Change back the dog fight mechanics

K.Rokossovski wrote:

My two pennies:

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.

This will increase air power (actually patrol power, but that's about the same) in all non-air-opposed situations. Since air is MORE than powerful enough already, this would only be feasible if combat stats (particularly for tac bombers) would be nerfed, and I know some people that would oppose that on the beaches, in the fields, and in the villages.

It could also be abused as an air version of "shoot and scoot", doing a tick and then flying on to a more favorable position without losing total damage output.

It also means attacking against a sizable enemy force that is already patrolling would be nigh-on impossible (you move to attack them and take that horrible "first hit against", only to find that they just fly off elsewhere after that.

So no, A is very bad.

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.

That would solve the problem, but limit air flexibility enormously. You basically would have to "position the first time right" or pay a heavy penalty (lose 2x flying time plus refuel). Completely changes air dynamics in non-dogfight situations also. That doesn't necessarily mean its bad, but it is very hard to fathom consequences. This is also a nerf for air power.

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.

What is the OFFENSIVE difference between patrolling and direct attack then? It hardly seems necessary to keep both alive as a game mechanic, if they are so similar? Also, the current exploit is about stacks NOT having their tick; so this doesn't solve anything, you could still leave murderous defensive patrolling stacks around if you prevent them from ticking?

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

No. We have to find SOME kind of solution. All-day air battles requiring both players to be on every 15m, and in the end there's no damage to either sides, that's just BAD.

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.

This would make patrolling a defensive AND manoever order; all offense must be done by direct attack (which could FOLLOW manoever). Like B, it will completely alter air combat dynamics. Refuelling will be a much more common problem (AND opportunity as the enemy does it). Still I'd prefer it to B. As I said before, if patrol also covers friendly PLANES (not just ground/sea troops), this will make attacking more than one full stack impossible (current problem persists), so it shouldn't cover friendly PLANES, and direct air-to-air attack should also be rebalanced because currently results are disatrous for the attacker. But yeah, if that is done, this is absolutely my favorite.

@freezy, you missed another suggestion in this thread:

F) When breaking patrol (moving somewhere else), all enemies able to fire at it get an extra unopposed shot at the breaking group.

This will make air combat much more static and less flexible; you pay a penalty for using the air's key virtue, flexibility. Makes it harder to retreat from a losing battle, and makes planes vulnerable to being "jumped" (locking them in their own mandatory damage soak) with a superior force. Very hard to teach newbies at well; they won't understand this at all. Better than the current situation, but not much.

So my order or preference would be: E first, B second, F third, none of the others.

TL;DR what he said, in same order (strong preference for E)

the question is: why less? to penalize the guys that like the airforce? that wasnt the point of this post. the point was to figure out a way to negate a game imbalancing exploit, not to force people to play the game differently.

And in our game, we did use air force to defeat the enemy. I also used gold. I also took heavy losses to my airforce. The main reason we won, was because we stayed active, not just because of the airforce.

Asking to nerf planes so people will be less active seems very counter-productive to me. Cant understand that stance at all.

Read through everything now, and while it isnt listed, @Diabolicals 'first target, first shot' solution has a nice ring to it as well. But as I understand, its not an option based on what the devs selected for us.

Reading the Xarus vs Stormbringer discussion. Stormbringer, lets face it, this game is the slowest game in the world. Even grass grows faster. Planes you get after a few days. I doubt the average call of duty type of players have the patience to wait for even that. In other words, Xarus is right.

This is a thinkers game, for people naturally inclined to have long term vision (and patience). I made a thread a while ago what kind of people play this, with the assumption/guestimation/educated guess/give it a name, that most players would fall into the NT category. And I was right. NTs are called Analysts in that theory. The name is there for a reason. And there are very few people that share these characteristics (less than 10% I believe).

But I digress (yeah I know, I do that often).

TL;DR: The very nature of this game, and the kinds of people it attracts (and stick around), is being slow. Making a midgame feature faster (or slower) will not make a difference. Xarus is right in regard to the average Joe.

