S3 Series

http://forum.totalsims.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12814
Now, how many of you did you say wanted perms to regulate the arena?

Before getting into the ideas I’ll preface my post with the perspective I have. It was stated over and over that numbers will not sustain split arenas. I am a firm believer in “build it and they will come”. A well set up arena list will facilitate natural growth IMO especially if there are good homes for the simmers, the gamers, and those in between. The S3 is often flaunted as the reason WB exists right now and often has the highest numbers at one time. Could you image how many more of those pilots would fly routinely if they had a 24/7 home similar to the S3s?

In that regard nomenclature is important. It sets the expectations and gives the description in a small amount of words, ideally one. New guy comes in and see Main Arena, well that is the first stop and sometimes only, stop. In my mind every arena is “WWII” with different levels of expectations. IMO the arena list should be renamed Easy (Instant Action), Intermediate(Main Arena), Advanced(World War 2), with the Squad Select Series being the well known Expert level.

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Specifically to this topic, here is what I and most of my compatriots’ opinions are on the Advanced World War 2 Arena setup. Some ideas may be duplicate, consider them agreements:

-No password
This should be breeding grounds for S3 recruitment and inviting to interested players. In essence, give folks exposure of the S3 type environment without dishing out the S3 PW. Players should have the option of forming noncurrent-S3 squads to get into the S3. This would not be the WWII “Select” arena.

-Unlimited re-ups
This arena should be about practice and fun at any hour. If any delay is added it should only be a minute to reflect on what went wrong and/or plan a new sortie. Anything more is pushing frustration levels and frankly not fun for $20 a month. In most cases, I believe units will have a tendency to up together rather than sending themselves into the grinder one at a time.

-Fuel divisor same as S3

-No external view

-Very limited donut dar and slow refresh rate of “dots”
Last spar in the WWII arena felt very much like looking at an old radar sweep picture. GCI should not be required yet dots should get people in the area without actively, accurately tracking enemy. This is what separates the arena from the S3. Difficult, but not full tilt “realism”. Depending on the day and time, having GCI might not be feasible for a country to offer a balanced fighting force. Recce would still be relatively necessary.

-S3 Icon range
Ranging skill should be required and practiced.

-Day/Night cycle enabled
Reference this post on settings= http://forum.totalsims.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12691

-Damage/Firepower setting should be universal across the board in all arenas
The difficulty factor should be increased through the accuracy, piloting skills, strategic thinking and tactical thinking necessary to accomplish a mission, not whether something blows up as expected.

-GVs allowed*
These can offer a welcome change of pace at times as well as perhaps allow an avenue for serious tanker groups to form. GV actions would be governed by target restrictions the same as bombers and jabos. I am a fan of the total war concept provided all adhere to the same simulation principle. I concede that the S3 has no scenarios in place for GV based groups so the relativity of allowing GVs is a bit of a moot point.

-Available A/C and GVs are country specific and only in the range prescribed in the bi-weekly scenario set up
An RPS/RTS would make available rides out of sequence from what is needed for the S3. A limited range would allow practice with S3 rides without potential rogues (or squads for that matter) utilizing “uber” rides, especially in an early war environment. The alternative is having all rides for a country available and hope no one feels like being a dick and receiving the banned-aid.

-Terrain is in same theater as S3, but not exact
Similar scenarios can be practiced/played out (CVs for instance in a Pacific terrain) without compromising planning or “freshness” of an S3 event.

-AI routines established around the terrain
These would include ship, air and ground units in varying types and locations. Initial set up is most likely labor intensive, but if we can work with the talented team of script writers it would be nice to have these semi-random and automatically loaded/reloaded. Having these available would allow a diverse palette of missions.

-Terrains are split up into “target sectors”
I see this working two ways: manually, where units commit themselves to only conducting operations (mostly bomber/jabo related missions) in designated scoring sectors established via boards or a pop up message upon logging in.
Automatically, where we utilize the “moving front” script to establish what the active target sector is at the time. Enabled AI routines would follow these sectors. Sectors should often be at medium to long distance from each other. Complete destruction of a target sector or mission set triggers the enabling of a new sector for “winning” country. Ideally, the next enabled sector is random.

-Terrain resets enabled but without any winner, winner, chicken dinner message
This is purely an anti-dweeb measure on off hours if one wants to close all the bases, it simply won’t matter.
This would be irrelevant with an automated target sector rotation.

-Winner determined by total “war asset” destruction at the end of a ToD
Objects/aircraft/gv etc. can be sorted into war asset types (Strategic, Tactical, Matérial, Special). With the help of scripting a message can pop up in the buffer with a tally of each type for each country every hour or so. At the end of a ToD the highest total wins. At the beginning of a ToD, COs/Moderators can establish any point bonuses for target types to help drive scenarios. The idea here is we get that human, mission oriented aspect that can be resistive to gaminess. If the score/ranking system can be changed to arena specific, this would be a good measure.

-“Rogues” are given one ToD to find a home, or form and grow a unit. If they decide to form a unit they will have a set number of ToD to show growth beyond one pilot or consider disbandment
At the end of the one ToD period perhaps a message is sent from CO’s letting them know the ToD is up and an “offer list” containing available units. Violators/stubborn pilots should receive constant pressure past the deadlines. Banning should be considered a last resort.

-A moderator from all units as reasonably able
I think this would lend to a balanced approach as well as getting all the units involved in policing themselves and the community.

