As a guy that likes rank for CV command it astounds me this misconception from guys that think Rank play effects game play. Gotta tell ya guys "YOU ARE WRONG".
OK, I agree that guys getting rank in empty arenas is gamey and prolly done by the lesser known scorers, if at all but, they ain't gonna get "fighter or GV" points. When ever there is a thread concerning rank you'll get lines like (Solar, Flatbar no offence to you, just an example)
I also agree the front page post drives the current rank importance which again drives poor game play..
Get rid of the scores and getting your name in lights for landing 2 or more 'kills' and the fighting in this game would get a heck of a lot better.
What a load of tosh. Have any of you that think rank makes poor game play ever really tried to get in the top 20 ? For those that say rank is meaningless fine but here's what you cannot do if you like or want rank.
Fighter:- You cannot float about for 45 minutes and land 3 kills. You can't be timid. You can't keep getting killed either. You gotta have some skills and landing kills goes along way towards rank, although not absolutely necessary ....depending on amount of kills in least time at the time blah blah blah.
Bombers:- Landing bombers is really a must for bomber rank but then again so is hit% to damage %. Doing 300 sorties (100 really x 3) and getting killed 280 times is just gamey bollocks. They'll be ya low level hanger bangers. Talking of hangers they pay bad for damage sortie. So avacadoting hangers all day long does not help rank or your concepts to "game play". Cities, Factories, Towns and to some extent Cv's pay for your bomber rank + it slows enemy strats.
Getting killed in bombers and missing with bombs is so bad for bomber rank you may as well not have bothered. So none of ya gamey Cv suicider low level hanger banging which is also really bad for game play.
GV:- You gotta get kills you gotta gun factories. Dieing and missing don't help. Camping for 2 hour and landing 10 kills is a waist of time. Like fighter rank you really need to get in there and kill buggers quick and lots of um. I once camped for nearly 3hrs and landed 53. It helped my Gv rank but no where near as much I thought. Factories pay good for hit / damage % + it helps slow enemy strats.
In short if you fly realism.... not dieing, getting kills or meeting mission objectives and then RTB your rank sorts itself out. I would much rather have an arena with 100 more "scorers" than 100 bomber bailers, pork an bailers, Cv suiciders. These are the guys that effect game play. Make game play poor. These are the real misguided idiots followed swiftly by those that think scoring is counter to good game play.
What would you prefer ... a guy that bombs your town from 18k and RTB's or the guy that makes 3 low level trips bailing each sortie so as to repeat ASAP. ?
What would you prefer a guy at 10k calibrated bombing your Cv giving you a chance to turn said Cv. Or the guy that repeatedly dive bombS his B17's onto the deck. ?
If you think rank is meaningless "FINE" but bad for game play...you are so "WRONG".