to capture bases....:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by beet1e
- to take shelter from the salvo of rotting vegetables? ;)
While I'm sure we'd have an enjoyable afternoon quaffing ale, this is exactly why I'm going to have to ask you to move about 20 yards to the side........
I think you're going to end up with far more veggies than I. In fact, you'll be hosting a salad dinner for 200 before this is over, I think.
;)
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slo... your post was nonsense. What are you talking about? We are talking about what is happening in the arena these days... as we speak. Not what you dreamed last night or wish was happening.
We are talking about how the game is nothing but a steamroller that sets up a vultch. maybe the steamrollers get a kill or two and maybe, probably they don't... they mostlyu just waste a lot of time and no one has much fun.
closer fields and easier capture would add fun, action and choice. You would still have 20K perchers and you could still be one if you desired... there would be more variety in the planes you met in the arena. More people would be involved in the fight. The fights would be more even with a better and easier chance to return to base if you ran out of ammo, fuel or were damaged.
lazs
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There's nothing wrong with needing many people to capture a base. Nor is there something wrong with taking out key strategical field objects such as radar, VH, fules, and sometimes ordnance.
The complaints and frustrations are coming from this fact:
* The improper and uninspiring use of air power, is in truth the most preferred method of field capture.
People don't mind when a really large mission strike comes in. Yeah sure, we laugh and make fun of how those dweebs in other country have organized people, but the defenders usually gather huge numbers to counter the attack as well.
In those situations, people take it for granted that there will be damage to a field. Huge numbers of attackers ensure that some of the field objects will be pounded. But that's ok. Being able to gather that many people into a single mission, is something to be admired. No gripes with that. Also, defenders think of ways to counter the mission, to defend the field.
Rallying defenders, sending out search calls for enemy goons, is all a part of a fun process. In reality, these missions are actually easier to stop than the really dangerous kamikaze bozos - missions have structure, they make sense, you can think and analyze it, and also counter it. Some missions even have signatures on 'em - you see it, and you immediately know who made that mission. You recall his habits, and then counter it.
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No, the large scale porking missions are not the reason why people get angry about field porkage.
The really frustrating thing is this: when about equal number of fighters on both sides are in the air, but one side still has overall numbers advantage in total.
It goes like this....
The A2A fights are great, but the side with numbers advantage keeps sending in these dweebs or newbies one by one, continuously, to the enemy field. You see a Typhoon, or a P-51D coming in from about 16k. The defenders see that, and some try to intercept. But the fediddlein' latewar planes are so fast that even with 2k+ payload strapped on, they outdive may planes. The bozo ignores everyone, alone jumps into the field, into the ack, lobs everything his got on one fuel tank, kills the fuel tank, and then augers in.
Then, in a few minutes, another same type of bozo drops in, jumps into a situation that he knows he won't survive from, ignores enemy defenses, goes straight to the field, kills a radar/ordnance bunker/fuel tank/town building or whatever, and then augers.
Then, in a few minutes again, this another bozo in NOE B-17 or a Lanc pops out of nowhere, flies 1k over the field, sprays bombs everywhere, manages to knock a few objects since he's spraying 42 thousand pounds worth of bombs!, and then augers in.
That's what really gets people frustrated. Massive raids can be stopped, or, at least countered. However, individual bozos doing the 9.11 terrorist impression, can never, ever be stopped.
You don't feel bad when the enemy organizes a big mission, and you fight and try hard to stop that, but fail. You know you've done your best, and you know it was bad odds - you chose to fight, and that is satisfying.
However, you feel like shi* when you know that the enemy fighters haven't really done anything inspiring. Not particularly many, nor are they particularly skilled. Not well organized either.
It was just a plain type of fight for local air power, but your field gets closed down, and your ability to fight is demolished.
Why? Because the conga line of uncatchable suicidal dweebs in their late-war planes with mega bomb loads come in one by one in an interval of minutes - they come from all directions, all altitudes, and auger into the field like a moth to a flame, but taking at least one field object with them in their demise.
So, you and your friends talk of grabbing alt, dragging tactics, prepare for good engagement, but what you see is while you're fighting one chump slips past you and your friends and takes something out. You begin to feel stupid - why bother with trying to fight when the dweebs avoid fight by all means?
You, and your experienced band of fellows, who invested a lot of time and effort to learn ACM, correct methods of field attack and stuff, are totally helpless and incompetent against the average dweeb with no fear of death!!
That's why people get mad. Look what happens when experienced people group together and attack a field - when they succeed, they do it beautifully. But in many occassions, they fail - they try hard, but they are stopped. Fantastic A2A engagements, noble endeavors, missed timing, many stuff comes up to ruin the perfect capture attempt. Each of the situations being presented, is what makes it so fun!
But look what happens in a large scale furball - I know, you know, everyone know what's gonna happen. The fights are fun, but the outcome is so dull. After a few minutes, one turd dives in and kills something. Then your field gets smashed. It's friggin' inefficient, and takes longer time, but ultimately, the dweebey kamikaze method of field capture works better than any carefully planned mission.
..
So, the point here, is removing the power from the dweeb's hands.
* Place light perks on late war planes with heavy bomb loads and lightning speeds - suiciding in those planes will cost you.
* Promote the usage of mid-war planes with the "real average" ordnance - most usually a single 500lbs bomb. It's free, but it's limited in power - it's gonna take six, seven consecutive suicides of more than four dweebs within a 15 minute period, to close down a small field. Besides, you don't get to spray two~three bombs and four~ten rockets. You've only got one 500lbs bomb. You want to help your team? Then learn how to bomb right.
* Promote the usage of dedicated jabo planes - specialized roles of attack planes to add variety in field attacks. These planes are very much more vulnerable than those late-war fighter-bombers. They, can be stopped and intercepted.
Basically, we have to neuter the individual dweeb by making it costly to kamikaze something, or at least greatly reduce the effectiveness of kamikaze by decreasing average payload a fighter carries.
The key is to make field captures hard for the people who aren't doing it right.. a certain area with lot of bozos, will almost never see any fluctuation in the front line. Their incompetency will deny them the opportunity of field porkage, or capture. It's not about making it hard for everyone.
ps) Oh, the radar range needs to be widened, too. By the time you see a group of dots, its already too late to stop them.
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
I do like your idea of having 2 vehicle hangers and a spawn point to the town. Maybe also adding a manned ack gun in the town as well. I also think there should be mannable 88mm acks that can fire both AA and AT rounds at each field to compliment the existing 37mm manned acks. Maybe even add a few .50 cal machine gun emplacements in addition to the 88mm and 37mm gun emplacements.
Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!
A single F4U-1D or P47 or P-38 or Typhoon can take down a VH, de-ack a field, and level most of the town. Another player can finish the job and another guy can bring in the troops. If winning WW2 was that easy, it wouldn't have taken until 1945 for it to end.
A mannable gun in the city would help tremendously. A VH spawn near (near, not in) the town would help a bit more but that assumes that the VH is still up by then. I think it would work better if there were individual vehicle bases at a distance from the town set up with spawn points to support the airfield and town. Kind of like a Maginot Line with 1 airfield supported by 2 or 3 vehicle bases. It would certainly give the vehicle bases a bit more value in the game.
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Hmmm ... 2 guys from the same squad with completely different theorys ... The "Toad Theory" and the "Zippatuh Theory" ... both I think present 2 valid scenarios.
I am with the "Zippatuh Theory".
If one side develops a big "steamroller", they could roll over a front with ease, which would never allow the building of a good furball. I could see that everytime a good furball might start, it would be quickly extinguished with an easy base capture. This would promote more timidness and less pilots having to engage the enemy ... not good.
The "Toad Theory" present a valid argument.
I don't really think that making the capture more difficult will cause larger "hordes".
The "hordes" as they are now, are quite large anyways, and to get more than what already participate, I believe, would have to be on the scale of the recent RJO ... organization ... which is hard to come by in AH.
The "horde" mentality within AH only builds as the task gets easier ... opportunistic and timid pilots taking advantage of hiding in larger numbers and getting their occasional kill or vultch.
I think making field capture more difficult would cause the "horde" to dissapate if a capture were not very organized and imminate ... the timid would be forced to engage or be bored to death from flying to target and RTB without engaging.
Making fields harder to capture would allow defenders to up and furballers to move foward toward the attacking base and create a stall point that could eventually build into a full blown furball.
If the "horde" decided to move on, so could the defense and eventually the capture could take place (what the strat guys want) or a major fullball could be developed (what the furballers want). Anything in between these 2 scenarios does satisfy both genre at the same time.
Making the capture harder ...
Make towns larger.
Add more mannable ack (not AI) at the field and the town.
5 inch guns would be a good addition.
2 Vehicle Hangers per field (4000 pounds to kill)
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Kweassa, you're description of what is going on (it goes like this...) is right on the money.
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kwea.. your description is accurate but... making fields harder is not gonna stop the behavior. dweebiness "look at me" behavior is impossible to stop if it is possible or if it has an "affect".
The harder you make it to take a field the more the suicide porkers will smash into stuff to get attention... the timid players and strat guys will hang back (or even encourage) and wait till the no talent suiciders have done their damage.
The real problem as I see it is that the fields are too far apart as it is and with the simple act of porking the fuel.... the distance is doubled or trippled... The horde hits an undefended or lightly defended field... loses the first wave of suiciders who manage to kill the ack and fuel and then the timid horde circles above the field hoping someone is dumb enough to try to up so that the 10 of em can fight over who gets to vultch him.
making fields harder to capture simply means that more will be porked and useless... As it is most of the playing tiome in AH is a bunch of timid steamrollers circling a porked field waiting for a goon followed by a hearty round of backslapping.
lazs
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"The harder you make it to take a field the more the suicide porkers will smash into stuff to get attention... the timid players and strat guys will hang back (or even encourage) and wait till the no talent suiciders have done their damage."
Lazs ... I think the inverse just might happen if fields were harder to take/pork.
Suiciders do it now because it only takes one run (of a few) to get the job done. If they had to make multiple flights to accomplish the same task as they do now in one run, they might get discouraged. As for the timid guys hanging above, if the field ack is not so easily taken down, and people can still up from the field, they just might be forced to fight or run back home bored.
"making fields harder to capture simply means that more will be porked and useless..."
It can't be any worse than it alreadly is.
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Originally posted by lazs2
tojo... Are you talking about the religion or the game? If it is the religion please tell me how it has to do with the suject. If it is the game then.... as I understand it... the "quakers" are the strat sissies? Isn't quake a game about teamwork and capture the flag with things like power ups (rearm refuel) and lots of Ai objects to kill and blow up?
lazs
Obviously not the religion, but you were being witty understood.
The Quake that I experienced had nothing to do with strategy or teamwork.. I equate the term Quaker to the non strat furball only types..
I.E.
1. Auger rather than land
2. complain when a carrier is sank
3. no interest in building battling
4. only interested in the quick kill and short fly times..
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
I enjoy a good Quake death match once in awhile..
0J0T
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Well...I'm not an expert, but think about this.....
AWDOS....circa 1990....Field Capture....drop bombs on field and land field within 5 minutes...result? Field capture.
Sounds too easy? Well, what it brought to the arena was a constant fight....lower alt engagements.....flowing enemy lines...a sense of anything is possible.
You logged on to find ferocious fights and lots of action....not what we have now.
WARBIRDS....circa 1996....very much the same.....great fights easily found.
ACES HIGH....circa early tours.....simple filed capture bred lots of action and a fluid front line....deep attacks were more than a hope.
Sadly, none of this will probably change....I seem to remember similar discussions about some feeling that field capture was too easy....we've made our bed I suppose.
Kweassa was correct in his assessment of current field capture woes....still, I doubt anything will change, especially anything that would take us back to the way it was.
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I trust ya Rude !!! Sounds logical ... I never flew those sims, but I believe ya.
You know what ... I'd be willing to try anything that would improve/change the current behaviour that is the norm in the MA.
I think that any of these ideas/changes will not take place until AH II : TOD is running in full swing. If/when that takes off, then the Strat genre will be completely satisfied. At that point those that live for the fight might be able to transform the MA to satisfy their needs.
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Originally posted by SlapShot
If/when that takes off, then the Strat genre will be completely satisfied.
Slap, you are the most optimistic guy I know. ;)
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yep... debate it all you want but... history (flight sim history) proves that easier capture fields closer together promote fights while making fields harder to capture promotes animostiy between player groups and lack of action... Long flights to nowhere in order to do nothing.
slap... no I don't think so. nothing is dweebproof to a determined dweeb. Witness the guy who ups over and over from a vultched field never getting past the engine start up or the suicide fluffers who low level attack a cv during an intense furball and probly die what? 10 times?
with more action.... suicide guys only succeed in putting themselves out of the action.
tojo... sure seems that quake is more like the simplistic capture the flag strat that we have and quakers would be the simplistic strat guys.
lazs
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- It seems reasonable that town size should be related to field size (and strategic value i.e. zone base). A large base could have a substantial size town and a zone base capture could require the status of the associated city be reduced to a fixed percent - say 32%, or perhaps all strategic targets of the zone be reduced to 65%.
It could bring escorted bomber missions into the game and people may even gravitate toward protecting the bombers. I read somewhere that this actually happened during the war... :D
- 2 vehicle hangers at a medium field and 3 at a large field doesn't seem unreasonable.
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There's one problem with your argument, Rude.
AW..OUt of business
WB's...200 subscribers?
AH (The early years) Much less subscriptions than it has now.
Now AH has benefited from being the the last man standing, aside from WB's but the game must be doing something right in order to have survived and thrived.
I like the idea of more ack, mannable ack, quad 50's, 4 times the town..hell give me 4 towns with 2 map rooms.
I tend to think harder captures leads to more furballs, and more strategic thinking. The longer a field stays under assault, the more time for the word to get out, people to land or die at other fights, and join the struggle at the contested field. This can only lend to a bigger, nastier, down in the mud furball, with the capture only being that much sweeter.
I detest any capture than can be done with 3 guys flying under dar. It's simply not even close to historically accurate.
As always, anything that brings a challenges, buts buffs back in the game and promotes a good furball with more fun for all. I also support anything that takes suicide dweebs out of the game.
And now for the Lazs challenge....
Lazs can take anything you say and turn it into an argument for closer fields..
Let's test him...
Lazs,
I prefer carpet to hardwood floors...your thoughts..:D
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Originally posted by Toad
Here's some tinder and a few sticks for the bonfire that's sure to come.
I'd say make the field capture way easier. Make it like it was back in beta.
Make it so easy you don't need a horde to steamroll a field. Make it so a small squad could do it with a little jabo practice and goon escort.
I think that would make it so that you'd need a horde to defend what you took, all along the front. Leave a base untended, you'd lose it.
Maybe the tide of battle would ebb and flow much more violently, with much more fighting. End runs and rear field sneak attacks might become more prevalent and add interest.
Just a thought.
I will now grab a lawnchair and a beer.
I'm sure this will turn out to be an interesting thread.
Oh, my gawd. I find myself agreeing with Mr. Toad.
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The idea of modifying the field capture system does nothing to adress the fact that its field capture itself that is simply the stupidest most gamey aspect of AH. The aura around it is also the number one cause of arguments between all sects of players.
You want shorter flights to fights? Move the fights away from the fields.
You want more realistic missions? Stop promoting missions that are completely unrealistic.
Its time to come up with a strat system that does not revolve around field capture.
MiniD
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fullback... escorting bombers is like watching paint dry. you will never get the majority of simmers to want to do something so boring.
muck.. AW didn't die till recently and AH picked up the players cause WB was stuck in "realism" mode.
as for carpet vs hardwood floors... your choice proves that you know nothing about choice and action... Closer fields in AH would at least get you thinking properly.
lazs
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But I still don't like the "closer" idea. That simply puts the reinforcements lower when the cavalry does arrive. Flying off in a different direction to gain alt simply recreates the same situation that the close fields are supposed to "correct". And putting the fields closer could make it easier for the attackers to keep reinforcements from getting to the attacked base.
The extra 10 miles takes less than 2 minutes at 300 mph.
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Originally posted by Mini D
The idea of modifying the field capture system does nothing to adress the fact that its field capture itself that is simply the stupidest most gamey aspect of AH. The aura around it is also the number one cause of arguments between all sects of players.
You want shorter flights to fights? Move the fights away from the fields.
You want more realistic missions? Stop promoting missions that are completely unrealistic.
Its time to come up with a strat system that does not revolve around field capture.
MiniD
What do you propose MD?
