Wingmen Vulnerability?

[Dan Verssen]

I think it's been mentioned, but I wanted to get feedback on the thought that wingmen might be too vulnerable to attack at higher XP levels.

Thoughts?

[kuroi neko]

Yes, definitely!

After 500 - 600 XP, a leader will draw enough cards to smoke or down a wingie in a single attack more than 50% of the time. The "distract wingman" skill tips the scales even more, and even a fully defensive wingman ("check six", "natural pilot", "spoil aim" and "sweep tail") will usually go down in the course of the first 3 turns. Even redraws and extra cards are not enough, since a random draw of 4 or 5 cards will rarely be enough to counter a serie of 4 or 5 selected attacks & manoeuvers (useless attacks/manoeuvers and inappropriate counter cards). The more cards drawn at random, the less effective the defense against the same number of attacks/manoeuvers.

Besides, on the attacker side, the effect is exactly the opposite: when the wingie attacks, nearly every card drawn counts. Except when the enemy leader is tailed, even manoeuvers will be uselful (an in that case you may want to bully the enemy wingie instead ). Even defensive actions can be used to damage or deplete the hand of the target, so gaining more attack cards make the wingmen proportionally more dangerous.

As experience grows, wingmen are both becoming more threatening and more vulnerable, so they appear more and more as the obvious target.

As for trying to even the odds a bit, just a few idle thoughts. I am well avare that tweaking the mechanics of a well proven system is very dangerous, so these few remarks should be taken as simple and vague suggestions, not requests or recriminations .

Having said that, I guess one could work on both ends of the problem:

1) increase wingmen resilience

new skills allowing wingmen to better defend themselves could be added.

I was thinking of a defense skill working a bit like "anticipation" (removing a random card from the leader's hand), which would allow the wingman to cancel one card of his choosing during an attack.

A lighter version could be a skill working a bit like the "agility" special ability, allowing to turn any card into a strong counter manoeuver, like scissor or vertical roll. Different skills could be used for different manoeuvers, or the efficiency of the manoeuver increased each time you buy the skill again (first time : tight turn, 2nd time: TT & BR, 3rd: TT, BR & SC, 4th: all counters except aces), or the choice of manoeuver left to the wingman as the skill is used.

How many times this skill could be used in a given game is debatable, but I think that could end the infamous "manoeuver+IMS2:D" sudden death for wingmen, and lessen the impact of an OTS3:4. To kill a wingie with IMS2:D you would have to have at least a serious other attack or counter card at hand, and be ready to sacrifice at least a valuable defensive card in order to hurt the wingman.

As Brian & Dan said, allowing multiple buying of "check six" is a possibility, but I don't like it much because the randomness of the draw will still produce extremely varied results. Either a complete failure or success will depend entirely of a non-controlled random draw, the only strategy will be in buying the skill and computing chances of success. The attacker will have to trust blind luck, while knowing an extra defense card is enough to beat the resilience of the wingman gives more elaborate tactical possibilites (basically, the same kind of choices between attack and defence that occurs while considering attacking a leader).

2) decrease wingmen lethality

If new skills allow wingmen to survive longer, it may be necessary to reduce their nuisance potential accordingly. This would make them less tempting preys and allow to come closer to a more balanced tactical choice of target between leader and wingman.

The number of w/m attack cards could be reduced by one (possibly adjusting the total attack count against bombers by +1 to compensate).

The "sweep tail" skill could be extended to leaders. An element with "sweep tail" both owned by the leader and the wingman would force the opposite wingie to drop 2 cards, which should even the odds nicely even if the nasty wingie survives for the whole game.

Wingmen could have to manoeuver against other wingmen to place the nasty 3:xxx attacks. For instance, they could play freely 1 or 2 burst cards against other wingies, and the 3 burst cards only after gaining at least a manoeuver point with "manoeuver" or "half loop". This would tone down the lethality without ruling out a nasty OTS3:4 from an inspired wingman to an unfortunate one. This would be especially nice in low XP duels, where a random OTS3:4 from a one attack card wingie has an unfair devastating effect on the opposite one defense card wingman.

[ October 13, 2005, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: kuroi neko ]

[bartbert]

Dan was thinking that perhaps if we allowed the "Check Six" skill to be purchased multiple times, that it would help wingmen survive a little better.

Do you guys think that would help?

[Strider]

Even for low level wingman, I've found it 'odd' that when a wingman is attacked, he as often as not, draws attack cards. Are there any major factors that would make wingman drawing 'only' defense card(s) when attacked?

Would this also help resolve the higher level wingmen's defense chance with the cards they do get?

