Change back the dog fight mechanics

E is fine as long as refueling times are cut down drastically. airplanes are expensive, their airfields do not help produce resources, and if they have to fly back to base to refuel, they will not get an attack per hour, like all other units get.

Alternatively, since the exploit was with interceptors, implement option E but only for interceptors. strats and tacs stay the same as they were.

otherwise you are discussing making aircraft pretty much useless, might as well just spam arty and tanks, because they will be just as fast as planes getting to the battle.

also, as a person that obviously enjoys the air aspect of the game, remember there are counters for air. This entire thread started because the game played differently than one person liked to play. Its always a two way street. if you build interceptors and anti air, u can counter those devilish and oh so dreaded tactical bombers. and you know what guys, you are allowed to build them too.

Option D. no change, is the best option for the community.

One function of patrol is recon. You want to see what is ahead of the front lines. So a fire at beginning destroys the recon function. If you send a patrol and find a stack that has heavy anti-air capabilities, the player probably doesn't want to attack it.

Another function is to destroy ground units found during that recon like tanks with no anti-air or artillery by patrolling. Sometimes you are defending your airport against forces coming towards your airport. Worse case you have one airport left. In that case if you have to refuel, you have nerfed any air defenders. Incoming planes can destroy your planes on the ground refueling.

Having to refuel basically destroys the patrol function. It also makes planes much more vulnerable to being destroying while refueling. The refuel time is a function of the health of the airport. If the airport is being damaged, the planes could be sitting ducks for 15 - 30 minutes. It also makes it harder to destroy enemy aircraft since they just fly away if another airport is in range instead of having a chance to destroy them.

I have to pick option D. Much as the current patrol function has serious flaws, I find the other options are far worse.

a) no. destroys patrol recon. Being able to see what is out there is a major function of patrol.

b) no. Leaves planes vulnerable during repeated refueling.

c) No. Nerfs patrol function

d) Has serious flaws but other proposed options are worse.

e) No

I come in on the side of "do nothing". Leave this particular part of game play as is.

D. - I haven't noticed any difference and Bytro itself confirms that no actual changes have been made to the dog-fighting script. To me it totally makes sense that planes would be either using attack or defense versus each tick and it never was realistic to always have attackers receive no damage in the exchange.

Isn't the problem really the 15 minute timer? How about removing it ? Make the 4 intervals at which the 25% attack is done random?

Personally I would prefer E applied to interceptors AND Rocket Fighters (in fact RF should not be allowed to patrol, there nature was quick shoot and scoot). Tacs, Strats and NBs and Nuke Bombers should have their patrol function untouched except of course for the removal of the 15 minute marker.

All options proposed are terrible.

wrote:

One function of patrol is recon. You want to see what is ahead of the front lines. So a fire at beginning destroys the recon function

Patrol is definitely not recon.

Guards patrolling the border and attack any intruder or at least contain them.

Recon is just acquiring information.

All this fuss is because of the offset in attack and defense of the tacs. Why don't we just use the defensive stat for patrolling? It would make sense if the planes on patrol will attack anything in its patrol radius, but since they're patrolling to defend that area, they should be using their defensive stat, not offensive stat towards enemy planes.

They would still attack the land units using offensive stats(which is the only stat they have towards land units), but use defensive stats against enemy planes. It is a slight buff to air power, but it fixes the problem of abusing the mechanics.

Did anyone read my post? Really?

Clanpred wrote:

Isn't the problem really the 15 minute timer? How about removing it ? Make the 4 intervals at which the 25% attack is done random?

Personally I would prefer E applied to interceptors AND Rocket Fighters (in fact RF should not be allowed to patrol, there nature was quick shoot and scoot). Tacs, Strats and NBs and Nuke Bombers should have their patrol function untouched except of course for the removal of the 15 minute marker.

Tacs, Strats and NBs should have their patrol function removed, while the fighters retain the patrol function. But this would limit air power significantly. Either way, it's not viable. The random timer is much more viable, we could use pseudorandom numbers to calculate that. As long as they attack 4 times/hour, it doesn't matter how long till their next attack

yes, I think the crux of the problem is the random timer. Removing the patrol from one type of aircraft might complicate stack mechanics?

Regid wrote:

All options proposed are terrible.

wrote:

One function of patrol is recon. You want to see what is ahead of the front lines. So a fire at beginning destroys the recon function

Patrol is definitely not recon.

Guards patrolling the border and attack any intruder or at least contain them.

Recon is just acquiring information.

... A Patrol with aircraft is not the same as guards patrolling a border. Just saying... They are completely different.

All this fuss is because of the offset in attack and defense of the tacs. Why don't we just use the defensive stat for patrolling? It would make sense if the planes on patrol will attack anything in its patrol radius, but since they're patrolling to defend that area, they should be using their defensive stat, not offensive stat towards enemy planes.

They would still attack the land units using offensive stats(which is the only stat they have towards land units), but use defensive stats against enemy planes. It is a slight buff to air power, but it fixes the problem of abusing the mechanics.

Did anyone read my post? Really?

Clanpred wrote:

yes, I think the crux of the problem is the random timer. Removing the patrol from one type of aircraft might complicate stack mechanics?

