organization ruining the MA.

[ghostdancer]

Perfect. That's exactly what my suggestion is intended as--it would slow down the landgrab a bit. By no means do I want to stop it entirely.

J_A_B

Jab,

I agree that toughening up the bases some will help. Right now I sort of find it more dangerous to take out a CV group if you don't have high bombers overhead than bases. So both probably could use some toughening. In the case of CVs .. a simple evasives button would be nice so that the controller can just hit it instead of trying to plot evasives right as planes are coming in.

In the case of bases I am not sure how much.

My earlier point was that an organized assault is going to take the base no matter what. To make it take longer for an organized force will need a lot more toughening of the base. Which if overdone might make it impossible for a non-organized strike to be able to take it or seriously hurt it.

Sort of a fine line to walk .. make it tougher so a strike of 20+ have a harder time but don't make it too hard to where only a force of 20+ coordinate / organized guys can do it.

Always an interesting problem of how much toughening is enough.

[SOB]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
For the record, the only 3 that agree, or semi-agree with Laz so far in this thread are all his squaddies.  

So, what you're saying is that like minds tend to group together?  Why can't members of a squad each have valid opinions, even if they are the same?

I for one wish fields would be a little harder to capture again, with the main field playing more of a role in the success/failure of a capture like it used too.  I think the longer it takes to capture a field the more likely it is that you'll find a good fight start to develop over that field.  I'd like to see the map room moved back onto the main airfield, but it'd be nice if the town still played some sort of role into the overall strat of that particular airfield...I just don't know what that role would be.


SOB

-edit-  LOL...just noticed there were two pages to this post and I only read the first one!  

[SOB]

Originally posted by indian
Lets See the object of the game is to fight and capture bases. The object of being in a squad is organization. The object of belong to a squad in a perticular country mass organization. Some people need to go play pixie sticks and stay away from massive multiplayer online games like this. What the hell he want a furball only arena. Its called game play get over you loser.

Umm, people join squads to get more organized?  uhhh, , eh...org, squa, wha?  


SOB

[Yeager]

I dunno lazs,

Ive always considered your well and oft stated preference to be one of overall mayhem and general dweebery aka "furballs" ...

Today AH is far more of what I thought you have been striving for than it has ever been IMO yet you still find it completely unsuitable to your preferences?  

Is it perhaps a case of "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it" or are you genuinely disaffected by the current MA
and its aweful lack of anything except complete dweeb chaos.


Y

[Hooligan]

I am pretty sure that making bases HARDER to capture is not the answer.  If it takes the coordinated efforts of 50 players to take a base then you will end up with 50 vs. 0 fights.  If you want lots of 10 x 10 fights then it should be easy to capture a base with 10 guys in fighters.  Large organized raids can then capture 4 bases at once rather than capturing them one at a time.  Also bases should be harder to disable.  If you want more opportunities for fights the following will probably give it to you.

1)  More numerous and closer bases:  So you can fly to a base under attack quickly without having to take off in the vulch zone.
2)  Make bases easier to capture:  Allowing lighting quick capture and recapture by small groups of players who know what they are doing.  This will split up the hordes of 30 or 40 as they attack several bases simultaneously.
3)  Make it hard to disable bases:  So the defenders can continue to fly and fight from a field under attack.  

Right now we have something of the reverse situation.  A couple of buffs can shut down the defenders at a base but it still seems to take quite a bit of time to capture it even though nobody or very few are defending it.

An MA that has a lot of small bitterly contested actions where bases are captured and recaptured rapidly will be a lot more fun than one in which 40 rooks milkrun a bish airbase while 40 Bish milkrun a rook airbase.

In this kind of MA a big organized force can split into groups and start taking bases 3 or 4 at a time.  Small groups of defenders can actually do something useful and recapture fields quickly.  An MA with a lot of captures and recaptures will give everybody lots to do regardless if they like jaboing, furballing, organizing big raids etc....

Hooligan

[Apache]

Originally posted by Hooligan
I am pretty sure that making bases HARDER to capture is not the answer.  If it takes the coordinated efforts of 50 players to take a base then you will end up with 50 vs. 0 fights.  If you want lots of 10 x 10 fights then it should be easy to capture a base with 10 guys in fighters.  Large organized raids can then capture 4 bases at once rather than capturing them one at a time.  Also bases should be harder to disable.  If you want more opportunities for fights the following will probably give it to you.

