I still think this is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas. There's no logic to it, other than being a quick fix to a serious problem. Quick fixes to serious problems never work. Here's what you're promoting HT:
1) No comaraderie at all. You want people to side-switch to balance the numbers for you. And to do that, you're putting a traffic cop on the runway with a stopwatch. It's no different than using a cattle prod. You'll implement a "feature" people detest so they move where you want 'em to. Which results in...
2) Breaking up squads. A 20-man squad switches sides and suddenly that country now has a time limit imposed. What do you think will happen once folks find out who switched to cause it? Flame warz galore. As a result squads will end up not being huge, functional squadrons. They'll end up being no more than five people. Squaddies wing up together because they're friends. Small problem: it's either put up with the stopwatch or swap sides. Either way squaddies won't be able to gather in one country. Some will get pissed and vamoos to another country. Thus busting up the squad.
3) You want to slow down the Mongolian Horde land-grab, but you're picking the most backwards way to do it. Instead of implementing changes to the strat system no one has seen before, you're using an "annoy the people" technique. Simply because that technique is faster to implement than changing an antequated system. Yes, antequated. Read my earlier post to see more on that subject.
4) You want the attitude on this BBS and in the game to improve, yet you're saying the exact opposite by sticking a dumb time limit in. People's attitudes won't change for the better, they'll get worse. You'll break up squads, piss people off, make 'em wait after getting shot down and for what? To slow down the Horde? How many other ideas have been posted that might, or could, work infinitely better than your's?
5) Using a time limit will take the trickle and turn it into several waves. Instead of the little guy facing down two or three enemy aircraft, he's now looking at five or ten. Putting the right respawn wave at the right target will negate this time limit completely and result in the same Horde-based land-grab. Only with double the numbers hitting a given target thanks to the 30 second wait.
Large changes are required to fix this problem, not quick fixes dreamed up over night. Does it have merrit? Most definitely! Will it work? If your intention is to make even more people angry, then yes. Otherwise it'll be a dismal failure.
For Pyro:
Doug, this isn't an online FPS game where insta-spawn can give you mega kills or that WunderShield or the BFG 9000. It's an aerial combat game. To get the bonuses here you don't have to run around the corner, grab the key, shoot the demon and get the gun. You have to fly several minutes in a given direction, think your way in, and then attack. It takes much longer to get a single kill here than it does in UT2k4. How many minutes did you have to fly for in order to bag your last kill? 5? 6? In 5 or 6 minutes in any FPS you can bag two dozen kills or more. My personal record in UT2k4 stands at 33 bots dead in ten minutes. That's why they have a respawn time of 5 seconds or so. To prevent mass scores from being run up. It's part of a system. You randomize the spawn location, give the player 5-15 seconds before respawn, and then it's back to work. Using tricks from FPS games in AH won't work because those tricks are built for FPS games, not flight games.
I'll say it again: If you want to slow down the Mongolian Horde you can not simply slap a respawn time limit in and call it magically fixed. Actual work has to be done to improve the strat system that hasn't changed in basic function since 1995. Slowing down the Horde requires actual supply limits. No more unlimited everything unless your field's bunkers have been plastered. Limited bombs, limited rockets, and limited troops based on actual lag time to ship those items from the factory to the front. The supply system is already in place to allow for this. What has to be done for it to work is implementation of hard limits on supplies. If you don't have trucks delivering your bombs and rockets, you will run out of them. If there's no supply ships moving freight into the port you took, you can't advance the front lines because things are in such short supply. Realistic adjustment factors that really happen will stop the Horde, not a "System: you can't fly for 40 seconds" message.
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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight SchoolPut the P-61B in Aces High
