Acm?

[rv6]

Hiya all..  Good subject & comments.

Per the HO "thing", allow me to add my meager .02 cents.  I am not one of the "stars" of AH by any means.  I can hold my own, and have been flying this sim since AW on GEnie in the 80's. No HO's type off-angle shots worked at all back then.  And I know all the "tricks" of the trade.. can land a plane looking out the rearview, etc, etc.

Scores and ranks really have no meaning to me, personally, and I like a good fair fight as much as anyone,,

Matter of fact?  One night, I saw Greebo in an F6, low on the deck, hard turning with my countryman.  I could've jumped in from a hi-perch, but preferred to let em have at it.. He shot down my countryman, I dove on him, with fair warning; "GERONIMOOOo!",, and he eventually got me too!

But, in the general MA, on any given engagement, it's a matter of "time to the kill" that stacks up against you.  IE: If you dawdle, and take time to setup these beautiful, swoopy, climbing-twisting, cold-merge fly-bys, in the name of honor and "HO's Be Damned!" fashion?  Then, it's always a matter of who's buds get there first to glom the looser.  No skill involved.  Sheer MA "pack mentality".

If it's a gentlemanly cold-merge you want (expect?), and pure skill on skill engagements?  DA all the way.. (hey! that rythmes!)

I fully expect and prepare for an HO every single time.  I do not go slamming in, head on, in a game of chicken, but I do have an "Off Angle" technique that I use, every single time.

Lineup an HO, and bore in until about d900'.. kick right rudder to bring the nose off center and move out of the path of oncoming stream of tracers.. :-)..

Then at d300' kick left rudder, and pin down the trigger!  No collision, and 8 out of 10 times it'll score hits.  First bullets into the nme tilt the rest of the engagement in your favor (but u'all knew that!)..

From this point, let's do our swoopy, twisty, acm "thing".

Agreeing with comments above, sometimes, I see an oncoming opponent, craftily avoid the slip stream of shots I put out..  Then I say to self: "Oh-Oh!"



RV6

[TexMurphy]

As Redd said when we where training together.

If you know your merge and your opening move you beat 70-80% of the pilots in the MA.

I think that is propably a quite true and good indicator.

One reason to this is that quite alot of players play AH like they played single player sims. Really in most single player games you can beat the enemy without really knowing what you do and if you cant just lower the skill level of the game. Single player games can be flown one dimentionally and still beaten.

I think this is the main reason behind much of the flying seen.

Another reason is that people dont help each other out enough.

There are tooo many vets that just go...

"Foookin HO dweeb"

When they kill a pilot who doesnt know how to fly, instead of giving him a few tips on how to imporve his flying.

Tex

[Ohio43]

Well, I definitely fit in that catagory.  I was in a Spit 9 and saw a 51 low and slow..saddled up and got into a stall fight.  He managed to stall me out and I bought the farm

[TexMurphy]

I try to NEVER EVER EVER take a HO shot.

Why?

Simply because if you wana live dont accept the HO.

Go under the enemy in the merge. Let him pull nose down, red out and take the shot. Go high in the opening move, immelman. Due to the horrible shot he took he is soo out of position that as you complete your immelman he is still flopping around below you. Get on his six and take him out.

You live 10 out of 10 times through the merge and you got high position on his six.

Tex

[eagl]

I got into a fight that had a really classy ending IMHO.

I saw waaay off in the distance 2 dots that were mixing it up.  I throttled back and cruised on over, making sure I arrived about 5k over the fight.  I saw a friendly P-38 fighting an enemy spit of some sort.  It looked pretty neutral with occasional tracers coming from both, but the fight had progressed nearly all the way down to the deck and flat on the deck a spit will usually rate around on a p-38 pretty quickly.

So I dove in and made one high speed rear-quarter pass at the spittie hoping to distract him so the p38 could get the kill.  I got a low percentage shot and maybe one or two mg pings, but I was intentionally too fast to saddle up.  Unfortunately, the spit wasn't distracted and the fight had reached the deck so I thought the P-38 was in real danger.  I went up over the top, dropped in, and splashed the spit.

