new penalties for AO defence failure

[subx]

There currently doesn't seem to be any penalty for failing to defend an AO, the counter attack timer continues to run and eventually the defence is successful even if no player is in the AO.

 

I suppose there are a couple of routes you could go with consequences:

 

- the enemy could take the AO back - but without the context of a wider campaign, it would probably just be annoying and repetitive.

 

- the timer could be non linear and instead based on some kind of ratio of players to enemies in the AO, to the point where it could stop, or even count back up (with a maximum) if things were going really badly.

 

Being able to see the exact time left makes life a bit too easy as well. I've had a couple of instances where I could have advanced on an enemy position, but there were only seconds left, so there was no point in the risk. Perhaps enemies should only stop spawning at the end of the timer rather than disappear, but I guess that would leave the problem of a stray AI stopping the objective completing.

 

 

[Sanguine]

The main issue I personally have with the defending is how the AI is completely uncoordinated. Since it's AI this can hardly be avoided, but for example having the enemy spawn mostly in one area (including their armour assets most importantly) with a few infantry squads randomly attacking from different sides. A concentrated attack where the armour cannot be singled out so easily will probably prove more of a challenge than is the case now.

[MDCCLXXVI]

It is possible to some extent, to adjust how they are randomly spawned around the objective.

 

It seems to be more fun when the defend circle is a bit tighter.

 

And its a fine balance of how many AI are added, because there is no adjustment for how many people are on the server at the time. If 50 people = 50 AI spawn. If 5 people, 50 AI spawn. So difficulty has to be moderated abit, both for that and server performance.

 

 

The only issues I've had with AO Retake so far that I'm having trouble resolving:

 

- is sometimes an AI squad or two not de-spawning. after a few hours the map is littered with stray AI.

- One of the AI squads always spawns at coordinates 1010 (the narrow bit of land connecting the mainland with the Skopos peninsula. right beside Drimea)

* ^ in EOS there appears to be a waypoint cycle around that location. I'll try to dig it out of the files and post here if I can get rid of that waypoint spawn.