1)  More numerous and closer bases:  So you can fly to a base under attack quickly without having to take off in the vulch zone.
2)  Make bases easier to capture:  Allowing lighting quick capture and recapture by small groups of players who know what they are doing.  This will split up the hordes of 30 or 40 as they attack several bases simultaneously.
3)  Make it hard to disable bases:  So the defenders can continue to fly and fight from a field under attack.  

Right now we have something of the reverse situation.  A couple of buffs can shut down the defenders at a base but it still seems to take quite a bit of time to capture it even though nobody or very few are defending it.

An MA that has a lot of small bitterly contested actions where bases are captured and recaptured rapidly will be a lot more fun than one in which 40 rooks milkrun a bish airbase while 40 Bish milkrun a rook airbase.

In this kind of MA a big organized force can split into groups and start taking bases 3 or 4 at a time.  Small groups of defenders can actually do something useful and recapture fields quickly.  An MA with a lot of captures and recaptures will give everybody lots to do regardless if they like jaboing, furballing, organizing big raids etc....

Hooligan

Pardon my ignorance, but could you expand on bases being "harder to capture" versus "harder to disable"?

[Wlfgng]

Laz... sorry buddy, but people are going to do what they want to do, how they want to do it, when they want to do it...
regardless of what you post here.

it must get frustrating to try to control the situation that, by nature, is uncontrollable.

[Kieran]

The one thing that determines whether or not you play is whether it is fun to log on or not. Organization or not, if it isn't fun, you won't play long. The game can never support one aspect of play to the exclusion of another, despite whatever zealots for any viewpoint espouse.

I think Lazs makes a decent point about the type of action we've seen lately, but Hangtime is also right about the dearth of missions. Somewhere in the middle is the fun we're looking for.

[NoBaddy]

Hmm, seems to me the problem is not really one of organization. It appears to be more a problem of volume. These maps are fine until we reach the 200+ point.

Funny, but moving the fields closer would be the LEAST effect solution. Do that and you end up with a lot more fields taken by sneak. 'Course, guess the map monkeys would like that...we could have 10 resets per day .

One thing that I do know for sure, HT is aware of the problem. There are plans to make changes in the future. Patience, neither Rome nor AH was built in a day:) .

[Hangtime]

Damn, now I'm inna spot...  on one hand, I see the glass being half full, no amount of organization can impact a batch of monkey-butt furballing slavering drooling furballers as they mob an area of the map... in defense or offence, the furball is just that... a furball.

In the midst of that furball of mayhem are a few guys giving status reports on the field under attack, a few guys in the tower react appropriately to the influx of meaningful data comming from the mayhem area and load up whats necessary to grab the field, and a capture occurs... eventually... in spite of the furball. This is called a 'seige'.

What i miss are 'captures'. Clean, effecient multi plane attacks that accomplish an objective with little fuss, minimum loss of mission members, balanced attacks that reward the mission player with what he's looking for, orginization, planning, stategy, combat, tactics, SKILL, points and a sense of accomplishing something in 4 minutes with 10-12 guys what 50 could not get done in 5 hours. Every kinda pilot gets what he might want outta a mission done well.. buffers can buff escorted to targets, goons have a chance of getting to the objective with top cover, cap fighters get to work the defenders down, JABO's get to wild weazel and slap down structures and GV's... something for everybody inna mission.

Lazs sees the little glimmer of organization thats beginning to emerge from the mayhem seiges as a threat to the furball... and I think Lazs's views are not inconsistent with what a large number of folks flying here want.. which is a furball. It's what they did 'over there' for years, it's what they wanna do, its what they are gonna do. Not many post here... I suspect that reading skillz and/or the time it takes from their buzy furball lives tend to interfere with their prime objective... mayhem. Doom with an A/C.

His glass is half empty. And hey.. thats cool. seems to me, either way, both glasses have about the same amount in 'em. The furballs are there.. hell look at the map. The strat is there... hell, look at the number of resets.. it ain't all one way or the other. Though it sure appears from my perspcetive that the MA is furball city as of late.

look.. don't pound on Lazs too hard.. the guy is not completely nuts.. not anymore than I am anyway. He''s also a heluva good stick, won't run from a fight, and will come pry a mission guy like me off yer butt if he see's you need help. Frankly, i'd rather have him on my wing than some score dweeb any day. The fact that I don't happen to enjoy just furballing don't mean I wanna end furballing.. furballing is part of the strat anyway.. if yah can't plan around or through it, yer gonna fail on the mission anyway.

