Author Topic: Zone system.  (Read 19373 times)

Offline Anaxogoras

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #60 on: September 11, 2009, 07:45:41 AM »
I don't see a huge impact. However, I'd like to see factories and the City increased in size to at least double their current building count while keeping the existing factories and City for backward compatibility.
Is that a possibility?

Two guys in B-17s shouldn't be able to disable a countries strat in two passes as they can now on some terrains.

Or the factories/cities could simply have their buildings hardened a bit.  As things are now it's easy to take out strats with 100lb bombs.  If you're not worried about your bombing % score, the Ju-88 is actually one of the best strat destroyers in the game with its 20x50kg bombs.
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Offline Bruv119

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #61 on: September 11, 2009, 08:21:30 AM »
just throw it in there and see how it goes.

anything to spice up the stale old MA gameplay  :aok
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Offline Helm

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #62 on: September 11, 2009, 08:28:43 AM »
I like the current zone system.  More targets.  Also I like how if the supply is disrupted by you not owning the zone base,  you must manually repair bases.


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Offline SlapShot

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #63 on: September 11, 2009, 08:29:26 AM »
Or at the least make the bridges destroyable to disrupt the supply lines.


ack-ack

Would that make it too easy to disrupt the flow of supplies ?

Back in the day when I was with the MAW, when we were going for a capture, we would assign a couple of guys to the supply line to take out any incoming supply trucks to prevent the supplies from bringing the town back up. I we had GVs involved in the capture, we would position 1 ostwind on the supply road and it would pop the trucks as they came rolling in.

If I remember correctly, we would bomb the supply train tracks and stop it dead in it's tracks ... thus preventing it from supplying the strats that we just leveled.
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Offline thndregg

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #64 on: September 11, 2009, 08:34:24 AM »
Two guys in B-17s shouldn't be able to disable a countries strat in two passes as they can now on some terrains.

I completely agree. I used to bomb city/factory targets with the supply chain in mind, but almost every time it was too easy. Flak was light, opposition was light to none, and target area was way too small and was demolished with absolute ease. Although the intent of the supply chain is clear, it still proves out that it simply is not of enough material importance for the enemy to defend it, and not worth bombers going the distance to bomb it.
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Offline moot

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #65 on: September 11, 2009, 09:14:47 AM »
If the factories are much further back and much easier to supply, then there accrues no great advantage to hitting them.  There would then be little incentive to hit factories at all.  Better to use the bombs at the front line. The score guys would still be heading there at the start of each month (probably in another arena anyway), but I can't see an increase in activity high over the factories from this, just a decrease.

How about having the strat sites (assuming there's multiples for each type) have some sort of scaling effect?  Have their contribution to the country resupply be e.g. 15% at front lines, 25% midway, and 60% for the rear-most strats.  Would such a scale be enough?
If not, how about having the rear strats be parent strats, in that they resupply both the dependent (rear) fields but also the strats midway and at the front lines? 
Another component could be supply lines.  These could be more meaningful if they were the only means of rebuilding strats. The supply routes themselves are too easy to disable in a setting like the MA (a few intruders NOE can sabotage things undetected in the countryside real quick), so they could stay immune as now, as well as their spawning hangar; unless it had adequate defense like a VH and radar tower (all the country's supply hangars and accompanying objects' down-time would depend on the rear-most City). If only the supply convoys themselves are vulnerable, then they could be made either more numerous: e.g. the same number at fronts, ~twice as many midway, and twice as many and/or twice as often at rear fields.  The only feasible exception that I can imagine off-hand would be bridges with at least some kind of radar (maybe not dot-dar but just flashing) and a minimum of automated defense, or some GV spawn.  Obviously, bridges or other critical points like these would have to be few and well placed.  Maybe make the rebuild time for these depend on the main City as well.

