Thoughts for a different type of "Event"...

[humble]

I'd love the chance to evolve an alternative to "Titanic Tuesday" if we have an SEA arena potentially available. It wouldnt have to be the samething every week (although obviously I winning formula would be repeated) and it wouldnt be historical in the sense that its not another snaphot type event. I'd want to retain the 3 country format and not artificially shape game play. I do however want to put the focus on true tactical warfare. Accordingly I'd explore the following...

1st all 4 engine buffs are out & GV's are severly restricted and primarily a component to defense. Or in the reverse GV's are the primary thrust and the airwar is primarily all air to ground in some setup. My initial thoughts are to mirror the MA and have the traditional 3 country setup. One concept I like is each side is country specific (thinking Japanese, Russian, British for the initial go around). The event would be run as a capture the flag type event with one field (of maybe 3) designated as the flag field. Ideally some scoutable sign would be a clue vs just trying to capture them all.

Formations would not be enabled, hardness would be up and plane types would be restrcted at various fields. Cloud cover and wind would be used to help shape the tactical environment. All three sides would have full historical compliment of non perk planes. The goal just being to promote tactical teamwork and planning vs carpet bombing and porking. you'd need to scout, attack and defend in a freeform setting. With the heavies and the formations gone the tactical set for all 3 is a bit balanced. Give the British the boston and the ruskkies the B-25 or A-20....

This would be a chance for the squads to step up and take the lead in creating a true tactical "winable" war in a 2 or 3 hour event...

[Sled]

Is this an event that would make use of registered squads like FSO, or open to walk-ons like a SS?

[humble]

I'd think open walk on but I dont have the depth of understanding of issues and logistics that you guys do...

[bmwgs]

I'd love the chance to evolve an alternative to "Titanic Tuesday" if we have an SEA arena potentially available. It wouldnt have to be the samething every week (although obviously I winning formula would be repeated) and it wouldnt be historical in the sense that its not another snaphot type event. I'd want to retain the 3 country format and not artificially shape game play. I do however want to put the focus on true tactical warfare. Accordingly I'd explore the following...

1st all 4 engine buffs are out & GV's are severly restricted and primarily a component to defense. Or in the reverse GV's are the primary thrust and the airwar is primarily all air to ground in some setup. My initial thoughts are to mirror the MA and have the traditional 3 country setup. One concept I like is each side is country specific (thinking Japanese, Russian, British for the initial go around). The event would be run as a capture the flag type event with one field (of maybe 3) designated as the flag field. Ideally some scoutable sign would be a clue vs just trying to capture them all.

Formations would not be enabled, hardness would be up and plane types would be restrcted at various fields. Cloud cover and wind would be used to help shape the tactical environment. All three sides would have full historical compliment of non perk planes. The goal just being to promote tactical teamwork and planning vs carpet bombing and porking. you'd need to scout, attack and defend in a freeform setting. With the heavies and the formations gone the tactical set for all 3 is a bit balanced. Give the British the boston and the ruskkies the B-25 or A-20....

This would be a chance for the squads to step up and take the lead in creating a true tactical "winable" war in a 2 or 3 hour event...

As strange as it may seem, being mostly a GV-er these days, I like this idea.  My question would be how to you keep the countries, Bishops, Knight, Rooks balanced?  I see a problem where many would switch to the allied  (US UK) so they could fly the more popular planes..   

Fred

[humble]

It would be an issue, however in tactical war without formations or 4 engine heavies some of the inequities are removed. If you then also spread out plane type by fields you have other built in limiters. My thoughts for the initial setup would be that only one base facing each side would have Nikki's, la-7's or spit8/16's. Now that field wouldn't be announced so you'd need to scout it...then if desired bombing down the fighter hangers would stop the use of a given plane. bombers would also be distributed so that taking out a set of bomber hangers would hamper things as well...

[Roscoroo]

in settings we have,,,
Country balance scale
Country balance enabled
min balance total
min eny value

forced side balance


I'm shure we can mess up the arena with a eny balancing act .

[bmwgs]

in settings we have,,,
Country balance scale
Country balance enabled
min balance total
min eny value

forced side balance


I'm shure we can mess up the arena with a eny balancing act .

You took the fun out of what sounded like fun.   

Fred

[humble]

The country set up would have spit XVI/la-7/nikki so you'd have some natural breakout by plane. you also have the yak, ki-84 and tiffie/hurricane so both sides have 2nd tier rides with strong followings. The limited availability would create normal targets to bomb in the sense that only certain bases would have certain planes. you could take out the spitty field or the la-7 field etc. So not only would bomber guys have a target with immediate impact but the fighter guys would have to defend or lose "their" ride. The Capture the flag aspect would give a specific mission target that could be won but not by simply rolling a bunch of lanc formations repeatedly. Your providing a 3 sided "late war" environment but not the closely structured 2 sided historical game play. Each side would have reasonably balanced medium bombers and fighters with similar ord capacity. I think that you could create an "arena" that would allow for some "strategic" play in the sense that bombers could take out meaningful targets (IE the "spit factory") and that supply could be affected by taking out the convoys (if that still effects resupply??) etc...

So the team that wanted to "win" would need to identify and bomb out the fields that contain the most uber rides, take down the capture field and town and possibly need to run low level sweeps to find and destroy the resupply convoys to keep targets down etc...

[Sled]

The three sides would each use the same country AC?

Bish= British

Knights= Russian

Rook= Japan

Yes?