Also, I think that A-C and E are more general guidelines as to how to fix the problem, not the exact method that fixes them. Obviously Bytro will have to do far more technical work which would involve some parts that are not included in the options mentioned. If they find something that doesn't allow one of the options to work by itself, they may implement another alongside it to see if that works. In other words, extrapolate a little bit.

recconaisance function can be still part of patrol function if there is a random attack at 4 attackesph (even in the beginning) as I suggested if we add the Fire Control button to the plane menu. So you set it on patrol but because it is a recce you hold fire.

Regid wrote:

All this fuss is because of the offset in attack and defense of the tacs.

Considering the options A or B sounds the best solution in my opinion.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

Regid wrote:

All this fuss is because of the offset in attack and defense of the tacs.

No it is not. You may want to read yourself, reread my post describing the problem please.

... A Patrol with aircraft is not the same as guards patrolling a border. Just saying... They are completely different.

Regid wrote:

... A Patrol with aircraft is not the same as guards patrolling a border. Just saying... They are completely different.

They are the same. That's why there's such a thing called "No Fly Zone". It's where planes will patrol and attack everything that gets into that zone.

... It's a no fly zone, not a patrol zone. Your not allowed to fly there, not because there is necessarily aircraft there, but because it is a designated no-fly zone where civilians are not allowed to fly. And if you do fly into it, a squadron of fighters(or something else, like a radio transmission telling you to turn around, or otherwise you will be shot out of the sky by SAM batteries.) will be sent up to enforce it, and, if need be, shoot you down. Usually just redirect you out of the zone, though. It's not a patrol zone. A patrol zone can be in any arbitrary place(it can literally be the area of a single house, if your using helos). No Fly Zones are put around specific, MAJOR military installations and other important places you shouldn't have a peep into, covering an area that no aircraft, or squadron of aircraft, is capable of fully patrolling without assistance from ground based facilities. This includes the Pentagon, airfields, and many other places I can not be bothered to name. It is a GEOPOLITICAL BORDER set up by politicians. It does not necessarily have aircraft scanning the skies overhead 24/7/365. It would be a waste of fuel, and everyone's time. A patrol is also organizational, in the military, and basically means a group of units were sent out to do an individual task(a no fly zone isn't a task until someone violates it.). For example, CAP(Combat Air Patrol).

Combat air patrol description, taken from wikipedia(with points highlighted in between myself). Obviously, Wikipedia isn't the most trustworthy source, but it's fairly good, and is correct in most of the military based stuff.

"A combat air patrol is an aircraft patrol provided over an objective area, over the force protected, over the critical area of a combat zone, or over an air defense area, for the purpose of intercepting and destroying hostile aircraft before they reach their target(in other words, they were assigned a task to accomplish). Combat air patrols apply to both overland and overwater operations, protecting other aircraft, fixed and mobile sites on land, or ships at sea."

Like I said, COMPLETELY different from patrolling a border. A border is 1 dimensional(It follows a line. Simple enough), and you aren't assigned to an entire area, you are assigned to a gateway or guard tower. They are different fundamentally, operationally, and linguistically(for lack of any other word to use, lol).

NovaTopaz wrote:

Like I said, COMPLETELY different from patrolling a border. A border is 1 dimensional(It follows a line. Simple enough), and you aren't assigned to an entire area, you are assigned to a gateway or guard tower.

Clanpred wrote:

NovaTopaz wrote:

Like I said, COMPLETELY different from patrolling a border. A border is 1 dimensional(It follows a line. Simple enough), and you aren't assigned to an entire area, you are assigned to a gateway or guard tower.

completely wrong. Borders and their patrol are not one dimensional activities and yes you can be assigned a sector.

Regid wrote:

K.Rokossovski wrote:

Regid wrote:

The problem is because player tried to avoid the patrol tick by moving the planes, by moving the planes if they are attacked they will use their defensive stats, which for tacs is higher than their offensive stats. That is the key problem, the offset in tacs offensive and defensive stats was the prime reason for players to exploit.

I made now a poll about the options. If you make your vote please remember that we need a solution for all players from CoW. We need a clear and easy dog fight for the community.

In my view we need a dog fight without a mechanic that gives players a major advantage, who is able to change the position of his planes all 10 minute.

freezy wrote:

Hello guys, nice discussions I talked with our devs about all proposals and also changed some of them to make them feasible. We then boiled down everything to the following options, which would be doable in the timeframe we have:

A) If a plane did not do an attack tick in the last 15min, the next patrol tick will happen at the beginning of the patrol timer.

B) When a plane started to patrol, any new command given to it will result in the plane flying back to refuel before executing the new command.

C) After each patrol tick in which a plane attacks offensively, it has to fly to base to refuel, before flying back to the patrol destination and resuming the patrol. Patrol damage is increased from 25% to 100% to make up for it.

D) we keep everything as it is and declare it as a feature that everyone can use or avoid.

E) planes do not deal damage during patrol anymore, unless other planes attack them directly or a friendly target within their patrol radius is attacked.

Please discuss these options. If no concensus can be reached, we fall back to D)

I have only a small question left about option E. Did both sides of planes must return to base to refuel after the direct attack or only the attackers.

And did planes at patrol also not attack ships and ground units etc. ?