Taking bases with Con Plane?

[Mugzeee]

I think it very un-thoughtful of HTC and rather self-serving. Having exceeding fun at other paying customers expense. Why not go LAN or to a separate arena and have their fun in the RV8s against each other? But then again...this is par for the course, get used to it for it is HTCs style as proven many many times in the past. I have grown to realize that it actually isn’t bad business on HTCs part...for if it were they would be losing customers at alarming rates. Hell im still here, AH is like a drug (Addicting) so the dealer can get away with peeing off the user, because the addiction is greater than the pain. HTC a pimp of sorts?
PS…the first part of healing is admitting you have an addiction.

[KTM520guy]

Don't most people here have fun at others expence? I know I do. So HTC did something special for the CON. Big deal.

[navajoboy]

where are the screen shots?

[MajWoody]

I saw the RV8s being flown by rooks & knits. I never looked in the hanger though to see about upping one.  Were they only available to con attendees? I did get ganged a few times by them but that was no ones fault but mine. I thought they were kinda kewl though.

[reacher15]

Brought to you by

[Bullethead]

Warspawn said:

Ok, let's try this again.

I like the evil con mission!  It's great!  For all the folks at the convention.

What I didn't like was the Con plane enabled for one side and disabled for everyone else, and then the planes being used to pork troops/ord and kill hangers.  And laser vulching.

The fact that the RV8s got left on for the Rooks for a long time was not by design but by accident....

1st off, the "Rooks" per se shouldn't have been flying the plane, period.  But somebody leaked out the commands so anybody could have gotten in it, and some sour grapes types promptly broadcast that arena-wide.  So in a perfect world, nobody but the Con guys would have been flying them, and their impact would have been a lot less.

2nd, the reason they got left enabled so long was that HT got really plastered and the other HTC folks were getting that way or otherwise engaged.  By then, most of the Con guys had had their fun and were talking and drinking and catching up with old friends, so the whole fact that RV8s were still enabled seemed to have slipped through the cracks.

[cav58d]

Your telling me there was a password and code that non con folks exploited to fly the RV8?  Damn.....I wish I stayed in the MA!  I would have been all over that

[Bullethead]

Mugzeee whined:

I think it very un-thoughtful of HTC and rather self-serving. Having exceeding fun at other paying customers expense.

Um, let's talk about the expense to "paying customers".  Whatever you paid to be in the arena last night when the RV8s were active (and we'll figure that up in a minute), the Con attendees paid WAY more.  Air fare and/or gas, plus restaurant meals, booze, Con registraton fee, and at least 3 nights in the hotel at $69 each.  That easily runs to $500-$1000, depending on where you come from, how you get there, how well you eat, and how drunk you want to be.  That's really being a "paying customer", and if HT wants to take care of such folks, good for him.

Now everybody else in the arena last night, such as your whining self, was on the $15/month plan (at best--how many were on their free 2 weeks?).  With an average of 720 hours per month, it costs $0.02 per hour to fly AH.  The RV8s were enabled for about 4 hours, so the total cost for a non-attendee to suffer through RV8 abuse was $0.08.  If you write HTC a nice letter explaining how you feel cheated out of the value of that money, I'm sure HTC will give you a full refund

Why not go LAN or to a separate arena and have their fun in the RV8s against each other? But then again...this is par for the course, get used to it for it is HTCs style as proven many many times in the past.  I have grown to realize that it actually isn’t bad business on HTCs part...for if it were they would be losing customers at alarming rates. Hell im still here, AH is like a drug (Addicting) so the dealer can get away with peeing off the user, because the addiction is greater than the pain. HTC a pimp of sorts?

You just don't have a clue at all, do you?  Well, I'll try to explain it for you....

Cons are parties thrown by game developers to thank their paying customers for their support.  They allow the community to meet face-to-face and get drunk together while remembering old times and discussing what to do in the future.  Those who go to Cons are the most into the whole community side of the game, even if they're no longer addicted to, or even really like, the gameplay.  But if you're so addicted, why weren't you there?

One of the most important things Cons do is remind everybody that it's all a friggin' GAME, all for fun.  People who hate each other in the arena and message boards meet at Cons, get drunk together, and end up being good friends.  Cons are a necessary reality check and attitude adjuster, and folks like you need them periodically.  If you're so upset that the normal rules don't apply for just a few hours for 1 night in 1 arena in a whole year, you're taking this WAY too seriously.  I strongly recommend you get a life.

Of course, most folks can't go to the Con for whatever reason.  That's one of the reasons there are Evil Con Missions--they let the attitude adjustment flow out into the larger community.  The weirdness of the missions forcibly reminds folks that the game world is NOT the real world and should not be taken anywhere near as seriously.  They also show self-centered players, who think they're entitled to the game being a certain way all the time, and can demand it change to suit their tastes, that they're not the boss.

In any case, Evil Con Missions predate AH and HTC by many, many years.  They go back to the dark ages of DOS AirWarrior.  HT's just continuing the tradition.  And let's face it--the main pleasure derived from playing the game is in pissing off the other guys.  HT and Pyro, when they were players like us, enjoyed this as much as anybody, so naturally part of the enjoyment for them is listening to whines like yours afterwards.  So on that point, I'd say this Con's Evil Mission was a complete success .

