On Behalf of all the frustrated, dedicated buff pilots, I come forth and say this:
Listen to LePaul a bit, he's got a point.
Ok. Lot of Buff pilots are in fact newbies. The vague romantic air flirting around the
'legend of Memphisbelle' is as almost as big as the typical ignorant fetish towards the
'legend of the Luftwaffe and the 109s' for a newbie(don't you deny this one! We've all been there!
) AH flight model is so hard for most every newbie that when they take their first step towards flight, they usually experiment out with the buffs, sit and look around in the turrets. I know that because I started off just the same.
Quite natural. Newbies just don't know their priorities(hey, is there a "Buff trainer" out there? I THINK NOT). Neither did I. But they'll learn. Whether you drive them up the wall like a drill sarge booting private arse, or you EXPLAIN THINGS NICELY, hey, they learn.
But there are other times. Where's that inkling of a thing called 'escorts'? Look around from the birds eye view and everyone else is busy hunting for their own kills. Many times one would suggest few people to stay up high CAP and stop reinforcements from entering from nearby fields and you get this terrific silence. Boy do I miss a "CC" when it's like that.
Somehow, the operation that began smoothly goes nuts. People are busy vulching, the goon gets left alone and killed by a N1K from another field that dives from 20K, the VHs knocked out prior to first attack is respawn by the time 2~3 goons come by and miserably get shot out of the sky.. Enemy dots begin popping from all over including large numbers of reinforcements from nearby fields, and by then people ask for buffs to down FHs so they can gain air superiority. What are buff pilots supposed to do?
The reasonable solution is to realize the tactical failure of the attack and plan an attack elsewhere. But then again, people stay around the field by this time which there's absolutely no possibility of capturing and do meaningless vulches for another half an hour, while reinforced enemy airpower at 18k begins dropping any more buffs approaching to kill VHs and other stuff.
We buff pilots get sick of dying unprotected, so we announce that we should target other fields. Nobody listens. So we announce an attack at a field that has low enemy profile(and good tactical value). Kill the VHs first as prescribed, even take out good FHs. And broadcast out like Larry King that we have a new good target. Of course by the time anybody actually listens to this and begins upping de-ack jabos, the VHs are back up. By the time we get home and land all the advantage is at a loss.
Cut us some slack. Try and establish some nice air sweeps up high and believe me, we will down any hangar in any order, any time.
The only way we could achieve these nice coordinated attacks so far was through mission settings. Most other case of field capture was usually brute force. Come join that
BORING mission which fighters have not much to do but keep a look out for many many many minutes. And once more, we'll drop any hangar in any sequence at given time.
But I forget. You guys don't join
'Not so fun missions which fighters do nothing but fly around for 20 minutes'.
Every second of those boring 20 minutes is a struggle for buff pilots. So next time, let's all be nice and somtimes LISTEN to what the buff pilots want. It's not because we're all morons we can't drop correct hangars things nicely.
ps) I always drop VHs first.
