My take on the infamous "Head On".
Why do I play Aces High? The flight model, damage model, gunnery model are all amazingly detailed and hard to learn. It's fun learning to fight in something difficult. Also, because of the live player interaction. I've played Confirmed Kill/WarBirds(v.91 up to 1.11r3), Fighter Duel over Kali, Red Baron 3D, Flying Circus and now this. The first two had very detailed and hard to learn flight models. The latter two were a lot more simpler and less complex. Extremely easy to fly, but they were arena based air combat. Multiple players doing their own lil' thang in a simple world. It was fun as hell. Not because it was hard to learn, but because of the fights. FC especially was a test of skill, not of who knew their plane better. I really like the challenge of flying against real live human opponents, I hate flying against scripted AI. They are boring and simply don't put up a fight. We all know this. That's what brings all of us together, one common interest. We all want to fight real live human opponents to test ourselves and have fights with realistic outcomes. Not 1 guy diving into a gaggle of 40 enemy AI planes and coming out on top. No, here it's not scripted and it runs on a dynamic system. You dive into a gaggle of 40 enemy human controlled planes, but shoot a few down. You may die, more friends may come and assist you or you may be able to run away and the pursuing planes break away. None of that would happen in EAW campaign mode, RB3D campaign mode or anything that works in a scripted sense.
Removing anything that could realisticly affect the outcome of a dogfight, whether it be a head on, the ability to turn tail and run away, or dumbing down the guns so you live longer is rediculous. Why? Why would you want to script a dynamic system? If every merge was guns cold, well I guarantee you it will get really freaking boring really freaking fast in any arena where *REAL* humans battle it out in a computer created world. The day we start following a set guidelines on how to and how not to engage the enemy, well that'll be the day I stop playing any game online. I like to know that my opponent is unpredictable, it teaches me not to do something so dumb as to let him get his guns around on me. Torque and his -1C can HO me all day, but he knows just as well as I do I never accept his jousting challenge. I just pull up and away and he usually doesn't get any critical damage on me.(sorry Torque, mean nothing by this. You are an excellent pilot, just using you as an example since you seem so popular ;-)
So, think about it realistically. Why do *YOU* play Aces High online? Is it to script combat so you can guarantee yourself a fair fight? If so, delete your account right NOW and please go play an offline game. You can program AI to be scripted, don't try to program a human player to not do a certain thing in combat.
*Throws on flame retardent suit and jumps into a titanium room with 3 years worth of oxygen*
-SW