Lazs-
Very disappointed in your answer. I don't think you worked on it hard enough. Though it had the trademark disparaging comment, it completely lacked the word "Fluff" or "Strat-weenie" and did not take a shot at me, the MAW, Beetle or Shubert.
I'll give that one a 6.
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Muck....are you saying that AH has succeeded due to the method of field capture currently in place?
Did you fly the other sims I mentioned? I'm just curious:)
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Don't worry Shubert, the exhilarating, light-headed, dizzy, dancing way you feel will soon pass and you'll return to your normal feelings.
;)
Just a small question or two, or three... or (OK, Mini...) SOME questions for the crowd:
Did the "dweeby low level buff tactics" (TM) start (become much more prevalent?) before or after the successful the hue & cry to make buffing "much more difficult"?
Did the "dweeby suicide jabo attacks" (TM) start (become much more prevalent?) before or after the successful hue & cry to make field capture "much more difficult"?
So the new solution to cut down on "dweebiness" (TM) is to make everything more difficult?
Just curious.
MiniD, a decent hypothesis. Any ideas? If not "capture the flag", then what?
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I flew Air Warrior from the AOL days until about 2-3 years ago.
I don't think any one thing makes AH successful, but any one thing can be a game killer.
With that in mind, I doubt AH could have grown if field capture as well as the many other aspects of AH from graphics to customer support were not at least satisfactory.
It could also be that AH is the last stop for guys with low end machines. Who really knows. The point is, the game must be working at least well enough to attract and maintain new and old customers. This is something neither AW nor WBs could do.
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Originally posted by rshubert
The extra 10 miles takes less than 2 minutes at 300 mph.
How much altitude can an early/mid/late war plane grab in a 300 mph climb in 2 minutes? You were dicussing "lower" as a problem, right?
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I guess I don't mind the current implementation of capture so much as I dislike the radar.
If a raid is NOE or GV, why should ANYTHING start to flash (town or base) until you are well within sight of said target? One of my favorite things to do is look for the poor goon who has camped waiting on his buds to arrive and I only had to notice the flashing town icon.
Town buildings could also be a little tougher IMHO.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
I flew Air Warrior from the AOL days until about 2-3 years ago.
I don't think any one thing makes AH successful, but any one thing can be a game killer.
With that in mind, I doubt AH could have grown if field capture as well as the many other aspects of AH from graphics to customer support were not at least satisfactory.
It could also be that AH is the last stop for guys with low end machines. Who really knows. The point is, the game must be working at least well enough to attract and maintain new and old customers. This is something neither AW nor WBs could do.
AW's life ran for many years....it's demise had nothing to do with the method of field capture, but rather the neglect shown by it's owners....still, let's agree to disagree.
I understand how someone such as yourself who enjoys the large mission type style of gameplay would not percieve anything to be amiss.
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Originally posted by rshubert
The extra 10 miles takes less than 2 minutes at 300 mph.
No, the extra 10 miles would take exactly two minutes at 300mph. However, you fail to account for a number of things. For instance:
(1) The Spit V cruises at around 280mph. That's typically after diving to get up to speed. It takes substantially longer to accelerate to that speed in a straight line. This means that 10 miles require about 2.14 minutes to travel. Other planes cruise even more slowly, especially early warbirds.
(2) The Spit V autoclimbs 3.5k/minute @ 160mph at sea level. If one autoclimbs into the fight, it takes 3.75 minutes to travel the extra 10 miles.
Figure therefore at least some variation of between 2.14 and 3.75 minutes to go the extra 10 miles for a Spit V. The former takes less time but puts one at exactly the altitude disadvantage you mentioned appearing on maps with closer bases. The latter takes quite a bit longer but compensates with higher altitude.
Now let's figure that the studious Spitfire pilot flies both to and from the enemy base, making the extra distance 20 miles (almost an entire sector) rather than 10 miles. Now he faces trip times ranging from roughly 4.28 extra minutes to 7.5 extra minutes. If, throughout the course of the evening, he flies ten sorties to and from this enemy base, you're looking at between 42.8 and 75 minutes of extra flight time because of those extra 10 miles. That's empty time with nothing to do but climb or travel. It's wasted time. It breeds boredom.
That's why so many people hate it.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by muckmaw
There's one problem with your argument, Rude.
AW..OUt of business
WB's...200 subscribers?
AH (The early years) Much less subscriptions than it has now.
You seriously can't be trying to say that as a result of having an easy field capture system is what caused AW to go under, WB to experience its current woes and why AH didn't have a large player base in the early years.
If you are, then maybe what the say about MAW IQ isn't too far off the bat.
Ack-Ack
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Let's try this again....
Originally posted by muckmaw
I flew Air Warrior from the AOL days until about 2-3 years ago.
I don't think any one thing makes AH successful, but any one thing can be a game killer.
With that in mind, I doubt AH could have grown if field capture as well as the many other aspects of AH from graphics to customer support were not at least satisfactory.
It could also be that AH is the last stop for guys with low end machines. Who really knows. The point is, the game must be working at least well enough to attract and maintain new and old customers. This is something neither AW nor WBs could do.
Ack, does this clarify my position for you? Toad?
NO ONE THING MAKES A GAME SUCCESSFUL, but screw one thing up royally, and you're history.
The field capture system is AT THE VERY LEAST, ACCEPTABLE AS IT IS NOW.
Can it be better? Sure. Go back and read my post and many others with good suggestions.
Could it be worse? Hell yes. Flopping a Jabo onto the runway of a porked field and calling it a capture is beyond gamey, imho.
If AW, and WBs were so great....why did they lose so many customers?
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well..... WB got away from quick action and went to the silly axis vs allied "realism"... they figured out a way to make sure that one side allways had the advantage and made it so that hiding from each other or steamrollering was the only way to play.
gamey field captures? who cares? only the insects care about field capture anyway... the strat is just something to get the fight going.. The fite is the thing. The strat is so simplistic in AH that only an insect would find it stimulating for more than the first dozen times or so.
And that is exactly what is happening... the guys who like to pretend they are officers in WWII are finally reaching the end of even their allmost unlimited threshold for boredom and are now demanding even more strat to bore people to death with.
I think that AH2 "missun arena" will solve some problems.. strat insects will happily buzz around the tower for 20 minutes waiting to form up in escort or attack squadrons and maybe the MA can get back to basics... Kill the red guy.
lazs
Publid Relations Officer for the BK's
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Better, Lazs.
I give that one a 7 for the repeated "insect" label, the generalization of people you don't know, and the elitist, "my way of flying" attitude. I'll give you a bonus .5 for the "Only insects care about field capture" contradtiction. If only insects care about field capture...why are you replying to a thread about....well, field capture?
Total score...7.5
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what i was tryin to say laz is it doesn't matter if its harder or easier to capture.....
some just don't give a ****......there attitude is 'as long as i got a base too take off from'
the other....the one that plays for capture....he really doesn't give a **** either...harder or easier.....he gonna capture that base anyways....5 or 10 guys...whats the f****** diff......none
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This seems like a really interesting idea to me. If we chose late 42 as our perk cutoff (to promote midwar) the top fighters would be the following (the Typhoon and F4U-1 would probably be perked, much like the Spit XIV and Tempest are in our current setup):
US: P-40E (or if we could get a P-38F that might work)
RAF: Spit Mk. IX
LW: Bf109G2, FW190A5
Reggia Aer. : C205 (I know, it's a later plane but it matches the others well)
IJAAF: Ki-61 (same deal as the C205)
VVS: Yak-9T (same as above)
I think that would make for a pretty interesting mix of fighters which are pretty well balanced in terms of speed and fighting ability, and most of the bombers would be pretty useful.
Originally posted by Kweassa
..
So, the point here, is removing the power from the dweeb's hands.
* Place light perks on late war planes with heavy bomb loads and lightning speeds - suiciding in those planes will cost you.
* Promote the usage of mid-war planes with the "real average" ordnance - most usually a single 500lbs bomb. It's free, but it's limited in power - it's gonna take six, seven consecutive suicides of more than four dweebs within a 15 minute period, to close down a small field. Besides, you don't get to spray two~three bombs and four~ten rockets. You've only got one 500lbs bomb. You want to help your team? Then learn how to bomb right.
* Promote the usage of dedicated jabo planes - specialized roles of attack planes to add variety in field attacks. These planes are very much more vulnerable than those late-war fighter-bombers. They, can be stopped and intercepted.
Basically, we have to neuter the individual dweeb by making it costly to kamikaze something, or at least greatly reduce the effectiveness of kamikaze by decreasing average payload a fighter carries.
The key is to make field captures hard for the people who aren't doing it right.. a certain area with lot of bozos, will almost never see any fluctuation in the front line. Their incompetency will deny them the opportunity of field porkage, or capture. It's not about making it hard for everyone.
ps) Oh, the radar range needs to be widened, too. By the time you see a group of dots, its already too late to stop them.
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Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
No, the extra 10 miles would take exactly two minutes at 300mph. However, you fail to account for a number of things. For instance:
(1) The Spit V cruises at around 280mph. That's typically after diving to get up to speed. It takes substantially longer to accelerate to that speed in a straight line. This means that 10 miles require about 2.14 minutes to travel. Other planes cruise even more slowly, especially early warbirds.
(2) The Spit V autoclimbs 3.5k/minute @ 160mph at sea level. If one autoclimbs into the fight, it takes 3.75 minutes to travel the extra 10 miles.
Figure therefore at least some variation of between 2.14 and 3.75 minutes to go the extra 10 miles for a Spit V. The former takes less time but puts one at exactly the altitude disadvantage you mentioned appearing on maps with closer bases. The latter takes quite a bit longer but compensates with higher altitude.
Now let's figure that the studious Spitfire pilot flies both to and from the enemy base, making the extra distance 20 miles (almost an entire sector) rather than 10 miles. Now he faces trip times ranging from roughly 4.28 extra minutes to 7.5 extra minutes. If, throughout the course of the evening, he flies ten sorties to and from this enemy base, you're looking at between 42.8 and 75 minutes of extra flight time because of those extra 10 miles. That's empty time with nothing to do but climb or travel. It's wasted time. It breeds boredom.
That's why so many people hate it.
-- Todd/Leviathn
And these points IMHO help to bump the numbers you see of the fast AC a la LA-7
Honestly, ifn I gotta travel a fair distance to a fight I grab an LA-7 strictly cuz it gets me there fastest (perk free speed).
Sorry, no intention to hijack.
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It may be a result of making the fields harder to take has inspired suicide action. I do believe though that if the fields were 4 or 5 times harder to take now that it might make a suicide mission useless and have no affect on the “strat” game.
So I’ll add to my list:
Increase the number of fuel blivets as well as increasing the hardness of the objects.
It seems to me that if the fields were easier to take you run the strong possibility of it being captured before you even get to the fight. Now you’re in your early war bird and still have a long flight because each time you up to a target, it gets captured.
My only history is with FA so I have not experienced the other sims by which this has been compared to. I’m not sure the comparisons are valid though. The number of people online at the time would certainly have an impact on game play.
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Originally posted by AcId
Honestly, ifn I gotta travel a fair distance to a fight I grab an LA-7 strictly cuz it gets me there fastest (perk free speed).
That's a good point, AcId, and one I mentioned in another thread awhile back. Lengthening field distances, besides increasing commute time to and from bases, also creates unforeseen side effects such as raising the altitude of most engagements and changing the sorts of planes one finds in those engagements.
It also tends to increase the effect of porking fuel, particularly for early war planes.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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acid is correct... the farther the distance between field the more people gravitate towards the faster and better climbing planes.
Come up with more anal insect like strat if you don't feel there are enough la7's, pee 51's or dee9/gee10's in the game.
muck... if field capture were easier with closer fields then the world would be a beautiful place...
lazs
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Closer fields, sure..why not.
But I just don't see how making capture easier will help your cause. Now why do i care? Well, about 50% of my AH time is spent looking for a decent furball.
Let me see if I can hash this out.
Easy capture:
Fields change hands quickly.
Suicide dweebs can still pork and 3 players can capture.
Resets happen faster.
Steamroller even more effective than it is now
Furballs not given time to form and grow
Harder capture:
More room for level bombing
More strategic planning needed for capture
Higher numbers needed to capture base
Steamroller will either accelerate, or method will be rendered less effective.
Suicide dweebs will either increase or decrease due to frustration.
Furballs will grow out of capture attempts and last longer due to increased difficulty.
I am honestly trying to see this from both sides. It just seems like a difficult capture will be better for everyone except the suicides, the low alt Buffs, and the 2-3 man capture attempts.
Please explain the benefits of making field capture easier.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Let's try this again....
Ack, does this clarify my position for you? Toad?
Allow me to clarify my position for you. I'm Toad, the one sitting in the lawnchair with a Boulevard Pale Ale, about 20 feet from the pile of rotting vegetables that Beet1e is sitting under.
RUDE, I believe, is the one you were having a discussion with. Hope this clears things up. ;)
**************
I note that while I was away, no one in the discussion addressed these questions.
Did the "dweeby low level buff tactics" (TM) start (become much more prevalent?) before or after the successful the hue & cry to make buffing "much more difficult"?
Did the "dweeby suicide jabo attacks" (TM) start (become much more prevalent?) before or after the successful hue & cry to make field capture "much more difficult"?
So the new solution to cut down on "dweebiness" (TM) is to make everything more difficult?
I surmise that the reason for this is obvious. Is it true that almost all of us realize that "making things more difficult" has lead to an overall increase in "dweeby gameplay"? Because that's what I'm thinking.
Please continue. I knew this thread would have legs!
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Sorry 'bout that toad.
Let me take a crack at your questions..
Low-Alt buffs...were here before, but much more prevalent after change to bombing. (Add in dive bombing buffs, as well)
Frankly, I find this group laughable. They provide easy fodder and rarely if ever hit anything of value. 90% of the times I've seen these types come into a contested area, they don't make it to target, much less hit it. I believe this group is negligible.
Suicide jabos have become much more prevalent but they've been here so long, I can't recall when they really got out of hand.
I just can't see, though, how making the capture more difficult will increase suicide jabos. They will really be useless.
If you're serious about eliminating them, you need to impliment several ideas from this thread. (Don't worry, none of them were mine).
Add perks to mid and late war rides.
Add perks to Jabo bombs.
Add to size of town at field
Add mannable or AI ack
Increase fuel bunkers by 50%
I honestly cannot see how watering down the game will help those with little skill, or regard for survival will suddenly develop skill, or learn to move up to the next level. 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.
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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.
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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?
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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. :)
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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.
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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.
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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 !!! :D ;)
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Originally posted by SlapShot
I hold your beer for ya and watch the cooler !!! :D ;)
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.....
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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
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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.
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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.
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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! :D
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.
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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? :D
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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.
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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
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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. :D
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"Capturing the Airfield" is so 1980's Airwarrior. Can't we come up with something better?
Why not Capture towns/Cities that have an airfield nearby. Capture the City and the airfield is yours.
You can attack the airfield to reduce its effectiveness, but the real battle is for a town nearby.
Drop the 10 drunks idea and make it gv capturable only.
Flying goons is Zero fun anyway.
This would be closer to history.
Why are we stuck in the same design of yesteryear?
Many of the best fights I've been in have been for current GV bases. Gv's rolling that need aircover, Aircraft jaboing the onrushing gvs. No insta spawn of aircraft to vulch. Air superiority means something.
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
snip
Or there's also the route that AW3/MV took and that was dropping 12 drunks within 5 minutes to get the capture.
Actually, that was configurable - it could be set at any number of troops desired. You also had an "overwhelming capture" setting that would allow for a field to be captured without destroying anything by just dropping enough troops within a time window.
The CM settings also allowed the number of eggs required to destroy different objects to be set, and also a "hardness multiplier" - let's say fuel tanks were set to 2 eggs, but Airfield XYZ had hardness set to 2, then fuels would take 4 there.
It was pretty easy to tailor the porkage/capture difficulty as desired. I always liked having forward line fields set easy, the ones behind those a little harder, the rear ones damn near impossible - that'd keep action focused in the middle, fast and furious, and ensure even an outnumbered country would pretty much always be able to fly.
I don't know anything about the AH CM settings system. Aren't these kind of things configurable here?
I do know the terrain editor thingy here is a Cod-send. We always wished for that at AW - terrain building there was a monumental chore.
culero
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make the field acks better and more of them and the supply lines more important.
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Thank you all for contributing to this thread with so little flaming getting in the way of discussion. I'm very surprised at that, even more so than seeing 75+ posts when I logged in 18 hrs after starting this thread :). All I can say is, thank the Dark Gods for booze at Cons :D.
