Overall Strategic/Operational Reworking Of Maps

[Oddball-CAF]

Example to Win the Map the winning Country must:
A) Own 90% of its own Airfields, and 20% of each of the other Countries' Airfields
and
B) Have reduced each of the other Countries' Strat Targets by 20% at the time of the capture of the last Airfield.
<S>

Hi Patches,
  While my idea is based more on an "operational scale", I see your point in adding a "strategic"
requirement to the "winning" of a map. My only problem with that is that it forces folks into
flying a 5,6,8 or 10 sector one-way mission to achieve a reset.
  Leaving it at an operational scale system (theoretically) ensures more fights/furballs,
more mission/goal oriented options even for those guys who are just poppin' in
for an hour or so.
  One thing I think many of us forget is that there is a large percentage of
players who don't have the luxury of time that some of us do.
  For those who enjoy the long, long range "strategic" missions, they could
as an alternative, be hitting 2, 3, 4, 5 or more localized strats/city complexes.

Best regards, Odd

[Patches1]

Hello, Folks,

Hi Patches,
  While my idea is based more on an "operational scale", I see your point in adding a "strategic"
requirement to the "winning" of a map. My only problem with that is that it forces folks into
flying a 5,6,8 or 10 sector one-way mission to achieve a reset.

<S> Oddball-CAF, sir. Yes, I did expect this objection to arise, but my hopes are that we can figure out a way to overcome this objection and incorporate "Strategic Bombing" it into the end product in a fashion that utilizes your ideas, yet only makes winning the map marginally more difficult.

I'm open to ideas. I purposely presented the requirements high initially to stimulate idea exchanges. I don't want to force anyone to do anything they don't wish to do, but it is my idea to give those Folks who fly bombers a very tangible purpose in the game related to winning the map that is not grounded in simply mindless bombing of GVs, Town centers, and Strats: I want to make those hours of flying to the Stats mean something for those bomber pilots who take the time to bomb the Strat City.

Just some thoughts...

[Tilt]

    There would be no "denial" of its use until/unless ALL fields in that AO were
captured. At which point, we could abstract that the civilian populace has either
been pacified or subjegated into rebuilding the strats/city and it would then
begin functioning under the "new ownership", supplying in full the
airfields of the invaders.

  The "uber strats" become excess to needs with this system in place.  
Best regards, Odd

Actually the first para above answers the last question..................

Imagine the following....in one zone we have a city and the radar strat.......... the zone gets over run and captured........... according to the above the invaders then also take possesion of the city and the radar strat.

Lets focus on the Radar strat...... if it is lost to the defenders (cos the invaders have acquired it by capturing the zone) does this leave the defenders without logistic support for their radar? do they end up unable to repair radar?

It seems to me this would not be condusive to game play.............. one way to still accomodate this (start zones as described above) is to still retain the rear uber strat but make it only capable of supporting #% (30% ? 50%?)of the total country logistics.

This way the zoned strat is still a viable target, still strategic in its value but not the source of total and almost permanent loss of a strat logistic within game play.

[Oddball-CAF]

Lets focus on the Radar strat...... if it is lost to the defenders (cos the invaders have acquired it by capturing the zone) does this leave the defenders without logistic support for their radar? do they end up unable to repair radar?

  If I'm understanding your question correctly, you are asking if the other zones in that area, each of
which would have a ammo, fuel, radar, troop factory (they've lost the radar factory zone)
would lose logistical support (less downtime) for -their- radars. Under this system, they
would not, BUT, the regenerating capacity of field supplies (M3s and C47s) would be
lessened.

  The result of this would be that the defenders would then naturally wish to reaquire
control of that Radar Factor "zone".

  The thing I like best about this setup is that it alleviates a lot of the "whack-a-mole"
base grabbin' crap we see so often in the LWA. Under this system, each country
is nudged a bit into defending/reaquiring bases they may have lost along a line
of battle since they are now directly impacted in a logistical as well as territorial
way.

