If you want to improve the gameplay, something must be done to reward air-to-air combat, which is what this game is supposed to be about.
That was the past. This is the present. Wake up and get a grasp on the concept of time - it flows from the past to the present to the future in our Earthly dimension. The glory days of pure, simple, homey, cozy, 'veteranesque' A2A combat is gone and it is not coming back. Face the reality.
You can dream all you want about how
'this game is supposed to be about A2A', but no amount of 'reward' is gonna get people to emphasize soley on aerial combat as in the good ol' AH1 days. Times have changed, people have changed, and the definition of "fun" has also changed with it. Back then, the goal of the game was to have A2A fun. Nowadays, the goal of the game is to take part in the war and achieve victory by means of aerial, naval, and ground combat combined. I didn't make this up, nor did HT set it up this way. It's simply the people nowadays play it that way.
The game has changed. GVs, fleets, all of it has become a vital part of the MA and the emphasis on combat doesn't just shift from where it is by willing it. People will play this game for the sole purpose of "winning the war" and there's nothing you can do about it, whether you personally think its lame or not. However, what is still possible, is to find a good compromising point in the overall structure of how the basic strat of the game is laid out, so that the 'fighter combat fun' does not necessarily have to be incompatible with the 'warring fun'. As it is, the current status of MA is one of total chaos, where the sheer size of overall combat has far exceeded the point where people can self-organize (or at least follow a set of moral codes) so that the gameplay stays healthy and orderly enough to enjoy the many aspects of AH to the full.
In the old days people followed the
'moral code of the old vets' where they didn't care much of land-grabbing. AH was like a small town where everybody knew everyone else, most of the whom already know each other from some other, previous sim they used to play together. Compared to that, the current AH2 is like a bustling metropolis, and going Hill-billy-retro and ranting about the good square-dancing and baked-beans and lawn-barbeque-party days is not gonna bring the friendly neighborhood back.
Face the future, old man. What AH needs is not some way to
'bring the fighter combat days back'. What it needs is some way to organize the strat into something that makes sense, so that in some parts of the map the limited aspect of "pure aerial combat" will have a chance to manifest more thoroughly from time to time, depending on its necessity based on the larger picture of general strategy.
In other words, if the MA strat gets a total overhaul and people submit themselves to some kind of basic structure that is carried on by the game, then the deployment of forces would be more limited and organized, instead of the impulsive, nasty,
Armageddon locust horde we have in the game. Fighter numbers will be more evened out, and people will have to fight with limited resources - in which case the stupid suicidal augering and HOing frenzy will do nothing but ultimately harm a country's capability to win and advance at the particular front. It is only then, when facing the facts that what they're doing is harming the country rather than benefitting it, will people begin to fly differently, emphasizing more on the results of fighter skirmish absed on skill, rather than lazily depending on steamrolling everything with brute force.
It's about time AH moved on, instead of turn back 180 degrees and go back to
'this game is supposed to be about fighter combat'. The problem with AH is not there is too many changes, but too less.