Anyway, I've just read everything so far. The balance of opinion seems to be that making field captures somewhat more difficult is better, although there are certainly votes for making it easier.
Personally, I don't think making things easier is better. Things have gotten harder over time for a reason. IIRC, the main reason was that a few folks in non-peak hours would milkrun beaucoup easy captures, so that when peak hours arrived, a bunch folks (usually Bz in AW, Golds in WB, and Rooks in AH) always found themselves about to be reset with their strat permanently porked.
In this regard, Toad brought up the fact that the trend towards harder captures tends to demonstrate that the whole capture-everything, RTS-type game model is a failure. My nostalgic side tends to agree. I, at least, engage in capture attempts not so much because I really want to, but because it's either that or be driven off the map. Reset the nme bastiges before they reset you is the law of the jungle. But the alternative is something like DOS AW, where only 3 of the 30 or so fields were capturable at all. That made for great furballs but nothing much else. While I liked those huge, unending furballs, I also like a bit of variety, and I also believe that a game needs to cater to other tastes to survive. So I'm willing to accept the conquer-the-world model and porking, etc.
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of votes for having more/harder VHs, more mannable acks especially at the town, and larger/harder towns would improve things. Maybe some GV spawns closer to town. IOW, the basic system seems OK, but could use some tweaks in light of present-day realities. That's what I've been thinking myself, so I'll now feel free to add such features to maps in the future. That pretty much answers the questions I had when I started this thread ;).
On the related topic of porking fields, Kweassa, seconded by a number of others, brought up the issue of kamikaze porkers. I'm with you all in detesting such dweebs, and agree that they're the logical alternative to being skillful and organized. The problem is that map-makers can't make the systemic changes to perks and stuff that Kweassa suggested.
As for Toad's questions of which came first, the harder buffing and captures or the kamikaze buffs and jabos, I have to say it was the attempts to make things harder. Sure, they existed before, but not in the numbers they have since, for the reasons Kweassa stated. So, if I make a map with multiple VHs per field and mannable acks at bigger towns, would this increase the number of kamikazes? I'm of the opinion that it would.
So it seems that besides making fields a bit harder to capture, we also want fields that are harder to pork. AFAIK, map-makers can't change the downtime of strat objects. Thus, the only ways to limit the effectiveness, and thus the attractiveness, of kamikaze attacks is to increase the number of field strats and/or make them harder to kill. IOW, make it require a major effort to pork a field. No more 3-4 lone kamikazes killing all the barracks on the whole front. No more "human V-1s" each taking fuel down 25% or more.
This would all tend to increase the concentration of pilots. This would make lone wolfing harder, but that really went out in 1917 anyway so I don't consider that much of a loss. It MIGHT tend to increase the severity and duration of furballs at fields, which would satisfy that crowd if they could learn to follow the herd instead of trying to sit at the same field all night. But on the large maps, would this concentrated attacking mass actually encounter any resistence? Or could the greater number of VHs and mannable acks at a field stymy the milkrunning landgrabbers long enough for reinforcing defenders to arrive?
I look forward to continued debate :)
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Thanks for noticing Muck :) This is the second time I've posted this and haven't even received a good flame or two :)
I think this concept I outlined would add gameplay variety, real "strat" and spread things out a bit more without having to particularly limit any type of gameplay. I even think there would be dedicated bomber squads running regular missions that had an impact, but not a field closing, furball ending impact.
Charon
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Charon, I like your ideas, but the real question is, what ever happened to that updated AH2 FAQ?
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<== climbs out from vegetables, and drinks Mr. Toad's warm beer.
Lazs! How many more times are you going to bang on about "the fields should be closer together"? Just to think, Nopoop accused me of sounding like a tape in an infinite loop.
Muckmaw- I can tell you that hardwood floors are actually better than carpets, because carpets generate a lot of fluff/fluffs - and that has to be a bad thing. ;)
Kweassa wrote a long thread in the AH2 forum - read it here (http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87356). It is long (makes one of my walls-o-words look like a short picket fence - lol) but I read every word, and it was damn well thought out - much more so than some of those willy-nilly suggestions to perk bombs, or increase strat target "hardness". Kweassa. It's a proposal about modifying the perk values of various planes. And I think it's a very good idea to have nominal perk values on some of the overused planes which have begun to dominate the MA. These would include the P51/Spit-ix/LA7. If we accept for one moment that the pork-n-auger nature of the tasks in which some of these aircraft are being used is ruining the game for most of us, and that the perpetrators are low-skilled Quake-dweebs, then surely the game would benefit by having some small perk values added to certain planes, especially since the implementation of the "sliding scale" valuation of perked planes in terms of perk point cost. Even if the nominal perk value of a P51 was as little as 6pp, I think this would be sufficient to cut down the pork-n-auger dweebery. But I would like to hear Kweassa's thoughts on this.
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you strat guys are overthinking this... closer fields that are more easily capturable will promote fights... the fights will be less lopsided in number and the planes that are in em will be more varied.
How? with far fields and difficult capture.. the way to move forward is to get organized and overwhelm the enemy.. this is not fun for anyone (well allmost no one anyway) because it is the dreaded steamroller. The easiest method of making progress is to pork resources adding to the uslessnes of the fields even more... Now, the insect squads or "missuns" rely on overwhelming numbers and/or suicide resource porkers to kill and take fields... there is rarely oppossitiojn because... who in their right mind will take off to defend against 5/1 odds on any kind of regular basis... the defenders never have the organization of the attackers.
If the fields were harder to capture then the insect squads would just have to come over in larger numbers to overwhelm and destroy resources making for even less action and variety.
contrast this with closer fields and easier capture... all the fields are pretty much active until right up to capture. defenders can up as soon as they see attackers or up a field back if they see a field being swarmed.. they will get their in time for the fun. even in mid or early planes... the fight will not be huge insect swarms but as fighters die and reup there will be an ebb and flow. RTB will be easier and people will take chances.
Fur and strat will be the same. You won't be able to tell who is participating in taking the field or just killing red guys. most of the time, even the furballers will be happy if a field is captured... they will just move on to the next.
lazs
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Originally posted by Bullethead
All I can say is, thank the Dark Gods for booze at Cons :D.
Muhahaha................
The AH Homebrewers Guild strikes again............
________________
Any fool can make bread out
of barly, It takes a dash of the
Divine to make BEER
Gunns
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lazs you.. nevermind, i'm not even gonna bother.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
As for Toad's questions of which came first, the harder buffing and captures or the kamikaze buffs and jabos, I have to say it was the attempts to make things harder. Sure, they existed before, but not in the numbers they have since,...
...So it seems that besides making fields a bit harder to capture, we also want fields that are harder to pork.
I love the way folks see things so differently.
You agree that making buffing and capture harder led to a huge increase in dweebish gameplay.
So, your suggested solution is to make capture even harder.
Is there a niggling little doubt in your mind that this might only make things worse? HIstory supports that hypothesis. Such a suggestion turns on a huge flashing red warning light in my thought process. Every time they do that, dweebish gameplay skyrockets.
Sorta reminds me of a guy hitting himself in the forehead with a hammer. I can only sit in awestruck wonder, sipping my BPA.
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Charon, I like your ideas, but the real question is, what ever happened to that updated AH2 FAQ?
I gave a pretty exhaustive list to Pyro about a week after I agreed to do it. Off the top of my head it had about 40 or more points for the HTC staff to provide the answers to and upload. I seem to remember him posting that it raised a lot of gameplay questions that were not quite decided yet, (I would imagine primarily with the "Tour of Duty" and the various RPG components). We'll just have to see what shakes out after the new engine is released for Classic I guess.
Charon
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With AHII coming out why be concerned with what is now? With AHII is the classic arena going to be exactly the same as the MA now? Just curious
ManeDog
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I think this is all an attempt to "shape the battlefield".
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Originally posted by ManeDog
With AHII coming out why be concerned with what is now? With AHII is the classic arena going to be exactly the same as the MA now? Just curious
ManeDog
Are you getting rid of the main arena in AH2?
No. AH2 will be divided into two branches of gameplay, AH2: Classic – this is just a new name for the arena format that we use today, and AH2: Tour of Duty – a polar opposite of the Main Arena format.
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The strat in AH has devolved into a situation where undefended attacks are simple (just look at milk-running on Pizza as an example) and attacks on defended fields are impossible because you can never really shut off the supply of defenders or attackers EXCEPT by porking their supply/spawning ability. 5 defenders could shoot down 20 attackers and know they have lost because attacker #21 suicided into a fuel dump. Now, all 21 will be back with the likelihood that more than 1 will get through and pork another fuel while the defenders have to land to re-arm since they ran outta ammo laying a whooping on the attackers the first time.
Skill simply isn't all that important right now. You can make as much difference by adopting certain undesirable tactics as you ever can with skill. Optimally, the 5 enemy you kill, or who suicided, would simply not be able to come back and attack immediately. Their attack would fail without re-enforcements of new players and be over.
Lots of people have made suggestions based on this principle, spawn limits, spawn time limits, spawn supply limits, etc... not sure I like any of those but it would likely make the most difference to the tactics employed right now. Kwessas description was all too accurate unfortunately.
-Soda
The Assassins.
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Originally posted by ManeDog
With AHII coming out why be concerned with what is now? With AHII is the classic arena going to be exactly the same as the MA now? Just curious
ManeDog
As far as we know..... yes.
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soda... good points but... even with spawn limits or whatever... the large insect squads would still steamroller and pork... they would simply mass a little bigger first. The suicide guys would still go after the adoration in their dog like fashion. The harder the field is to capture (and still be able to be made useless) the more "missuns" and the larger the attack/suicide group... the less chance anyone will bother to oppose. Plus.... if you make the field harder to capture then it will simply remain porked and useless to anyone for a longer time period.
Any strat element that you add that makes "organization" even more important takes even more fun from gameplay. The attacker is by nature and design very military like and has the full co-operation of his fellow attackers who, after all, have "bought in" and joined the "missun". the defenders, on the other hand, have no such unity. You can't say.. "ok, missun to defend A6" for instance and then not defend until you have a requisite number of participants. And... while AH mimics WWII it by no means mimics the military (except certain insect squads possibly).... one man can't "order" the defense on the spur of the moment so... any defense is by nature sporadic and spontaneous and tends to evaporate under superior enemy numbers. The attackers are playing with themselves for the most part...
Not so with "tour of duty" attacker and defender will be on equal footing..That is how "tour of duty" will work... the attack and defense will be planned and neither will be allowed to start until everyone is on board and in place.
that sort of thing is unworkable and unfun in a spontaneous arena filled with individuals.
lazs
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Maybe its me, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how making fields easier will abolish the "horde" & "pork/suicide" mentality.
I believe that with the amount of players that we have on at primetime, some group will always gravitate to creating a "horde", whether it be a small, big, or huge "horde" ... one will develop ... no way around it. The mission editor is there and it will be used to create a "horde".
My vision of easily captured fields ...
The country with the most amount of players will most definately rule the MA under this scenario.
So, as the "horde" approaches (pick your size), planes up and maybe the beginnings of a furball start halfway between the bases. While that goes on, 2 to 4 yokels avoid the conflict and capture the base. Base is not porked (full fuel - full troops) ... no need to ... capture has been made easier. Now ... those of us in eary war planes happily furballing, now have nowhere to RTB without having to fly 2 bases away.
Lazs ... the cry for closer fields to cut down on flying to the fight and flying back from the fight has just gone out the window with easier captures.
Once that base has been taken ... rinse and repeat and the "horde" grows bigger with momentum.
To surmount another defense against the "horde" would require those stuck without a field to RTB, will either have to auger (eary war) - run out of gas trying to RTB (eary war - mid war) or bring your favorite late war ride to the furball ... just what we want more of in the furball ... late war rides.
:confused:
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I can appreciate your concerns but I think there would be little appreciable increase in the requirement for organization. Seriously, how many people are going to be willing to join a 50 vs 10 mission when they know the likelihood of more enemy targets showing up is low. That'd be really boring so people wouldn't bother after a while. It would only be the newbies who feel safety in packs who would join up, everyone else would look for a fight where they have a better likelihood of finding something to shoot down. Besides, 50 guys is a waste of pilots for any one attack and opens up opportunities to exploit all those concentrated pilots in one area.
That said, 5 guys could come in and take on 10 and still succeed if they were good. that would put a lot of squads back into the game who have low numbers of highly skilled pilots. Even lone-wolfing would mean something, you could go out and shoot someone down and know you weakened a sector of the enemy. You might even run some fighter sweeps to knock out some of the enemy before launching an attack in the area... all kinds of possibilities for new tactics show up. Right now a fighter sweep is somewhat useless because all you do is wake up the enemy and the ones you knock down simply climb higher next time.
Same on defense, attackers would have to better protect their assets (C-47 and Jabo) because the loss ofany key element to even a lone defender could spell failure because the same guy couldn't simply launch another goon 2 seconds later. You'd get some suicide defenses (diving into C-47) but at least the goon can try to avoid unlike a fuel bunker.
Overwhelming numbers are a fact of life, they are realistic and everyone tries to overwhelm the enemy if they can. It would still happen, but it would also focus a number of resources in one area. Even the suicide dweebs would have to think about their tactics a bit. Sure, they could still suicide but to be honest that's impossible to stop and sometimes hard to detect in guys who get unlucky or have poor technique. Once they did suicide though, their efforts on that attack end, they won't be back. Battles would likely have starts and ends, unlike the ever-ongoing masses of now. I think serious furballs would still happen but they would end with one side standing and one dead/running away.
-Soda
The Assassins.
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Slapshot, let me see can I 'splain it.
Easier capture translates into less required pilots. Say, for the sake of discussion, 5. You as the attacking force have 10. Why use 10 on one field? You most likely will try for 2 simultaneously . I as the defender can up at either field with 2, 3 or what have you and the fights on. You take both fields. But guess what? I know I can take one right back, or back door ya. (Shut up Animal) You know this too. Fights on again.
The flow of the game and the fights are quicker and more intense. I know you're coming in quick and you should assume I am coming back just as quick. That alone brings the fights down, which then gives the buffs thier required altitude window. Obviously if I want to get the buffs, I have to go up to them and most likely would. I know they could hurt me more.
Wish I could explain it better.
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Apache-
I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.
I think this may be one of those "Try it and find out" situations because I think we're trying to predict what people will do individually given a set of circumstances. I believe this is very difficult, if not impossible to do.
Personally, I am of the belief that tougher captures lead to larger packs of players on both sides, with massive furballs forming over contested terrain.
As I said earlier, furballs take some time to develop as people land or kill, check the map, and see where the action is. The only time I've seen a spontaneous furball erupt is when 2 missions happen to collide, otherwise, the numbers grow over an hour or more.
Look at it this way. Last night, there was an enemy CV off of one of the knight bases. They lauched, we launched, and this continued for about 40 mintues with the pack getting ever thicker as time progressed. At one point, there must have been 50 planes within sight of each other.
Anyway, eventually someone came along and sank the CV...(No, not me.) If the CV stayed up, the result would have been an even bigger, longer furball.
Now imagine if someone sank that CV after the first wave lifted. 15 planes in the area...tops. Boom, furballs dead. People scatter and look for another fight. SOme go north, some go south, etc.
I firmly believe, and I can be wrong, that this is the scenario we would have if we watered down field capture. Small groups, bang, capture, move on..scatter.
Once again, my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.
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Made field capture tougher got steamroller attack modes. Many attackers fighting to get to the vultch first.
Made buffing tougher, got suicide jabo and low level suicide buffs.
... and the suggested solution now is make something, anything tougher. So these dweebs will have to conform and play using "legitimate tactics".
But you're not trying to make them "play your way".
That's the view from the lawnchair so far.
:D
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soda... they do it every night right now... 20 or so guys hit an undefended or very lightly (read newbie vulchbait) "defended" field... the "missuns" do it all the time and they never seem to get bored with it. they have no one to fight and still they do it.
with closer more easily captured fields fights would break out on half a dozen fronts. Even if a huge squad of insects decided to steamroll fields... so what? let em or oppose em... there would still be plenty of fights and... if a steamroller got started it would just leave other close fields vulnerable.
that is the way it worked when the fields were easier to capture and not so many far fields.
lazs
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Apache-
I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.
Muck it does work, been there done that in WB's heyday.
Any beer left ??
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Apache-
I can see your point, but I just don't see it working.
