Over the last few years I've been on, I've seen kill stealing brought up several times. If you have been on enough, I'm sure it has happened to you as well. Sometimes it can be an honest mistake, but what happened today was blatant.
I shot a plane off of a fellow countryman's tail after much manuevering. I shot the tail completely off of the plane and it was falling flat, staight down, obviously no longer a threat. I even called out this particular plane as down over range. As I looked back, I saw tracers from a "friendly" (I use the term loosely) pouring into this falling, tailess plane. I look at the text buffer and of course see "assist on -----"
I really don't care about the score, or getting a handle up in lights, it's just the point of the matter. I'm not going to lose my cool and crawl the guy, because it does no good and it's likely a noob kid that doesn't know any better anyway. But to do nothing about it is no different than encouraging it.
If you've been here more than a couple of weeks, I'm sure you can relate to this problem. There are some pretty sharp people here that have been playing this game for a while, so I ask you: What can be done? Or should we just let it go? Let the guy you've worked hard to knock down get stolen as the wreckage falls to the ground?
HT has been exellent at listening to the community and fixing problems, so if there is enough voice, there will be a result.
I suggest this: If a part critical to flight is missing, the plane is scored as a kill right then. It's not hard. Simply looking at the damage list tells you the game already knows what has been hit. Examples are: Wing (entire), horizontal stabs, vertical stabs and tail section. If those are missing, the plane has no hope of continued flight...it has been killed and reduced to falling wreckage. Any shots that follow can do damage, but will not be counted as it is now a crash looking for a place to happen.
PS: No, this is not a

or a

. It is a question to my Brothers and Sisters. Should it be fixed or rewarded?