Scoring that encourages the fight

[pellik]

I don't think increasing the radar range would help much with encouraging defenders. Most people look at the radar once to find something to attack, then just keep going there. Despite having 100+ people on Bish every night I'm always flying with the same 10 or so people on defense, as we're the only people who even look for the opportunity to fly defense. So the 10 of us may be slightly more effective if we up to defend a base that isn't already under attack such as to intercept a mission, but most fights start slower and escilate. The reason most people don't like defense is that you fly with an altitude disadvantage. You can catch people and bring them down to you, but there are always more who have a sector or two to climb before they get to the fight. And because so many more people look for an attack with a couple defenders the numbers of the attacking side will grow indefinitely until our smaller dar bar is squashed. I guess for the below average pilot a dar bar advantage is about as tempting as it gets.

I have only ever seen one thing which actually increases the ratio of defenders -- larger seperation between bases. The one big advantage defending offers is that you have a very short flight to the fight. Pizza always encouraged defenders like nothing else, as the 2 sector flights to an enemy base worked very poorly for the horde mentality. The long flight made a slowly esculating numbers advantage much harder to achieve since defenders were back in the fight within 5 min while the attackers faced 20min climbs. When a country would organize it's attacks to produce more concentrated numbers advantages and thus quickly win a fight the majority of the participants would get bored quickly, as once capped defenders wouldn't fly to a field from neighboring fields as frequently. This was troublesome if you had some need to defend a particular field, but it was more troublesome to the attackers who would fly 20+min to a vulched field and find not a single plane to vulch.

Pizza also catered well to the lone wolf pilots. If you flew by yourself or with only one or two friendlys to an enemy field you could usually expect to be met with approximately equal resistance. I was almost always able to find 1v3s or 2v5s where there was a good balance between the attacker's alt advantage and the defender's numerical advantage. The horde might up to get you if you get em mad, but they can't come from a base half a sector away to cherry pick you only 3min after you start fighting.
The GVers usually had good limited enguagements around the crust fighting for all those V bases on a near direct curved line to the enemy's HQ. Milk runners had plenty of strat targets to go for, and the bordem of the below average pilots would send them to intercept. Thus the noob bomber dweebs were usually faced off directly with the noob fighter dweebs. And on top of it all squads somehow always managed to face off against each other in the canyons, producing some truely remarkable fights. The only canyon fighting we can do now is at A1 on trinity.

If you can't tell, I'm still bitter about Pizza being dropped from the rotation. It was the only map that discouraged horde flying, and once pilots learned the joys of limited enguagements they would fly with smaller packs on the other maps too.

-p.

[pellik]

Here's an idea for ya HT. Set up the fighter rank and perk point award systems around damage done, similar to attack. But weight the reward by how damaged the plane you shot is. Basically it would be like each undamaged plane has an initial reward of 1.0. If you shoot him for (some arbitrary number here) 300 damage and knock off an elevator you are awarded for 300 damage points. But now missing an elevator that guys reward value is down at something like .6. The next guy who comes along and cherrys the sucker for 200 damage points would only get .6x200. Shooting that flaming wingless wreck on it's way to the ground would reward practically nothing.

Another idea is a "vulch timer". Upon beginning a flight some timer is set for 30 seconds to 1min or so which while active causes no reward to be given for killing him. The standard kill message would be replaced with a vulch message. The death of the pilot should count as normal, however, to prevent base defenders from endlessly upping en mass. This would seperate the score potatos from the land grab dweebs a little bit. It would also stop the people who dive in from 20k to take one dweeb vulch pass on the runway and then extend 10miles, ignoring every airborn threat in the sector.

Finally, just increase ack lethality and accuracy. Planes can dive in and vulch on a field with full ack up and usually get several passes before they get hit. De-acking is something that only happens when nobody is trying to take off. If killing someone on the runway who won't be any kind of threat for at least a minet while he takes off is a higher priority then de-acking, which is definately a threat, then something is wrong with the ack. The puffy ack is a random low probability kill, as it should be because of it's range. The regular ack can so easily be avoided that it shouldn't be that way. Making this fair would perhaps mean softening up the ack a bit again, though. I don't see how some little guy sitting behind those guns could survive a hail of 50cal rounds like they do now, it was better before when a quick burst of 50s could finish the job. It's rediculous that a P47 needs several seconds of guns on target, a substantial chunk of it's ammo load, to knock out an AA emplacement that 1 single 20mm round can pop.