@freezy Just had a random thought about marketing posting the above. Why not target places where said types (the NTs) reside usually? Reddit, ICT forums, history & war sites and other 'nerdy' places. Assuming you arent doing this already. Probably a better click-through-rate compared to that Zuckerberg spy site (and much cheaper)

Xarus wrote:

If option D is become normal, only active players can use planes in future, all "normal" players loose them,

The whole ethos of this game is the ability to play a bit, go away and then play more without suddenly discovering you have been wiped off the map. It is not a true RTS such as Supreme Commander where seconds count. Here gameplay should be measured in hours not 15 minute intervals, that is the true essence of this game.

Option D unfortunately favours the handful of players that can be online and who can set alarms at different times of the night to move things along. It creates a huge problem in competitive play in community events where a handful of players wreck the experience for the second largest group of players.

Option E presents the best resolution PROVIDED the patrol defends friendlies and itself within the patrol area.

miech wrote:

This is a thinkers game, for people naturally inclined to have long term vision (and patience).

Where is your "Players Theory"

There are other solutions to Storm's dilemma, the Arms Race map is one such solution.

I am currently playing in the Alternate Blue Collar League and that game style is even slower than vanilla COW. It is however a much greater requirement to think out the strategy and make every single province capture count towards the win. No light tank rush here.

yes to each their own. the normal way of doing things still allows u guys to play in your style. changing things drastically means that other players will not have an option to play in their style. we cant make a players league style game with rules that contradict the game mechanics.

thank u for helping me make my point.

it merely means that a tiny minority cannot dominate the game. it benefits the wider community, that can only be a good thing.

the current round of PL has been totally dominated by two players who are on 24/7. They have exploited a flaw in the game mechanic which this whole thread is trying to rectify. The game mechanic needs tweaking as has been happening since the game began to eliminate this exploit which goes against the whole point of the COW style of play.

The status quo is not really an option, everyone seems to be working for a solution and not to maintain the status quo.

ok guys i have been polling folks on chat about this. it is definitely a problem that has to be dealt with. It is understood that this exploit is devastating games, especially in the players league, an organization known to uphold high standards of fairness in the game.

The overwhelming response is that this has to be dealt with, and that folks dont want planes nerfed. taking away patrol attacks is not going to go over well with the community. Neither is using an exploitation of the mechanics.

So, we need to think of other options. All of us are going to have to think of something that leaves planes generally the way they are, just without the exploit. The options put forth are not acceptable.

So lets think of something better before the devs put something in place that NONE of us can live with.

I submit again. If a patrol is moved, any unit in range that can attack an aircraft gets a free unanswered attack. That will kill the exploit without killing the patrol function, or nerfing planes. Devs: this may not be the easy to program choice, but it is the right choice until someone comes up with a better one.

where are the replies, and also, where are the other polls i have presented all day?

submitting my posts out of context is fairly good evidence of you looking for your own self validation.

Not really shining in your most favorable light, clan. For shame.

Like I said, whoever wants to can go through the Global Chat logs and make up their own minds.

Storm, the way you were asking those questions were quite leading... there's an old anecdote about polling questions that says, to the question "Do you think government should expand the road network so people can get around better", 90% will say yes, while asking ""Do you think government should expand the road network so precious nature preserves get destroyed", 90% will say no.

I agree that if people from groups 1 and 2 meet a group-3 and get their hard-built air force destroyed in a very short time, they might decide to leave in disgust. I may be called a group-3'er (I'm not really but I manage to keep the impression alive), but that's not what I want, I have enough of an advantage over those groups already, and if I kill G1-2's I want to kill them slowly so they know how and why they were defeated, not by them going offline for a few hours and have their sizable air force ruined to the bone when they log in again by an exploit.

Storm, your option (which I baptized F higher up in this thread) also has severe problems, people will still get jumped while being offline for a few hours, and it will make air combat much more static which is ALSO a nerf.

I still go by E, BUT:

Option E presents the best resolution PROVIDED the patrol defends friendlies and itself within the patrol area.

This would be a horrible thing to do for other air units! Leave two 10-stacks of planes hanging somewhere with the same circle, and your opponent can't do anything about it even with 50 planes... every 10-stack attacking gets two defensive shots back. This is very similar to the current exploit that we are trying to fix... for direct-attack air-to-air combat, friendly patrollers shouldn't "help" when their collegue gets attacked!