I think this may be one of those "Try it and find out" situations because I think we're trying to predict what people will do individually given a set of circumstances. I believe this is very difficult, if not impossible to do.
Personally, I am of the belief that tougher captures lead to larger packs of players on both sides, with massive furballs forming over contested terrain.
As I said earlier, furballs take some time to develop as people land or kill, check the map, and see where the action is. The only time I've seen a spontaneous furball erupt is when 2 missions happen to collide, otherwise, the numbers grow over an hour or more.
Look at it this way. Last night, there was an enemy CV off of one of the knight bases. They lauched, we launched, and this continued for about 40 mintues with the pack getting ever thicker as time progressed. At one point, there must have been 50 planes within sight of each other.
Anyway, eventually someone came along and sank the CV...(No, not me.) If the CV stayed up, the result would have been an even bigger, longer furball.
Now imagine if someone sank that CV after the first wave lifted. 15 planes in the area...tops. Boom, furballs dead. People scatter and look for another fight. SOme go north, some go south, etc.
I firmly believe, and I can be wrong, that this is the scenario we would have if we watered down field capture. Small groups, bang, capture, move on..scatter.
Once again, my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.
Muck,
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
You see, the state I'm talking about does work. It worked in WB and worked in the early days of AH.
It changed as more and more of the strat ilk became more vocal. I had no problem with it at first but it has gotten close to intolerable as the gamey players have taken over the furballers and the true strat players game. This is evident by suicide (and I believe it is intentional) jabo and 100 ft. buffs to name just 2. I of the furbal crowd can't stand such gamey BS. Do the strat players really condone such actions?
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Hey Laz, I totally know what you mean, but my point was, you can't really stop 20 guys from showing up if they want to. My idea was, let'm come but don't let them continue to come back over and over and over. Often you see engagements in AH that simply have no end, its shoot away until you run outta ammo or get shot down. The same guys over and over come back, that's what frustrates me. It leads to no requirement for skill either, they simply suicide everything and don't care. You can't change that sort of lemming mentality unless you make death a bit of a penalty. If the suicide squad comes through and hits the field, well, every guy who died isn't coming back anytime soon, that's my point.
I wouldn't make fields tougher and think they are actually pretty easy right now. Moving the fields closer might be ok but I don't think that alone would address the issue. I also don't think forcing someone to spawn at some spot they don't want to is a way to go. Let them spawn, if they die then they simply have to find somewhere else to go for a while.
I think the big missions hope to find guys who will spawn in a vulch 20 times each and that's often the case. This would eliminate that too making any hope of that happening pretty rare. I think some of the really big missions wouldn't attract anybody to join if that were the case.
On the flip side, people could actually run things like fighter sweeps to knock back the enemy concentration for a bit to prepare an area to be attacked. As it is now a fighter sweep gets kills but it means nothing. All the guys you kill simply re-up and climb higher the next time.
-Soda
The Assassins.
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Toad
You agree that making buffing and capture harder led to a huge increase in dweebish gameplay. So, your suggested solution is to make capture even harder. Is there a niggling little doubt in your mind that this might only make things worse?
Good point, but what would you do instead? We've already had easier captures and the documented bad effects of that have led to the increasing difficulty over time. Which in turn we agree has led to an increase in kamikazes. Quite a conundrum (however you spell that).
You could look at it as 2 issues. If you accept that kamikazes are a minority, then the bulk of players need harder captures. The question then becomes how do you deal with kamikazes, and the answer to that (at least as far as map-makers can go) is a greater number of and/or harder field strats along with tougher captures. That way, 1 kamikaze would have very little chance of making a dent in field strat.
OTOH, you could look at it as direct cause and effect, where increases in difficulty of "legit" captures always spawns a correspondingly greater number of kamikazes. In which case, continued changes making things tougher would eventully result in pure kamikaze attacks by everybody.
It could therefore be that HT's suggest was the only really viable one. Start a timer when you drop eggs and have them not explode if you die within X seconds afterwards. I was against that proposal, but at the time I was only thinking about myself and how often I get gacked by FPs right after bombs away. Does HT's idea look any better now in light of this discussion?
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I disagree with your hypothesis that "easier captures and the documented bad effects of that have led to the increasing difficulty over time."
What are the "bad effects" of easy field capture? An ebb and flow in the battles?
Look, when bombing was easy enough for anyone to grasp in a real short time and when field capture didn't require 39 guys to mob the defenders, we still had resets and all that. We also had fast and furious air-to-air battles. What we DIDN'T have was these "suicide jabos" and "low level buffers" that seem to bother some folks to the point that they want to force them to "play my way" or leave the game.
This was true in "easy capture" AW. It was true in "easy capture" WB. It wast true in early "easy capture" AH.
The "dweebery" that is being complained about now started when things were made more difficult. So we'll just make it MORE difficult. THAT will show them. :)
Make it so hard that they'll rarely have a chance to survive the effort. THAT will make them want to live.
Oh.. wait... we already tried that. They figured they weren't going to live so they just didn't worry about it at all.
rrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKABOOM! :)
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In the first of two posts I would like to dispense with the suicide jabo issue.
The suicide jabo thing isn't going to end. It's an option that will be used, whether as routine or desperation. I believe the only thing that can be done to slow it down is to impose a penalty. In real life the penalty was death... pretty affective. Hitech and others talked of a time fuse on the bombs which would not explode if the guy who dropped them got killed. Others talk of bomb perks. I would like to see a form of the real life used... death.
If a guy drops his bombs and augers shortly after, he can't get another load of bombs for a while, at least in the same area. As with death, this would prevent him from returning to do it again. If a guy wants to die for his country, who's to stop him. It's the repetiveness that's hard to accept.
I fear bombs that don't explode right away or damage that heals itself if the pilot augers may appear a bit lame in practice.
Perks? Well, that reminds me of a game where everything costs money, the plane, the ammunition, the bombs, the fuel, etc. If you couldn't afford a mission, you had to economize. It was a mersonary type game where you and your crew got hired for a mission, the greater the success the more pay you got. This financed future missions. You could make it big time or go bust. An interesting concept it was. One of those things that makes you go, hmmmmm.
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Regarding arena play and base capture.
First of all, I don't like the pork the arena concept because it totally messes up game play for the country who has less players... something that can't easily be controled. That being said, suggestions for a few alternatives to land grabbing.
First, I would like to try to think outside of the box and not lock in on arena capture as the only game objective. Yes, HiTech made it so, but he can change it if we convince him. So no suggestion should be summarily dismissed.
What's with the base capture thing? This was seldom a wartime objective. The territory certainly, but the airfields were more often attacked to damage the enemy's resistance. Capturing territory was usually left for the infantry to do, while the planes provided air superiority. So superiority was an objective, and to gain that the fighters had to eliminate enemy planes. To accomplish this the fighters had to fight. So our first keyword is fight... which happens to be a major source of entertainment in an air combat sim.
Another objective was to damage a country's resources to the point where they could no longer attack your country or resist your infantry. This mainly required bombers, protected by fighters, and supplimented by attack planes in air to ground assaults (our jabo buddies).
In Aces High air planes are somehow empowered with the task of capturing territory. Our infantry consists of ten drunken paratroops delivered by a single C47 or one glorified truck. This then becomes the main objective of the game. But how now to best accomplish this objective? The answer is by avoiding a fight, either with massive force, by zooming past the defenses to jabo a field and auger so you can do it again quicker, or by attacking bases that are not defended.
For the country getting attacked it has the appearance of a locust infestation, and about as fun. To the attackers, it's certainly a rush, but how long can one do this before it gets old? And how much glory is there in defeating an enemy by avoiding him? All so you can earn perks to buy a Me262 with which to cherry pick... more super fun I'm sure.
How about getting back to basics? How about making the objective destruction of the enemy's resources? Included in these resources would be enemy fighter defenses and their airfields. Airfields would still be attacked, but to damage them, not capture. This would return a major role to the bombers. Fighters could once again fight. The jabo guys would be doing important work, but the world would no longer revolve around them enticing them to drop and auger.
At some point, a country's resources would reach a minimal level and the infantry march in. To the victors would go the perks for their Me262's... which would actually have bombers to attack. (I noticed lately them being used for ground attacks... probably something Hitler would have approved of.) And right up to the end the enemy could still fly and otherwise continue playing. If players choose to go fight each other in a far corner of the arena, they could and any damage they inflicted upon the other would still count to their country's main objective. Even the furballers would be contributing.
What do you guys think? Does this give you other ideas of how to make it even better?
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It's not gonna work.
People in the MA follow a purpose. They identify themselves by the country they are "serving". They feel fun and satisfaction not from the contest of skills, but by following a common cause and making things happen, according to it.
In the case of the MA, the common cause is winning the war. The things that happen, which confirms that a certain pilot has done something for his country, which makes him proud, which gives him fun, is seeing a field get captured.
In short, the mentality is totally different from what AH used to be. It's a new AH now - a war oriented one. When AH was young, and not many people were in it, the countries didn't mean much. Just a loose means of dividing the sides so they can fight each other.
However, like a small city-type state grows into a gigantic territorial country, AH has grown out of that stage. The competitiveness of the countries, which now holds hundreds of pilots in it, has grown considerably. In the younger days, pilots feel the fun when their personal skills were adept. Now, pilots feel the fun when their country is winning.
As long as your country is winning, and you can do something to help your country in winning, then you're satisfied. That's what drives the folks in MA. That's why some of the vets can't stand the changes of recent - individual skill and quality means nothing now. The things they have learned and practiced, don't effect the outcome at all. The factors that constitue the situations of the MA has changed - concentration of force, using that force with impunity, is now favorable. It is continuously being depersonalized, and more and more changing into a war-machine.
In short, the growth of numbers, and change of strat, is bringing us closer and closer to the "War" aspect. Old days, we fought with the WWI concept of strategy and honor, contest of ACM. We know who the enemy pilot is. We know where he is. We salute him, we fight wih him, we chat with him.
Now, it is becoming more like the depersonalized air combats of WW2 - no time, no luxury of contest of skill, personal gratification, personal satisfaction. Only the victory of your country, and the efforts which support such victory, can give you an opportunity to survive.
......
So, there are a few things which we have to try not to confuse.
If the purpose of discussing strat is to revive the good 'ol days of pure fighter battle, contest of ACM, it's not gonna work, unless we decide to go back to the snuggy 150 guy arena.
What we can do, is try to relieve some of the quirks in the strat system, so it can adequately react and do away with the most extreme form of dweebery, so that even in this depersonalized, large-scale battle, a certain level of precision and skill is required to have any effect on the outcome of the war. Currently, people don't need any of those, to feel their satisfaction as a part of a team effort.
We wanted a better strat, a more "war" like environment. In truth, the MA is growing towards that direction.
We can either request changes to refine the problems with it, and adapt to the changes that follow a 'war' like environment,
Or we can request to do away with strat totally. Making it a massive, country divided version of the DA.
Of the two, I think Toad's suggestion, fired by nostalgia, is based upon the latter.
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Yeah, I'm one of the old dinosaurs I guess. I don't care who's winning the war or even if there is a war of territorial conquest. I came for the fight and only the fight.
However, I disagree that easier capture does away with strat. It just makes it different. After the Golden Horde rolls over 13 bases, their rear/flank areas become very vulnerable to a small strike force... due to easy capture. I think it would make "war winning" tougher. Who really knows?
However, isn't AH2-TOD supposed to be what you've just described as Nirvana? All that skill, co-operation, strategy, personal satisfaction and gratification when you get "promoted" and all that?
That's why I personally have such high hopes for AH2. :D
'Cuz I'll still be in the MA.
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Originally posted by nopoop
Muck it does work, been there done that in WB's heyday.
Any beer left ??
AH is the only sim that I have ever played, but from what I have heard and read on these boards, those games never saw the numbers that we have on in AH prime time. It's been said that the other games would, at most, have the same amount of numbers for the whole areana as we have per country. I don't see how you can make a direct correlation between the past gameplay of other sims to what we currently have in AH.
With that in mind, and what I was trying to say before, is that the "horde" mentality is here now and is here to stay. Making things easier for the "horde", will not, IMO, eliminate or discourage that type of play. I believe that it will only encourage timid play and fights that will end as fast as they start.
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"Timid" people are not going to become "brave" (or vice-versa) because of a map or base layout. Guys who like to suicide into stuff, are always going to suicide into stuff because they think it is fun. Guys who don't, aren't going to start just because the ground looks different.
Players are who they are, and will play the way they want to, no matter how anyone might attempt to mandate it to be otherwise.
P.S.(A weak example and a different topic but first one that comes to mind is the perk multiplier. Sort of worked for a while, but now things are back to normal. People resumed their natural behavior.)
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soda.. with closer fields and easier captures it won't matter if the guy ups a thousand times... he won't be able to. his field will fall. He will have to move one back. suicide porkers will, first, have no point... There will be no point to it because the field falls and second... they will have to get through a group of guys all fighting.
Fighter sweeps? not gonna happen this side of the "tour of duty" arena.. no true furballer will take orders and do a dumb fighter sweep in the ma. Like Toad said... none of us give a crap about who is winning the capture the flag part of the game.
now... I have said in the past... It wouldn't bother me if we had huge cities and when those cities were bombed into oblivion then the country with the least damage to it's cities "won"... that would be fine with me. guys that want to carry bombs could hit the cities.
but for now... closer fields... easier capture and more CV's will help gameplay.. and while they won't stop suicide morons... those features will make suicide ineffective.
The only people that will be hurt by this will be the HUGE squads and the missun doodz. there will be no point to having a large club to swing... simply look at the people who want to arrange the arena so that it requires more and more teamwork to succeed... success for them means lack of fun for everyone else.
lazs
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You old farts ... you know who I am talking about ... have got to get out from under the past. What was, is not now, and never will be again. You can wish in one hand, and ****e in the other ... tell me which one will come true first.
As I stated before, I am relatively new to this (over a year and a-half in AH), but the parameters for taking a field have not changed at all that I am aware of .... so taking fields is no harder now (in concept) than it was a year and a-half ago.
What has changed drastically is the number of people playing AH. This alone has made field capture harder. What use to take 3-5 guys to accomplish, grew (seems exponentially) due to the fact that when the same 3-5 guys came to take a base, they were met with equal or more numbers. So, they grab 3-5 MORE guys ... you get the idea. Now, with the number of players that we have on at prime time, pretty much assures that you have to have a "horde" to take a base.
If a good defense is put up, then the suiciders come crawling out of the woodwork. If the initial attack group is met with an equal defense, then a certain percentage of that group will suicide to reduce fuel. They will then up again immediately, armed to the teeth, to return to the attack and wipeout any remaining fuel, if not already porked, or start taking out the fighter hangers.
I forgot who mentioned it above, but I am liking the idea that if one drops their bombs and dies, whether it be by suicide or just plain got shot down, if they launch from the same field again, they cannot take ordinance. If they RTB, then they can re-plane or re-load, loaded for bear again.
This would only effect the rinse and repeaters ... If a large enough "horde" was to come to a base, they could effectively scorch earth a base in one suicide pass with left-overs to start the CAP and vulch. This is where the problem still lies. If making the field harder to pork ... more fuel bunkers ... more mannable ack ... more VHs ... then the one pass mentallity will not work, and the fight continures.
This is where I would like to see it go, but I am willing to see if the "easy capture" theory would work. If it fails, then we try a different tack ... lets just get soemthing going to see if we can change the gameplay to satisfy (at least try) all.
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one way to test the theories is for the next bright boy who does a map to make an area in the map where it is not important strategicaly... not close to hedquarters etc.. and put the fields, say 14-21 close... 3/4 sector. Make it near a coast with a lot of ports and CV's.....leave the rest of the map with far fields... make em max distance even.. make all the "strat" accdessable only through these fields.
See what happens. My guess is that the enemies of fun will try to trash the close fields because no one will play with them in the strat part of the map. My guess is that the close field area wil be very popular. Even if I'm wrong... what will it hurt?
lazs
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Originally posted by Kweassa
It's not gonna work.
People in the MA follow a purpose. They identify themselves by the country they are "serving". They feel fun and satisfaction not from the contest of skills, but by following a common cause and making things happen, according to it.
In the case of the MA, the common cause is winning the war. The things that happen, which confirms that a certain pilot has done something for his country, which makes him proud, which gives him fun, is seeing a field get captured.
In short, the mentality is totally different from what AH used to be. It's a new AH now - a war oriented one. When AH was young, and not many people were in it, the countries didn't mean much. Just a loose means of dividing the sides so they can fight each other.
