ATAG Dedicated Server is up!

[AbortedMan]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Doc

+1

Just saying m8 its coming. Seems everyone hates the blue people. Lol

Heh, it's because you're always sticking your yellow noses up our ***.

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Doc

Seems everyone hates the blue people. Lol

Nooooooo.

[AbortedMan]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Bliss

I disagree. The battle of hawkinge as you put it, is because most reds, not all, spawn at the front line bases. That makes easy pickings for a cannon equipped 109 hovering above. The reason this accumulates and turns into the hawkinge show is because more reds spawn in at hawkinge to try to get the low flying 109 that was already there because of the decision of the red pilot to spawn at hawkinge in the 1st place. People's bad decisions shouldn't be blamed on mission design. Every single red pilot could take off and get to 20K without ever a thought of a 109 in the vicinity during the entire climb if they really wanted to. There's more than enough airfields spread out all over England to do just that.

The same can be applied for the 109 fields. I generally take off quite a bit inland so by the time I reach the coast of France I'm already at 4-5km at altitude. Actually most of the 109's I fly with on coms generally take off inland as well.

I do agree that the FMs are not the greatest, but at altitude, real altitude, the spit performs much better than it does on the deck, where as the 109 starts performing a lot worse. The higher the engagement the more even (not saying it's even) the better for a spitfire.

Altitude also takes flak/AAA completely out of the picture. So my suggestion is to simply not spawn anywhere near the front lines. When everyone on red figures this out, there won't be anyone at hawkinge for the blues to shoot at.

Also, the "easy pickings" attraction of the front lines base would be nullified if there were more severe consequences for entering that airspace, like a guaranteed 15 sec max survivability chance due to AA damage, no fly zone. This would force the fight at least off shore a bit, which in turn would open up the possibility for the fight to move farther out and into the rest of the map. If Red or Blue still used AA as a safe zone to hide in, that would leave the rest of the objectives completely unguarded to bomb/capture/whatever for the opposing team, so the overall mission feel would inherit a "if you hide you lose, be pro-active you win" sense which we need, imo.

[ATAG_MajorBorris]

If anyone out there has the C# skills to script bad ass missions we all would love to enjoy their work!

Be warned

The pay is 0 and invariable someone with little or no experience in mission building will question your effort.

[5./JG27.Farber]

Originally Posted by ATAG_MajorBorris

The pay is 0 and invariable someone with little or no experience in mission building will question your effort.

So true.

S! Borris.

[AbortedMan]

Originally Posted by ATAG_MajorBorris

The pay is 0 and invariable someone with little or no experience in mission building will question your effort.

Nice. I see what you did there.

I'm truly lovin' this warm reception to potentially constructive and critical debate.

I'mma just start keeping my opinions to myself and let you ATAG guys do your thing...Everyone's got opinions, who needs another...on a forum no less.

What was I thinking? Silly me.

[ATAG_MajorBorris]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Nice. I see what you did there.

I'm truly lovin' this warm reception to potentially constructive and critical debate.

I'mma just start keeping my opinions to myself and let you ATAG guys do your thing...Everyone's got opinions, who needs another...on a forum no less.

What was I thinking? Silly me.

Dont be silly AbortedMan,

We all have been hashing the very same things you bring up for a year.

Im sure if you join us on coms and ask the horse you will get what it takes to make a mission and why all the cool stuff isnt all there yet.

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Actually, you're not disagreeing with me at all...just talking about something different in half of your post. I agree with what you're saying completely here. Reds love throwing their aircraft into the meat grinder for some reason despite constant efforts to rally or strategize the mindless uncollectiveness. I am not one of those, mind you...10k ft is my MINIMUM engagement/first contact altitude in any sortie.

