Improving the ground war to help the air war

[The Fugitive]

Sounds like you are trying to control how other people play   

endless noe's are controlling how I play. I either play walk a mole chasing player who are determined to NOT engage in combat in a combat game, or I am forced to fly cap missions along the coast in the hope i run into a fight.

I not saying take away the noes, I'm saying make them less popular by having them get busted more often.

If this is so true, shame on the defenders for not anticipating  and setting up some patrols to counter.    A BARCAP would have gone a long way to providing some early warning.  There is a reason that most of the aircraft operational flights during WWII were none combat flights and just search and patrol, but good luck with trying to set up a mission to establish a sustained patrol.  We all know that the game is lacking in any kind of strategy and perhaps that is where AI aircraft could be used to help improve that part of the game.

This is a game that is suppose to have combat in it. I'm not paying 15 a month to fly cap. I pay to play. Less and less people are playing with more and more hiding.  Could this be a reason subscriptions are down?

[Traveler]

With the dwindling numbers it seems that something new has to be experimented with or you're done - but not by your choice.

The 113th Lucky Strikes is down to 6 hard core members, each has been here since the beginning and we collectively, on some of those long 10 min flights, have discussed what it would take for us to collectively go find another game.   We'ed like to see an improvement to the strategy side and to creating strategic targets that have some meaning, like bridges at river crossings that would created both Air and ground conflict, perhaps the inclusion of meaningful AI like AirWarrior had.  We all discussed the addition of Air Spawns and to a man decided that we wouldn't play.   So we been looking at other games that we as a UNIT might switch to if and when AH dies or becomes to arcade for our liking.

[Traveler]

endless noe's are controlling how I play. I either play walk a mole chasing player who are determined to NOT engage in combat in a combat game, or I am forced to fly cap missions along the coast in the hope i run into a fight.

I not saying take away the noes, I'm saying make them less popular by having them get busted more often.


This is a game that is suppose to have combat in it. I'm not paying 15 a month to fly cap. I pay to play. Less and less people are playing with more and more hiding.  Could this be a reason subscriptions are down?

Are you telling me they are paying 15 a month to hide?  Perhaps the decline of squads has more to do with subscriptions being down.   Our policy in the 113th is to invite everyone to join us and give a squad a try if not our squad perhaps another.  We see a lot of guys roll on through,  They join, learn the ropes and jump out to become a "lone eagle"  "Super Fighter Pilot" and soon after that, they become a former player of Aces High.

[Chilli]

{snip}


The longer it takes for a player to rejoin the battle the emptier the arena seems to be. this is definitely true for long drives to spawn points........ on that point.  "Should LVTs be placed closer to the shore line?"

What in the ground war effects air war?  Let's try and keep the discussion on topic.

1-  Ground to air defenses, including vehicles, manned guns, auto guns, and puffy ack.

2-  Strategic target location, hardness, and defenses (same as above)

3-  Visibility and effectiveness against air to ground attackers.

4-  (Probably should be listed as number 1) The "fun" aspect of the war.  Currently, spawn camping and base captures is all we got......  < please take this as intended, an observation and not a whine 

5-  Distance from spawn to action.  CV's seem to have been pushed further off shore making LVT landings, for the most part fruitless.

[Traveler]

What in the ground war effects air war?  Let's try and keep the discussion on topic.

1-  Ground to air defenses, including vehicles, manned guns, auto guns, and puffy ack.

2-  Strategic target location, hardness, and defenses (same as above)

3-  Visibility and effectiveness against air to ground attackers.

4-  (Probably should be listed as number 1) The "fun" aspect of the war.  Currently, spawn camping and base captures is all we got......  < please take this as intended, an observation and not a whine 

5-  Distance from spawn to action.  CV's seem to have been pushed further off shore making LVT landings, for the most part fruitless.