[Bullethead]

cav58d said:

Your telling me there was a password and code that non con folks exploited to fly the RV8?  Damn.....I wish I stayed in the MA!  I would have been all over that

There's no password per se, or at least their hasn't been so far.  It's always worked like this:

1.  A week or so before the Con, a new patch comes out that, while making some real improvement to the game, also contains the new thing for the Evil Con Mission.  This is so everybody has the data for the new thing so they can see it in the game even if they can't fly it themselves.

2.  To keep the new thing secret until the Evil Mission, however, it can't appear in the hangar even though it's really there.  To access the new thing at Mission time, therefore, you have to use the standard .plane x command.  The real secret, or "password" if you will, is what the new thing's plane number is.  HT tells us that just before we launch.  This is done by yelling across the Con room, not over the radio.

3.  HT then enables the new thing at the chosen launch field only, everybody goes there and does the .plane command, and away we go.  After a while, HT will disable the plane at that field and enable it at another, usually in a different country, to try to even out the effects on everybody.  The new launch field is also shouted across the Con room.  Thus, even if the secret of the plane's number is out, it does you no good unless you fly from the only field where the plane's enabled, and that's a secret for a little while at least, too.

This system broke down in a couple of ways last night.  First, the plane number didn't stay secret very long at all.  Somebody outside the Con got it somehow and promptly broadcast it everywhere, where it was repeated by many others.  So 5 minutes in, there was hardly a nit who didn't know how to get his hands on an RV8.  Then. after we switched to being Rooks, all the HTC folks got sidetracked or sidelined by booze.  By then most folks in the arena knew how to get the plane, and all the Rooks knew where to fly from.

Back in WarBirds, you had to have a floppy with some special stuff on it to be able to get the new thing.  You got the floppy at the Con just before the mission.  This wasn't totally secure, either, because folks would copy the files and send them to buddies outside the Con.  However, the number of non-Con folks able to fly the new thing was much lower than it was last night when the secret got so totally blown.

[Eagle Eye]

<-----got the code flew the plane (but my pentance  WAS AFTER iT WAS DISABLED TRYING TO FIND IT AGAIN i ACCIDENTLY LAUNCHED A 262 THAT WAS VULCHED ON RW)SO there goes 240 perk points I de say pentance paid.>

[Mr Big]

I was on last night and had a blast watching the RTV8's and trying to kill them.

I eventually got to fly one after the launch field went Rook, then someone told me the code. Nice looking plane.

Even though it was leaked, I don't think it was so bad. Lot's of people had a good time last night and only a few whined about it.

[Vudak]

I think the fact that the code got leaked and HT and company were too trashed to notice made this a con worth remembering, even if you weren't there

I didn't actually get to fly one but it sounds like everyone (mostly) had a good time.  It was interesting fighting the squirrely buggers tho, and nice to get a few weeks worth of F4U4's outta the deal

Some of you guys really have to chill out...  If you can't deal with things not going "your way" for 1 night out of the year, how the heck are ya ever gonna deal with a woman?

[tedrbr]

Not to mention that folks that were actually downing RV-8's were claiming some massive perkie points for their efforts.  

Or all the "cherry pickers" that would fly with the RV-8's to nab kills.... after all, with lots of RV-8's in the air, who's going to chase a La La or Spit 16?  Some other smart pilots in perk-o-lator planes took advantage of things as well to up their scores.  Very smart thinking.

Smarter and luckier RV-8 pilots learned quick to hotpad rather than risking a re-up.... they managed to hold onto their RV-8's long after they became disabled.  (mine was smoking through 4 sorties with a flap shot away before a Hurri finally took out my engine oil       )  That's why you saw a lot of Rooks in RV-8's late into the night.

Total chaos, but much fun.  I avoid 200, but I can imagine how ....lively... (read as:         ) it was last night.  

As to hitting other targets....heck , we just wanted to see what those little birds could do:  drop a town, a hangar, kill a Tiger, buff intercept.... you name it folks were trying it.  Total play time really.  Near the end we got numerous requests to hit this or hit that by folks that could not up RV-8's any more..... they all wanted us to risk ours          

Good time while it lasted.

[Mr Big]

Oh, btw.

The mouse pointer made a perfect gunsite for the RV8.

[Stegahorse]

The RV8 gag is the best EVER!! I was not at the AHCON but flew when THE MISSION finally got going. It WAS great seeing all those tiny yellow planes!
Then seeing the hail of bullets that erupted from them was AWESOME.

I think this is the best Idea ever. It was an Uberplane, but you just had to know it had SOMETHING. It could be shot down, but it could rip you up just as easily. It was the best balance of thought and fun ever! It also showed that it ain't the plane, it is the pilot! I saw a few of the more notable pilots LAND some kills in them proving that skill is far more of an advantage than any plane attribute.

I Vote that the RV8 be a part of every Convention from now on!