30 on 5 -The Horde Mentality

[Grizzly]

I think it's the priorities and objectives that make AH what it is. All planes available to everyone in unlimited quantities. Lack of consequense if you die. And the land grabbing initiative makes it natural that players will concentrate on fighting buildings instead of each other.

For what it's worth, AirWarrior had a setup where country bases could only be killed for a half hour. And there was a fourth neutral country who's bases could be captured to gain strategic advantage.

Destruction of factories limited the availability of some war material, like fuel and Spitfires. The number of planes that could fly oiut of each field was limited and affected by strategic bombing. The type of planes available was based upon the theatre you were flying in (PAC ,EURO, WW1 or Korea). Sometimes the planes available were based upon a period of the war.

How about a few changes in AH2 MA?

If you die in a mission you can't take off from the same field (or same plane) for 15 minutes. This may reduce the Jabo, auger and repeat conveyor belt.

Bases are used for starting a mission and can only be destroyed for a period of time. The objective will be changed to elimination of resources by strategic missions instead of flag capturing. This might promote more realistic and organized game play instead of the non-combatant mud pounding to capture bases the quickest way possible.

Perhaps corridores to strategic targets will be created by base destruction. Organized missions with large bomber formations will become common. Fighters will be used for escorting the bombers and interception. It will become a common practice to send up scouts and interceptors to cover a corridore at larger distances. This should provide a lot more structure and realism to game play and provide the incentive for bomber pilots that they always asked for.

Then maybe in the center there can be a bunch of bases clustered together for dogfighting... a natural location where the countries merge and bases are more closely grouped.

I bet people here can come up with a lot more ideas also. The important thing is to be willing to abandon that which is and think outside the box.

grizzly

[JB42]

Allow me to mention this as I duck under some furniture before getting pummeled for saying it: Air Warrior had a built in feature where if too many friendly planes were in a sector, airfields in that sector were closed< runs and slides under large oak desk>

[A_Clown]

some good suggestions flowin-

but im relatively sure that most programmers at HTC are likely working on some other prject at this time.

As far as the growth of numbers in the game overall-

Seems worthy of note that advertising on history channel, as well as buying spots on very popular web based search engines may indeed have played a part in the swelling of player base.

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by JB42
Allow me to mention this as I duck under some furniture before getting pummeled for saying it: Air Warrior had a built in feature where if too many friendly planes were in a sector, airfields in that sector were closed< runs and slides under large oak desk>

I'd forgotten that.  It worked, too.

- oldman

[Tilt]

Originally posted by Oldman731
I'd forgotten that.  It worked, too.

- oldman

The zone limit........ it was air field based normally set to a number between 15 and 30 in the FR maps.

Basically only a certain number of AC could be spawned from a base at any one time.

Up side

.....it spread combat over the map and stopped  mega raids from one field.

..... missions were launched form "rear" fields to ensure access giving some warning


Down side

...........mega raids were planned using AW superior mission planner from multiple fields (against one field). Although not very often.

.......... A squad might take off to find some of its members were blocked due to zone limit.


.......... In AW it was erroniously  linked to field fuel such that the zone limit reduced as the fuel was porked. ( minimum was 50% of the zone limit)


I think one option that could be used is a spawn queue. Ie only one player can spawn from a field at a time and the window is say 10 or even 15 secs a 20 man mission would then take  3 to 5 minutes to assemble on the runway (longer if other players were using the field) or become some what stretched out.

The problem with this is that it is server based and all HTC solutions are those that sit on the FE.

Edit............. if zone limit did indeed count the freindlies in the tower based radar range (per JB above) and limit take off accordingly then it could be FE based. Same pro's and cons apply

[bockko]

ahh AW. I liked the game, but this game is much better. Remember the same stale maps? Remember the relaxed realism environs with hundreds of pilots and the FR arenas with 30 or 40? Or the great customer service we recieved from EA games? or the great "new flight model"  near AW's end? I couldnt believe the p.o.s. flight model that was labeled "ultra-realism" or some such crap. I remember flying around for a looong time with many planes, none of use being able to reliable line up a shot because of the bouncing and yaw induced by overmodeling (or undermodeling?). As fun as AW was, I'll never ask for features like we had there.

Now, if ony I could get that terrain editor to not crash.....

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by bockko
As fun as AW was, I'll never ask for features like we had there.
 