That's just it, currently there is nothing that effects the air war and nothing connected to a airbase that effects the ground war, aircraft are not limited in supply, and can endless fly out of bases that can't be captured , While it is possible to take down hangers and VH's.  The same game strategy has existed since the roll out.  capture field with 10 troops, there is no limit to available aircraft so no battles to hold or protect strats like factories , no limit to available spits or P51's, 190s or 109's    No limit to any kind of GV unless that hanger is down supply is limitless .  So the strategy is roll a horde to a base, capture it.   No limit to the number of aircraft that depart out of any one field.  It's the basic game play that after 15 years has become very stale .    There is no need to develop a strategy because none is needed.

[DREDIOCK]

That's just it, currently there is nothing that effects the air war and nothing connected to a airbase that effects the ground war, aircraft are not limited in supply, and can endless fly out of bases that can't be captured , While it is possible to take down hangers and VH's.  The same game strategy has existed since the roll out.  capture field with 10 troops, there is no limit to available aircraft so no battles to hold or protect strats like factories , no limit to available spits or P51's, 190s or 109's    No limit to any kind of GV unless that hanger is down supply is limitless .  So the strategy is roll a horde to a base, capture it.   No limit to the number of aircraft that depart out of any one field.  It's the basic game play that after 15 years has become very stale .    There is no need to develop a strategy because none is needed.

See I think we should have strat factory targets such as factories for the "uber" rides, 262's 190D9 and 152, Spit 16,,KI84, Tigers (both variants) LA7's

Time the amount of damage needed to be done and/or time down to ENY. This would both create more of a reason to do missions and a reason to defend against them.. Surround them by AA bases so that NOE raids on them would be near impossible. And make them hard enough so that it takes more then one set of bombers to do any significant damage

[The Fugitive]

Are you telling me they are paying 15 a month to hide?  Perhaps the decline of squads has more to do with subscriptions being down.   Our policy in the 113th is to invite everyone to join us and give a squad a try if not our squad perhaps another.  We see a lot of guys roll on through,  They join, learn the ropes and jump out to become a "lone eagle"  "Super Fighter Pilot" and soon after that, they become a former player of Aces High.

Thats how the play has gone. Now it is more important in the game to capture bases. Even lots of the so called "fighter" guys are falling into the no fight mentality, to them the kill is the most important. I don't know how many times I came into fight at a disadvantage, either alt or numbers and as soon as you make enough moves to either start turning the tables or just show your not an easy kill off they go, looking for ack, more friends or to regain their advantage.

I think squads should be a better value in the game. If "x" amount of your squad mates hit a certain percentage of targets or knocked down a certain number of players during an attack the squad earns perks.  Squad nights use to be important to many players, now it's more about a "click" than anything. Put squad ranks on the web page instead of individual ranks. I'm looking for a squad now that likes to run missions. I miss that element in the game as it is few and fare between good missions these days. Sure you get Jokers horde, GHIs horde, or ETs horde but thats about all you have.

The only GV vs air action we have these days in breaking spawn camps or just bombt***ing them. Both of which does nothing but tick off the GVers. It doesn't matter how much you work the GV game until you can get it out of the spawn. Get rid of the spawn camps and no you get hunts. Hunts for the attackers.... which way are they coming? Can the attack be slowed/stopped by heavy fighters? If not report ahead, defenders set up an ambush!

But again you fall into the same old boat, your dictating how people play. Take away the spawn camping and how much of an uproar would you hear? Same as if you took away vulching a field. To some its the only way they either want to, or CAN play. Removing their type of fun isn't really fair, but if it was in the interest of better game play? I don't know, Im glad it's not a decision I have to make.