On another note, refuelling will be a very common sight again (last seen for many of us in our noob days). I don't see a problem with other planes cause it works for both sides; BUT maybe rockets deserve a nerf when attacking refuellers?

K.Rokossovski wrote:

I want to kill them slowly so they know how and why they were defeated, not by them going offline for a few hours and have their sizable air force ruined to the bone when they log in again by an exploit.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

every 10-stack attacking gets two defensive shots back. This is very similar to the current exploit that we are trying to fix...

K.Rokossovski wrote:

On another note, refuelling will be a very common sight again (last seen for many of us in our noob days). I don't see a problem with other planes cause it works for both sides;

Clanpred wrote:

K.Rokossovski wrote:

I want to kill them slowly so they know how and why they were defeated, not by them going offline for a few hours and have their sizable air force ruined to the bone when they log in again by an exploit.

but u did this to me in the PL OCt game over Venice, or was it Mark? Lost my 4 stacks of 5 ints whilst I was AFK.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

I will also do my best to work in this thread to make it impossible for myself and everyone else to use the exploit.

yes, but patrolling came as a welcome additional feature. One way to work around the refuelling problem in air versus air is to work from an airfield which is out of range of the enemies airfield. like that you can return to it safely. Yes it complicates things but then again this is about strategy.

Maybe we could reduce airfield cost a bit to appease Storm?

my post were taken out of context roko, and without the players replies in between. no one was led, and i didnt ask anyone to vote a certain way. i also didnt discuss the exploit on public chat.

It is also true that i have never used it, nor have i ever had it used on me.

It is also true that i asked more than once, and i got a variety of answers. but the overwhelming response was that players didnt want a cheat in the game, and that they didnt want to lose patrol feature on planes.

I thought i made that clear.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

My own air is never hanging over the battlefield if I go offline for more than an hour;

Hi everyone. This is my first post on CoW forums. I was monitoring the global chat earlier when Stormbringer brought up this thread.

I don't know him or anyone else on this thread so I hope you take my comment as unbiased.

It was my impression that Stormbringer was more concerned about a handful of people making a suggestion to alter a specific mechanic of the game that as DxC says 90% of players have no clue about. He shared a link and implored people to read it and weigh in, he didn't seem to advocate for any particular solution, at least that's the impression I got.

I've only been playing for a little over 6 months and o boy there is a lot to learn. I guess I'm an NT type because I read nearly all the pertinent posts and manuals to be as good a player as I can be. I also have lots of time to spend online.

Now then, having to learn this game and be successful means you will encounter innumerable different play styles and tactics. I have tried to understand every aspect of the various unit types, stacks, countermeasures and my worst skill diplomacy.

It is my opinion that as the game is currently configured I wouldn't change a thing. Use your skills and expirience to prevail it is really gratifying. And yea I was a COD clan admin and 2nd in command of a large clan for a lot of years. I'm older now and my hand eye co-ordination isn't what it used to be and I don't need the razzle dazzle top of the line high end (expensive) latest gaming computer to play this game.

So if there were a legitimate vote (which I don't see here) I vote leave it the way it is ,... and no to paratroops too lol.

thankyou all this community is one of the nicer online communities I've had the pleasure of participating with.

Ruy

thank you Stormbringer i never would have posted if not for your concern.

Thing is Ruy, you're not aware of how bad of a problem it is until you experienced it, which you haven't and that will seriously discredit your vote.

The change is not gonna be that catastrophic as you think. Like you said, 90% of players don't even know about this, so what would it make any difference to them if it is changed? Many players are still learning the mechanics of the game, much less the planes(a lot seem to love rocket spamming or light tank spamming) and the change to the patrol system is only temporarily until a better solution is proposed. If we continue to discuss this, it will drag on and on and nothing will be done. Anyone whose work consists of problem solving knows what i'm talking about. You either put up a temporarily fix and continue to update the fix, or you will keep discussing until everything has gone to crap.

E is the closet option that is able to fix the problem.

Ruy Diaz de Bivar wrote:

Hi everyone. This is my first post on CoW forums. I was monitoring the global chat earlier when Stormbringer brought up this thread.