-100 can be off, though the expectation is for the community and CO’s to police themselves so this would be unnecessary

good post

With all due respect, I think you guys are over thinking it. It can be really simple. Set up the WW2 arena with s3 "like" settings as Todzilla suggested. Squads who want to participate should have squad nights there. Try to have a couple different squad nights a week for those that cant make the other one., hey maybe even every other night, mon, weds, friday night and saturday night. There really is no need to speculate on the effect on the main or the future of the game or anything, just start having squad nights in s3 rather than the main.

Monday is terrain change day...what terrain do you want?

Japan.


~GRIN~

Crimea!

Gotta agree with timos... this doesn't have to be a cosmic scripted arena.

s3 type settings, axis/allied split, squad orientated.

We can use the bomber squads who want to participate as practice for sweep and escort, and the other side gets to practice bomber killing. We just have to work "together" in there...

yikes!, the really big ones. I'd really like to have a moving front script for these large maps at least for MA play.........but, we can make do with what we got til then....I'll have to check to see if we got any rps's for em yet too. I doubt we got a axis allied ww2 rps yet.
Pick something I know we have stuff for that's been set up in ww2 already.

Summation of meeting on 4th FG TS:


WWII Arena and Main Arena

Attendees:
Wildbill, Kelly, Light, Billpete, Bombr, Pappyb, Stonie, Dazed, =weis=, cruser, Grillem, Jedic, Nookyb, Omega, Pcalex, -Briar, Choppr, Looboy, Vonsleep, Zinhawk, Sycho and Swanee.
Discussion:
Turn off channel 100
If player changes color must wait 10 minutes to play
Is Replication possible?
WWII squad only and password protected – Von indicated that password protection is useless unless we police the arena.
Trainers and CM’s police arena
Spindez indicated that any changes needed to WWII arena had to be in by SUNDAY Monday every other week.
IN WWII arena – 24 hour death rule struck down.
How to influence bad behavior in arenas
Light suggested mission oriented game play
Wildbill wants consensus for review
Stonie suggested WW2 arena as realistically as possible. If we want it to mirror the S3 setup, that’s fine. I still want a full on realistic as hell arena, NOT in the main, but I don’t think it will ever happen

BOMBR- LEAVE MAIN AS IS BUT KEEP CAPT AND ABOVE OUT (ALLOW TRAINERS), SET UP WWII = S3, DESIGNATE A 2nd “ADVANCED ARENA” FOR THOSE CAPT & ABOVE WHO DON”T WANT ALL THE CHALLENGES OF S3 – SORT OF A MORE DIFFICULT MAIN.
Wildbill noted that splitting arenas will hurt numbers. Is this for real?
Stonie response to Bill above” Last night after about 2 hours there were 12 in WW2 & 35 in the main. I don’t see a problem with that. If the dweebs show up, our only recourses are to leave, or all WW2 flyers gang up on the dweebs to ruin their fun. If we DID have a password protected arena & ONLY allowed WW2 aficionados, MAYBE, that would work. I guess we could always go get the dweeb’s CO to rein him in. That would piss off the dweeb, his CO, the rest of the squad….

Bombr- mentioned that main should be for new guys until they reach rank of captain.
Bombr NEED A METHOD THAT LINKS SCORE/RANK AND ENTRY INTO AUTHORIZED ARENA.
Pappyb WWII should be duplicate of current S3 arena
Choppr pointed out that buffing is not fun anymore because of inflight dar and dweebery
Swanee setup WWII same as S3 with no switching sides Bombr asks:WHY? WE TALKED ABOUT THE VALUE OF FLYING THE OTHER SIDE
Sycho noted that rank does not follow from one arena to another THAT SHOULD CHANGE
Omega offered programming skills to help
Stonie How can we stop buffs from dropping then ditching to get more bombs? Bombr suggest NEED SOME METHOD OF TRACKING HOW A PLAYER DIES AND PENALIZING (DELAY REPLAY) IF DITCHING W/O DAMAGE
Bombr reminded us that buffs are made of paper. And TOUGH BUFF NEEDS TO BE ADJUSTED SO THAT THOSE FLYING BOMBERS HAVE A REALISTC CHANCE OF MISSION ACCOMPLISMENT
Dazed move all skilled pilots as a squad unit to WWII arena
Sepua added: no inflight DAR, but just a couple (of tree) fields available to each side, so the action can be condensed to be more suitable to the current numbers.
One field really close to the action, one mid distance and the last deep in the territory to allow buffs to get in alt for more realistic missions.

How about icons? Do we need any??? I like to ID the a/c by visual

Stonie think we need icons! Or bigger dots
Icyplt says:
There are a few people, a small minority of total players but impossible to ignore, that have somehow obtained the ability to very nearly live within the warbirds and become, as a result, VERY good at the game, so good, in fact, that to normal occasional players and especially Pilots, they seem almost to be cheating,
In most online games there are multiple servers you can choose from so you have a better chance of finding a place to play without any of these idiots around.
Don’t fly anything but S3’s now as even semi organized opposition is nearly futile against these players who have spent so many hours gaming the game they can do things no ordinary player (or Pilot) would even think of.  So until I see meaningful changes that will at least discourage this type of behavior, or give regular guys a way to avoid it, I will give my $24.99 a month to a Simulation I have enjoyed so much I travelled to North Carolina in 2000 just to play it with the people I knew only by their handle, in the fervent hope something is done before so many leave and so few join there is nothing left but a memory of a once great Simulation. icy out. <S>”

Pappyb-- I would like to have the plane sets reflect the "Theater" used; ie: Europe...no IJN planes, Pacific....no europe planes(except those which reaslly flew in the pacific theater).
We can consolidate all comments into one proposal. Until then, let's use what we have..........OR,
How about either the Tunisia map, or Pacific for a starter?