Wotan - welcome to the nightmare.
AW went through *exactly* the same growing pains but it didn't have the time (or the will) to find a solution. I think I heard it best expressed that "The landgrab should be a *vehicle* to promote Air Combat as opposed to the be all end all of the game."
However correct the above statement may be, the problem remains that a whole lotta players "like" the stratego land-grab and that can't be ignored either, it puts fannies in the seats.
First thing HTC could do is find a way to not reward abberant behavior like suicide missions. Of course there has to be a way to differentiate a "suicide" run as opposed to lousy planning.
Now, to really take a page out of an old musty book.....
The old AW1 had some maps where only the center of the map had capturable bases. As opposed to land grabbing the *entire* map, the objective of a team was to capture and hold this central area. Other bases could be "closed" but not taken. Attacking the strat targets of the team that held the middle would weaken thier means to continue to hold the middle. Perhaps a bigger version of a map like that, with the "objective" being for a country to hold that area for 12 hours straight to force a reset, could work out. I really dunno. It's one thing to "win the war" but that's a finite point in time. Capturing and HOLDING turf (over time) is a slightly different game. The map would have to be designed so that the team currently owning the middle was "spread a little thin" by virtue of having to allocate resources to maintain the controll. If it takes 1/2 your side to maintain controll, you have less people available to defend your strat - yada yada.
(I will editorialise a sec and say that this is not an unrealistic model for a "war game". IE in many wars the objective isn't to drive your opponent into the sea, it's merely to assert (and maintain) controll over a "disputed area". There exists an understanding that the countries themselves will continue to exist.)
What I do know is that the problem was not solved as AW grew bigger. The Big Pac map was good - but it also got knicknamed the "Big Pork" - because the land grab, (and the abberant player behavior a total land grab spawns) took center stage. There was constant friction between the "pure ACM dweebs - and the "stratego wannabe's". Not at all unlike what's going on in the MA now except that I believe that there *may* be a solution if HTC is willing to hunt for it. As I said before, AW lacked the time (or the will) to ever solve this issue - so theres no history to tap.
The trick will be, to both design a map, and gameplay rules, to thwart people from merely "gaming the game" to achieve an objective, yet providing an objective that somehow rewards good ACM over silly gameism.
It's still virgin turf..............
-W
(PS: Allowing players to perma-squelch individuals on channel 1 would stop a lot of the whining about silly loudouths)
Originally posted by Wotan
I never viewed AH as something that can be "won". Resets always happened but the base capture seemed a side show to the a2a war. Now we have whole groups of folks who only play the land grab reset game. They take the paths of least resistance whether it be undefended fields or suicide runs.
People wonder why ostwinds get the majority of the kills in ah. Its because everyone is busy killing themselves in the great land grab going for that reset.
Folks would rather die to ack or auger before fighting. [/B]
