Bombing Strats have become a waste of time...

[Chilli]

I agree with Fugitive.  That is why the more big fat bomber icons seen on the map, the better. 30 minute resupply time helps to achieve just that.  Bombers in turn become  targets .... and the real warz begin 

Otherwise, strats would be flat all the time.  If there were an area of resupply that needed adjusting it would be the towns, and even there, not sure if we want to mess with the balance.

As it is now, we have plenty of bomber targets, at the same time we have defenders willing to break off from their attacks to rebuild their factories, because it does not become an insurmountable task, and soon they are back  making the AH3 World Go Round!! 

[Dobs]

Two types of players: Those who like to 'win the game', and those that like to fight.

Those who like to win the game, and play as required to do so (hoard attacks, dropping strats, etc) will, in time, eventually tire of it. You can be plate-spinning autistic and you're still going to eventually tire of the repetition. It's a mindless, skill-less endeavor.

Those who like to fight are a different story. They never tire of it, because until they're #1, there's always a challenge ahead of them. And once they reach number one - which is rare and always open to interpretation - they've got one heck of a job ahead of them to hold it.

It would seem to me that AH has made a big mistake catering to the first group, which continues to further alienate the second group. And in my opinion - the second group is where the money is, where the longevity is, and where the loyalty is (or perhaps was).

All of the guys who have been your bread and butter over the years - guys I remember thoroughly enjoying fighting with and against - are telling you to leave things the way they are. But no - let's cater to the first group instead?? Doesn't make any sense to me.

And if you want to see what happens when the first group gets the "catering to" well....you can go look at HT's old game and see how many people are left.  A balance must be achieved to allow everyone to play the game they like, but finding that balance is not as easy as you think.  If you make a game that people can play "unopposed" or "minimize" their risk and still get points....people will do that. If you make a game where you can avoid a fight, people do that. If you make a game where people will retreat from the air and sit in a ackwagon or field gun hoping something flies by to shoot at....well you might as well make a virtual "Dove Hunt" game:)  It blows my mind to think that logging into a MMO game and trying to avoid people is a definition of "fun", but amazingly it is. 

[fd ski]

I worked from home one day, spend time working while "bombing" strat targets. It would seem that out of 30+ people in arena at that time, about 20 were doing something similar as myself Normally i would fly a fighter and fight it out, but trying to join work with pleasure results in B29 strat runs

[Electroman]

The OP should ask the community about the perceived attitude over the last 15 years of Hitech to giving any single player, or very small group, absolute control over the majority's fun, by a single action against a target as a country wide choke hold. The OP wants his single finger salute to shut down the fun of a whole country and edify himself when he sees his name in lights. While probably enjoying the whines of outrage on 200 during his trip back to land.

This is not what the customers are paying Hitech for. Nor is how this open arena system been designed. This is not a two country war of domination game. Depending on the terrain, it's up to 200 individual wars staged at 200 individual bases in an open world environment. Winning the war is only one of many possible results available to the players depending on what they like doing for a few hours. But, not crippling the environment of a single country for a sustained time period without having to fight that countries players directly for the result. And even fighting a whole country can be abused, which is how we got ENY.

The OP should know about what the 49ers abused in this vein until Hitech changed the underlying amount of damage needed, and down time to the HQ. What the OP wants was recently super abused because the 49ers enjoyed the game power of their single finger salutes to take away the majorities fun. Hitech made his view clear on the subject by changing the game itself to stop them from driving his paying customers away. Any of you remember just how we got ENY because of organized abuse of the game driving away paying customers...........

I decided to wait a bit and see others comments before replying to this post.

First, I've been around for the past 15+ years. I took a long hiatus from the game largely due to the activities (such as 49'ers activities) among other reasons. So yes, I have been around - and - I have seen the results from before and to now. Yes, some of those activities drove people away...as it was going to do it again now with the way the game changed significantly too much to the other way. There needed to be a happy medium. 30 minute resup time was not a happy middle ground.

