And I've read the lot thus far. Hmmnn...
In no particular order...
Bomb-dropping: carpet-bombing is IMO the way to go, for reasons eloquently and accurately put above. Ensure you have a couple of good bombardiers per formation (at least one backup in case the master bombardier dies, discos or otherwise becomes unable to do the job), and have everyone else drop when the lead bombardier does. That means that to ensure maximal bombs on target area, the planes in the formation really do need to fly in formation. Only drawback here is lack of Otto gunnery meaning that ideally each buff trio should have a player gunner aboard as well.
Fighter types - kill anyone tying to insist on planes that didnt enter until later than this scenario is actually supposed to be. Besides, REAL fighter pilots can get kills armed with a revolver in a Tiger Moth, only wimps need the Allied/Axis uberplanes to get kills, right? ;-)
Night flying. Night combat was a fact of WW2. Any attempt to portray the bulk of the RAF bombing effort that doesnt involve night flying is ridiculous. Any attempt to simply ignore the RAF effort is ridiculous. If you don't like flying at night, then just don't do it! If you're Allied you could man the guns for a bomber pilot; if you're Axis you could man the radar.
From game (only) experience, the night in AH is pathetically bright, and once it's into full night is much the same as full daylight but with the sky painted black, so far as I can tell. But that's flying with a full moon all the time for you, I suppose. Which both the RAF and LW often AVOIDED doing because it made life more dangerous for the bomber crews. No, I don;t mess with the gamma. And I've flown WB2 "2D" at night (that's the untextured version) and in that the night was really pitch black, you could barely see the ground at all from altitude. It took a little more effort and patience to land safely, and you might have to orbit around a bit trying to find the target if it wasnt already on fire - juts like in real life. It was not particularly difficult, and flying at the darkest AH can currently do is easy by comparison. And I'm just a girly! ;-)
Kill all fighter dweebs arguing over a few mph difference in speed when machines in service with worn engines and airframes seldom met those specs anyway, while we're at it... ;-)
Frames part 1 - I'd happily have it that PTO games are held mostly at US-friendly times and ETO games mostly at Euro-friendly times. Some argue that because most players currently are American that we should cater mostly for them. But if you do that too much, you just alienate folks from other parts of the world, reducing their percentage in the player base, etc. etc. Hold games of particular interest to Europeans at Euro-friendly times, you might just help attract (or at leat keep) more Europeans. Which isnt to say that no Europeans are interested in PTO or Americans in ETO, of course, but I hope you get my point...
Frames, part 2 - in order to plan buff raids properly, Batz is perfectly correct that a sufficient amount of between-frame time is necessary. In RL where the planners could all be around one planning table, this might possibly have been a fairly rapid peration. Oddly, trying to do the same thing across the internet is slower, because only one person is working on an initial plan, for review by another, and the plans need to do a certain amount of going back and forth until they can be finalised. Much more effort that putting pencil marks on paper and shoving em back and forth across a table.
Frames part 3 - allowance has to be made for everyone - especially those involved in planning - having a life outside AH (no, honestly! :-} ). Having been in a situation where, by oversight, I was kind of expected to put my life on hold for an entire weekend for several weekends running, I can say that this is NOT a good thing to expect of anyone. Hence avoiding clashes with other games, and frame timing and length issues.
Personally, I dont mind early Saturday morning starts, but then I dont have any family to consider. I HAVE done early morning Mondays, but only for a long-running series of unit-based games (in Another Place, as they say in Parliament) which were so much to my liking that I felt it was worth going to bed early, getting up at 1am flying for three hours, gopin to bed again then getting up at 7am to go to work. I am not prepared to do the like for a one-off game unless the details look vey, very much to my liking.
Finally... kill everyone wanting to fly B17s at 30,0000ft whilst attempting individual precision bombing all the damned time, whilst we're at it! Or at least, chuck a decent amount of cloud over the target area now and then, just to see how they cope...
Esme (who recalls reading about one P38 pilot saying he didnt fly over 15,000ft the entire time he was in Europe.)
(chuckle... ) :-)
