Any room in Aces high for buff drivers?

[SMERSH]

As a change from the low level furballing, I'm really having fun flying buffs these days, but the current Aces High environment for buff drivers is VERY hostile. At this rate, no one will want to fly buffs.

First , it takes like 2 hours to bring a buff to any reasonably safe altitude of >15 thousand feet and us working folks with jobs don't have THAT amount of time freely available for a sim just to reach a safe altitude. For gameplay reasons, the climb rates for buffs should be made a little bit more practical (yes in ww2 the buffs may have taken 5 hours to reach high alt, but come on, that's not practical here).

The other points are probably things that will be resolved with further patches like getting in human gunners on the buffs to protect vs fighters, artificial horizon, norden bombsight, clouds to hide in etc.

Once again, for practical gameplay reasons, we need buffs to climb a *bit* faster than they are now, so we don't take an unreasonable time to reach high altitude.

It'll be a rather boring sim if everyone just flies fighters right? So make the prospect of flying buffs a bit more attractive and practical.  

[Brick]

SMERSH... as soon as they make otto available , I'm going to try my hand at leveling cities... I'm not that good with pickle-barrel bombing (WB), but I do like the carpet bombing that they did in WWII...eerrr...that didn't sound right.  Lemme say it this way - I would love to virtually lay waste to a city, my bombs rippling out of the bomber to kill many buildings.  

Andy
(not normally seen up at 20K)

[RASTER]

SMERCHer! Your my kinda guy. But it takes an hour to get at least 3 of the bombers in formation...har..hehehehe.

RASTER...we don't need no stinking amo.

[Mark Luper]

Ht is working on getting the self defence mechanism up and working for the buffs as we "speak". He tested it last night in it's first iteration and hopefully soon we will have the ability to  sprout some real quills in our porcupines. I am a buffer too, also think that the rate of climb needs to be pushed up a bit, at least to the tune of about 500 fpm for the same reasons you stated SMERSH. At least once we get the guns we will have an opportunity to fight back after having spent however much time necessary to get alt.


MarkAT

[IceNine]

I tried the bomber yesterday.

I have much less interest in flying fighters now.
 

[indian]

Us fighter pilots love buff pilots and would glady welcome th enemy buff ilots to the arena. We would even be kind enough to give them some lead to hold onto. I cant hit the broad side of a barn in these buff so my hats off to those who can.  

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[Wackem]

One solution would be an airstart for buffs in rear bases, (even better if it was an option), Say 20K, At least you can set a reasonable cruise speed an still get high over the target without taking 2 or 3 hrs to do it.

I have given up buffs until there is at least some form of self defense. On the map it is pretty easy to figure out the lone dot deep into your territory is a B17. Go to the nearest field. take a spit or 109, 1/2 tanks and Wep and you can be at 30K in 10 mins.

I would really love to fill the guy who crawls up on my 6 until 200 yards a taste of what really happens if you tried that.

Wackem

[Brazos]

Yikes,

No dumbing down of the flight models please! Until they get the human gunners coded, use the time for working on your acm. But no buff "buffs", and for god's sake no otto. Give HT a chance to show how the game will be better without them.

[aircat]

 you all are doing something wrong... I set my climb speed for 150 and get 1k FPM 25 minutrs Im cruising at 25k another 8 or so gets me to abouve 30k... take less fuel... the bombers was designed for LOOOOONG flights and the arena aint that big. I took a bomber up last night.. and little over 35 minutes I was at 32k.. I turned to target and was 35k before leveling. (I cant line up anything.. but I was safe and hitting anything that passed under the sight)
learn to use the auto speed climb, it'll do wonders. my flight was from a low field.. but you can get a 4k jump just from the raised platue fields.

[Teapot]

Concur with Brazos ... I'd hate to see any dumbing down to compromise.  

[Teapot]

Concur with Brazos ... I'd hate to see any dumbing down to compromise.  

[Hans]

Check out the news page.

Pyro posted a message about next weeks version .36 info.

Mosty it was about gunners.  Next week we get manned guns, but no otto.  Gunning will be a "master gun control" system.  If you shoot the top turret at something, then any other gun position that can fire...will fire.  Cheek guns are also included.  Only one gunner per aircraft, which makes sense since you don't need any more than one in this setup.

N1K1 might also make an appreance.  Note:  It states "might" so don't cry if you don't see it.

Hans.

[This message has been edited by Hans (edited 10-16-1999).]

[Camel]

Yes their is!

I just logged after a thrilling night of buffing. Four of us took 11 feilds tonight, 2 fighter jocks(thanks TRiMmer and CW) 1 c47 (thanks Floo and later Pherbie) and I in the 17. Yeah, I didnt land all those sorties, but got the feild.  

Cant wait for the gunners  

Camel

[Gadfly]

Have you "buffers" tried bombing inverted?  The looping ability of this plane is wunerful, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the FM of it.

[PapaFox]

Looping a buff is unrealistic? Have you seen Bob Hoover loop his Shrike? I watched Frank Tallman loop a Grumman Duck decades ago at the Reno Air Races. The duck looks far less likely to loop than a B17. The first B-707 performed a nice barrel roll over Seattle.

A typical plane can be looped without exceeding 3 Gs. I've done loops at 2 and 1/2 Gs. I think the buf could do a loop, but I'd rather watch it for real from the ground than from the waist gunner's position.