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 passwordThis 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-upsThis 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 rangeRanging skill should be required and practiced.
-Day/Night cycle enabledReference 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 arenasThe 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 exactSimilar 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 terrainThese 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 messageThis 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 disbandmentAt 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 ableI 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