I hope folks had fun. I did. I thank you all for playing in it.
This event is basically a "This Day in WWII" event. Unlike scenarios, The "This Day" series of events are designed so that any player can participate without any prior preparation at all (just show up and play) and so that there are no player-enforced rules (i.e., a player can do anything that the arena lets him -- there is nothing he has to be aware of not doing or suffer a penalty to his side). Also, they are generally built so that a side balance of 50/50 results in approximately equal (although perhaps not perfect) balance. There are no pre-assigned CO's for each side -- that duty goes to whomever a side picks to be its leader.
We take these constraints and then craft something that has the theme of a particular battle. We use an approximatley historical mix of aircraft and vehicles, the best terrain match we have available, but with the balance and "no player-enforced rules" as top priorities.
In this particular case, Battle of the Bulge, the reason for turning off aircraft half way through is that for the vast majority of the Battle of the Bulge, it was a ground war. Also, in other special events, we have had people who like tanking complain bitterly about aircraft. Of all the "This Day in WWII" events, I figured there should be one that gives tankers their chance at a good ground fight without a lot of airplanes bombing them, so decided for the 2nd half turning off aircraft.
All of the other "This Day in WWII" events have aircraft for the whole thing. (The full list is here:
http://ahevents.org/this-day-in-wwii-category/this-day-in-wwii.html ).
For balance in this one, in the first running of this back in January, the allies won. The same thing happened to the axis side there that happened to the allied side this time around: they had fewer retained players over time. That seems to be more the determining factor in these -- which side keeps more players to the end. Also, in the 10 pm running, being on the axis side, I noticed that the axis side had quite good organization, which should affect outcome.
At any rate, if you liked this style of event (which, again, is designed to be simpler to play in), please join us for these:
http://ahevents.org/this-day-in-wwii-category/this-day-in-wwii.htmlAnd, again, thank you for playing!