In all due respect, AW was a terrific game. It had it's drawbacks, but these were mostly the failure of Kesmai to keep it up to date. Certainly they tried, AW3 was the very first to offer 3-D terrain. AW was at that time the latest in technology, but this wained as they just didn't keep up with the fast advances in technology.

The flight model they produced was excellant. In it's beta form it had lots of problems, a lot like we're seeing in AH2 now (the original beta version of AH had an even worse FM). But in it's last revision before EA killed AW, it had become a terrific FM, which many didn't have a chance to experience.

There are many other features introduced in AW that were duplicated in WB, FA and AH also. This includes the customs that the player base have developed over the years. AW wasn't anywhere near the products of its competators in the last few years, but it had thrived for over 15 years at a time when online connections cost a fortune. In its AOL hayday, more players were in AW each night than all the other air combat sims combined have now... over 2000 on an average night.

AW was what many of the premier players of today cut their eye teeth on, including HiTech himself. And AW provided us with a rich heritage that we still enjoy today. Resist the fashionable criticism. AW couldn't handle it's success and became history, but it had a lot of good things going for it that might be usefull to us here and now. It doesn't make sense to close our eyes to the good things because of the mistakes they made.

grizzly

[anton]

Wow! Alot of great input/suggestions.

It seems to me that the current horde situation is likely equally contributed to by both players as well as game set-up.

But IMO the reality of the situation is that HTC is unlikely to spend much time doing any major revamp or setting tweak until after the release of AH2. And what I expect is that they will want to take some time to evaluate how AH2 is accepted befor they make such a decision.

So if i'm correct, what that leaves to improve our current game is US, the COMMUNITY.  Now I know I have been a horses rear-end on more than 1 occasion, & it is very unlikely that I will stop with that tradition. But I also do alot to help: If an area I'm fighting in becomes to saturated with green guys I leave, If I see 2 countrymen on a con I USUALLY pull off, I give check6s to anyone I see that needs 1, I often train new people & help with command & radio controls, I will sprint to help a countrymen in need, I want to land every plane I lift- every vehicle as well, I fly several different planes from fighter to buff/c47. These are just a few off the top, & im not anywhere near to being a pillar of the community. But if more people decide to give a care, maybe we can improve things ourselves.
Anton

[Drunky]

We should add tittie-bars.  That should keep most of the horde busy.

[lazs2]

more maps from fester would help a lot.

fester redoing the pizza and infinity and big isle would be fine.
lazs

[Batz]

Originally posted by Drunky
We should add tittie-bars.  That should keep most of the horde busy.

Nope that wouldn't help. As soon as the strat folks see people having fun they will find a way to "strat" it and put an end to any enjoyment folks would get from it. It's all about "impact" and if something is put in the game that cause folks to ignore the strat types they through a fit.

Boobies would become more hated then fighter hangers and fuel tanks.

[Hajo]

Batz....you're right on the subject of tittie bars.  Strat guys

would Jabo the implant factory.

[Toad]

Maybe they could turn up ALL auto-ack to the absolute maximum "KILL" setting on every map. Make so if you even look at a field from 3 miles away or less you die immediately. Make it have a max altitude of 20K. Make it totally effective against jabos in a dive too.

So, if you want to take a field, you have to have a huge buff raid above 20K come in and take out the ack first.

It might generate some fights outside of field capture, might make buffs important again.

And maybe not. But it'd sure be fun watching the ack splatter lemmnig fur all over the terrain (for a while anyway).

[anton]

It could have been a fun saturday evening, I had about a 3 hour window I could play AH.

I logged in & checked the map, found a few good looking battles & had a couple fun flights. It didnt take but maybe an hour for the whole map to turn into nothing but Mass numbered hordes on milk runs. Merely following the path of least resistance, not even bothering to use the power to take bases in a strategic matter, like zone bases or high bases or what have you. Almost as if when the last troop captures current baseeveryone looks for closest vacant base. Always careful to avoid any possible conflict with a red horde. Which of course the red horde is doing the EXACT same thing.

>WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! oh boy these buildings are SUCH a CHALLENGE!!!!

look how many bases we can capture & not protect! We must be truely the coolest!:rolleyes:

Absolutely disgusting.

Anton

[B17Skull12]

boy anton whine here and get in arguement with steve on 2.