However, like a small city-type state grows into a gigantic territorial country, AH has grown out of that stage. The competitiveness of the countries, which now holds hundreds of pilots in it, has grown considerably. In the younger days, pilots feel the fun when their personal skills were adept. Now, pilots feel the fun when their country is winning.
As long as your country is winning, and you can do something to help your country in winning, then you're satisfied. That's what drives the folks in MA. That's why some of the vets can't stand the changes of recent - individual skill and quality means nothing now. The things they have learned and practiced, don't effect the outcome at all. The factors that constitue the situations of the MA has changed - concentration of force, using that force with impunity, is now favorable. It is continuously being depersonalized, and more and more changing into a war-machine.
In short, the growth of numbers, and change of strat, is bringing us closer and closer to the "War" aspect. Old days, we fought with the WWI concept of strategy and honor, contest of ACM. We know who the enemy pilot is. We know where he is. We salute him, we fight wih him, we chat with him.
Now, it is becoming more like the depersonalized air combats of WW2 - no time, no luxury of contest of skill, personal gratification, personal satisfaction. Only the victory of your country, and the efforts which support such victory, can give you an opportunity to survive.
......
So, there are a few things which we have to try not to confuse.
If the purpose of discussing strat is to revive the good 'ol days of pure fighter battle, contest of ACM, it's not gonna work, unless we decide to go back to the snuggy 150 guy arena.
What we can do, is try to relieve some of the quirks in the strat system, so it can adequately react and do away with the most extreme form of dweebery, so that even in this depersonalized, large-scale battle, a certain level of precision and skill is required to have any effect on the outcome of the war. Currently, people don't need any of those, to feel their satisfaction as a part of a team effort.
We wanted a better strat, a more "war" like environment. In truth, the MA is growing towards that direction.
We can either request changes to refine the problems with it, and adapt to the changes that follow a 'war' like environment,
Or we can request to do away with strat totally. Making it a massive, country divided version of the DA.
Of the two, I think Toad's suggestion, fired by nostalgia, is based upon the latter.
Easier base capture would only expedite strat and resets and also add a capability for those who wish to capture or affect the WAR, all without having to join the 30 player steamroller you seem to want us all to become a part of.
In addition, the above change would keep fights lower and faster allowing those of us who don't like to spend 30 minutes in the air prior to the engagement, to enjoy ourselves as well, all without altering your precious war effort.
You seem to want everyone to play your way, while all I'm suggesting is allowing me to play differently while still allowing you your fun.
What's wrong with that request?
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Yep... adding some closer fields and more CV's just adds choice for more people... The enemies of fun allways want the game to be more insect like.
lazs
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I am not trying to be hard-headed here, but how can capture be made an easier than it is now ?
Capture, as it is now, can be accomplished with a minimum of 2 pilots. One pilot in a 110-G2 to take the town down and a goon. If done expediantly and the distance is within reason, it can be accomplished with 1 player.
Help me here.
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Originally posted by lazs2
Yep... adding some closer fields and more CV's just adds choice for more people... The enemies of fun allways want the game to be more insect like.
lazs
Lazs ... I am with ya on these ideas and I think you know that.
What I am getting at is when we (you, me, nopoop, apache, etc) were flying around last week with our "hair on fire" in a base vs CV furball and the dweeby suiciders come in from the rear and pork all the fuel and eventually took out all the fighter hangers. That sucks !!!
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One thing we need to concider...
Right now a large force of 20 pilots will attack and capture a base. This is called the Steamroller.
Make base capture easier and those same 20 pilots will divide into 4-5 groups, and bag 4-5 bases at a time.
So you'll have 4-5 smaller engagements instead of 1 large one.
Is that the aim here? To get smaller fights over bases, eventually thinning out the attack group to the point where a battle for a base is a 2 on 2 engagement?
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Originally posted by muckmaw
One thing we need to concider...
Right now a large force of 20 pilots will attack and capture a base. This is called the Steamroller.
Make base capture easier and those same 20 pilots will divide into 4-5 groups, and bag 4-5 bases at a time.
So you'll have 4-5 smaller engagements instead of 1 large one.
Is that the aim here? To get smaller fights over bases, eventually thinning out the attack group to the point where a battle for a base is a 2 on 2 engagement?
Nevermind.....you guys don't want any change....you like it like it is.
Muck....you must have never flown any other sims to not understand what we're speaking of.....many of us have lived it...it worked and it had nothing to do with the failure of any sim.
I give up.
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Originally posted by Rude
Nevermind.....you guys don't want any change....you like it like it is.
Muck....you must have never flown any other sims to not understand what we're speaking of.....many of us have lived it...it worked and it had nothing to do with the failure of any sim.
I give up.
Come on Rude ... I think that everybody that has participated realizes that a change has to be made ... its just which direction to go.
Muck has flown other sims .. I haven't, and I am just trying to understand your point of view, which I have no experience of. Like I said before ... I am willing to try anything at this point. If it fails, then back to the drawing board. I think we all agree that something has to change.
"I give up" ... ha ... I don't believe that for a second. I don't know you personally, but I don't believe that attitude is part of your makeup.
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Originally posted by Grizzly
The suicide jabo thing isn't going to end. It's an option that will be used, whether as routine or desperation. I believe the only thing that can be done to slow it down is to impose a penalty. In real life the penalty was death... pretty affective. Hitech and others talked of a time fuse on the bombs which would not explode if the guy who dropped them got killed. Others talk of bomb perks.
How about bomb perks applied negatively? If you take off with ordnance, and auger without suffering loss-of-control damage within some arena-setting time limit after dropping ordnance that causes damage to a ground object, then you a) don't get any perks for that flight, and b) get fined perks based on the ordnance you took up -- larger bombs, bigger penalty, with an arena-setting multiplier to allow the penalty to be tuned. If you drop into negative perk points, you can't get ordnance.
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I'd think the aim would be to make the game more fun.
I guess there's somebody who thinks being in a huge horde and fighting for the scraps during a steamroller base capture is fun... and guess what? They'd still be able to participate in those.
But there'd also be those smaller, more balanced engagements when the steamroller ground past and the flanking and rear area strikes began.
Try something different? OK!
Last time we made things more difficult. The "dweebery" got much worse. So let's indeed try something different. "More difficult" wouldn't be different.. it'd be the same, with the same results.
Besides, all these things you guys seem to want so badly are going to be the heart and soul of AH2:TOD, right?
So why worry about the boring old MA? Your dreams are about to be fulfilled!
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Originally posted by Toad
I'd think the aim would be to make the game more fun.
I guess there's somebody who thinks being in a huge horde and fighting for the scraps during a steamroller base capture is fun... and guess what? They'd still be able to participate in those.
But there'd also be those smaller, more balanced engagements when the steamroller ground past and the flanking and rear area strikes began.
Try something different? OK!
Last time we made things more difficult. The "dweebery" got much worse. So let's indeed try something different. "More difficult" wouldn't be different.. it'd be the same, with the same results.
Besides, all these things you guys seem to want so badly are going to be the heart and soul of AH2:TOD, right?
So why worry about the boring old MA? Your dreams are about to be fulfilled!
Ok ... Sounds like a plan ... so how do we make it easier ? ... thats the next step.
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Depending on how AHII goes down, depends on my participation in the MA in the future.
However, there will be times when a quick sortie will be the order of the day, to which the MA will always be suited.
Aside from that, this is an open, hypothetical discussion that is intereting to participate in. Though I'm sure HT is interested in his customers opinion, I don't think these discussions have much bearing on what he does with his game.
That said, I'm still having a great time in the MA. Whether it's squad night, or flying with a bunch of unknowns in a furball, I'm still loving this game.
Change it and try it.. more difficult, less difficult...whatever. Give it a shot. If it works, great, if not, go back and try the other way.
As far as other sims, I flew AW from AOL days, and like everyone else, just about every offline flight sim since Flight Simulator for the Commodore 64. (God' we've come a long way in 20 years, huh?)
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Originally posted by SlapShot
Ok ... Sounds like a plan ... so how do we make it easier ? ... thats the next step.
Hmm..eliminate the town and make capture acheived by a successful landing of any type of AC on the runway?
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What I have started doing is filming whenever I see a horde about to suicide/steamroll a field or CV. That way I can play it back and the film viewer lists their IDs. I can then check their scores. Quite a number of those doofuses are rank dweebs judging from their scores and stats. They probably don't have two perk points to rub together. Unfortunately, the scores and stats pages don't show how many perk points a player has. Now, assuming that they fly only dweeb missions, and have no interest in ACM, they're not going to have many PP. So why don't we introduce some nominal perk costs for some planes, for the same reason that the Chog was perked, which was that it was completely unbalancing the arena just as all this suicide/horde/steamroller/pork-n-auger/fuel-porkage is unbalancing the arena right now? A nominal 4pp for a P51 or TYPH would not seem unreasonable. This might reduce to 2pp or 1pp if the side became outnumbered, or rise to 6pp or 8pp if the side became the strongest numerically. By implementing this change, we might see TWO benefits: [list=1]
- The suicide fuel porkery etc. would be reduced because the dweebs that do it would have to earn PP to fly their P51 pork-n-auger sorties, and...
- the sliding scale of perk values would help to balance the numbers of certain planes so that we couldn't have a horde of P51 P&A guys beating up a field and making it impossible to take off - or at least it would get very expensive for them to fly those dweeb P&A sorties at 8pp a throw.
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Shiva,
If you perk ordinance, I would think you would want to do it up front. That way the jabo pilot is always thing about it.
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Man.. this is amazing!
I was thinking I just saw Beet1e basically buy into Laz' "perk the bombs" idea, albeit in a slightly different manner in an attempt to disquise Beet's submisson to Laz' wisdom. Didn't Beet just slam Laz about that idea not long ago?
I am truly smiling so hard my face is cracking!
Or is it just one too many Boulevards?
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Originally posted by Mr. Toad
Man.. this is amazing!
I was thinking I just saw Beet1e basically buy into Laz' "perk the bombs" idea, albeit in a slightly different manner in an attempt to disquise Beet's submisson to Laz' wisdom. Didn't Beet just slam Laz about that idea not long ago?
I am truly smiling so hard my face is cracking!
Or is it just one too many Boulevards?
LOLOLOL! Hehe, I said what I said, and I was very careful in what I said. :D I said perk certain planes - not the ammo and/or ord that they carry. Lazs has a long standing grievance against buffs/fluffs - which is why I pointed out (further up) that I'm against the lives of buffers being made even harder by perking bombs. Elsewhere on the board, I said that we might want to consider small perkage costs for planes like P51/Spit ix/LA7/Yak-9U - if only because they have become overused and have taken over the arena in the same way (I am told) that the Chog dominated the arena before it was perked. Now, in the case of the P51, we have overlap. It is one of the "big three" because of its speed and survivability. But it is also much more formidable as a jabo than the LA7 or Spit-ix. My nominal perkage suggestion is intended to target certain overused planes, some of which just happen to be instrumental in suicide P&A campaigns. I would, for example, be quite opposed to perking the F6F and/or its bombs. There. Hope that clears it up, Mr. Toad. Get some chapstick for yer gob, as all that grinning will cause your lips to split in that midwestern sun. :D
But Mr. Toad has a point, and indeed I was thinking that very thing when I wrote the post before this one. ;):D
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Originally posted by beet1e
What I have started doing is filming whenever I see a horde about to suicide/steamroll a field or CV. That way I can play it back and the film viewer lists their IDs. I can then check their scores. Quite a number of those doofuses are rank dweebs judging from their scores and stats. They probably don't have two perk points to rub together. Unfortunately, the scores and stats pages don't show how many perk points a player has. Now, assuming that they fly only dweeb missions, and have no interest in ACM, they're not going to have many PP. So why don't we introduce some nominal perk costs for some planes, for the same reason that the Chog was perked, which was that it was completely unbalancing the arena just as all this suicide/horde/steamroller/pork-n-auger/fuel-porkage is unbalancing the arena right now? A nominal 4pp for a P51 or TYPH would not seem unreasonable. This might reduce to 2pp or 1pp if the side became outnumbered, or rise to 6pp or 8pp if the side became the strongest numerically. By implementing this change, we might see TWO benefits: [list=1]- The suicide fuel porkery etc. would be reduced because the dweebs that do it would have to earn PP to fly their P51 pork-n-auger sorties, and...
- the sliding scale of perk values would help to balance the numbers of certain planes so that we couldn't have a horde of P51 P&A guys beating up a field and making it impossible to take off - or at least it would get very expensive for them to fly those dweeb P&A sorties at 8pp a throw.
I've always advocated perkin everything....the current perk system promotes saving rather than spending perks.
Nice work Beetle....ya see, you and I can get along as long as you agree with what I believe is right:)
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Originally posted by beet1e
LOLOLOL! Hehe, I said what I said, and I was very careful in what I said. :D I said perk certain planes - not the ammo and/or ord that they carry. Lazs has a long standing grievance against buffs/fluffs - which is why I pointed out (further up) that I'm against the lives of buffers being made even harder by perking bombs. Elsewhere on the board, I said that we might want to consider small perkage costs for planes like P51/Spit ix/LA7/Yak-9U - if only because they have become overused and have taken over the arena in the same way (I am told) that the Chog dominated the arena before it was perked. Now, in the case of the P51, we have overlap. It is one of the "big three" because of its speed and survivability. But it is also much more formidable as a jabo than the LA7 or Spit-ix. My nominal perkage suggestion is intended to target certain overused planes, some of which just happen to be instrumental in suicide P&A campaigns. I would, for example, be quite opposed to perking the F6F and/or its bombs. There. Hope that clears it up, Mr. Toad. Get some chapstick for yer gob, as all that grinning will cause your lips to split in that midwestern sun. :D
But Mr. Toad has a point, and indeed I was thinking that very thing when I wrote the post before this one. ;):D
lol, you are truly daft. The Yak9U is over used?
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Originally posted by Apache
lol, you are truly daft. The Yak9U is over used?
Oh, well that wasn't very polite. :(
I think of the overused planes as the big THREE (P51/LA7/Spit ix). However, Kweassa has spoken of the big FOUR. I wasn't sure which one the fourth one was, but I see a lot of Yaks and assumed it was the 9U - isn't that the über Yak? I wouldn't know. I never fly from the overused list.
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Originally posted by beet1e
Oh, well that wasn't very polite. :(
I think of the overused planes as the big THREE (P51/LA7/Spit ix). However, Kweassa has spoken of the big FOUR. I wasn't sure which one the fourth one was, but I see a lot of Yaks and assumed it was the 9U - isn't that the über Yak? I wouldn't know. I never fly from the overused list.
Does the N1K ring a bell ?!?!?
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Originally posted by Apache
lol, you are truly daft. The Yak9U is over used?
Apache = YAK-9U DWEEB ... :D
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Originally posted by SlapShot
Muck has flown other sims .. I haven't, and I am just trying to understand your point of view, which I have no experience of.
Maybe I can help you here.
I flew AirWarrior for many years. I don't suggest it was better than Aces High, and I wouldn't want to go back. But my memories of it I wouldn't trade away. Maybe there is something of value in it that can be used by us now.
The company that provided AW supplied the planes and arena but let the players set the game. Their phylosophy was that the biggest advantage of a massive online sim was that it allowed the players to set their own goals and make their own rules. The game became a living entity, changing with the will of its players, limited only by the imagination of human beings.
The result was a great variety of game play. The arenas were set up so that they had different areas to play in along the country borders, where players could play the type of game they liked without interfering with each other.
An example of a game: The HammerHeads back then had a arch enemy squad called the Black Dragons. We would meet in the NW corner of the arena each night and fight each other tooth and nail. Our objective was to damage the other's bases and carriers and push them back to their rear base. We could kill their bases and make them unusable for a half hour, but not capture them. We had glorious fun and became great friends between our two squads. Many other squads in other parts of the arena were doing the same. And in the center, where the default spawn bases were, new or unafilliated players would play until they fanned out and joined the various squads (the massive never ending furball area).
But still we needed variety. At the time AirWarrior was hosting a minimum of 2000 players each night, maybe double that on prime nights. With a limit of 250 players per arena, there were a lot of arenas to choose from. Each had it's own character, so one could bounce around until you found something you liked. But they also provided two theaters, Pacific and Europe. The theaters provided the types of planes that belonged there, so if you get tired of being B&Zed by 190s, you could go munch on Zekes in a Pac arena. There was great variety.
Of course we still had our porkers, milk runners, alt monkeys, gangers, etc. But the community basically humiliated them to keep their numbers at a minimum. One of the greatest differences I've seen between AW and AH is that many of the activities abhored and ridiculed in AW are accepted and respected in AH.