[Ack-Ack]

I think the next update will help alleviate some of these concerns.  With the new town and field layout, coupled with the new terrain designs, it will help the ground war become more dynamic instead being the whack-a-mole spawn camp it's become.

ack-ack

[Chilli]

I think the next update will help alleviate some of these concerns.  With the new town and field layout, coupled with the new terrain designs, it will help the ground war become more dynamic instead being the whack-a-mole spawn camp it's become.

ack-ack

It will indeed, but not for all that long if it is lipstick on a pig...... (oh, my squadees.... just spit out some mud...) 

and none of us know what the new version ground war will be.... so, a wait and see is the best thing to do.  It doesn't hurt to make suggestions as we all are trying to do, but after building a whole new graphics system, I think that tweaks can go a long way without major coad changes.

[Traveler]

Thats how the play has gone. Now it is more important in the game to capture bases. Even lots of the so called "fighter" guys are falling into the no fight mentality, to them the kill is the most important. I don't know how many times I came into fight at a disadvantage, either alt or numbers and as soon as you make enough moves to either start turning the tables or just show your not an easy kill off they go, looking for ack, more friends or to regain their advantage.

I think squads should be a better value in the game. If "x" amount of your squad mates hit a certain percentage of targets or knocked down a certain number of players during an attack the squad earns perks.  Squad nights use to be important to many players, now it's more about a "click" than anything. Put squad ranks on the web page instead of individual ranks. I'm looking for a squad now that likes to run missions. I miss that element in the game as it is few and fare between good missions these days. Sure you get Jokers horde, GHIs horde, or ETs horde but thats about all you have.

The only GV vs air action we have these days in breaking spawn camps or just bombt***ing them. Both of which does nothing but tick off the GVers. It doesn't matter how much you work the GV game until you can get it out of the spawn. Get rid of the spawn camps and no you get hunts. Hunts for the attackers.... which way are they coming? Can the attack be slowed/stopped by heavy fighters? If not report ahead, defenders set up an ambush!

But again you fall into the same old boat, your dictating how people play. Take away the spawn camping and how much of an uproar would you hear? Same as if you took away vulching a field. To some its the only way they either want to, or CAN play. Removing their type of fun isn't really fair, but if it was in the interest of better game play? I don't know, Im glad it's not a decision I have to make.

You're welcome to wing up with the 113th Lucky Strikes, we fly on Saturday evenings as Knights vox 113, we have never changed sides and doubt that we will anytime soon.  Every flight we fly is a mission and sometimes we wing up with others and sometimes we go out on our own.  We tend to pick a field and shut down everything on it for hours at a time or we strike at adjoining fields to cut off nme support. We resupply bases, fly troops, escort bombers, what ever it takes.  You can fly what you like, but we do use the P38L J and G, a lot.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

That's just it, currently there is nothing that effects the air war and nothing connected to a airbase that effects the ground war, aircraft are not limited in supply, and can endless fly out of bases that can't be captured , While it is possible to take down hangers and VH's.  The same game strategy has existed since the roll out.  capture field with 10 troops, there is no limit to available aircraft so no battles to hold or protect strats like factories , no limit to available spits or P51's, 190s or 109's    No limit to any kind of GV unless that hanger is down supply is limitless .  So the strategy is roll a horde to a base, capture it.   No limit to the number of aircraft that depart out of any one field.  It's the basic game play that after 15 years has become very stale .    There is no need to develop a strategy because none is needed.

ö
While in theory attrition and limiting the planeset sounds like an awesome idea, think about this scenario: You log on, your country has all the strats destroyed because previous players didn't have the capacity or didn't care to protect them. Your planeset is totally limited for the whole day and you can't even turn the tables alone let alone with the crappy planes you have.

Attrition would just make the country imbalance even more pronounced because the hordelings always have a few dweebs who do nothing but NOE strats and ords, then suicide while the horde keeps poiunding the smaller country so that nobody can even care about the few dweebs who do their sabotage work completely unopposed.

AH:s biggest problem are the gamey gamers themselves, not how the game is made. This is every MMOs biggest dilemma, how to keep the game fun but also stop the players from ruining the game for others with their selfishness.

