Originally posted by EagleDNY
We desperately need some kind of altitude indicator for radar contacts. You have a perfect position indication on the contact, but you have no idea whether he is at 1K or 25K. Even a basic "Low, Medium, High" indication would at least give folks a chance to know if they need to climb to the furball or not.
Intercepting an incoming mission or bomber box is pretty much a crap shoot - you can hit the position exactly and still be 5 miles hi or low of your intercept point, and waste a lot of good gaming time getting there.
EagleDNY
$.02
I disagree with this. The only surprise advantage bombers have is coming in high... Most cant go fast and they can't manuver so that is the only chance they have of evading NME fighters.
I think that an idea such as this would kill any motivation for flying bombers at all, there arn't many over all that do anyway espetially hi alt.
What you are asking for is the bomber guys to fly for a massive amount of time to get to alt while the fighters climb to that alt in half or less of that time so the figher guys can pick off a lonly buff formation.
I can tell you that most buff drivers would say screw it if they knew that they would have to face a bunch of fighters every time they went to bomb something because the fighters would know exactally where they were. For the fighter guys this might sound good, YAY we have a big fat target at so an so alt lets kill it. but for the bomber guy it would be like.. Lets see if we even get the chance to bomb our objective now that we have this locator beacon on our planes. Bombers are not in the air to have a fire fight with other planes. they are there to bomb targets.
As far as knowing if you need to climb to a furball
That is just silly. I have to ask how many furballs have you seen above 5 or maybe 10K LOL. I know in my 3 years of play that there have been very few high alt furballs that I have ever witnessed.
Anyone that has played this game long enough should be able to have some idea of the alt of an inbound raid. You just need to be vigilant and check around the map. Note how far away that big dar bar has come from, has that bar progressed fast or slow? If it moved fast it most likly is a bunch of fighters/attack planes and I have rarly seen them real high. If the dar takes a long time to shift sectors I would say it is a bunch of heavy bombers climbing to alt.
Most of the time I would say the bomber guys get a drop on people because people are not paying attention to the current map information untill it is to late. The dar is fine the way it is, if they instagated your idea I bet the # of buff formations would drop back down to the level they had befor they changed the bomb sight back to easymode. (I miss the old hard bomb callibration mode personally)
Personally if you think there is a buff formatiion coming in grab a good climber and get high quick.. If you don't find one then you are in a great position to dive on what ever came in low.
Just my $0.02 on the matter.