[Sixxkiller]

I wouldnt like the defense only cards for the wingys. Its hard enough to shoot them down as is.

-Ray

[bartbert]

Yes, I think "stacking the deck" so that wingmen only draw defensive cards when they are attacked would probably throw things too far in the other direction.

I think there's only so much that we can do for the "poor wingies". If players decide that dog-piling on the wingman is a successful strategy, then wingmen are going to go down.

However, it seems to me that this is a somewhat risky strategy. If you go after the wingman and fail to take him down, he and his leader may come back on you with a vengence.

The "Redraw" skill becomes VERY powerful for the high end aircraft. I would have several of these in my back pocket for both the leader and the wingman.

[kuroi neko]

Well not wanting to make sweeping generalizations here, but after a few hundred games against humans, my conclusion is that above 200 XP, if you have the "distract wingman" skill (or 400 XP if you were foolish enough not to buy it ), going after the leader is only a last resort strategy.

Above this level, avoiding the fight until you've built a hand allowing to damage the wingie is a far better option if available.

Even in demo games the wingman was rarely not down or pouring smoke after 3 turns. If your initial draw did not allow to maul the wingie, you had to pray for the adversary to be unable to do the same to you, or the rest of the fight was just a struggle for survival.

Natural pilot, check 6 and distract wingie was the choice combination of skills you could afford for 100 XP and it was by far the most successful against humans. The wingman scored few kills but the leader could down a lot of wingies.

Here again you could do stats on the server on human vs human fights and get an idea of the relative durability of wingmen and leaders, depending on the average XP total. I suspect a curve of this kind would be pretty telling.

Frankly the manoeuver+IMS2:D or 2 x manoeuver+OTS3:4 are the most frequent "fun killer combos". After 150 XP, loosing a leader in the first turn is exceptional, but above 500 XP, seeing a wingman smoked or kissing him goodbye before turn 3 occurs in more than 50% of the games.

Until you reach 100-200 XP you can do little to protect against it, and after that the number of attack cards will grow at the same rate as the number of defenses, which will more than compensate for the increased number of defenses.

I do not support your views on the redraws, for several reasons:

1) as I said, a random assortment of cards is weaker than a purposely selected attack combo of the same number of cards, and even more so as the number of cards increase.

2) there are many cases where for instance a 4 hands defensive draw will yeld a couple of mild defenses and a redraw will do little to improve the situation. It may also yeld even poorer results, which is just a cause for frustration.

3) as things go now, buying 3 to 6 redraws for wingies is a kind of mandatory 15 to 30 XP tax above 500 XP, simply slowing down wingman progression in an arbitrary way. This is aggravated by the fact that wingies gain far less XPs than leaders since they are far less likely to deal the final blow to a plane (although they will often allow the final leader combo to get through by depleting the enemy leader's hand). Since at this level practically all the XPs are gained by smoking or downing planes, the wingies cant really afford to buy a fresh assortment of redraws each game.

4) the tactical choices involving redraw are limited to an estimation of the offensive potential of the leader, which does not depend on many "computable" factors except the relative hand sizes. Having more efficient defensive skills like a way to turn any card into a defense would give more tactical depth to the game, both for the attacker and the defender.

[ October 14, 2005, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: kuroi neko ]

[Liebchen]

I was wondering why a wingman gets to draw cards when attacked by a wingman and again when attacked by the leader. Wouldn't the energy used to ward off the attack by the wingman have already been spent?

[Skuderian]

Hi!

I think with a few changes this problem is being solved.

1) Wingman should get double experience points.

2) New skill: Expert Wingman (+1 attack, +1 defense) Basic cost 100XP

3) New skill: Famous Wingman (+1 attack, +1 defense, +1 airframe) Basic Cost 200XP

4)When flying against bombers there should be a restriction for attacking. (Maximum number of Cards against Heavy Bombers 6, Medium 5, Small 4)

With this changes wingies get more powerfull against fighters, but less powerfull against bombers.

[kuroi neko]

As I see it, the card system gets a bit stretched when handling high-end planes. The corrections should focus on preserving the current mid-level balance and toning down some phenomena tied to the increase in statistical issues above a given number of cards.

The key to balancing the game at high level is to add some factors that would restore a meaningful, fun and tactically sound alternative between leader and wingman as targets.

In order to correct these problems, the wingman resilience should certainly be increased, but his lethality should be decreased if anything . The excessive threat represented by the wingman contributes to force players to follow the "wingie must die no matter what" strategy.

Allowing wingmen to become both more resilient and agressive at the same time would not change anything about this lack of alternative tactics, it would simply allow owners of the skill to wipe the floor with people not rich enough to buy the equivalent (or foolish enough to waste XPs on other gizmos) .