Altogether this could make a front line strat neutralizeable by destroying it as usual, and destroying the convoys (from their own supply line + the parent strat's supply convoys) which would run at a relatively low frequency (the parent supply convoys could be easily differentiable, e.g. heavily armored). While at the other end of the scale, hitting the major strat site for any strat type (way out near HQ), as well as the major city (if there are multiples) would effectively kill the whole country's strat of that type, while then depending on the resupply convoys (with indestructible routes and hangar) to bring it back up.  And these would be fairly numerous so that you could only suppress rebuilding of the city, and in turn rebuilding of the parent strat type, by having a large or undisputed presence deep in enemy territory.  The payoff would be a relatively but arbitrarily large aggregate downtime.

This could be all scaled by the relative "weight" of each strat (like the above example, three strat levels 15, 25, 60%), and by the number of strat items of each type on the fields themselves.

One of the possible positive effects of this scattering of critical points (while keeping one large target as center point) would be to split up attack forces in the arenas.  You would have to have bombers or very large fighter-bomber groups for the strat sites, and have to send smaller units to intercept the convoys.  The parent strat convoys would probably best be quite a bit longer than the trains and truck lines we have now.

One flaw is that the above system effectively removes player resupply...  Only for strats though.  Fields still are affected by player resupply.  I suppose the HQ and rear-most City would also best be left available to player-resupply.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2009, 09:28:58 AM by moot »
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Offline Tilt

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #66 on: September 11, 2009, 09:42:51 AM »
Reading above one effect will be that strat gets moved way back to areas around the HQ making it out of range (from a gaming point of veiw) on many maps.

This would reduce the strat functionality in game even more prompting buffers to target air fields more than now.

Scattering town objects and a  map room inside strat facilities  would make them capturable, would make them more the focus of combat, and mean that you do not have to redistribute the strat facilities on larger maps.

Each facility then acts like its own zone master.
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Offline moot

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #67 on: September 11, 2009, 09:54:25 AM »
You mean my suggestion, or the thread as a whole?
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Offline hitech

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #68 on: September 11, 2009, 10:06:10 AM »
Quote
A possible solution to the large maps problem would be to still have 2 or 3 of each type of strat object (say 2 relatively close to the front and one further back), that would have a cumulative effect on supply -- i.e. take one of the factories down to zero, your map status would show 33%, and supply would be 2/3rds as effective.  It still has an impact, but not crippling to a country that is pushed back well behind the initial map start.

I was debating between this, and putting them all in the back / HQ area of the country.

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Offline Knite

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #69 on: September 11, 2009, 10:25:38 AM »
I like the idea of making it more country based.

Also, what about the concept of making a strategic target able to support a certain number of airfields, and make it capturable? This way you wouldn't need to keep strats at the "back" of a country's area, but the placement of the strats could alter strategy in the map.

For instance, let's say 1 strat can supply 10 fields supplies 100%....
An example map would have 3 sides with 40 fields, and 4 strats per side.

Using Bishes as an example... If 1 of the Bish's 4 strats are captured, the resupply rate is dropped to 75% for all 40 fields. However, if 10 of the Bish's fields were captured, that means the remaining 3 strats would supply the remaining 30 Bish fields at 100% rate. If the Bishes with 30 fields re-captures the 4th strat, resupply would be taking place at all fields at a 133% rate. Giving the losing side an ability to hold off the winning side by making their own fields more defensible by having them repair faster.

Example numbers to take away the text :

Country has :
4 strats, 40 fields = 100% resupply rate
3 strats, 30 fields = 100% resupply rate
3 strats, 40 fields = 75% resupply rate
4 strats, 30 fields = 133% resupply rate.

Of course HT's question was a simple "Country or zone based" so I vote Country. =)
lol
« Last Edit: September 11, 2009, 10:28:30 AM by Knite »
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Offline hammer

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #70 on: September 11, 2009, 10:29:17 AM »
Another idea would be to cluster strats fairly close around a zone-controlling feature (city? zone HQ?) that would make it more obvious what was being accomplished.

One issue with the straight distributed effectiveness model (lose a front line factory - resupply reduced 33% etc) is that it will have an immediate detrimental effect on the country that is the target of the day. When that country is down to a third of its bases and getting ganged from both sides, having a less effective resupply will just be another nail in the coffin and make it that much harder to defend / recover. That, I would think, would need to be accounted for somewhere.