[humble]

Yes, that way we have a historically "correct" tactical environment but without the specific structured historical environment. Obviously not all plane types are represented and sides may not be truely balanced but we have a significant representation of the major "late war" plane sets for all 3. The biggest factor I'd see is the lack of a Russian CV capability since they didnt have one (same for the germans). so we'd need to either leave them out or simply realize that the Russians and Germans (as the nationalities rotate) dont have them.

So in effect we're melding the historical tactical plane sets with MA play and just tweaking a couple of things. We use limited availability to bring back some tangible results for bombing and force true planning and precision vs just rolling mass buff formations. Each country has reasonable 2nd tier fighters so the ki-84/spitIX and la-5/yak all will be competitive. If in fact the mission types step up then actually winning the war would be a worthwhile achievement I think.

[Sled]

Obviously not all plane types are represented and sides may not be truely balanced

This will be a bigger issue than you may realize, as the SEA comunity tends to want things very fair and even.

What if you did this with all sides using the same AC? Put the focus on stratigy and tactics.

[humble]

I'm not opposed to that but my 1st question would be simple. Is it really unbalanced? The Japanese would have the longest range fighters, fastest bomber and single most useful plane (IMO) in the nikki. The Russians would have the "best" fighter in the la-7 but suffer at higher alts and have the shortest range. The Brits would have the Tiffie/spitVIII/XVI combo but would be challenged on one side by the yaks and lala's and on the other by the Nikki's and Ki-84's. Since each side has the ability to alter the plane set the nikki, la-7 and spit XVI/VIII are all "removable"...so a perceived imbalance can actually be corrected by the player base without any artificial action.

How imbalanced are the match ups? The spit nikki and la-7 are all low ENY planes and the Ki-84, la-5/yak and spitIX/tiffie are all reasonably formidable 2nd tier rides. I think it that any of the three sides can win. The Russians will fight there range issues, the spitties have the shortest clips (of the "big three") and the Japanese have the longest endurance and the nikki has the ammo load edge. The Ki-67 has the edge in speed and survivability to offset the lower bomb load out.

I'm curious what type of turnout you'd get for an event like this that has the "historical matchups without the constraints. I think I could win with any of the three sides....

[noTch]

I had to read this a couple of times and I must say I think I like this idea.

I also have a suggestion. 4440 & SheGotYa run a monthly event called 'Heavy Metal Sunday'. These two people are
always looking for new and exciting things to do. I will link this thread to them and see if they can help you realize this
awesome idea

Also this really sounds like a great AvA idea.

[Sled]

I'm not opposed to that but my 1st question would be simple. Is it really unbalanced? The Japanese would have the longest range fighters, fastest bomber and single most useful plane (IMO) in the nikki. The Russians would have the "best" fighter in the la-7 but suffer at higher alts and have the shortest range. The Brits would have the Tiffie/spitVIII/XVI combo but would be challenged on one side by the yaks and lala's and on the other by the Nikki's and Ki-84's. Since each side has the ability to alter the plane set the nikki, la-7 and spit XVI/VIII are all "removable"...so a perceived imbalance can actually be corrected by the player base without any artificial action.

How imbalanced are the match ups? The spit nikki and la-7 are all low ENY planes and the Ki-84, la-5/yak and spitIX/tiffie are all reasonably formidable 2nd tier rides. I think it that any of the three sides can win. The Russians will fight there range issues, the spitties have the shortest clips (of the "big three") and the Japanese have the longest endurance and the nikki has the ammo load edge. The Ki-67 has the edge in speed and survivability to offset the lower bomb load out.

I'm curious what type of turnout you'd get for an event like this that has the "historical matchups without the constraints. I think I could win with any of the three sides....

We are going to my sisters in RI for the week of thanksgiving, so my responses will be short for the next week, as I will only be using my Iphone.

Is it really unbalanced?

No, it is not, and I was not saying it was. The problem is going to be the fact that people are not going to want to fly certain AC, and when one side loses they will complain that the plane set was a big factor. Believe me I have been at this awhile. Also you are going to have the issue that most will want the Allied rides, that is just the way it is, this has been proven time and again for years in AHSE's. In your examples above, the British AC are going to be the most wanted, but not everyone is going to be able to fly them, so some are going to be in AC they do not prefer. That is when the issues with AC assignments or choices are going to surface.

I am not trying to rain on your parade, I am just pointing out some facts of life when it comes to AHSE's.

My next question would be on command structure for this event. How would that be handled?

As in, who is making the orders, and giving them out? Would this be handeld like FSO?

I am not trying to intimidate with all the questions, I am just trying to help start working on some details.

[humble]

SLED,

My original thoughts are/were much along the nature of what Rosco set up. At the same time I understand the issues with simply "floating" another arena. My thoughts shifted as a result to more of a what can we do with what we have that doesnt duplicate anything.

So what we have is either "structured structure" {FSO, snapshots etc} or unstructured structure {AVA}. Both are two sided affairs with a lot of built in control. My entire thought has been to more of an alternative to the MA...

1) Three sided
2) No formal structure
3) "come as you are" {no squad mission launch time etc)

So more along the AVA in that regard, but with goals that do encourage game play. Now if the appeal is there then a squad based system would be great. I think it would be a great canvas to allow the really good FSO squads a free form ability to map out tactics for a capture the flag type event. A chance for them to really go back to the "old school" squad mission format where your attacking defending and spoiling all at once.

So I would look at current FSO squad registrations and see if anyones up for giving it a try with squads registering for a side. Since the "win" is determined by flag capture planning would be in game thru squad coordination. No different then the current MA in that regard.

The real problem is we're using the SEA to explore an alternative arena not an event per se...