Death - is this what divides?

[zoozoo]

i dont care if i die, unless i get picked or ganged

[Karnak]

Some of you have very restricted ideas of how real pilots flew and fought.  Yes, some were like Hartman and only engaged with a clear plan to withdraw.  But I have also read accounts of eight Hurricane Mk Is climbing into a formation of 30 Bf109E-4s.  Sometimes the pilots just had to fight, even though it wasn't favorable.

[moot]

That's preposterous!

[BiPoLaR]

ummm ok.im just posting cause i have nothing better to do...ok bye

[Guppy35]

Some of you have very restricted ideas of how real pilots flew and fought.  Yes, some were like Hartman and only engaged with a clear plan to withdraw.  But I have also read accounts of eight Hurricane Mk Is climbing into a formation of 30 Bf109E-4s.  Sometimes the pilots just had to fight, even though it wasn't favorable.

All you have to do is think about those inexperienced LW pilots in the Fall of 44 that had to try and intercept 1000 bombers with 800 escorts.  Absolutely nothing in their favor.  They never shot down more then they lost and it was only a scratch on the  numbers the Allies were putting up at the time, and there was really no hope it would turn the US bombers away.

They still went up.

[Toad]

Yeah, those fools didn't fly to live, did they? Shame on them. I hope they didn't pay the LW more than $14.95/mo.

Still, you gotta wonder why they didn't fly like real pilots.

[angelsandair]

After verbally-duking it out with a whole variety of people here, some thoughtful and some gnashing their teeth, my conclusion is that what divides us is death and its roll in the game of AH.

Some of us think that death is bad, it should be avoided at all costs (just like real pilots), and may even go so far as to believe that a lack of death-fear hurts gameplay (dive-bombing lancs, anyone?).

Some of us think that death is no big deal because you can always roll out a new plane, you'll get to the next fight more quickly, and learn more by fighting and dying in situations where you are a 90% favorite to get shot down.  Virtual pilots who avoid virtual death hurt gameplay because they spend far too much time flying in between fights and running away.

Most people here are somewhere in the middle and wonder why the thread about furballers has reached 14 pages.

So what do you think about death and its roll in the game?  Should death count less against score?  More?  Should there be no score at all?  And if stats still cause people to try too hard not to die, then should stats go too?

You know that I'm on the side of avoiding death.  I think I've said enough about it, but if you haven't heard, it's generally because I like to emulate real combat conditions.  If real pilots had to avoid death at all costs, then that's what I want to do too.  I wouldn't fly AH if there were not some historical basis for the game.  But hey, that's just me.

There was a time when an opinion like mine was the solid majority, but maybe it's the AW crowd here, I don't really know...  I remember reading threads at argo's where people proposed sending someone who died back to a rear-airfield as a penalty, or making them wait one full minute before they could replane.  No kidding.

Those are people concerned with their Score. 

Those are the people that everyone complains about.