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Offline Knite

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #71 on: September 11, 2009, 10:37:06 AM »
One issue with the straight distributed effectiveness model (lose a front line factory - resupply reduced 33% etc) is that it will have an immediate detrimental effect on the country that is the target of the day. When that country is down to a third of its bases and getting ganged from both sides, having a less effective resupply will just be another nail in the coffin and make it that much harder to defend / recover. That, I would think, would need to be accounted for somewhere.

One counter to that argument is... isn't the fact that the country is the "target of the day" an immediate detrimental effect? =)
Sorry, couldn't resist.

But as an actual answer to your concern, using my example earlier, 40 fields, 4 strats... if a strat is captured knocking resupply down to 75%, then as the defending country, you have the option of either A) using your superior #s of owned airfields near that strat to re-capture it, or B) use the time the enemy country is spending on your strat to capture some of their fields, or their own strat. Keep in mind that the strat doesn't do a whole lot to an airfield unless that airfield is currently under attack. If a strat is being attacked, the airfields are slightly safer as there's less manpower attacking them. This also prevents extensive push into enemy territory, as if you aren't capturing enemy strats while on the attack, it means your own airfields will not resupply as quickly, giving the enemy more opportunity to hit back.

It opens a whole new set of tactical possibilities. Do we capture the strat? Do we instead capture a number of fields? Do we defend our own strat, or that port, or an airfield first?
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Offline hitech

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #72 on: September 11, 2009, 11:30:53 AM »
Gents, capture-able strat in the sense you wish will not happen. If you think that capturing strat would then permanently make the other counties rebuilds 75% less or what ever, you have just set up a steam roll condition.

I.E. Each capture makes it harder and harder for a country to defend. While this is how the world works, it does not make for good game play.

HiTech


Offline moot

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #73 on: September 11, 2009, 11:42:34 AM »
But like someone said, having only strats way back near the HQ would mean really long flight times. On a map like Trinity that's no exageration. So, instead, you could have two or three sets of each strat type, and have them be abandoned once the front lines overtook them. The remaining strats would pick up the abandoned strat(s)'s portion of country resupply. To give an incentive for bombing further inland, you could weigh the strats' contribution to country strat objects' (barracks etc at the fields) rebuilding with a bias for inner strats.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2009, 12:07:59 PM by moot »
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Offline Knite

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Re: Zone system.
« Reply #74 on: September 11, 2009, 11:57:13 AM »
Gents, capture-able strat in the sense you wish will not happen. If you think that capturing strat would then permanently make the other counties rebuilds 75% less or what ever, you have just set up a steam roll condition.

I.E. Each capture makes it harder and harder for a country to defend. While this is how the world works, it does not make for good game play.

HiTech

HiTech,

I respectfully disagree on this being only a negative thing, and actually think it has the capability to make defending more palatable at times (and will concede it will also make it tougher, it's a give/take relationship). Here's my thinking... (again using my 4/40 example).

If bish lose 5 fields, but keep their 4 strats, each strat would resupply at GREATER than 100% (in this case : 114% efficiency). The attacking country would resupply at a SLOWER pace (88% efficiency) because of their lower strat/field ratio. Therefore attacks by the defending country would actually be MORE effective than standard. If the attacking country took a strat, that still leaves the defending country at 86% efficiency, while the attacking country now with 5 strats and 45 fields would be at 112% effeciency. Yes, it would make the attacker have the advantage at this point, but as it stands with zone supplies, wouldn't the zone fields be more affected than 86% efficiency? Plus, the option would still exist to fly supplies in from other airfields, as we do now, as well as likely that strategic target is still surrounded by the defender's airbases, making re-taking it easier than defending it.

My actual math equation is as follows... very simple :
#Strats x 10 (or 15 or whatever you want to use) / #airfields.

Just wanted to throw the concept out there to think about, that's all.  :salute


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