To each his own.
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No sarcasm here..legitamate question..
So many folks have fond memories of Air Warrior. I played for a while, but I can remember very little.
I do recall being very impressed with the graphics and sound, and FM in AH, when we moved here.
My question is, why did Air Warrior end?
I'm guessing it was massived mismanagement on the part of EA, but I really don't know the answer. Did AH siphon off their subscriber base until they could no longer turn a profit? I can't see why any company would pull the plug on a profitable enterprise. Anyone know the whole story?
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Originally posted by muckmaw
I'm guessing it was massived mismanagement on the part of EA
bingo.
h
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Originally posted by beet1e
Oh, well that wasn't very polite. :(
I think of the overused planes as the big THREE (P51/LA7/Spit ix). However, Kweassa has spoken of the big FOUR. I wasn't sure which one the fourth one was, but I see a lot of Yaks and assumed it was the 9U - isn't that the über Yak? I wouldn't know. I never fly from the overused list.
lol, quite right, it wasn't polite. Wasn't intended. I don't use those silly emoticons any more.
Slap, hehe, BINGO!!
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Originally posted by SlapShot
Apache = YAK-9U DWEEB ... :D
LOL! So I see. Now it all make sense. :D
Oddly enough, I have just been fighting between 18 and 29 - first in P47 (D25 & D11) then in 109G10. I gave up the P47 because I could not turn, climb or run as well as the cons that were chasing me. Con type? Erm... well, they were Yaks, actually.:o
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Originally posted by beet1e
My nominal perkage suggestion is intended to target certain overused planes, some of which just happen to be instrumental in suicide P&A campaigns.
It was clear you would try to dance around the fact that you now agree with Laz about perking bombs before you even replied.
Neither the SpitIX or the La-7 is a "suicide jabo" ride of choice. (So in those cases you're just voicing another ride restriction for others, similar to your support of an RPS.) The P-51 would fit in that category, although it's no more common in that role than a few others. Typhoon, P-47 and P-38 are likely either more or just as common.
But, it's always wonderful to see you glide across the floor, trying to dance around your previous statements.
Beet1e agrees with Laz! Who'd a thunk it?
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Originally posted by beet1e
LOL! So I see. Now it all make sense. :D
Oddly enough, I have just been fighting between 18 and 29 - first in P47 (D25 & D11) then in 109G10. I gave up the P47 because I could not turn, climb or run as well as the cons that were chasing me. Con type? Erm... well, they were Yaks, actually.:o
From last months stats provided by DJ.
Yak-9U 4863 5130 0.948 1.92 78.25 ranks 16th. About where it usually stays.
But it's probably a good thing you "disengaged" (lol). They probably woulda kicked your arse anyway.
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Do not perk the P51. It is an useless aircraft with little ability and very little strength. Besides, I only have about 5 perks and could not afford more than one :(.
Oh, and I do think the numbers in AH make difference. I will agree that it would be nice to have something done. Easier/harder one or the other lets try it and see.
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"It is an useless aircraft with little ability and very little strength."
Especially when the likes of Zip is flying it ... nothing but a BIG FAT TARGET.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
No sarcasm here..legitamate question..
So many folks have fond memories of Air Warrior. I played for a while, but I can remember very little.
I do recall being very impressed with the graphics and sound, and FM in AH, when we moved here.
My question is, why did Air Warrior end?
When AW was owned by News Corp. they wouldn't invest any resources to keep it up to date. Instead, they had the developers working on other projects. AW had begun to whither and die when EA bought it. Kesmai had secured a contract from AOL to supply games. EA took the contract and canceled AW.
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Originally posted by Apache
But it's probably a good thing you "disengaged" (lol). They probably woulda kicked your arse anyway.
Quite so. The Yak chased me all the way back to base, shot my wing off from about 800 yards (realistic - lol) and was promptly despatched by the reception committee. Got to fight fire with fire, so upped a G10 and did some arse kicking of my own. Just as we were bugging out, I had a P51 and 190 chasing me - then a high P47 dived on me. :( But I pulled a full loop and continued back to base - lost them, or they lost me. But now here comes BGBMAW in his Hurri :( Luckily, I extended away and made it home to land my kills.
Mr. Toad. :D We have a saying here - a leopard never changes its spots. The American equivalent might be a toad never changes its warts! ;)
As always, when I haven't quite said what you really, really wanted me to have said, you pretend that I said it anyway - LOL. I guess it's just too hard to see your trophy slip through your fingers! And of course - you are in your element with your usual BBS audience comprised of TAS and BK squads. That's OK, I'm happiest when everything/everyone is against me! You said you now agree with Laz about perking bombs
Erm... no. I said no such thing. I am in favour of perking the big 3 by small amounts - only to balance the arena and for the same reason that the Chog was perked. I made that clear, and have said so before in other threads. A by-product of this change, which I mention in passing, is that the P51 might not be selected for pork-n-auger missions if it had a small perk charge, which might please some. OK, maybe I could have listed my points in the reverse order, but I stand by what I said in each of them. And I said nothing about perking bombs. If you would be so kind as to review my post that you seized upon with such alacrity for the purposes of trying to embarrass me, you will find that it does not even contain the word "bomb". Indeed, if I wanted to pork fuel and deack a base with a P51, I would use rockets and/or strafe...
10/10 for a nice try!
LOL - now get back under your rock until you're sent for. :D
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I like the idea of a penalty for dieing.
Penalty:
=============
If you die, you cant take off from that field for a few minutes after you die.
1st death no penalty
2nd death 3 minutes
3rd death 5 minutes
4th death 7 minutes
When a country gets down to 6 bases they have no penalty for re-planeing. The penalty could be attached to small and medium bases, but not large. It could start when resources are down. Lots of room for embellishment here.
Results:
==============
1) No one to vulch, but a defending crowd screaming in with alt from another base.
2) Really slow up the suicide bombers and jabo.
3) A smaller number of defenders with alt can succesfully defend a base from swarming.
4) Change furball tactics to real ACM rather than DCM (Dweeb Combat Manuevers)TM.
5) Easier to program for HT.
6) It will spread the fight around the map.
7) It will encourage missions.
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I think the one thing you have to add is somehow, the penalty only applies to Jabo or Heavy Bomber missions.
Otherwise, you penalize folks for dying in furballs, which depend on repeat uppers to keep the fight going.
There would have to be some way to code it so that if you died within a certain area around the enemy field while carrying or having released ordinance a within X number of seconds, you get penalized.
I don't think it fair to penalize people for dying in furballs, or an post ordinance delivery dogfight. Same holds for heavy bombers. It would be unfair to penalize them for getting shot down on final approach to their home base after a successful bomb run.
If nothing else, I think this would really put a crimp in the suicide jabos.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
While I was at the Con, quite a few people (Grimm, Slapshot, and Ghostdancer that I recall--there were more but I was drunk) said they believed that capturing fields was too easy. This bothered me because I try to make arena maps, and help others with their maps, and of course I want to make a quality product. I'm concerned enough to ask you all for your opinions on the matter. Not just whether you think it's too easy at present, but what can be done about it, and what the long-term effects of any corrective measures would be.
Before you all sound off, let me start the ball rolling with my own opinions.....
Major snippage !
BH - That was a very good post ( Regardless of what side of the fence one sits on ). I would not have guessed you could have written it so well considering the condition I saw you in at the CON !
And thanks for the use of your Map for the bomber compotition !
Jordi
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Sorry if this was already mentioned, but halway through the thread and almost time to leave work.. sooo:
I know this porbably isn't possible currently, but perhaps if it took 30 troopers from a goon (arbitrary number) and only 10 from an m-3 to capture a base?
Historically paratroops were generally only used to hold specific targets for a short period of time until ground forces came along to relieve them. In this situation the M-3 would represent the ground forces and the goon obviously the paratroopers.
This approach would also have the addtional effects of:
1) decreasing the ability of the three man team to capture a base
2) increasing the time defenders have to prevent capture
3) require air superiority to be maintained over a base for a longer period of time (read as furball development)
4) promote use of GVs
5) little closer to reality
Is it just me or would this address many of the complaints raised recently?
Not sure if it is easy/possible for HTC to put a flag on troopers in a goon to mark them as different/less effective.
If not this then I think City size/number of close GV spawns to city should be proportional to field size. I also really liked the idea of having to take down strat to get a zone base.
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To expound on Bubba's post...
Or maybe you were saying this and I missed it.
A capture has to go through a series of events?
Town down, Goon drops to secure as they do now, but the capture does not happen until an M-3 with troops arrive?
Meanwhile, a direct hit from X# of rockets or #lbs of bombs kills paratroopers waiting in the map room.
Interesting, bubba.
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beetle is not really agreeing with me except in the problem... that of suicide jabo... he is unable to grasp or, more likely, too proud to admit, that my solution is the most elegant and makes the most sense... simply perk all bombs for JABO over 100 lbs say. the perk points could be adjusted to suite. The large fluffs have allready been adjusted down in leathiality to a relaistic and good gameplay level.
beetles solution does nothing except get rid of pee 51's in the arena... the -1 corsairs and f6's are excellent jabo platforms as are other planes that aren't currently all that popular.. A suicide P47 is allmost impossible to stop and yet he would do nothing to limit them. He attacks the problem from the wrong angle and comes up with a non solution.
slap... with closer fields... a whole clump of em... so what if they took the field? you up pne back and you and I and the dozen other guys all enjoying the fight would just fly the 3/4 sector or less to fight again. the strat guys would be patting themselves on the back or writhing in agony depending on if they had "captured" the field or "lost" it. we, of course, would not care one way or the other but everyone would have a good time. If the field were down to 25% fuel... who cares? plenty of fuel to get to the fight 3/4 sector or less away... I would also suggest that all planes could take off so long as any hanger was up. I would call "capture" when all hangers, ack and VH were down.
lazs
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Lazs, me old China - you are wrong about me. I'm not trying to solve your suicide jabo "problem". I would like to see fewer of the big 3 - P51/LA7/Spit ix - and that was the subject of my nominal perks suggestion. Said suggestion would also mean that the P51 would be less likely to be used as a suicide jabo, but that was not why I made the suggestion. As for perking bombs, it would not make any difference. The P51 can carry 8 rockets - or is it 10? And if I wanted to embark on de-ackage/fuel porkage, that would be my loadout - NOT bombs. About the only thing I use bombs for is the VH, and only then the VH at a major airfield. Vehicle base VHs can be killed with 8 rockets.
And that is why my perkage extension would apply to planes - not bombs/ammo.
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Originally posted by beet1e
....So why don't we introduce some nominal perk costs for some planes, for the same reason that the Chog was perked, which was that it was completely unbalancing the arena just as all this suicide/horde/steamroller/pork-n-auger/fuel-porkage is unbalancing the arena right now? A nominal 4pp for a P51 or TYPH would not seem unreasonable.....
...The suicide fuel porkery etc. would be reduced because [/b]the dweebs that do it would have to earn PP to fly their P51 pork-n-auger sorties,[/b] and...
.....so that we couldn't have a horde of P51 P&A guys beating up a field and making it impossible to take off - or at least it would get very expensive for them to fly those dweeb P&A sorties at 8pp a throw.
Shortly thereafter Beet says:
Originally posted by beet1e Lazs, me old China - you are wrong about me. I'm not trying to solve your suicide jabo "problem". I would like to see fewer of the big 3 - P51/LA7/Spit ix - and that was the subject of my nominal perks suggestion. Said suggestion would also mean that the P51 would be less likely to be used as a suicide jabo, but that was not why I made the suggestion.
Ya have to love someone that can twist, turn and double back on himself that quick while denying he did any such thing.
Too funny.
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Originally posted by Mr. Toad
Too funny.
Seems like you're the only one laughing.
Except me. :D
I'll try to say it again - slowly - and more concisely. Bombs do not enter into it. Fuel and acks can be porked by strafing or by rockets. Perking bombs won't change your enemies ability to pork your field. Lazs said beetles solution does nothing except get rid of pee 51's in the arena...
... and that's because my solution addresses a different problem - over use of the Big Three (or Four if you prefer, but mainly P51/Spit/LA7). I mentioned the TYPH because it becomes one of the overused planes when someone decides to design a missun. I had a screenshot somewhere with 15 TYPHS on a missun - ridiculous.
The reason that the P51 IS so popular/overused is because it is a good all round plane - fast, manoeuvrable, good fire power, and provides good survivability - in an environment in which 6-calls are not always forthcoming. It does carry bombs, but so do P47/P38/F4U/F6F/110 etc. I am not advocating that those planes (or their bombs) should be perked at all. I have never suggested that bombs should be perked. BTW, I have done plenty of de-acking and fuel porking, but only rarely used bombs.
I think it's time for you to lie down in that bed you made for yourself. I didn't say what you really, really wanted me to have said, and you just can't face it but can't let this ¼ of a chance pass by. Remember that movie with Fred Astaire dancing on the wall while a guy played cards? Maybe he wasn't dancing on the wall, and it was the room that had been "twisted and turned" around. That would explain why, in the out take, the cards flew past the guys head when he let go of them. Think on the analogy for a while in relation to your comments about twisting and turning...
... and then put away your fishing tackle. It's a bad day, and the loch is as smooth as a mill pond. You've cast your line and caught nothing. And now even the worm on your hook is laughing at you.
And there I must take my leave of you. The warmer climes of Côte d'Azur beckon. See you on Thursday.
Toodle-Pip! :D
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LoL!
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believe me.. toad is not the only one laughing at you beetle... sooo.... you want to perk the big eight or ten pr so in order to .... Have more variety? and you don't care about jabo except that you did care a few posts back except that you also worry about overused planes like the yak that is number 16 except that it can kill you so you...
Or is this just one of your long winded and convoluted "perk the La7" posts? And they say I have a one track mind!
lazs
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Ah..nevermind
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Originally posted by Bubbaj6
Sorry if this was already mentioned, but halway through the thread and almost time to leave work.. sooo:
I know this porbably isn't possible currently, but perhaps if it took 30 troopers from a goon (arbitrary number) and only 10 from an m-3 to capture a base?
And this penalizes people attacking from a direction where the vehicle spawns don't allow you to spawn vehicles to the field. Go back and look at the various terrains, and look for cases where fields sit with unidrectional spawns -- in some cases, there are fields that can only (in practice) be attacked by vehicles from a single other field, which are nonetheless sitting in the middle of four or five fields. You'd have to go back and redo vehicle spawns to equalize the situation.
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Capturing fields too hard??? WTF ARE YOU GUYS ON??
Kill a dozen buildings, 3 ack, and land troops is too hard? Same thing required to capture a dirt runway as a huge zone field.... At the very least I feel it should 10,20,30 troops based on field size..
I say move map room back to the base and still require town to be flat. Its already too easy. One guy can do it...
Making fields easier to capture just helps the milkrunners.
someone said they didn't like the flashing base icons... HELLO?? the flashing icon makes perfect sense IMO. Or are these 'bases' and 'towns' deserted with no communication system?
Capturing a base with 1 or even 2 guys is a joke IMO. I'd like to see base capture require more realistic strategies/tactics. Even a heavily defended base can be stolen out from under a team currently which again I dislike +) Sure it feels great to get the steal.
Dunno where the solution lies... for me.. Hmm best setup that comes to mind is two maprooms, one in town one on the base. Both have to be captured to have a full functional base. Capture the town maproom = cuts off supplies and troops to the base. (though any existing troops at the base are ok) Capture the base maproom, no troops or supplies until town also captured.
Player mannable 88's at both town and base, more acks at town, and town 4x larger. Stead of having to destroy whole town, have key buildings/encampments which need to be destroyed.
SKurj
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A swarm of planes storms in, first one kills the VH, the rest de-ack the field, and then they have a vulch fest until the city is dead and their goony comes in.
With a well coordinated attack it's easy to capture a base. With a few well placed hits, it's all over and the defenders can't do anything about it. This just isn't right.
And what of the field defenses? Manable ack that fires so slow it's harder than hell to hit an enemy plane unless he is coming directly at you. Constant warps just as the enemy plane comes into range. And one tiny hit from way out instanly kills the ack.
Then, of course, you have the Osty, which is almost as difficult to hit an enemy, but at least can survive a bit. But has a range far to short to do anything about bombers... even low ones. The M16 is better at hitting moving targets, but too easy to kill.