I felt sorta guilty about this since I wasn't sure if the P-38 pilot was about to kill the spit or if I'd just saved his bacon, so it was a great relief to see him say thanks for helping out instead of "kill stealer!".  It was also nice to not have the spit bag on me for interfering or starting some sort of 2v1 gangbang.  He'd put up a great fight but a stationary fight is a dangerous fight, and he paid the price for the fight dragging on.  I was just glad he took it like a man and didn't complain about it.

Anyhow, I thought that was neat, trying to help someone out and having it come across as helping, not kill-stealing or gangbanging.  I can't remember who it was though.

[WilldCrd]

Originally posted by dedalos
My main killer, bad estimate of the other guys E.  Once in a while its ACM ( you know when your luck runs out and you meet Morp, Slap, . . . )  but most of the times someone was faster than I thought he was.

Thought yor main killer was typing while your flying and letting me sneak up on ya for the kill

[dedalos]

Originally posted by WilldCrd
Thought yor main killer was typing while your flying and letting me sneak up on ya for the kill

Nah, I saw you but thought I had time to finish typing first.  See, under estimated your speed

[mars01]

I have no idea 90 percent of the time what I'm doing. No idea what a move is called. No idea what to do when. No idea what they just did. No ideas really at all.

Yeah Red, I bet you have some nice bridges to sell too.

Yeah Howitzer you are always fun to run into, always good fights ensue.


As for Hos, in a 1 Vs 1 or 2 the hos are actually a disadvantage for the enemy.  I know they are going for the Ho, so I break turn/revers just before them and out of their guns vector, before they know it you are at a 45 degree angle on their six and if they aren't fast enough they are dead.

When its 4, 5, 6 ... 10 to 1, I think the guys that HO are just plain lame arses!!  Not only are they taking a good kill from the guys that are actually doing all the work,  but I lost count of how many times people have kill shootered themselves because they hit the guy on my six or vice versa lolh.

[TequilaChaser]

Originally posted by TexMurphy

Go under the enemy in the merge. Let him pull nose down, red out and take the shot.

does not work on everyone. I tryed to evade WMLute the other night, each time I tryed to duck under or offest from a nose to nose merge, he used rudder and nose down to attain a most excellent executed canopy shot ( front windshield)giving me a pilot wound 3 straight times, 3 different fights......some in the game practice these type shots to where if you turn away or maneuver away from a head on they still gonna get you.....

not dissing Lute by no means....Lute is a good pilot and I enjoy fighting him....

[SlapShot]

Originally posted by Finrod
I was saying the same thing to a squadie the other day. If I see no HO attempt obn the intitial merge I know I've got someone  with skills on my hands.  The good ones don't seem to think they need to HO, they rely on that whole manuevering thing to get you.

I love to see a guy HO (especially at 1K out) cause if they don't continue on a straight line, they will be dead in one turn.

I have said this many times, to those that continue to do this.

When one relies on the HO for their opening move, it shows that they have no clue as to merging. The HO shot is not an easy shot, so they spend more time and mental energy trying/hoping to land the HO, and when it fails, they have no clue as to what do do after the failed attempt. Dogfighting is like playing chess ... if you arent' thinking at least a couple of moves ahead of the current siutuation at hand, then you will get "owned".

After the a failed HO attempt, "new" newbies 99% of the time will yank into a flat turn trying to find you, and die a quick death.

Those who are not "new" newbies, but still rely mainly on the HO shot are the ones that will continue straight thru keeping their speed. They will then extended 6K+, turn around and try again or hope that you are busy with someone else so they can pick you.

I feel bad for the "new" newbies and most times will explain to them their error, but those that don't fall into this category, yet continue to use the HO exclusivly, are basically cowards and need to grow a pair.

I also love it when I come upon someone who doesn't HO at the initial merge ... that's when I say ... "I got a live one on the end of the line ... YEEEEHAAAAAA !!!"

[Quah!]

What?  WTF is acm?  No one in my beloved horde ever explained it to me.  I am l337 hoer so stay away from me!  I'll mow you down or smash into you breaking your precious spitfire into a thousand bits and because of my lag cheat I'll fly on unharmed hah!  Mess with the ho!!!!!

Who needs acm when you're l337!!!


 "Furballers"