Anyway, I know I keep drifting off topic here but it seems like all these problems are related.

-p.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by MaddogJoe
the scattered radar sites sounds good, especially if the triggerd radar annouced a grid location as to which was triggered. It might get more people to scan the map , take a guess at which base the force may be heading and up the appropriate base to defend.

It might also get the "lone wolfs" involed as a triggered radar site will point to a general area to hunt.

I am pretty much looking at the map the entire time I'm up. Esp if a fight is starting to die down... I start looking for another one.

Also if there's a full sector's worth of nme dar common sense tells you there's something going on there... Most likely a mission of some sort.

I'm not sure how much more early warning we need to be honest. If there's a whole lot of red in one sector with no green, 20 miles behind nme lines you know something's otw in...

[JB73]

Originally posted by Morpheus
I am pretty much looking at the map the entire time I'm up. Esp if a fight is starting to die down... I start looking for another one.

Also if there's a full sector's worth of nme dar common sense tells you there's something going on there... Most likely a mission of some sort.

I'm not sure how much more early warning we need to be honest. If there's a whole lot of red in one sector with no green, 20 miles behind nme lines you know something's otw in...

ditto esp the looking all the time.

looking for what's going on, looking for a "better" fight LOL

pellic, i dont look where to attack, i look for cons IB

even though the JB's are a decent sized squad, usually there is 5-7 on tops, maybe more on a friday night. it takes more than 5-7 to capture a base so we don't usually bother with attack for capture. the only "attacks" we do is when our CO says "jb73 and 88 go kill troops at bases xx xx xx xx and xx.

then we "attack"

[pellik]

Originally posted by JB73
ditto esp the looking all the time.

looking for what's going on, looking for a "better" fight LOL

pellic, i dont look where to attack, i look for cons IB

even though the JB's are a decent sized squad, usually there is 5-7 on tops, maybe more on a friday night. it takes more than 5-7 to capture a base so we don't usually bother with attack for capture. the only "attacks" we do is when our CO says "jb73 and 88 go kill troops at bases xx xx xx xx and xx.

then we "attack"

Yeah, but you JBs have been around long enough to somewhat grow out of the horde warrior phase. If I find a 190 or two that are willing to enguage without a clear advantage and stick through the fight instead of taking the first opportunity to disenguage it'll be one of you guys more often then not.

-p.

[AKFokerFoder+]

A slight flaw in the vulch timer.  Like HT can do it he wants to. But so what?

I like to vulch now and then.  It is a lot of fun.... for a while, and then it gets boring.  But I don't vulch for the kill to be added to my score or for the perk points.  

I vulch because I really love to shoot some poor helpless slob who is trying to take off.  It satisfies some primordial part of me that is at best psychopathic.

It is like shooting some poor sot who is shot to hell, smoking, and trying to rtb or ditch.  I don't do it for the kill to be added to my score.  Often all you get is an assist.  I do it for the pure unadulterated pleasure I get out of it.

There is a part of me that is purely psychopathic, sadistic, and psychotic when I play on-line.  It is a vicarious Mr. Hyde that slithers out of the primordial ooze of my baser persona.  And from the performance of others in the arena, I would say that I am a long ways from being an anomaly.

What you are trying to fight here is the condition of the human spirit.  Religions, philosophies and governments have spent thousands of years in futile attempts of trying to control the baser part of our humanity.  They have come up with all kinds of rules and ideas.  None of them has been very successful.  Why do you think your rules will be any better at controlling human behavior in the arena?  Especially when there are so many unrepentant anarchistic reprobates like myself who will not submit themselves to the sanctimonious, and often ridiculous unwritten rules of behavior that some want to impose on me?

I don’t cuss, swear etc on open channels. I stay off of channel 200.  I don’t deliberately kill steal. And I don’t do anything to keep others from having fun their way, except that I will shoot them down anyway I can.  I vulch, cherry pick, gang bang, alt monkey, fly with hordes, back stab, shoot at a bogey from it’s 11 to 1 position.  If I have no chance, I will HO.

All of the above is not “Honorable” behavior.  But I will assure you that I have been vulched, cherry picked, gang banged, been hit by alt monkeys, back stabbed, HO’d, attacked when I have been low slow, shot to hell, smoking and trying to ditch or rtb.  