Then you have the cities located out of range, and often out of sight from the field without any defense but a couple of ack that can be taken out on the first pass. With the VH down and swarms of planes over the base, there is no defense. Worst are the cities with spawn points right next to them. It's easier for the enemy to get to them than the defenders.
Then there are trhe jabo guys who can take out hangers on every drop. What happened to the non-precision bombing we were supposed to have back then? How can one plane take out the VH every time, first try, without worry about getting killed? I know some guys practised until they could do it well, but no amount of practise can stop them.
All in all, there is very poor defense at the fields making it so much easier for the mass swarms to take them with impunity. Give us manable 88s, and give us some defense for our cities. Else it's just a contest to see who can swarm faster, and that would be the side who has the most players. We could just as well count the players on each side and declare the one with the most winner.
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I was just wondering if ammo bunkers and fuel tanks in real WW2 fields could take as much bullets as they do in AH.
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hmmmmmmmm...
Maybe 40 mannable 88 batteries at the field, each with 4 guns. All are AI until taken over by a player. And additional 50 or 60 mixed .50 BMG and/or 20mm quad mount positions. About half again of those placed around the city, 20 88's and 30 lighter quads....
Now the 40 plane steamroller attack might be fun for the defenders... if you like that "groundpounder" sort of action.
Moving the pendulum ever closer to the uncapturable base. :)
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Originally posted by Toad
Moving the pendulum ever closer to the uncapturable base. :)
...and ending the game entirely.
I am not a supporter of the massive missions. IMHO recruiting for 15 to 30 minutes is ridiculous ( once again IMHO)..
If a base is not defended or can`t be defended due to mass numbers in a mission it`s just simply no fun.
On the other hand uncapturable bases is defiinitley not the answer, that`s what the game is all about and why it is played by the vast majority.
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well... In my opinion... it isn't so much that the fields are too hard to capture as it is that they are too easy to make useless... If they are useless they should be automatically captured or... they shouldn't be able to be made useless.
too far apart and too easy to make useless is the problem for both camps... everyone would have more fun if the game moved a little faster with more action.
lazs
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Two maprooms, one in town, one on the airfield. Only 10 troops still needed but 5 in each. The town has to be destroyed as per usual but to get the 5 troops in the airfield means that you have to deack the airfield. Defenders may have a chance at straffing troops before they get into the airfield maproom ala AH of old.
It will also mean either more goons/M3 or a very careful goon to drop 5 on each maproom.
If you want to make it harder then make the town larger. Put in dispersed AA batteries around the perimeter of the airfield.
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Thanks again for all the input. Remember, as a map-maker, I can't do anything but use more or less of the stuff already in the game. I can't change the perk system, nor the underlying strat and capture systems. Stuff I can do, however, might mimic some sorts of systemic changes. This might not be a good idea in all cases, due to the game systems still working underneath as before and assuming everything on top is still the same, which might lead to some strange results. But there are possibilities. For example....
Faking a Change to the Perk System
Somebody said we should have '42-'43 be the norm and perk all planes built after that time. The idea here, besides getting some use out of the early birds, was to limit the availability of really fast planes armed with 1000# bombs and rockets, which are the kamikaze jabos of choice.
Map-makers can approximate this by disabling late-war planes except at a couple of rear fields near HQ, like the 163 is now. You'd still be able to fly late-war planes anywhere on the map, but you'd have to ferry them in from far away via rearm pads. Then once you died, you'd have to do that again. That would pretty much make using such planes for kamikazes impractical. And if it didn't work out, it's easy to turn all planes on again. An additional benefit would be a great reduction in the numbers of nikis and lamer7s seen :).
OTOH, it would have other effects as well. The most obvious is that it would make resets much harder to achieve. As 1 side is pushed back, the defenders would suddenly find the late-war planes close and handy, while the attackers would encounter longer and longer supply lines. Still sound like a good idea?
There are various shades of gray in between this extreme and today's universal availability. For instance, on large maps with multiple zones in each country, you could have late-war planes available only at the large fields in each zone. This would scatter late-war bases evenly around the map and shorten all the supply lines in steps.
Anyway, what do you all think of that?
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Originally posted by Bullethead
snip
There are various shades of gray in between this extreme and today's universal availability. For instance, on large maps with multiple zones in each country, you could have late-war planes available only at the large fields in each zone. This would scatter late-war bases evenly around the map and shorten all the supply lines in steps.
Anyway, what do you all think of that?
A little related history: at AW, we had the problem in the Allies vs Axis ETO Historic terrain arena that one side or the other would milk-run the whole map when the other side wasn't there in numbers.
I worked up a setup doing pretty much what you suggest here, along with limiting ordnance - late-war fighters available in England and Germany only, B17s and jets also (jets limited in number as well). Each side had medium bombers and mid-war planes in France, but no bombers if they reached the other "homeland".
There were at times excursions by each country past France toward the other side, but no more roll-ups of the map. Most of the time, fast and furious action was focused in the "front lines" somewhere in France. With the relatively small numbers in that arena, it was a good result.
Point is, I believe 100% that you could really influence an arena favorably here by exactly the kind of setup "tweaks" you're talking here - just decide what you want to accomplish and go for it.
culero
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culero said:
A little related history: at AW, we had the problem in the Allies vs Axis ETO Historic terrain arena that one side or the other would milk-run the whole map when the other side wasn't there in numbers.
Thanks for pointing that out. It was that way in the main arenas, too, back when captures were relatively easy. 1 side always got steamrollered during non-peak hours by a bunch of milkrunners. Which is why captures have gotten harder over time, in all games. Folks seem to have forgotten that or came along afterwards.
Point is, I believe 100% that you could really influence an arena favorably here by exactly the kind of setup "tweaks" you're talking here - just decide what you want to accomplish and go for it.
Glad you approve. I'm working up a design but am waiting for AH2 so I can build it with the new system instead of having to redo it. In the meantime, I'm thinking about stuff like this.
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Sorry for the delayed reply, Muck, but I guess to summarize what I was thinking:
Capture is the same process as now. deack field, establish air superiority, take down the town, etc. The real difference is that it would take 3 goons (again an arbitrary number) to capture or a single M3.
This would require a flag being set on troops being carried in a goon to mark them as different than those of an M-3 which I am not sure is possible. If it were though it would have the effect of making base capture a little harder, require greater air supriority and give defenders a chance to up from an adjacent base and thwart capture (which would probably lead to more furballs). As a side benefit it would also promote the land war a bit more.
Right now, a base can be captured in 3 minutes or so when an organized effort is under way. This doesn't give any chance for the defenders to up and turn things around. In other words the advantage is with the attackers.
It also only takes one goon to get in and drop troops. Most missions I have seen typically run only that one goon. If manpower is available they will go with 2. If the goon pilot is there when he should be this still denies the defenders a response from another base and is where I see the "easy" part of base capture because it can happen so quickly. To further illustrate the point, think of the "carpet goon" method of capture on a well defended base. This is where a bunch of goons up and come into a base and all drop troops hoping that 10 out of the 30 or 40 they dropped will make it in. Essentially this is saturating the defenders.
Now imagine the above if it took 30 troops to get a capture: more goons in the air. More negative effect for the attackers if one is gotten, etc. Couple this with the tendency for most goon drivers to play follow the leader and you can see how it would require more time to take a base. This extra time would allow the defenders to up from an adjacent bae and turn back the attackers or to simply run the attackers out of gas and bullets before they succeed. Either way a furball is probably going to happen.
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I was just wondering if ammo bunkers and fuel tanks in real WW2 fields could take as much bullets as they do in AH.
Devourer
A better question would be:
Did front-line airfields subject to regular air attack have "ammo bunkers" and "Fuel tanks" located centrally out in the open, in the same plce at every airfield? Realistically, damaging ammo or fuel at the specific airfield should probably not be modeled in AH, or should reflect limited ability to only destroy a fuel bowser or two unlucky enough to get caught out in the open.
When the LW faced fuel shortages for its tanks and planes it wasn't because of jabo "field" attacks, it was because of loss of territority, strategic attacks on refineries and interdiction attackes on supply routes. None of which matter all that much with the current strat model.
What is wrong with the idea of having to reduce a strat target first in order to make it easier to capture the bases in that zone? Otherwise, why bother with start targets (or heavy bombers, or trains or truck convoys etc.) given the fact that they are really not needed at all in the current game?
Charon
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What you guys are asking for with harder capture is that the field stay useless for even longer while the end game to captuire happens... the preliminary will still happen, de ack and de fuel... the field will sit useless... you will have in effect doubled the distance to any fight.
The real problem is that the people who like to have fun can't/won't design maps and the enemies of fun and sky accountants love that kind of drudgery and attention. so we end up with maps that are no fun.
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
What you guys are asking for with harder capture is that the field stay useless for even longer while the end game to captuire happens... the preliminary will still happen, de ack and de fuel... the field will sit useless... you will have in effect doubled the distance to any fight.
The real problem is that the people who like to have fun can't/won't design maps and the enemies of fun and sky accountants love that kind of drudgery and attention. so we end up with maps that are no fun.
lazs
Lazs ... what I have been asking for is to make the fields harder to pork so that the fight/defense can continue. This implys "harder capture" ... the longer we are allowed to fight/furball, the harder it is to capture the field. As it is now, it doesn't take much to pork a field and put us "out of business".
Like last night when we were furballing our fool heads off with the CV planes, others snuck in from behind us and easily porked the field which eventually lead to our "loss of fun".
Had it been difficult for them to pork the field, who knows, we might have gotten an extra 15-30 minutes of fighting. It was inevitable that they were going to smash our field last night due to the shear numbers, but another 15-30 minutes would have been cool with me.
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Anyone look at Charon's post?
Some interesting stuff there.
Consider this...
Though we know nothing will change until AH2.
A field stays at 125% fuel until all the current fuel bunkers at said field are down. ONce all down, fuel goes to 100% (of course, these numbers should be tweaked). Now, to bring the fuel down at said field to 25%, the attackers must destroy the entire zone refinery, and any fuel convoys that are enroute.
There are some merits to this idea. It brings the buffs back into the game, makes a fields fuel harder to pork, and gives more fuel to the furballers. It also can lead to new missions like SEADs for fuel convoys and may even lead to furballs at the fuel refinerys.
Any thoughts?
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Originally posted by lazs2
The real problem is that the people who like to have fun can't/won't design maps and the enemies of fun and sky accountants love that kind of drudgery and attention. so we end up with maps that are no fun.
lazs
:D
Makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Face it... us furballers came here straight from "Short Attention Span Theater". An hour ride in a buff has no appeal for me and neither does an hour spent designing a terrain tile. But a quick furball! Yeah! I'm in! Now, if we could only make a map in 15 minutes. ;)
OTOH, those that like the long drawn out missions and the detailed strategy of AH obviously DO have the patience to painstakingly build a map that will enhance their style of play.
BTW, thanks to the FreeBirds for allowing me to participate in the the rocking, rolling free-for-all in the DA last night! Most enjoyable!
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slap... of course you are right but.... do we really want such a stagnant front? If the field is hard to capture and hard to pork... we will simply have very little or no movement... huge insect like squads will simply spend more time in the tower organizinfg a "raid" that is larger... at any one time you will have 20% in GV's and 20% in the tower and another 20% in flight to mob a field.
with easier capture and closer fields you will have the front move more quickly... imagine if , instead of merely porking our field the attackers had captured it. Now also imagine that the next field of ours was 3/4 of a sector back from the one captured.... there would be no point in spending 20 minutes in the tower gathering an insect horde.... the scene would change to fast for that... more people would be in the air at any one time. everyone would appear to be inmvolved in the 'war'..... sense of community would be better. more chance for newbies to learn.
but what am I saying... the guys who design maps are the enemies of fun... if they had their way there would be a fight every hour or so... look at the text buffer on the big maps and how seldom we see kill messages compared to the small maps.
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
slap... of course you are right but.... do we really want such a stagnant front? If the field is hard to capture and hard to pork... we will simply have very little or no movement... huge insect like squads will simply spend more time in the tower organizinfg a "raid" that is larger... at any one time you will have 20% in GV's and 20% in the tower and another 20% in flight to mob a field.
Of course I am right !!! ... and at the same time so are you. They would probably have to amass a big/huge "raid" to affect a capture ... so what ... as long as we get decent amount of time to fight, prior to the inevitable, then thats fine with me.
Once the base is taken, we move onto the next "furball area". Its just that most times it takes too long to get a good furball, with balance, and it takes just minutes to have it ripped right out from under us. It took a good 20 minutes to get last nights furball to a good fighting state, prior to that, it was us clubbing baby seals. Then the word got out and BAMM ... fuel porked ... hangers porked ... fight over.
Originally posted by lazs2
with easier capture and closer fields you will have the front move more quickly... imagine if , instead of merely porking our field the attackers had captured it. Now also imagine that the next field of ours was 3/4 of a sector back from the one captured.... there would be no point in spending 20 minutes in the tower gathering an insect horde.... the scene would change to fast for that... more people would be in the air at any one time. everyone would appear to be inmvolved in the 'war'..... sense of community would be better. more chance for newbies to learn.
I am imagining lifting off, get into the fight, the field is captured in a blink of an eye, and I am sitting now more than a sector away from my nearest base in a Spit V ... I won't be getting home in a short amount of time, and as I try to RTB, every jamoke and their brother will be lifting off from the newly captured field looking to clean up the likes of you and me in early war rides. Another important point is ... I DON'T WANT TO AUGER just to get to the next field
Originally posted by lazs2
but what am I saying... the guys who design maps are the enemies of fun... if they had their way there would be a fight every hour or so... look at the text buffer on the big maps and how seldom we see kill messages compared to the small maps.
I think that you are painting the map makers here with a very broad brush. "Enemies of fun" is a little harsh and I don't believe for one second that they intentionally design/make maps to hinder the furballers ... they might not haven taken it into consideration, but not intentionally.
I have been here over a year and a half now, and only within the past couple of months is really the first time that I have seen "furballers" really stand up and make notice. I believe that the "voice" has been heard, and any mapmaker from this point forward would be negligent in not taking into consideration some of the requests/points that you/me/13th/furballers have brought forth.
NoBaddy took notice and took action ... a big <> to him all day long. Next time BigIsles is up, the author of that map, needs to watch and see where changes need to be made in the similar vein that NoBaddy did. I think that AKDESERT can be salvaged, its just who wants to do it ... AKs or HTC.
I HATE the small maps (Mindano the most) ... with the amount of people that we have logged on, and currently with the Knight's being short handed most of the time (NOTE: not a whine) ... I do more evasive work, dodging the gangs, than I do fighting. I get my share of kills, but most are defensive kills.
I do like Charon's ideas ... Problem is is that would probably require some recoding of the game, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. I met Bullethead at the con (a most enjoyable character), and I believe that if he is on the path of creating a new map for the MA, he will try to make it work for EVERYBODY, so we all can have fun ... right Bullethead ?
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Slapshot said:
I met Bullethead at the con, and I believe that if he is on the path of creating a new map for the MA, he will try to make it work for EVERYBODY, so we all can have fun ... right Bullethead ?
Well, that's my eventual hope, but it might not ever see the light of day. Making a map, especially one the size of Pizza or Trinity, is a gawdawful amount of work. That's why we don't see new maps very often. It's not the fault of the editor program, either. That might not be the most user-friendly software out there, but it's still pretty simple to get the hang of. Even folks with a furballer's attention span :D can, with a day or 2 of effort, begin turning out tiny H2H maps that work just fine. Making a bigger map is really no different except in size.
That's the problem--the nearly unimaginable number of things you need to put on the map, and check, tweak, re-check, and re-tweak ad nauseum. Those who have never tried making a map just can't appreciate it. That's why it kinda bugs me to see the Pizza map slammed so hard all the time. Don't get me wrong, I don't like that map much either, but I know full-well how hard it was to make, and I've not yet done anything comparable myself, so I feel the only people who've earned the right to damn it are those who have made an equally big map.
And that, IMHO, is the bottom line when it comes to map-makers vs. fliers. Because making maps is such an enormous investment of time that could be spent killing dweebs, chasing women, drinking, etc. (I'm talking MONTHS), those who build maps to completion get the opinion, and IMHO justifiably so, that the map should suit their own preferences above all, and if you don't like that, go build your own damn map. The editor's there for free, all it takes is commitment.
So, if I ever manage to get a big map built, you can be sure it'll emphasize the things that I personally like the best. At the same time, however, I want to make the map as attractive to everybody else as possible. Which is why I asked for everybody's opinions in this thread. However, there are real limitations to what you can do within the context of the overall strat, capture, and reset systems, so I can't implement everything I thought was a good idea. And like I said, I might not ever complete my dream map. Still, this thread IMHO will be worth it anyway because a) existing map makers might take its ideas into account, and b) it might encourage some more folks to make their own maps.