As I said, the time needed to be adjusted to something fair for both sides, but, along with this I made other suggestions. It should not be the case where a single bomber can cripple strats damage so much in a single run. Having multiple bombers is more effective (agreed - always has been the case) but even with that the targets should be more difficult to hit. I propose:

- 10 min (or even 15 min) resup times
- redesign strat target objects further apart so they can't be taken out easily in a single pass
- relocate strat objects to a reasonable distance away from a base so that quick resups (or for that matter when a base is captured near a strat) it is not easily resupplied or taken down quickly

Let's try to find a better middle ground - I don't think the above is trying to propose putting it back to favor one side or another but trying to find a constructive balance of fairness.

As for one last item regarding long flight times / name in lights / 1 finger salutes...I'll simply put it this way. I'm a bomber pilot predominantly. I don't always fly at 30K+, I quite often fly at altitudes much lower than that, and I like doing long strat runs with squaddies or other country members (at least we used to before the 30 min resup times) because we chat and enjoy the ride / challenge of multiple fighters intercepting us along the way. It's not about the stardom at the end of the night, it's about the mission and we always assume the risk of getting shot down on those long runs (more often then not once we are discovered).

Take into consideration as a bomber pilot if I fly long strat runs that take me 1.5 - 2 hours each, and am online for 4 - 6 hours at a time...how many runs / missions do I do compared to many others that GV / Ftr pilot? No where near as many...and I pay the same as everyone else. So All I have asked is to balance things out to make things more fair across the board. We may not completely agree on how we get there but I am hoping the above proposal is a start.

Thanks HiTech for making some adjustments and hope that the above is constructive moving forward.

Cheers,
Elec1

[Chilli]

Or.............  leave it as it has been in AH3.  Much simpler...

I still don't get your argument.... especially when you say you are working with a group.  Let me let the cat out of the bag..... Take out factory, assign group member(s) to take out corresponding strat, town buildings or AAA guns.  Mission complete!  What else did you WANT?   ...... to hear 200 whine about how long they have to wait while their strats will be down.......

I really don't think you are the griefer type.... but your posts sure do have that content, even if it is not your intention.  I frequently fly bombers, and for the most part have no problem with doing your job in much less time..... besides taking down factories and town centers without coordinated effort seems way too much self absorbed, and score padding..... and that's okay and I am not without fault, but it shouldn't matter to you that team B repaired the damage that you did, it doesn't erase the fact that you receive credit for the damage.

With 30 minutes factory resupply times, 180 minutes YES 3 HOURS is no longer an insurmountable task.  So guess what?  I grab a box of supplies and take it to the damaged factory .... WHEN TIME SUITS ME.  In other words, your 1 sortie no longer dictates that I either dedicate time away from what I enjoy doing or suffer a broken country resource and maybe even log off.

[Electroman]

Or.............  leave it as it has been in AH3.  Much simpler...

I still don't get your argument.... especially when you say you are working with a group.  Let me let the cat out of the bag..... Take out factory, assign group member(s) to take out corresponding strat, town buildings or AAA guns.  Mission complete!  What else did you WANT?   ...... to hear 200 whine about how long they have to wait while their strats will be down.......

I really don't think you are the griefer type.... but your posts sure do have that content, even if it is not your intention.  I frequently fly bombers, and for the most part have no problem with doing your job in much less time..... besides taking down factories and town centers without coordinated effort seems way too much self absorbed, and score padding..... and that's okay and I am not without fault, but it shouldn't matter to you that team B repaired the damage that you did, it doesn't erase the fact that you receive credit for the damage.

With 30 minutes factory resupply times, 180 minutes YES 3 HOURS is no longer an insurmountable task.  So guess what?  I grab a box of supplies and take it to the damaged factory .... WHEN TIME SUITS ME.  In other words, your 1 sortie no longer dictates that I either dedicate time away from what I enjoy doing or suffer a broken country resource and maybe even log off.

Chilli - With respect...I understand what you are saying however your logic does not fix the root problem that we have been facing with the resup time.