The battle of Hawkinge...I'm not saying this is bad mission design by common definition, but it's a condition that hasn't been addressed effectively, so affords some sort of fault to the mission design simply because it's a misallocation of resources and motivation to get those "meat-grinder" pilots away from the deathmatch areas and start engaging in a proper flight SIMULATOR fashion. I understand what the mission designer was trying to accomplish, but that's not what is happening. It's like trying to make a irrigation ditch with the intentions of routing water around the Eastern side of your house, implementing your planned dig route, then when the water escapes and flows on the Western side of your house you just stare at it and say, "Well, this isn't what's SUPPOSED to happen."...that isn't going to fix the issue. We all know the problem, now the next step is to find the solution. The players are "gaming the game", so now the mission builders need to "game the game" right back to balance it out.

Example, there's not a lot, well...enough motivation and emphasis right now on objectives for the common non-regular player, whether that be to go bomb something (which is not on the common Red pilot's mind/agenda...we only have one buggy bomber), escort AI bombers (no real reason to other than hopes to find other enemy fighters, possibly exacerbating the air-quake mentality issue) defend a grid/building from bombers, etc. If there was a constant stream of AI bombers attacking each Army's *vital, round winning objectives* and actually had purpose there would be constant pressure to take out bomber formations and get pilots off the airfields and onto escorting/intercept missions. As I see it right now, AI bombers are fairly immaterial and just serve as target practice and/or a stage for a high altitude contact scenario with their escorts, if applicable, and go to the wayside never to be seen again after the engagement.

This is a matter of a mission designer providing motivation to do the fun, interactive and balanced activities this simulator has to offer (bombing runs, escorts, interception, recon), meanwhile discouraging the less desirable, unfair, unbalanced activities (vulching, base raping, unrealistic altitude engagements, lone wolfing, "gaming the game"). Stuff like Wolf's Channel Command seems promising with missions on demand, limited aircraft supply (this will be a big one, as it will discourage unrealistic/unsportmanlike bailing out/crashing to skip the flight home), random AI fighter engagements, etc.

Bliss you seem to turn a blind eye to the current mission's faults and have repeatedly cited the pilots as the issue (did you make it yourself or something?), while I don't disagree with you, the pilot's actions are not something that is going to change because of forum posts. Said pilot's actions are a constant. We cannot force or change them, but the mission parameters in-game can. It can be something complicated like an aircraft supply system, or a simple on-screen notification of a formation of bomber's location heading toward a critical mission objective...Or ailerons falling off of an aircraft upon spawn because you don't want to deal with that aircraft in the sky, you big blue babies .

See, you're saying that people spawning at Hawkinge is still a problem, that low flying combat is a problem. Basically what you are saying is the mission should tell people how they should fly. Again, I completely disagree. If we were running some sort of hosted event with signups and everyone knew the exact objectives with the intent of the whole event completing them, had a tactical plan, etc., then I would expect people that signed up to fly a particular way that was intended.

But we are not running an event. We are a public server. The last thing I will ever do is force someone to fly a certain way. One of the main reasons we started the server is because we were sick and tired of playing on servers that had ridiculous rules. If someone wants to spawn at hawkinge and die repeatedly, so be it. If someone on blue wants to dive their Ju88 right into a red airfield, have fun. I'm never going to tell other people how to fly and I'm sure as hell never gonna penalize someone for how they want to fly. Team killing is a different story obviously, but this isn't about that.

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Also, the "easy pickings" attraction of the front lines base would be nullified if there were more severe consequences for entering that airspace, like a guaranteed 15 sec max survivability chance due to AA damage, no fly zone. This would force the fight at least off shore a bit, which in turn would open up the possibility for the fight to move farther out and into the rest of the map. If Red or Blue still used AA as a safe zone to hide in, that would leave the rest of the objectives completely unguarded to bomb/capture/whatever for the opposing team, so the overall mission feel would inherit a "if you hide you lose, be pro-active you win" sense which we need, imo.

As I stated above, I will never penalize someone for how they want to fly. When I'm on red, I enjoy spawning at hawkinge and getting a quick fix. I also enjoy spawning further inland and doing a proper high altitude flight.
But the last thing I'm going to do is penalize people for not flying a certain way. Every single person that joins the server should have every right to do w/e they want (sight seeing in a Tiger Moth, landing a JU88 at london, or w/e minus team killing) without having to hear a rash of crap about it. They paid for the game just like I did and I'm not about to tell them how they should play it.