[Ack-Ack]

That's just it, currently there is nothing that effects the air war and nothing connected to a airbase that effects the ground war, aircraft are not limited in supply, and can endless fly out of bases that can't be captured , While it is possible to take down hangers and VH's.  The same game strategy has existed since the roll out.  capture field with 10 troops, there is no limit to available aircraft so no battles to hold or protect strats like factories , no limit to available spits or P51's, 190s or 109's    No limit to any kind of GV unless that hanger is down supply is limitless .  So the strategy is roll a horde to a base, capture it.   No limit to the number of aircraft that depart out of any one field.  It's the basic game play that after 15 years has become very stale .    There is no need to develop a strategy because none is needed.

While I really liked the feature in AW where if you destroyed the Spitfire victory, it prevented anyone from upping a Spitfire IX and it really caused some epic air battles to fight your way to the factory.  However, there was a big downside in that once the Spitfire factory was bombed and people couldn't up Spitfire IX's, players would log in mass or switch sides to another country that still had Spitfire IXs.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

While I really liked the feature in AW where if you destroyed the Spitfire victory, it prevented anyone from upping a Spitfire IX and it really caused some epic air battles to fight your way to the factory.  However, there was a big downside in that once the Spitfire factory was bombed and people couldn't up Spitfire IX's, players would log in mass or switch sides to another country that still had Spitfire IXs.

Yes this is prime example of what's your fun may kill the others fun. If one side gets to make their game 'too fun' for themselves (be it killing strats to disable the enemy, bomb hq, horde in massive numbers you name it) the more 'fun' it comes for the other side the less fun it becomes for the opponent side. Then after a certain threshold the opponent side sees no point in playing the game anymore and either logs off temporarily or if situation continues, cancels totally.

[Chilli]

ö
{snip}

AH:s biggest problem are the gamey gamers themselves, not how the game is made. This is every MMOs biggest dilemma, how to keep the game fun but also stop the players from ruining the game for others with their selfishness.

I think the biggest problem as far as imbalance is concerned is the "all or nothing" base take.  A player / group / country could work for hours trying to take one field.  In the end, either you got it or you tuck your tail and vacate.

Like others have said, if the war had more objectives other than capturing bases, that at least gave missions and sorties lasting effects other than removing bombs or radar from a base for a few minutes, a base attack could show some sort of real progress, even if the base has not been captured.  Capturing hills, villages, railways, bridges would equal more interaction and more fun.  Festers map almost has that feel, with the chain of vbases.  Think if at the end of that chain a major strategical airfield was located, and the vbases had single hangars and multiple entry points from either country (on that front), advances could routinely be made by small forces, but also easily pushed back.

Somewhere along the line, someone has decided that rolling bases is bad for AH.  I put out the challenge that it is GOOD for AH, and even better when a low populated country has an opportunity to score territory (even if at a slower rate).

[DREDIOCK]

While I really liked the feature in AW where if you destroyed the Spitfire victory, it prevented anyone from upping a Spitfire IX and it really caused some epic air battles to fight your way to the factory.  However, there was a big downside in that once the Spitfire factory was bombed and people couldn't up Spitfire IX's, players would log in mass or switch sides to another country that still had Spitfire IXs.

I never understood the people that did that. How long was the factory down? For a whole 15 minutes?

I personally think the ones with the problem is the ones that cant survive without their favorite ride for 15 minutes (hey, Im willing to put my ride on the line)

Anyway. Thats why I suggested it be tied to ENY. To make it harder for the horde to destroy without pulling significant numbers from the win the war effort. triple the amount of act surrounding strats. Make hitting them a major accomplishment and not just a milk run

I also still believe in Zones. We had the best overall gameplay when we had the fights over the primary zone bases.
 Have a strat factory for each category in each zone. Then unless all strats are hit at once. Then nobody is ever completely  without their ride. Only from upping their ride in a given zone. Place them toward the back of each zone and the closer you get to a strat target the less distance someone has to travel in "their" ride to get to the fight