Improve the freaking strat game!

[321BAR]

nuff said. theres other threads about it. make the strat game better. make more strats, better bombing targets, etc.

[Lusche]

A quick improvement would be making them at least more worth in terms of score. Currently they give you much less points than bombing a few random town centers, at much increased risk (heavy puffy ack, long flight, easily predictable route).

[Jayhawk]

Agree 10,000%.

HTC said the current strat was a work in progress when it came out, I thought that meant we'd see changes sooner than now.  I know he doesn't make big changes on a whim, but it's time.

[RoGenT]

+ 

[The Grinch]

1+

[Plazus]

Perhaps make the strat a bit more "important" to destroy. Meaning, that if they were destroyed, it would have a greater impact on the country. Maybe it'll encourage more people to up and defend their own strats more often.

[bustr]

With two LWMA arenas, players will simply jump to the other LWMA arena until the destroyed strat imposed hardship is gone. The current AH general culture enjoys dishing out pain and hardship to other players\countries. When the same happens to them they begin ditching to the other arenas. Titanic Tuesday is the only time I see anyone really digging their feet in and fighting back. Why?....Because it's the only arena on Tuesday night with the uber late war rides that give average players some sense of parity and personal power in the arenas.

Localised hardship works because players will stay in the arena but move to another feild with fewer problems once they feel overwhelmed or unable to compete in that sector. Defending a single feild against a hoard or resuplying the HQ to gain back radar is about all the attention span and tollerance for incovieniance your average player is willing to invest. Once you allow destroying a strategic target to become more than points for the attacker and be a single factor to control the outcome of a country for longer than 5 minutes, you will begin loosing your average player base.

So localised hardship but making strat mean more in the game....hmmm?

Try a map with the three countries broken into equal sectors each dominated by a sector strat. Right now to win a map you have to own what,,,70% of your own country and 40% of the other two? Each country is 5 sectors with 5 strat and some number of airfeilds and other bases. To win the war and reset the map you have to take 2 sectors of the other two countries which cannot be accomplished without capturing those sectors feilds and destroying or capturing the strat to capture the sector. When you capture the last feild that strat has to be down or captured to give your country that sector. All of this while keeping 4 of your own sectors. You still own your sector until the strat is destroyed or captured after all the feilds are captured from you. Means if just one feild gets recaptured during the process you have to take it back while making sure the strat will be destroyed or captured when you get that feild back. Process is probably simpler is destroying the strat is the requirement.

In a way it would be similare to some of our new giant maps with all of the big islands with about 5 or 6 bases in each country. Just add a strat in the middel of the island and say the country taking all of the bases doesnt own the island without also destroying or capturing the strat to get one of two stages towards winning the map. A good first map would be an ocean map where each country has 6 islands. One island in the backfeild with the HQ and defensive bases then 5 islands with feilds and a strat. Maybe have some of the bases point vehical spawns outside of the strat to have GV battles for the strat.

Some kind of a strat completely destroyed or captured message and country x owns sector y message should pop up along with being able to right click on the strat and see who owns it be labeled. 

At the rate countries take some of these islands on the new maps with 5 bases on them, this should be possible. Kill the strat or capture the strat to own that sector and pass out points for the effort of bombing it into oblivion or capturing it. Say 15-20 troops. Add some manned ack, 17lbers along with auto ack. The buffs eventualy will level the place but, fun could be had defending against GV's and jabo. Think of being the last guy holding up the other country from taking a whole sector. All that will matter to own the sector is when the last base falls you better have flattened or captured the strat to own that realestate. Don't know...totaly destroy the strat or 15-20 troops to capture the strat....hmmmm.

This would make strats more important to the game while keeping pain and hardship localised so as to not make players bail to another arena.

And to the GV'ers who will want a GV hanger in the strat if it has mannable guns. No body really likes built in no brainer spawn camping. So the other feilds spawn in just outside of easy spawn camping setup driving range and tank battles insue for the realestate while manned and auto ack supports from the strat. Jabo and bombers are going to flatten the place anyway. Think of Stalingrad. Preplan spawned in defences and supply drops and muppets and piggies Oh My and other fantasy critters......

This is just an idea to promot combat without allowing a single newbie in a suicide Lancaster to shut down a resource for a whole country for an extended period of time other than resupplyable radar.
 

[guncrasher]

make the m18 drive all the way to the strats 


semp

[bagrat]

hows about factorys in the strat for every plane. so like if someone bombs the p-51 factory, no more p-51's for 45mins, or spit factory.(not just for these 2 planes, but everyplane and bomber. even tanks)  i dunno somethin to make the strats more valuable, a more desirable target.

[The Grinch]

make the m18 drive all the way to the strats 


semp

hehehe

[bustr]

hows about factorys in the strat for every plane. so like if someone bombs the p-51 factory, no more p-51's for 45mins, or spit factory.(not just for these 2 planes, but everyplane and bomber. even tanks)  i dunno somethin to make the strats more valuable, a more desirable target.

You will only enjoy this if it's not your factory or strat. It will promot greifer hoards, poor conduct and gamey strategies just to screw a third of the arena to get away with it. One week of repeated 45 minutes global pain and denyal of rides for a country will kill off the player base because a few will abuse it to the max once they figure how to. This game only works if the pain is simple, short and localised. Everyone pays the same $14.95 to expect their P51 or spit16 on demand with in reason. ENY is the most global long term pain anyone will put up with.

Even if its only the bases in a capturable sector, one squad buff run then can wipe out all the factories in the controling strat disabling all aircraft and vehicles for the feilds in that capturable sector. That won't be accepted by anyone for very long. You are giveing one small group the ability to deny a critical global resorce to a whole country with very little effort. You are not promoting ongoing semi equal conflict as the root of resetting a map. You are promoting the concept of winning by denyal of resources via little personal effort. No one will stay to defend the strat adfinitum just to keep their rides available. They will find another game.

If the 5 sector strat model was adopted with your suggestion for factories. Eventualy there would be a joint squad operations organised across two countries to run massive buff raids concurrently to kill only the 5 strats and their factories denying aircraft and vehicals for the third country for 45 minutes. AH would bleed customers from that night on unless HiTech shut that down on the spot. Just like the massive 300 player joint squad ops back in AH1 which caused ENY, split arenas and arena caps.

Maybe HiTech knows something about game theory and player motivation after all this time and that is why he has never liked having destroyable aircraft factories that deny players their rides. You only model a game your way if it has two countries and the method of winning is total domination by denying the other side the ability to wage war and then capitualte or be exterminated. When the goal of the game is to promote combat and conflict 24x7 you never allow the destruction of individual objects to have catastrophic global control over a vast amount of a single side. You insure that if there is an ability to win, the 24x7 combat and conflict is the venue under which you win.

[thndregg]

Railroad marshalling yards, ocean convoys, warehouse-type targets & bridges would be nice destructable objects- basically significant methods of conveying supplies, the objective of which would be to affect resupply of strategic base targets.

[JHerne]

+1.

Well read Bustr.

J

[Traveler]

Great idea, tieing the factory strat to the ability to capture that sector and in order to capture a sector you have to have captured all bases within that sector including the factory.  People can still fly what they want, game/play is still balanced by CAPS/ENY.  More fights, more/different strategy needed, a more interesting game.

[Delirium]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Currently the bomber guys don't have any targets that really effect gameplay unless you count airfields. One guy cannot affect strats or HQ, so they do what will give them the results they want; bombing airfield hangers.

That said, there should be multiple wind and cloud layers to make 20k+ bombing a lot less accurate. Nothing is worse than seeing bombers 30k and still dropping JDAMs.