Now, finally getting to your specific question....
I don't really think it's possible to make a map that "works for EVERYBODY" simultaneously. The land-grab/reset and strat bombing things are inescapable due to the underlying game systems, and CVs are pretty easy to work in. The hard things are finding places for both furballers and GV vs. GV battles, where those types of fights can go on for a long time, and folks logging in at any time will usually find them available. In fact, I'd say these goals are well-nigh unachievable as the game currently works.
The basic problem is, the GVs and furballers need fields to launch from, and in AH you can't make fields uncapturable. So no matter what you do in the basic map design to make space for this type of action, the vast herd of landgrabbers who want the reset will eventually capture the bases set aside for these purposes.
On top of this, you have the problem of AH geography. Using terrain features to protect GV or furball areas causes other problems. Look at Trinity and Pizza, which use terrain in different ways to protect GV areas. On Trinity, the central GV area is surrounded by high mountains to deter planes from messing up the GVers' fun. Problem is, these same mountains keep the furballers of all 3 sides from getting together in 1 place very easily. Pizza, OTOH, has the canyons full of GV bases, hoping folks won't want to blow so much alt going down in there, and thus leaving the central area free for furballers. However, the problem there is that to create the canyons, which can't be below sea level, the surrounding land has to be at very high alt, and to avoid big mountains the AKs sloped the ground up smoothly from miles away, so many airfields are at bizarrely high alts.
The other alternative is to put furball and GV area off in corners, so far away from the main play area that nobody from there could capture or pork them. But this can't be done with fields out there because the fields have to be captured for the whole reset system to work. The only way this might work would be to not have actual bases out there, but just spawn points from bases that logically should be among the last to fall in a reset. But the problem then would be letting folks know about these corner areas, at least for plane spawns. The plane spawn arrows wouldn't show on the map, and there wouldn't be field icons out there, either.
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I think the map makers heard only what they wanted to hear and that the next maps will be even worse than these with nothing for the furballers to do.
lazs
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>>As AH has evolved, HTC has made field captures harder and harder. That's why fields have gotten more acks over time<<
BH:
Yet it is still somewhat easy to capture a field, although more difficult than before. And for one reason in particular:
Yes, there are more field acks but, the field acks are only 37mm with a limited range. A low flying Buff, yet at least 5k can fly back and forth over a field and lay waste to important parts of that field. Cratering is a non factor, yet in RL it was very much a factor.
Field acks are way too easy to kill by a strafing Jabo; even with a dead on shot by a Field ack. A Jabo can start shooting at an ack from 1k and score hits, and simply fly off w/o so much as a scratch. A 90 mm or an 88 mm cannon would go a lot farther to make field capture tougher, than the 37 mm. And during the RL WW2, field acks were used for field defense and Bridge defense etc. at much larger caliber than is modeled in AH. IMO, all that is needed to make field capture more of a challenge is replacement of 37mm filed acks with larger caliber guns for defense. We already have the building toughness and dispersed fuel storage facilities.
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>>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<<
Zanth:
Bravo! An objective opinion! And balance is a much argued point in AH as well.
There are other problems which IMO are country related, as well as specific to the nature of a field's defenses; it is still to easy to kill a field. Further, IMO a case in point is the Pizza map. Too large, and therefore too easily milked; a group of 2 or 3 can still milk a base on the pizza map, and prevent a reset into the bargain. That, and the prediliction for the Nits to go after Rooks regardless of whether they have a snowballs chance in hell of catching up to Bish for the reset:p Makes for a very boring experience at times. There are all kinds playing this game, some gamier than others. The purists want a different kind of gameplay, the fighter types want still another type of gameplay, the dweebs simply want to be recognized, and will do anything to gain perk points and kills (to include kamikaze attacks; HO ramming etc.)
For me, keep it simple, put in 75mm or 88 mm manneable acks, leave the 37mm acks unmanned, and the rest will take care of itself. Even the swarms will have to take a less hazardous approach to a field on the attack, rather than the overwhelming Tiffie attack, and the no ping a field ack kills by strafers.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
snip
Thanks for pointing that out. It was that way in the main arenas, too, back when captures were relatively easy. 1 side always got steamrollered during non-peak hours by a bunch of milkrunners. Which is why captures have gotten harder over time, in all games.
Food for thought:
Remember how it was often lamented at AW, after the new AW2/3 base capture system came out, missing the times when the fights were fierce in the middle all the time because that was where the only capturable fields were?
Toward the end, we finally got a handle on the steamrollering in the MA, to an extent, by leaving the fields along the lines between the default country borders easy to capture, but making the ones farther away progressively harder, then leaving some in the rear areas uncapturable.
This had the effect of focusing action along the borders. Those fields swapped hands back and forth easily and often - but the increasing difficulty of capture as penetration continued made it easier for an outnumbered country to defend.
culero
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Originally posted by lazs2
I think the map makers heard only what they wanted to hear and that the next maps will be even worse than these with nothing for the furballers to do.
lazs
The bottom line is, put up or shut up. If you don't like the maps out there today, or even the opinions of those whose maps are as yet pure speculation, build your own damn map.
Go ahead. I dare you. The editor's right there on the download page. If my whiskey-soaked brain can figure it out, I'm sure yours can, too, despite your intoxicant or drug of choice.
That goes for everybody out there. HT himself appears to be pretty open-minded about new maps, because he knows better than anybody what a pain they are to make. He seems to be glad to get ANYTHING out of us irresponsible drunks.
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Interesting discussion. Took some reading to get thru it all.
I like the suggestion to put a map room at the airfield and the town.
I also like the ideas about perk points required for all of the late model rides.
I would even support a reset of the perk points each camp. This would in effect cause a rolling plane set as no one would be able to afford the perked rides in the opening days of a camp.
I'm not sure about making the buildings more numerous or hardened as I found I lean more to the discussion about stopping the quake warrior mentality. The constant pork, auger, replane cycle needs to be dealt with. I am not sure how we should approach that tho.
Personally I have always been in favor of a limit on each aircraft type available to a pilot in a 24 hour period. 3 of ea. or something like that. So you get into this wild pork and auger routine and you will be out of airframes in a short period of time.
Perhaps only Attack Hops can carry bombs, and only X number of attack deaths allowed in a 24 hour period. :confused:
Just some thoughts to add to the confusion.
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SOUP! :)
Long time, good to see ya.
culero
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Originally posted by culero
SOUP! :)
Long time, good to see ya.
culero
CULERO!
Tks for the nice words! Good to see you as well!
Hey is there any screen shots or downloads to see this new AH2?
SOUP
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I don't drink.
lazs
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bullethead.. why the sham? I mean, if you don't want opinions that differ from yours then why pretend to? Are you saying that if you don't draw a map then you have no right to an opinion about the maps you pay to play?
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
I think the map makers heard only what they wanted to hear and that the next maps will be even worse than these with nothing for the furballers to do.
lazs
but what am I saying... the guys who design maps are the enemies of fun... if they had their way there would be a fight every hour or so...
Maybe Bullethead was insulted? I know I would have been.
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Culero,
Reading a bit more slowly.. I like what you are recommending as well. Might be a fine place to start... and then use the perk system etc as well.
I really want a system that requires all of us to "earn" our rides. If you constantly auger or die, then you will eventually have a choice of a C-47 or an M-3. Also resetting the perks each camp will keep folks from building huge amounts and allowing them to waste them.
Oh well.. one Jagdflieger's opinions.. obviously there are many!
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4510-
What you are proposing has been mentioned before, and is quite unpopular with many people.
I think AHII may fit the bill, as I like the idea of earning rides as well, and am eagerly awaiting this release.
The MA has, and will probably always be a free for all when it comes to almost all aircraft.
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Originally posted by 4510
Culero,
Reading a bit more slowly.. I like what you are recommending as well. Might be a fine place to start... and then use the perk system etc as well.
I really want a system that requires all of us to "earn" our rides. If you constantly auger or die, then you will eventually have a choice of a C-47 or an M-3. Also resetting the perks each camp will keep folks from building huge amounts and allowing them to waste them.
Oh well.. one Jagdflieger's opinions.. obviously there are many!
Well, I wasn't so much as recommending any specific thing as I was just offering examples of what had been done to accomplish certain aims in AW, and what the results were.
AH is a different game, with different factors involved. For instance, the increasingly hard fields with a few uncapturables was something we did in AW because when a country was all rolled up, someone had to be summoned to do an arena reset manually. Since AH does this automatically, and even sets it as a goal (rewarded by perks for the "winners") it wouldn't be a starter here. Obviously, the game designers *want* the players to be able to roll an arena up.
I was just saying that perhaps being able to vary field hardnesses could address some concerns expressed in this thread. For instance, this coupled with making bombers unavailable from fields in the HQ areas might make the "end game" in the smaller terrains here more viable with the numbers we see in arena now.
I DAMN sure don't agree with the "use 'em or lose 'em" idea for perk points. That would make them useless for players whose frequency of play isn't conducive to earning points.
I agree it'd be nice to sonehow limit the availability of planes to porkNauger dweebs, I hate that **** too. But making it simply tied to deaths ain't right. The system would somehow have to differentiate between deaths due to combat damage and deaths due to undamaged planes crashing to be fair, IMO.
culero
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Originally posted by muckmaw
4510-
What you are proposing has been mentioned before, and is quite unpopular with many people.
I think AHII may fit the bill, as I like the idea of earning rides as well, and am eagerly awaiting this release.
The MA has, and will probably always be a free for all when it comes to almost all aircraft.
Yes.. a rolling plane set wasn't really popular in AW either. (sigh) But I have always liked the idea. (marching to a different drummer?)
I enjoy the technology progression going from the early war planes to the later. I know one could pick an early war plane but it becomes pointless to try and fly it in the MA when you can't hardly catch a cold with a 109E for example.. much less have a lot of firepower.
Its interesting and fun when the power balance swings back and forth between the different models available.
I also have ALWAYS had a problem with an intentional fight and auger to get a new ride thing. Especially when it aids in keeping numbers unbalanced at a point of attack to speed up land grabbing.
Having said that I have no REAL dog in the fight... I don't get to fly as often as most, so I pretty much figure I am flying in an arena that is optimized for the mass that flys regularly. Just give me a field to take off from that isn't capped, a couple of FWs or so (incase I get shot out of mine ) and I am a happy Jagdflieger.
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Originally posted by 4510
I also have ALWAYS had a problem with an intentional fight and auger to get a new ride thing. Especially when it aids in keeping numbers unbalanced at a point of attack to speed up land grabbing.
Hey Soup, great to see you again! Is your son playing AH too?
I hate the arena capture concept. I think that if we didn't have that objective, there would less emphasis on land grabbing and more on the fight.
Many a night I've had great fun fighting over one or two bases, in a remote part of the arena, unaffected by the land grabbers. But eventually they work their way around to where we're playing and pork our fun.
It reminds me of that Internet ad game where you "bonk" the bunney. After you get so you can bonk him at will, the appeal wears off.
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something for the field defenses....
the best A/A was the german 3 barrel
20mm , 88s is more good to stop ground
attacks (you need some sec to reload a
88,for effective A/Fighter fire,high buffs is another story ).
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Originally posted by Grizzly
Hey Soup, great to see you again! Is your son playing AH too?
Hey there Grizz.....
Nope.. WU is involved in other things... Cars.. and such....
Can't remember the last time he flew.
Matter of fact.. for all I know he is bonking bunnies! ;)
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Originally posted by 4510
Hey there Grizz.....
Nope.. WU is involved in other things... Cars.. and such....
Can't remember the last time he flew.
Matter of fact.. for all I know he is bonking bunnies! ;)
Better bunneys than grizzlies <=o[
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>>Right now, a base can be captured in 3 minutes or so when an organized effort is under way. This doesn't give any chance for the defenders to up and turn things around. In other words the advantage is with the attackers. <<
Bubba:
A base can be captured in such a short time usually when the intent is to milkrun. I submit it is a lot more difficult of a prospect when there is opposition. Defenders cannot up when 15 or so milkers decide to hit a base up in the far north or down in the south, where there are no nmez, or when nmez are otherwise occupied fighting. Yet, gameplay cannot be dictated to those who play the game in this way.
I agree totally with your point re: the advantage is with the attackers but....not always, and certainly with an able and spirited defense team.
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>>I don't drink<<
You should :D
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Originally posted by Devourer
I was just wondering if ammo bunkers and fuel tanks in real WW2 fields could take as much bullets as they do in AH.
A lit cigarette was enough to blow an ammo or fuel dump sky high in real life.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Bullethead
Thanks again for all the input. Remember, as a map-maker, I can't do anything but use more or less of the stuff already in the game. I can't change the perk system, nor the underlying strat and capture systems. Stuff I can do, however, might mimic some sorts of systemic changes. This might not be a good idea in all cases, due to the game systems still working underneath as before and assuming everything on top is still the same, which might lead to some strange results. But there are possibilities. For example....
Faking a Change to the Perk System
Map-makers can approximate this by disabling late-war planes except at a couple of rear fields near HQ, like the 163 is now. You'd still be able to fly late-war planes anywhere on the map, but you'd have to ferry them in from far away via rearm pads. Then once you died, you'd have to do that again. That would pretty much make using such planes for kamikazes impractical. And if it didn't work out, it's easy to turn all planes on again. An additional benefit would be a great reduction in the numbers of nikis and lamer7s seen :).
That would be a good idea for buffs, since I don't recall too many bombers being stationed on front line bases. But trying to do that to fighters so you can attempt to limit one flies, IMO is not a good idea. While you're trying to decrease the usage of the Big Four late war planes (N1K2, La7, Spitfire Mk IX and P-51D) you're in effect also punishing the ones that fly those other 'less' glamerous late war planes. Frankly, I have no desire to fly any other fighter than the P-38 nor do I have any desire to fly 5+ sectors just to find a fight because people are whining about the late war planes. Which would eventually lead me to have no desire to fly in AH.
With the current plane set as it is, there's no real alternative for me since there aren't any early war P-38s in the plane set.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by lazs2
bullethead.. why the sham? I mean, if you don't want opinions that differ from yours then why pretend to? Are you saying that if you don't draw a map then you have no right to an opinion about the maps you pay to play?
lazs
Maybe he's trying to tell you that if you can do a better job and actually have something worthwhile to contribute other than your endless whines, by all means step up to the plate.
Ack-Ack
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so ack ack... where is your map? Are your opinions more valuable than mine? What I was saying was that it appears that the map makers want gameplay to go only one direction. any suggestion that appears to further that cause is considered brilliant by the mapmakers. Any suggestin that furthers gameplay for the action/furballers is looked at as a whine.
If I did a map I would certainly expect that I would get negative comments. Listening to the yes men and people with the same agenda is pointless.
lazs
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your opinion was interesting 8 months ago, you've said nothing new since then. Time to make your own map or stfu.
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Originally posted by lazs2
so ack ack... where is your map? Are your opinions more valuable than mine? What I was saying was that it appears that the map makers want gameplay to go only one direction. any suggestion that appears to further that cause is considered brilliant by the mapmakers. Any suggestin that furthers gameplay for the action/furballers is looked at as a whine.
If I did a map I would certainly expect that I would get negative comments. Listening to the yes men and people with the same agenda is pointless.
lazs
BH threw the gauntlet down at your feet, not mine.
BH came in here with the honest attempt at gathering player opinions so he could better create a map that would appeal to the broadest range of players. All you've done is try to pass off your whines as opinions. You did the same thing with NB in a thread he posted about the revised Trinity map he had been working on. In fact, it just looked like you copied and pasted your whines from that thread to this one.
ack-ack
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nothing has changed in 8 months if that is the criteria for putting forth a suggestion. maps have been made but they are worse than the small ones that HTC made. every new map is exactly the same with a different terrain.... with the exception of a "tank town" so that GV guys can have fun. All the suggestions here are old rehashes... not one new idea in the whole group.
Any new idea that promotes action and fun and it is deemed impossible.. such as, area arena (much like tank town) for early, mid and late war planes... But if the new idea is mind numbing, boring "strat" it is greeted with a whole slew of wet pantied oohs and ahhs by the "make the fields 2 sectors apart so that everyone I bounce will be lulled into snoozing" crowd.
The sky accountants ruined WB's they are working on ruining AH.
lazs
Public Relations Officer for the BK's