I'm sorry you seem to think all your desires should be implemented, but when it comes to forcing or penalizing players for their styles of playing the game, I will never agree with you. The missions we run are designed that way. So again, there's no fault in the mission at all. That's how our server is run and will always be run, albeit some special event. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's who we are.

[AbortedMan]

Originally Posted by ATAG_MajorBorris

Dont be silly AbortedMan,

We all have been hashing the very same things you bring up for a year.

Im sure if you join us on coms and ask the horse you will get what it takes to make a mission and why all the cool stuff isnt all there yet.

Not talking about "cool stuff" talking about gameplay stuff. Fixes for base raping/vulching (more anti-air), a purpose to AI bombers (making them mission essential), motivation to not constantly hover around Hawkinge.

But of course, you guys are intelligent and if there was a fix, it would have been done by now, no doubt. So I'm essentially bored at work and beating a dead horse by stating the (hopefully) obvious. By my logic I was thinking the guy that made the current mission can obviously create missions, but maybe he hasn't thought of what I pointed out in my post. I wouldn't be much of a successful person in life if I just assumed and never took action to ask, or point out what seems to be important information. Maybe it helped and informed someone, maybe it didn't...it kept me awake at my desk though.

Either way I sense some mis-directed forum hostility from some of you ATAG guys. Put down your dukes, I'm not berating, insulting, calling out, or hurting anyone. I come in peace and I'm doing what I can to reach the common goal. It may not be C++ programming, but ideas are ideas and can be invaluable to an undertaking such as this.

[AbortedMan]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Bliss

See, you're saying that people spawning at Hawkinge is still a problem, that low flying combat is a problem. Basically what you are saying is the mission should tell people how they should fly. Again, I completely disagree. If we were running some sort of hosted event with signups and everyone knew the exact objectives with the intent of the whole event completing them, had a tactical plan, etc., then I would expect people that signed up to fly a particular way that was intended.

But we are not running an event. We are a public server. The last thing I will ever do is force someone to fly a certain way. One of the main reasons we started the server is because we were sick and tired of playing on servers that had ridiculous rules. If someone wants to spawn at hawkinge and die repeatedly, so be it. If someone on blue wants to dive their Ju88 right into a red airfield, have fun. I'm never going to tell other people how to fly and I'm sure as hell never gonna penalize someone for how they want to fly. Team killing is a different story obviously, but this isn't about that.





As I stated above, I will never penalize someone for how they want to fly. When I'm on red, I enjoy spawning at hawkinge and getting a quick fix. I also enjoy spawning further inland and doing a proper high altitude flight.
But the last thing I'm going to do is penalize people for not flying a certain way. Every single person that joins the server should have every right to do w/e they want (sight seeing in a Tiger Moth, landing a JU88 at london, or w/e minus team killing) without having to hear a rash of crap about it. They paid for the game just like I did and I'm not about to tell them how they should play it.

I'm sorry you seem to think all your desires should be implemented, but when it comes to forcing or penalizing players for their styles of playing the game, I will never agree with you. The missions we run are designed that way. So again, there's no fault in the mission at all. That's how our server is run and will always be run, albeit some special event. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's who we are.

Haha, no one is talking about penalizing...unless you mean losing a round counts as penalizing because you didn't play the mission to its objectives, which makes very little sense. This is a multiplayer game, with set parameters (rules, if you will) for winning as per the objectives/rounds/team-based structure. By your logic, the server should be on free flight with no mission loaded at all...and that's not speaking in hyperbole, I'm being literal.

I'm not the only one frustrated about the issue. A few pages back there's a couple other people citing gameplay changes. So what's ATAG's goal with this server? Free flight do-what-you-want or realistic BoB mission style sorties? Declare it now so I can stop rambling about mission suggestions.