I don't know him or anyone else on this thread so I hope you take my comment as unbiased.

It was my impression that Stormbringer was more concerned about a handful of people making a suggestion to alter a specific mechanic of the game that as DxC says 90% of players have no clue about. He shared a link and implored people to read it and weigh in, he didn't seem to advocate for any particular solution, at least that's the impression I got.

I've only been playing for a little over 6 months and o boy there is a lot to learn. I guess I'm an NT type because I read nearly all the pertinent posts and manuals to be as good a player as I can be. I also have lots of time to spend online.

Now then, having to learn this game and be successful means you will encounter innumerable different play styles and tactics. I have tried to understand every aspect of the various unit types, stacks, countermeasures and my worst skill diplomacy.

It is my opinion that as the game is currently configured I wouldn't change a thing. Use your skills and expirience to prevail it is really gratifying. And yea I was a COD clan admin and 2nd in command of a large clan for a lot of years. I'm older now and my hand eye co-ordination isn't what it used to be and I don't need the razzle dazzle top of the line high end (expensive) latest gaming computer to play this game.

So if there were a legitimate vote (which I don't see here) I vote leave it the way it is ,... and no to paratroops too lol.

thankyou all this community is one of the nicer online communities I've had the pleasure of participating with.

Ruy

thank you Stormbringer i never would have posted if not for your concern.

miech wrote:

@freezy Just had a random thought about marketing posting the above. Why not target places where said types (the NTs) reside usually? Reddit, ICT forums, history & war sites and other 'nerdy' places. Assuming you arent doing this already. Probably a better click-through-rate compared to that Zuckerberg spy site (and much cheaper)

However, I would wager that at least 20% of their annual income from Gold sales is probably to non-nerdy "casual gamers" who just found CoW like I did through advertisement, but whom thought it seemed kinda fun and so spent some money to make stuff happen quickly. Of course, a lot of those types would get bored and leave eventually, even after buying some Gold, but Bytro's still gonna make money off them. So I wouldn't necessarily want to cancel whatever advertising is being used to bring those temporary players into the game.

miech wrote:

This is a thinkers game, for people naturally inclined to have long term vision (and patience). I made a thread a while ago what kind of people play this, with the assumption/guestimation/educated guess/give it a name, that most players would fall into the NT category. And I was right. NTs are called Analysts in that theory. The name is there for a reason. And there are very few people that share these characteristics (less than 10% I believe).

Clanpred wrote:

it merely means that a tiny minority cannot dominate the game. it benefits the wider community, that can only be a good thing.

This could really get a lot more participation into the forums. Additionally, they could point to an occasional forum-based poll as well as automatically opening the global chat feature once in awhile. The game's pretty slow, anyway. So, having an occasional popup that points to peripheral Bytro stuff would make sense (like with the bonus Gold multiplier purchase deals).

Ruy Diaz de Bivar wrote:

So if there were a legitimate vote (which I don't see here) I vote leave it the way it is ,... and no to paratroops too lol.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

if I kill G1-2's I want to kill them slowly so they know how and why they were defeated, not by them going offline for a few hours and have their sizable air force ruined to the bone when they log in again by an exploit.

...If an exploit exists, yeah I will use it.

...being the gentleman and doing that myself, while not using the exploit on others, would have put myself at a disadvantage

Just think how many possibly long-term players have been pushed away by some of us old-timers when that vicious streak kicks in. I'm sure I've probably hurt some people....maybe even made them to feel small or pissed off with my usual aggressive playing style. And for that, I'm sorry, because the last thing this game needs is for us to turn away competitive players, even if some of them need some extra time to learn the game's ins and outs.

That's why I am usually willing to take the time to take a player or two under my wing in most matches, to give them some pointers and help them to stay in it. Sure, that doesn't always work out. But I've mentored more than a few players that are now regulars in Call of War. And I've got to say, I'm darn proud of that. And some, I dare say, have since given me a run for my money in competition....so much so that I've since lost a few matches to a few of my proteges.

I've made a poll yesterday, about the options that Bytro gives us.

Here is the link to the poll: click