I did get a kick outta the 'anti-hang' concept though.. lol.. talk about opposite viewpoints. wow. In the cockpit though.. lazs and i are a lot closer in outlook than most might think.. we both hate score cards, and we both favor our own objectives over a death any day. If I gotta sacrafice myself as bait to distract that last flack while somebody else kills it.. hey, I died, but the mission was accomplised. With lazs, he'll crank that bent wing ugly assed radial powered swabby tool around and HO a cannon equipped vulcher in a heartbeat with only a 10% chance of success. His only objection seems to be somebody like me swatted his hanger down so now he's gotta ride fer 7 minutes to come get my bellybutton the next time.

Good to hear the Rooks are adopting squad based mission detailing.. this is what we had in bishland a long while back and it kicked bellybutton for a long time. was a lotta fun. The knits too have had some good nights on the mission board by all accounts, and here in bishland we have fariz.. thank god.

Let the furballers furball.. harden the fields, expand the map.. these won't detract much from strat, and they may improve the mix of gameplay.. I can't see it as hurting it. Moving the fields closer... I dunno if I can say that would improve the situation for the furballers.. the fields in close proximity now are the ones that fall first to the strat guys.. dunno if that would solve lazs's problem, but it sure won't make mine any worse.

[Daff]

Haven't you guys figured it out yet?..All Lazs wants is a single field with 10k airstart, where all will launch from.

Daff

[funkedup]

One of these days I gotta get myself organizized.

[eskimo2]

What a Thread!  If Lazs is so way out there, why is he able rile up so many folks who agree that his ideas are totally whacked?  Why don't the "Good Idea Threads" get 10% of the response that Lazs' Threads get?  Lazs, I salute you for being able to push buttons!  You are the Champion Antagonist!

eskimo

[lazs2]

daff... figured you might weazel your way in here while you're watching your ship go down.   You don't know anything about me and never have.   you have no opinion worth listening to.    kinda typical of yu to take an effiminate little kick at me from the sidelines tho eh?

Guys.. I think closer fields, say as close as our closest ones are now, 3/4 of a sector, will spread out the fight but improve the quality of all the fights (for mid and early war planes at least)  The map is too small?  Too crowded???  LOL!   the map is all but deserted for at least 50% of it's surface!   closer fields will have people spreading out.   Bigger maps will just mean more deserted area.   futher fields will just mean that people will fear moving away from the safety of their ack unless they are in a huge MOB.    people concentrate on a very few fields now.... spread out the fields and they will concentrate on even fewer fields leaving even more of the map deserted.

you make it so that the fights happen in a neutral zone halfway or so between fields and with maybe 5 locations were that is possible at all times and everyone will have a blast... make it so the mid war and slow planes have a chance to RTB without being harried by those in late war planes that can harrie them for over half a sector.   dodging mustangs and d9's for half a sector or so get's old real fast for the slower guys... They think twice about heading a sector or more unless they have a certain thing the next time they up.   With at least five pairs of close fields to chose from, the tyes of furs will vary.   Mission guys can still plan and execute they just won't have a bunch of people tagging along who have no better place to be.   Give the slower planes a viable place to have some good semi fair fights with a chance of RTB...  No big deal.

hang.. not sure I see things as "half empty"... I see the arena getting less fun tho.. no argument there...   I never claim to want to quit tho.   I leave that to you "half full" guys.

eskimo... a lot of the guys that fear me simply fear the kind of fight that my ideas would allow.   the kind of fight that they, or their chosen ride or both... don't do well in.   That is perhaps true but I say that the can still cherry pick..   they may have to actually fight a little or lose their unarmed, low on fuel prey to his ack tho.
lazs

[Seeker]

I'm constantly surprised to see you guys advocate furballers should go to the training arena.

I can understand advocating the Duelling arena (while I don't agree 100%); although advocating something that's inoperative (and has inappropriate settings while in use) is disingenious; to say the least.

But advocating the TA for a place for bored killers to congregate is no service for the newbies nor trainees nor trainers.


Get a clue.

(edited for even worse than usual spilling)