Best regards, Odd

[Lusche]

I for one would just put in a simple addition:
Leave the central strats as they are and add a railyard complex to each zone, which simply gives another bonus (or malus) to downtimes for all supplyable objects int hat zone only.

So you can either fly
- far and have an impact on the whole enemy country (central strat complex), or
- fly a medium distance (with possibly lesser risk) and cause some regional supply shortfall for the enemies (railyards), or
- fly a short distance and cause local trouble by porking the base.

Strategic-Operational-Tactical strike. Chose your mood, mode and tool for the job  

[Oddball-CAF]

I like this idea a LOT better than mine. We're due for some new
"scenery" in the game, too. Railyards would look sweet. Hell,
unless I'm mistaken, HTC did some work on the trains in AH
months ago. Mind you , I've never actually seen them in-game
except years ago when they seemed to be everywhere, but I
would think adding tracks and railyards a lot simpler than
my now retracted strats/zones idea.

Best regards, Odd

[Hazard69]

Imagine the following....in one zone we have a city and the radar strat.......... the zone gets over run and captured........... according to the above the invaders then also take possesion of the city and the radar strat.

Lets focus on the Radar strat...... if it is lost to the defenders (cos the invaders have acquired it by capturing the zone) does this leave the defenders without logistic support for their radar? do they end up unable to repair radar?

It seems to me this would not be condusive to game play.............. one way to still accomodate this (start zones as described above) is to still retain the rear uber strat but make it only capable of supporting #% (30% ? 50%?)of the total country logistics.

The question is not really an accurate one. If the invaders took over the entire zone (i.e ring of fields surrounding the local strats) then the defenders are now essentially flying into enemy territory. It should be no different than a rook flying into knight held airspace is today.

Also remember the strats simply affect the rebuild time of structures/equipment on the bases.

Now if we reverse the question and say what if the invaders have captured all the fields but one, what is the situation like?

Well it would be like this, all the captured fields now belong to the invaders and their radars etc function as normal. However, the defenders downing a invader held radar will have a much more severe impact than the invaders dropping the defender held radar.
This is because, the defenders will continue to receive the supply convoys as normal to their last outpost. The invaders on the other hand will not be receiving regular supplies to their captured bases (equivalent to having the strats at 0 for them), until they capture all the fields surrounding the strats and thus the strat itself. This makes it vital for the invaders to capture fields in a localised area and makes it a little tougher to steam roll the weaker/outnumbered defensive country.

Well thats my $0.02.

I like Lusche's idea of localised logistic centers replacing localised strats too. Essentially the same thing, but adds an element of deep strike larger impact missions vs localised effect missions. It also entails a bit less map reworking. Plus it calls for more trains to strafe and thats always a good thing!   

[Tilt]

I like railway yards or depots more too..........in AH1 (for a while) we had railway yards that took "stuff" from the city and "fed" the strat.

Strat magically fed depots which then distributed logistics to fields via roads

Depots were local to a set of fields.......they had map rooms and could be captured (actually the object group used was the old old town group with a field tower in the middle)

A return to depots would enable local "mini strat play"............

the more a depot was destroyed the lower the refresh rate for fields in its zone.

The depots could be made simply capturable but with a white flag rule that a %  (75-80%?)of linked fields have to be captured before the depot would go white flag.

[Tilt]

The question is not really an accurate one. If the invaders took over the entire zone (i.e ring of fields surrounding the local strats) then the defenders are now essentially flying into enemy territory. It should be no different than a rook flying into knight held airspace is today.

The structure the OP presented was one where a group of say 4-5 fields (a zone) could be taken and the country lose all its strat for the "type" linked to those fields. I used radar as an example....in that example the defenders simply lost all their radar as it was destroyed and never rebuilt becaused at that point they had no radar strat (it was captured).

Oddball suggested that radar would have to be replenished by players dropping supplies. I might wonder where the supplies get their radar parts from but that takes even my penickitiness beyond the extreme................