I do unto others as others have done unto me.  Kill or be killed, that is the only rule to fly by.  All other rules are wistful romantic ideas dreamed up by people who have never been on an actual battlefield.

You want reality in Aces High?  Then fly like a real fighter pilot: Kill the enemy any way you can, before he kills you.

[JB73]

Originally posted by pellik
Yeah, but you JBs have been around long enough to somewhat grow out of the horde warrior phase. If I find a 190 or two that are willing to enguage without a clear advantage and stick through the fight instead of taking the first opportunity to disenguage it'll be one of you guys more often then not.

-p.

thank you for the compliment sir we try best we can ; )

[Clifra Jones]

Maybe that's part of the solution. I wasn't aware (as I'm not aware of alot) that Pizza was dumped. HT, Why? I can venture a guess. "I don't want to fly for 20 minutes to bomb those FHs waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"

What was that map a few weeks ago with the towns set far from the airbases? I liked that map.

I didn't want this tread to digress into a complaint about the fun killing bomber dweebs, but I started this thread so I can say what I want. They need to have more of a disadvantage. It should not be so easy to climb to 20K, fly over a base that no fighter can up to get to you because they don't have enough advanced warning, and bomb out the hangers. I think the AAA should be more lethal to bombers, the bomb drops less accurate and they should HAVE TO DEAL WITH WIND! If there were a 15 knot wind at the deck with 25 knot gusts and a 20-30 knot wind at 15-20k they would have to deal with it accordingly. Fly at lower alts and the drops would be less effective. Overcast skys with a 10k ceiling. And thunderstorms, yeah, with lighting, wings icing up, Yeah that's the ticket! (deep breath, ok I feel better)

Pellik makes some valid points. I though of a map where the continents only met at peninsula choke points with large bodies of water in between. It you wanted to attack the other country you had to attack the choke point. there would be islands in the water so your other options would be an island hopping strategy with CV. I can see how many would not like this and it would make it hard for the singleton or small group out looking for a fight.

Another thought I had was that in RL not all your fighter aircraft would be housed in 4 buildings. They would be parked along the taxiways covered with como nets and such. Just bombing the hangars would not kill all the aircraft. Not sure how that idea would be implemented in AH but it is a thought. I know that would not sit well with some because we have a significant player base that just can't stand to have any fighter resistance up while they are trying to capture a base.

How about covert bases? Makeshift airfields carved out of the forest with camo covering the buildings and aircraft. Not on the map like enemy CV's are not shown. These would have limited numbers of aircraft, ord and planesets. Some would have short runways so only short TOL planes could use them.  You could also use them for refuel/rearm.  How about letting the GVers go out and create one of these fields. They bring the supplies to point on the map and this established this field. Runways could be grass marked out with small flags. Now they also have a covert point of attack. This could open up a whole new covert operations aspect to the game.

My apologies to the hangar killing base capturers but if I had something like this I'd be upping a plane and flying to your base capture to spoil your fun every chance I could get. Because IMO I think you have it far to easy.

I personally like fly the defensive more than the offensive in this game. Even with my squad which never takes down the FHs on a base capture the offense turns into a flying circus with the fighters vulching the occasional brave soal upping a fighter to defend. The problem for us is we are so good at this is does get to be dull sometimes. The other problem is that whenever there is a good base defense going on with jabo and fighter attack happening. Some bomber dweebs will come in up in the stratosphere and kills the hangars ending all the fun. I can deal with the jabo pilots trying to kill our hangars are we have just as much change of killing them as they do killing our hangars.

Anyway, I'm done raving. Gotta go home now.

[JB73]

Originally posted by Clifra Jones
I wasn't aware (as I'm not aware of alot) that Pizza was dumped.

not "dumped" but AHII does not have multiple tiles, and all new desert terrains have to be made for that map.

i am guessing HTC people have been busy with tons of stuff, and haven't had the opprotunity to make them and recompile the map.

maybe they dont have the source files anymore, and the map is doomed to extinsion, because from just the .res file i dont think they can re-tile it.

dont really know, but that is the basic reason it is not in rotation

[sullie363]

This sounds more like a TOD thing than a MA thing.

[sullie363]

Originally posted by hitech


Ive been wondering if changing the radar settings so people would have early warning of attacks would also solve most of the problem.

We already know where the attack is coming from and most likely going.  Unless they are NOE.  Many people simply don't care to defend, especially on maps where the front line never moves more than a couple bases either way.