I was wondering if we could do a poll for a special event on TPU. Myself and Mojo have been talking of a cool idea that can benefit players flying skills. Whenever the next wildcard for DarkRyda day come about (because these maps are conquest), having a map for dogfighting only with all the rules of dogfighting,no flags no flying in circles just good old fighting in the sky. Players may see this intimidating but actually this can be great way to up your air skills. But if the poll gets good votes and its a go- it will be one heck of a ride for fun. I know that DarkRyda day doesn't come a lot but if the day comes again, this idea Mojo and I have would be well worth it. We both wouldn't mind getting feed back from players on this and Jeff you too,what do you think?

i reckon britain would be the best map for that. i could set up the conquest to have the plane layout the coop version has, i can also put planes anywhere, like have the bf109s at the allied fields and spits and stangs at the axis field. hell throw in some zeros. i can also set the buildings (radar,factory) to respawn so that fools cant come in and end the map. as they peck away at the buildings, trying to figure out why they come right back, u can pick them off.
since it would be set up for dog fighting, we can get rid of some things like the tanks and trade them for planes, same thing for the machineguns and AAs, but maybe we keep the AAs, lol.
we could have all the planes in the bf1942 mod, but really we just need the fighters

That works very nicely Dark. Yeah bombers wouldn't really be useful (well the ju88A only) but yes, having a wide variety of fighters is awesome. If this does goes through, I think this project will be just flat out fun. It's like a break from the same o same o if you know what I mean. I'm sure players would love the idea of having a battleground that is just for this and BoB to me, is the best choice also. Having bots in the way wouldn't go well here and so a conquest dogfight sounds awesome. But we still need to have the votes to see if players would want this.

Jeff, this idea of a dogfight map would be inside DarkRyda's map pack and that would mean he would have to add the new bob conquest to it and have players download it all over again. But if we don't get any votes for it then the idea is dead after all. It is up to players to vote for this but Mojo, Dark,Lotus and myself loves the idea and with that I know that this project will take some time to get up and running if votes are good. Also, being that the two of the main challenges are in bob,this is another way players can learn the challenges for the fighter and the ju88a because there will be not bots in the way and I'm sure that if a players says I'm here to practice,they want get shot down. All this is just an idea and even tho it's sounds awesome to a hand few of us, doesn't mean everybody else would agree.

Sounds good to me. Ryda might be able to make most of the changes to BoB without requiring client map pack re-download, which would be helpful. Then we could just add that BoB to the map list. No, wait, that wouldn't work, because it would interfere with the regular BoB. I'll have to think about that. Anyhow, I'll set up the poll.

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-- Jeff (boot13)

a dog fighting map ay sounds good to me as long as they are not helicopters im down xD

jeff is right, i can set up the map server side, no download needed.
at the moment i actually started working on a set up for conquest.
i thought about going ahead and putting the b17 back in, just try it out, i was thinking since no bots will be filling the sky maybe it will work, cause hell if everyone is dog fighting, why would they want to fly a b17 alone? lol but i kinda get into the gunner seats, and it be fun to fly around in b17 or ju88a and challenge guys to take on the fortress fully loaded.

so far it looks just like the coop britain, but i added more planes to all the airfields.
i removed the tanks, jeeps and machinguns, and changed them all to planes
still got kettenkrads to get around, but all former jeep and tank locations, will now be kettenkrads.
i added the jap planes, the zero and the vals. pretty much every plane will be on the map except for the torp bombers.
i added a few allied planes and a zero and val to the axis field, and bf109s and zeros to the allied fields.
still got all the AA locations, and all the buildings respawn so no chance of the map ending fast.

i could even set it up so both sides tickets count down at the same rate, this way the team with the most kills will win in the end, instead of axis always losing.
im almost done actually, need to test it out tho

