Lesson in E Fighting

[mtnman]

Originally posted by SteveBailey
No offense Mtnman but Murdr makes a good point here.

Sometimes, you simply get beaten... outflown. Happens to me enough to know when it happens. I do my share of crying on 200, but not when this happens.

MTN, Remember the other day when we had that wicked little scissors going on the deck at stall speed? You were in a -4 hog and I in my pony. You were simply better than me, despite my best efforts, and you shot me down. I don't know that I made a bad choice.  I believe that you plain old beat me.  It was dumb luck that I got a ditch out of it.  My broken plane fluttered down from the 25 feet or so we were off the deck.  

It was an awesome fight Steve, and one to remember!  !

I don't know that either of us made decisions incorrectly.  But does making a correct decision guarantee success?

Personally, I chose to be where I was, in what I was in, and had a very real expectation of the risks I was taking.  I made decisions based on information at hand, and from past experience.

I even chose to attempt to finish you off, knowing I would be in a mess if I did.  And I was, and I died, and I knew I had other options available than the one I chose.

Granted, most of us desire a certain amount of risk and "unknown" to make the game interesting, but following through with the desire is a choice.

Guess I wasn't brought up to blame others for my success or failure.  How can you take credit for one but not the other?

MtnMan

[mtnman]

Originally posted by Sloehand
I'd like to hear well-defined, comparative definitions of all the 'styles' MtnMan ascribes to (academic curiosity).  I've seen some people agree with his catagorization of ACM in the past, and some not.  Would be interested to see how one style is differentiated from the other in his prespective.

Hmmm, ok.
 
I'll start a new thread though, to stop this one from getting too far out of hand.

MtnMan

[Murdr]

Mtman, let me put this another way.  One tool that players have in their hands that affect general gameplay is peer pressure.  Pervasive, consistant peer pressure is called etiquette.  One can choose to take or leave such pressure as they will, but pervasive 'screw everyone including your buddy' gameplay makes for poor general gameplay for everyone.

With the quote I reposted, it stands to reason that speaking out against this type of behavior is also, "crying" and "idiotic".  Maybe that was not the message you were trying to send.  If I were hit by a drunk driver, I would not blame myself for choosing to be on the road.  While vastly more trivial, if I see another players outright ignorance or stupidity that adversely affects my gameplay experience, I am not going to blame myself, nor keep quiet about it either.

[33Vortex]

HighGTrn

If you keep that up, analyzing why you get shot down, and learn from it, you are going to improve a lot. This is what 99% of the players seem to overlook, instead they up a new plane to get back into the action, and get killed again in most cases.

The causes you listed there are the same I've had on my list for a long time.

[mtnman]

Originally posted by Murdr
Mtman, let me put this another way.  One tool that players have in their hands that affect general gameplay is peer pressure.  Pervasive, consistant peer pressure is called etiquette.  One can choose to take or leave such pressure as they will, but pervasive 'screw everyone including your buddy' gameplay makes for poor general gameplay for everyone.

With the quote I reposted, it stands to reason that speaking out against this type of behavior is also, "crying" and "idiotic".  Maybe that was not the message you were trying to send.  If I were hit by a drunk driver, I would not blame myself for choosing to be on the road.  While vastly more trivial, if I see another players outright ignorance or stupidity that adversely affects my gameplay experience, I am not going to blame myself, nor keep quiet about it either.

I would concede that there are circumstances that will arise that are beyond our control, or are so rare and unlikely as to be dismissed (rightly so) during our decision making.  We can't stay off the roads because of the fairly minimal risk of being in an accident.  We can't forecast where lightning will strike etc...  We make choices based on most likely outcome.

I agree that peer pressure can and should be used in an attempt to improve or at least halt degrading gameplay.  I would argue that most of the peer pressure we see applied is ineffective, and fits in the crying and idiotic category, however unfortunately.  Ranting, insulting, name-calling etc are the normal avenues I see taken, with little or no positive effect.  Quite honestly, that was the point of my initial post, which was likely worded poorly.  It was an effort to recognize my desire to see higher quality fights, and a higher level of skill.  I was a bit irked that what I saw as skill was simply labeled as picking.

MtnMan

[toonces3]

I kinda got lost here in the discussion.

I searched for a while but finally found the articles I was looking for on Simhq.com.  Here's an excerpt:

"If you have read any of my articles before, you know what’s coming now!! Yep…it’s time for a little academics! A successful BnZ attack is going to come as the result of two things…knowing when to fly the maneuver and knowing how to fly the maneuver. Let’s start off with a look at when such a maneuver would be necessary in the first place.

We have this maneuver in our clue bag mainly because we can put our A2A maneuvering into one of two basic categories with respect to our adversary.

One category is when our fighter "turns better but accelerates worse" than our adversary. In this case, we refer to our fighter as an angles fighter. The second category is when we "turn worse but accelerate better" than our adversary…that makes us an energy fighter when compared to him."

"Acceleration Performance
With regard to this factor, we are talking both acceleration (ability to increase speed over time…knots per second), as well as top speed (knots per hour). In general, when we talk BnZ capability, we consider top speed more important than acceleration.

Bottom Line…an angles fighter is one that can generate a higher turn rate at a slower airspeed than the aircraft it is being compared to…and an energy fighter is one that can accelerate to a faster top speed than its opponent. In our sim world, we often refer to the angles fight as a "turn and burn" (TnB) and the energy fight as the "boom and zoom" (BnZ).

Remember…the terms are relative only when making comparisons. It is entirely possible for a specific fighter type to be both, depending on its opponent. For example, the P-38 would be an energy fighter when compared to a Zero and an angles fighter when compared to a Me-110."

I have truncated alot here, but I thought these two quotes spoke directly to the argument/discussion re: whether energy fighting was a type of ACM.

The entire link is here:  http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_024a.html

[toonces3]

With respect to style, I absolutely think a pilot on here can have a style.  By style, I mean a means of executing maneuvers that make them distinguishable from another performing the same maneuver.

I distinctly recall running into the same pilot on two separate occasions.  I want to say it was Storch, but I could be wrong.  At any rate, this guy did this lag turn thing on my 6 in a very distinctive way.  It's hard to describe- it was a way of resetting his plane that I've never seen before.

Several nights later I was dogfighting this guy and as I watched in the rear 6 view I saw that wierd lag reset thing, and I knew it was Storch even before he shot me down.

Dedalos has a distinctive move as well that I've noticed.

For what it's worth.

[HighGTrn]

Originally posted by Tiger
Holy technicalities batman....



HighG...  you keep a journal on your AH sorties?  Interesting concept.  I'm not quite that devoted to this game, but very interesting indeed.

Yeah pretty nuts huh?  Actually, its force of habit.  I have a private pilot license in  real life and every pilot has a log book.  This log book is your life if you are a flyer.  I just kinda made a log book for this game.  Its really not as involved or time consuming as you may think.  Just like in real life, you record the highlights...  

For example, an entry may look like this:

SA Est, CAP run on field xx
loadout, fuel, takeoff 1.5 sectors fr. CAP
CAP @ Flt LvL 18
Hard deck 8
Clean kill 109G4 (high aspect beam snap shot)
Egress vector 090, flt LvL 10
Touchdown.

That's it.

BTW, I know its been beat to death here but if there is one thing lower than anything and all people who commit this act deserves a special place in Aces High Hell, is lag cheaters.  Long story but I busted someone obviously, purposefully lagging tonight.  I was tempted to let him shoot me down just so I could find out who it was.  There, horse dead.

HighGTrn

[33Vortex]

If you want to find out who someone is, just tap your record film key.