Doc on RDP Bombing.

[Bundyrum]

Here's what you need to understand. RDP damage is cumulative. You might think "11%" or whatever number you think you see now, for your effort, as "not enough". But evryone who goes and bombs a factory over a given time frame is accumulating that effect. The system has to guard against two things.

1. If 10 people can go bomb a factory in the same timeframe, and do, as you say, "11%" damage each ... that's more than 100% damage in a single trip. Ten people in agame this size isn't very much. I have seen FORTY bombers go on a bombing run. Frequent ? Hell no. But the system has to accomodate it no matter how infrequent and a lone bomber doing his run within a system set up to accomodate many bombers, isn't going to see much for his individual effort. If he made 10 runs himself, solo ... his effort would appear much more signifigant.

2. Too much negative gameplay influence. Once upon a time it was possible to stop a countries RDP altogether. That was bad for the game as a whole. It made bomber pilots happy, but having 1 country with the latest equipment and another a week later still waiting for it, held back the games ability to attract players on the side with no hope at all of ever having balanced equipment sets based on the tier match system. We at CRS feel a day or two is the maximum we can permit before it becomes time for players to leave in total dissappointment. So that's what we have now. Enetetainment is a tough gig. One side having a nuclear bomb and the other a bow and arrow might be entertaining for the guy with the nuclear bomb, but the guy with the bow and arrow ain't going to be joining the fun for long. That's an important part of our business model and why you can't always have what you as an individual want.

There is damage you do you're not aware of. Supply timers. Bombing RDP does more damage to the enemy than you think, as for every 10% danage you do to the factories, you not only slow down the rate at which their cycle completes, you add 5% to their resupply timers for equipment lost in attrition.

This functions much better in the duel (and opposing) purpose of allowing you to hurt the enemy and keeping everyone happy at the same time. You can slow his getting new equipment (not as much as before but it still has an effect) and he doesn't feel the wait time makes it hopeless, in a day or two max, they will be back on par. That's the perception issue covered, what he can see that hurts him but not not so much he gives up completely.

We need to show you on the webpage where supply timers are slowed by bombing, so that you don't get the impression you didn't do so much. You only see factory damage, you don't see that attririon resupply on the side you bombed is running at 20% longer (or 25%, or 50% or whatever it is currently) and you should. We just have to create a reporting function for the front page, like we did for factory damage. We'll get that done soon.

Resupply timer damage is actually more fruitful than you think as an objective for bombers. When your side is in a particularly tough situation, like defending a big town (or assaulting one) ... a big bombing strike made against ther RDP factories during that battle might add an hour, two, or even more to the time it takes the enemy to resupply armour lost in that battle. That puts your side at a very improved advanatge ... locally and very much more immediately than the week you wait to see an RDP cycle complete at a rate you slowed by bombing.

So basically, the change spread the damage bombers do to RDP to have less catestrophic visible damage in one spot, to having more effects on your enemy in more spots. It added depth to the war effort, and lessened a catastrophic effect that hurt gameplay, but added more variety to how that hurt can be spread across your enemies abilities to fight back.

Yeah it doesn't make all the bomber piklots as happy, but it keeps the majority of the game alive longer for everyone, and if you understand what you're really doing, it does hurt the enemy in a more useful fashion forn the game than it used to. Some players hate attrition, because it's not as much fun when you run out of stuff. True, on a personal level of "using equipment" ... but within the wuider view the game was designed on (the war) attrition has to be a part of the game.

Moving "bombing RDP" to affect production and supply as well as research is also opart of that "wider view incorporating the war" approach. Individuals who only want to see the previous "I hurt their research ability a whole lot" which is what RDP bombing used to be, at the same time as doing zip to production or supply, will be dissappointed. We however, always wanted production and supply to be a part of strategic bombing effects. The fact it hurts subscriptions less is also a bonus. We get more players staying and a system we can use to make hurting the war have more veriety and depth. Everyone wins except those who spit the dummy.

Well we always lose those guys. B)

Next step is to seperate production from supply, and seperate research into branches that are automonous to themselves more, and less "global" in nature. Recent changes to RDP bombing were just a step in that direction. There's more on the way. Things like bombing this over here hurts attrition resupply. Bombing that over there hurts production out put that attrition resupply pulls from. Bombing those things down here hurts introduction of equipment through research.

It's always better to have the kind of depth and variety that greater divrsity of cause and effect, action and consequence creates, over simple single layer approaches like RDP bombing used to be.

Yes, it dilutes the gamey "I did this" aspect to sdome extent, but it's endemic to this games design to make everything less "single layer I did this" and more detailed in it's team driven variety and diversity of purpose. Every step we make adds seperation from what a single player game is ("I did this") and the simple way we often have to introduce things (bombing RDP was more like a single player game would manage bombing missions in terms of the objective) and moves us further into tryue multiplayer gaming where you are part of a much bigger collective goal. Making tha collective goal (teamwork) a part of a collective of different objectives, with a variety of effects on the outcome of the other teams efforts, is all a part of that complex evolution.

The goal is to one day have a war game that defies complete understanding by the individual, but within which there is a collective of specialists who know their part of the game upsside down and backwards. ie: precisely what a single player game isn't, on every level possible.

That's a huge undertaking, and will take years to achieve. But it will be the most awesome multiplayer game and evvironment ever created if we can achieve it. You're a part of that monumental gaming evolution, right now. It's going to have some bumps and bad moments, this journey, but that isn't a sign of anything being so horribly wrong.
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Geof Rey Evans
Producer/CRS
"this is rocket science, it just looks like a video game"
Last edited by DOC : Today at 03:46 PM.
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[Charlie3]

his over inflated ego is oozing out of that pat myself on the back post

doc must be a real ahole in real life

never got along with people like that

[Bundyrum]

He neglected to say that resupply is currently linked to factory rebuild times. So that as the factory rebuilds the delay reduces.To maintain a 4.5 hour delay you need to hold the entie Axis rdp at 50% .
You need to look much closer at the facts and not the smoke screen. At present RDP is just not viable as a means of affecting The Axis War Machine.

There is damage you do you're not aware of. Supply timers. Bombing RDP does more damage to the enemy than you think, as for every 10% danage you do to the factories, you not only slow down the rate at which their cycle completes, you add 5% to their resupply timers for equipment lost in attrition.

Note it says factories -You can totally bomb MG into oblivion but all you will do is slow axis supply by 5% . And this 5% decreases as the factories rebuild -currently around 4 hours .
To achieve a 4.5 hour set back you will require 30 Bombers [db-7s] to hit at once and score max damage.
Factories rebuild at around 25% per hour so you will then need to hit the factories every hour with a minimum of 10 planes. To keep it at the maximum you will need to keep the damage below the 50% threshold so as to keep ahead of the rebuild.
But if i read the quote right the most you can do to supply is 50% increase 10% damage =5% supply
100% damage = 50% supply

ahh forget it -not worth the effort.

[Kizmet]

Jesus. It takes as much effort to figure out what damage you do, as it does to do the damage itself.

[FuelPump]

Yeah, they'll need to fast track that damage counter on the web page.
Spawn delay=1.732*(T/v-RY^2+(J+(GF))) isn't going to cut it.

I don't think it's as bad as all that. In some ways I think it's an improvement. Now we have the ability to bomb all campaign and make a difference.

It still remains to be seen how useful strat bombing is though. If it is going to take a massive effort to change things only a little bit at the frontline, then it's pointless.

Once again, the axis could have the edge here, for reasons I won't post in an open forum.