Besides, and that is quite obvious if you have a look at the offense/manoeuver/defense cards repartition, gaining an extra attack is much more efficient than gaining an extra defense.

One must also bear in mind that the attacker has the initiative: reaction cards are at an intrinsic disadvantage since the attacker has the choice to correlate bursts and counter manoeuvers while the defender does not know about remaining attacks. Yet again this advantage grows with the number of cards.

This is why I proposed a mechanism that would tone down this "initiative advantage".

Allowing the defender to turn one card into a counter manoeuver would limit the attackers options (thus toning down both leader and wingman lethality, but only against wingman), and give some additional information to the defender (attacker would have to keep a counter manoeuver to follow the attack, which would mean the last attack card would not be a burst unless the defender had already played the counter, the defender could evaluate the probability for a leader to have remaining counters from the previous turn actions, the attacker would have to deplete his defenses to get a successful attack, etc.).

This would, I think, turn wingman attack sequences into something more amusing than the current "(re)draw and pray" routine. Basically it would make it closer to the leader vs leader attack sequence, the "free counter" capability of the wingman being similar to the capacity for the leader to spare a couple of decent defenses from previous turns.

Since the effect would be more pronounced with large number of cards, this would also preserve the current low and medium level playability, and become more effective at the level the current issues appear.

This could be a step toward the intended goal, that is to add more incentive to choose between leader and wingman as targets on a more equal footing.

[ October 15, 2005, 05:32 AM: Message edited by: kuroi neko ]

[Ron]

I think the Wingman issue is much more fundamental than simply allowing an additional 'Check Six' to be purchased and/or purchasing multiple Redraws which are just a crapshoot. Kuroi has espoused on the matter extensively and much more eloquently than I could. He has identified possible solutions that to me address the problem in a satisfying manner and would allow the 'flight dynamics' to be part of the Wingman game.

To recap, Wingmen are too lethal offensively and vulnerable defensively at higher XP. The apparent inability to regain Escape Death(bug?), gain XP in a meaningful way at higher levels(to even afford card buys let alone new skills!) and being the 'target of choice' against humans only exasperates this.

Obviously changing the design aspects of a game is daunting but the proposals by Kuroi would go a long ways towards addressing this problem. Until then it is 'poor Wingy' indeed!!

Ron

[Stalin's Organ]

Perhaps a skill that lets the leader play cards when the wingman is attacked?

Or perhaps a "draw again" skill that lets them draw another hand when one is finished? It'd have to be quite expensive, and I'd suggest it would cover only defensive situatoins!!

Certainly "redraw" is a must - and a few extra cards come in handy too - it's quite common to get experienced wingman with 5 good cards to play!

[Stalin's Organ]

Some more random thoughts....

Wingmen are inherently better at offence than defence because htey can always play any shooting cards they get, but cannot always play any defensive cards.

I can understand this from a "historical" point of view - if someone gets on the leader then the wingie is probably in a good position to let him have it, but perhaps that's an area where wingmen can be beefed up a bit? Perhaps allow them to play a "tight turn" if a barrel roll is required, or vice versa, or summ'it like that.

Also from a "historical pov the wingies job IS to catch hte bullets 'cos he's last in hte line, so experienced pilots with brand new wingies might be expected.

Another possibility - allow experienced pilots to take up other wingies from your hand, so the new wingies start at the bottom of hte rung with hte most inexperienced pilot.

Another idea - allow pilots and/or wingies to retire/be posted to a desk job and keep a roll of all those who do so so htey aren't forgotten forever

[Liebchen]

...and why do we never get to reassign our teams, anyway? Is this based upon some historical precedent? I suspect not, but can't say for sure. It certainly doesn't make for great management...

[Sixxkiller]

Ok I dont have the game yet but one possible solution would be for wingys to have an attack and def rating (applicable only to drawing cards) as far as cards he can hold in his hand. Say if he draws 7 cards and his attack rating in 4, then he can only hold 4 "attack" cards at most, so that say IMS and OTS cards are in the attack category, half loop,maneuver, ace pilot, and sissors cards are neutral cards, and barrel roll, tight turn and vertical roll are def cards.

So if a wingy has an attack rating of say 3 and he has 2 IMS, 2 maneuver, 2 barrel roll, and an ace pilot, he is within the parameters but if he has 3 OTS, 2 IMS and 2 vertical roll he is not with in range, so the computer redraws until he is inside the range.

What wouldnt apply is if he gets xtra card draws. Only the base would be subject to the rule.

Just a thought

-Ray

[Stalin's Organ]

Perhaps an easier idea would be for wingmen to share in the experience their leaders get for kills?