The allied attendance did play a part in this. However, the design called for a 6% advantage for the allies (2 or 3 players). The reality was that during each frame the axis had anywhere from a 10% to 20% advantage over the allies, and over 16% to 26% past the design. This does not include the number of people required to be in bombers which was another 20% to 30% of the allied force. That gave the axis a fighter-to-fighter superiority of anywhere from 30% to 50%. At no time did you compensate as other designers have done in the past.
Now add in the other semi realistic restrictions imposed on the allies with 50% cloud cover that during my experience often obscured the target, and an altitude boundary 18k to 22k for the bombers which made it easier for the defenders. This allowed for the axis strategy to simply orbit over target and pounce on the bombers with their vast numerical superiority and potent canon armed aircraft. The result was what turned out to be a turkey shoot for the axis each frame.
The defense was so devastating that the allies lost approximately 30 to 40% of their participants before the end of the first hour each frame. Making it even more difficult for those remaining to accomplish the stated goals. If you truly want to keep interest in FSO, having events unfold like this will not help. And while I've been on the losing side many times. I've never been frustrated enough to leave before the second hour of a multi-life frame before, but the third frame was finally enough to make me go.
Finally, I've never been a fan of a pass/fail scoring. I've favored an accumulation of points so that by the end of an event, you know exactly how much you've won or loss by.
I commend you for your inspiration in designing the event and for providing our sandbox to play in this month, but I feel that you fell just a bit short.
I agree that the numbers did not work out. I could have moved a squad in retrospect, had I known that the problem would only worsen. But how are we to know? In these cases, an Allied advantage is indeed better than an Axis one, but I've seen it play out the other way, too. Frankly, neither is fun nor reparable.
Regarding objectives, I'm not sure what the alternative is. It's 8th AF, so we want bombers at altitude, hence the alt window. We don't want max alt pre-45 so there's an alt cap. Clouds were a thing, I hate that they obscured the targets at times. The defenders' best strategy is indeed to sit at target and pounce once we found them. I'm not sure what else is expected.
People leaving prior to Hour 2 is something else that the admin can't control. I understand that some of it may have been out if frustration. Luckily, my setups aren't dependant on hour 2 and I don't like a lot of emphasis on hour 2 because it is so chaotic and ad hoc.
The scoring system is not preferable to you, I understand and appreciate that. In this case, I was fearful of numbers as well as kills being disproportionate because of the nature of the event. Bombers are here to bomb and escorts are not there to kill, they are there to escort. The only people with the mission to actually kill are the bomber attacking defenders. So, in my opinion, to score kills in a setup such as this only helps one side. Plus, 8th AF missions based success on a few factors, most important was target status. Therefore, this event focused on the target status after the frame to determine victory. I thought it was best for this event, maybe I was wrong. On that note, the Allies were 10 buildings from winning and about 35 buildings from winning all 3 frames.
Maybe I did fall short of a good design. I think moving a 3-5 squad would have been good. Had I known that the Allies wouldn't have turned up and the Axis would have, I would have put more squads on Allies. I always try to give an interesting flair to my events or something brand new. This time it was 163s. I am sorry you didn't enjoy the event and I will take your feedback into consideration for my next event.
Cheers.