It appears i spoke out of turn..Not-A-Bot is offended by the idea of a dog fighting BOB. So my apologies to those whom I assumed i could speak for.
I personally do not think it sacrilege to have Human vs. Human on a co-op server, In particular on a single map only. BOB is already a catch 22, no-win situation for the axis side, and its performance makes it clear that some type of overhaul is overdue. If this map is modded with the goals of better performance ( we all know the long standing latency issues associated with it) in mind, and a fair chance for either team to win, then it will be fun again, with or without the dog fighting idea.
I don't think a conquest BOB is going to be that much fun, as we just wont be able to generate enough players at any given time to really make it engaging. That's part of the attraction of BOB anyway-the swirling masses of fighters defending and attacking bombers, each other, etc. I would suggest we keep the bots. If we are going to modd the existing map and forgo a download, that means the tpu standard, 2 to 1 odds will apply. In light of this, and from viewing some of the path finding code, i have some suggestions for better game play and observations of existing issues.

The gross number of active bot-flown axis planes is too high.

The gross number of active bot-flown allied planes is too low.

Too many allied bots are idle at factory at any given time

Too many axis bots are idle at axis airfield at any given time-or in kettengrads/tanks blocking runway.

Lag/latency high over factory/areas of high plane concentration.

Some possible solutions: Remove the factory. no factory, no spawn, and therefore no plane concentration over this (primary) target. Also server workload is relieved of one more function, that of the damage counter/respawn time counter/rendering etc. as a side benefit, more allied bots spawn at airfields.
Make the team ratio three to one, server wide. (Now we finally have a challenge in all maps.) Time BOB for Allied advantage during peak hours.
Increase max number of hanger-JU88's. there's always axis bots standing inside hanger/just in front/or not spawning at all untill another ju88 spawns inside hanger. Get axis bots out of kettengrads at axis field. Maybe relocate kettengrads away from their primary objective, the hanger ju88 spawner. Im down for extensive testing and trial/error on this map, there's much potential in it for improvement.

Those are all good ideas except perhaps getting rid of the factory. Until the radar stations started respawning, it was always possible to win as Axis by bombing the hell out of the factory. Since we want to make it winnable by the Axis again, I suggest adjusting the radar station spawns but leaving the factory as it is. Ideally, it should be difficult to the Axis to win, and doing it will involve dodging AA and enemy fighters, and a lot of accurate bombing. Just my take on it anyway.

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-- Jeff (boot13)

I wouldn't say I'm offended by the idea of a conquest BoB map. I like dogfighting maps, in fact I wish there were more servers running them. HOWEVER, I don't think it fits for TPU's server. Coop is the name of the game here. Coop 1942 servers are an endangered species. Looking a couple of days ago, there were only 30 out of 250 servers running coop maps. And then of that, only 10 servers were running vanilla bf1942. That's right, TEN servers running coop '42 maps.
Darkryda's custom Race Track map is an exception, and it requires a special download directly from this site. Folks who play on that map know going in what to expect. I think it will cause confusion for casual players to have a conquest BoB map running. For those who like coop maps, they may not like it. For the clueless players that come and want to play on TPU like it is a conquest server, intentionally hunting humans just to be pains-in-the-ass, this will add fuel to the fire for them. Also, the idea is to practice dogfighting, and I can easily see troublemakers come on and attack participants getting to their planes.

Well, Mojo and I wanted some feedback,mission accomplished. Thanks for responding, tho it still sounds like one fun ride. Selfish on my part because I believe so many can really learn and improve on their flying skills. Tho I see some might have some different feelings on it and it goes back to what we said " even tho we as in [few] see it as a great idea,some my not". I kinda thought of it as a training ground for future pilots on a day that doesn't come up a lot. But, is that what we do anyway when DarkRyda day would be on? Most all maps are conquest anyways and we did that like two times and everybody was ok with it. That is another reason we thought about using that day as a dogfighting day, because players already knew it was a pvp day. But it goes back to what players really want and it seem it may not be the best thing for TPU after all. So, I'm a idealist, sue me lol.......