Everyone keeps focusing on the "180 minutes / 3 hours downtime". Yes, if it is completely wiped out to 0%, but again resupping that strat quickly from a nearby spawn nullifies that very quickly. Even if you takeout strategic resup spawn points on most maps there are multiple respawns. Trying to coordinate every resup spawn point takeout would be quite the challenge...and even then...those will be resupped quickly as well. The problem has been the 30 min resup time - period. It was too big of a swing to the other side.

I agree - take multiple people to hit strat / surrounding targets is one method to hit targets. However, when having to fly long distances for 1+ hours it is not easy to get enough pilots that are willing (or have the time) to do so. Many times it is one or 2 guys that take their time to do this to help their country benefit from the strat hit for a period of time. As for you being able to do the same job in less time...is there some special high speed / light weight fuel efficient bomber you are using that I'm unaware of? Distance & altitude all play a factor.

Sure, I can go at 5000 ft and reduce my time for climbing and save some time. I could take a faster bomber such as TU2's but with a reduced payload which makes it less of an impact. All of this is taken into consideration when hitting a strat when by myself, or, with a group - the choice is based on the situation (location of strat, time to get there, fuel required, number of people in mission, etc etc). It's not my first rodeo ya know...I have been around and bombing for a while now.

My comments / proposal was to try and make things still somewhat effective - for both sides. Make it challenging for both bombers (wider spread out targets or adjust damage model of strat targets), and resuppers (less time per drop, adjust spawn points). Your comments to leave as is does nothing to find middle ground but simply leave it swayed to one side and you think that is fine...and that is your opinion and I respect that. My comments are meant to find a middle ground because there are many of us (bomber pilots in particular) that feel the strats have now become useless to waste time on bombing for the time invested to hit them - and that takes away from the game.

 
Elec1

[Lazerr]

I agree with Fugitive.  That is why the more big fat bomber icons seen on the map, the better. 30 minute resupply time helps to achieve just that.  Bombers in turn become  targets .... and the real warz begin 

Otherwise, strats would be flat all the time.  If there were an area of resupply that needed adjusting it would be the towns, and even there, not sure if we want to mess with the balance.

As it is now, we have plenty of bomber targets, at the same time we have defenders willing to break off from their attacks to rebuild their factories, because it does not become an insurmountable task, and soon they are back  making the AH3 World Go Round!! 

I see the opposite of this.  I believe we would see less bombers due to people not wanting to waste the time of it being easily resupplied.

Just how I look at it.  I randomly bomb strats when i get the urge.  I wouldnt waste the time if I knew it was going to be almost immediately supplied.

[hitech]

I set it to 10 mins today.

HiTech

[Lazerr]

I set it to 10 mins today.

HiTech

I think thats perfect.  Bombers will continue to bomb,  defenders can defend, and suppliers can supply.

Maybe the fact it wont be supplied so easily will convince them to defend and create some memorable combat moments.  (The things that get people hooked)

Not just another drive in a supply truck. 

[Lusche]

It seems strange to me when people ask for more combat, yet want resupply to be a much better option than defense?
"Look, a darbar going to the AA factory!" - "Don't worry, we are already waiting here in a m3"

The op was told to get more bombers together, a team , to get his/her job done. It is no longer a single person job. It takes a team effort.

Team effort would be adjusted by size, number, location and hardness/defense of strategic objects, not by making them easily resupplyable by a just two people.
No matter if it's 1 or 10 players in a strat raid, it takes absolutely the same effort to undo the damage caused by them.

Now with 10 minutes, it's somewhat better balanced in my opinion, but the basic problems of the strats are still there.

[Biggamer]

10 mins seems like an awsome choice for strat resup 4 minutes was not enough in aces high 2 and 30 minutes was over kill. Thank you

[Shuffler]

Now the M3 drivers are going to want three M3s like the buff drivers get three buffs. Lol

[scott66]

Now the M3 drivers are going to want three M3s like the buff drivers get three buffs. Lol

why didn't I think of that!?

[popeye]

So ack, radar and ords will be down longer.  Not sure how that contributes to more air-air combat.

[Electroman]

I set it to 10 mins today.

HiTech

Thank You Sir!