Kev, Spits are always considered special in almost every combat flight sim I've encountered. I guess its a testament to how terrific the plane was. The problem with Spitfires that it is always overused due to its fantatstic handling.
The 'golden rule' of war-time aviation seems to be that either the plane is really fast or climbs well at the expense of maneuverability, or vice versa. Therefore, in games people are given a choice of either fly a good maneuvering but slow plane, or fly a fast but bad maneuvering plane. This sort of evens out and gives balance to the variety of planes existing at a single virtual world. However, with the Spits, it is different. It's a plane that does it all. Looking at the Spit16, a '43 plane as you say, it practically out-everythings against most of the contemporary planes we have in the plane set. The contemporary '43 Bf109G-6 or Fw190A-5 we have, is admittably an undermatch. Even the early '44 P-47D-11 or Fw190A-8 is not much competition in pure A2A performance.
Despite that fact, I also think the Spit16 should remain free. We already had one 'scourge of the skies' in the form of the La-7 - and clearly HTC did not do anything about it. If that be so, perking the Spit16 and leaving the La-7 alone is flat-out unacceptable IMO, especially in the name of 'controlling overuse'.
I really don't like the direction AH is moving. My only hope is that TOD or another MA will save it.
What people cry for and get, is more and more. Later, faster, bigger guns and we end up with MA common planeset representing the last weeks of WWII. BLAH!
We have 1939 planes with max speed close to the stall speed of 1945 planes.
We have 2/3 of the planeset competative in the Hangar Queen pageant.
We have perk points and nothing to spend them on.
We have ENY values that apart from blobking usage on a severe population imbalance are meaninngless (see perks).
bozon, in reality you and I share the same view points.
However, IMO, this isn't how AH is going. AH isn't going anywhere - It was ALWAYS like this, at least IMO, structured this way.
Remember the meager plane set AH started off with. HTC didn't start out by filling early war plane rosters and then moving on to late war. They started out mostly with '44~'45 planes. P-51D, Bf109G-10, F4U-1D, F4U-1C.. and etc etc.. Since then, all of the following new introductions to the plane rosters were to add more competition at the same level. While some early war planes were eventually added, the MA itself started out as late war environment from the very beginning, and despite some worried opinions the MA never changed - up to date.
There were some suggestions on the Rolling Plane Set idea. HT flunked it. And the people chose to understand. His reasons were clear, and making some people wait forever for their favorites is not gonna be tolerated. However, RPS is not the only idea around. There are other ideas that could be brain stormed, or at least very carefully tested out. But it also seems to fall on deaf ears - or rather, HT and Pyro doesn't seem to perceive this as a problem as some of us do.
That's why my first group of suggestions were made. It was an attempt to slap a small price on the late-war planes, so the "non-perked alternatives" could gain more ground in the MA.
The problem is, everytime I suggest it there are significant resistances from the players that somehow, despite the really low perk price suggested, they accuse me of wanting to make late-war planes totally inaccessible to people and throwing the entire game into a RPS type of situation - which clearly isn't true.
What gets me even more stumped, as you see in this very thread, is if I turn 180degrees around, and suggest, "OK, you guys don't want perks. So if you don't want perked planes, let's do the same for other perked late-war rides"... and I still see people resisting the idea.
Is it time to create a second areana? where the Mosquito is actually a fast ride, bombers are more effective than JABOs at destroying stuff, 190s are formidable fighters, C202 can duke it out with spit V and P40s are not laughed at. Maybe even the stuka will see some use when its carring capacity is appreciated.
And no, this is not the CT which is too limiting for too many people.
Never!
As a guy who really loves Aces High, I dare claim that a creation of a second MA arena with a different set of rule, which will split up the people discontent from the current MA arena, will become the downfall of AH.
If a solution must be found, it must be found and applied at a universal level for the entire MA, consistently, and integrated. Splitting up the MA is a cheaper way out, which might satisfy people for a short time, but ultimately will do more harm than good.
It's either the whole MA changes, or remain status quo. I'd rather see my suggestions go unheard, than support a split MA that might use some of my suggestions as its basis.
