Pickers and runners please help me understand...

[Steve]

It is inferior. Picking and running is the shallowest form of gameplay there is. That's pretty much the general consensus around the AH community.

Well, perhaps anyone who feels this way should also look for the  "all co-alt turn fighters arena" too then. 
I think they varying styles in the MA makes it more interesting. If everyone flew the same way, bordom whould ensue.  IMHO

[Yeager]

One day I will run into this guy and when I do, I will get in a K4, and see what he is really made of. 

if your going to expose the community to your self adulating whinery about runners and pickers at least make it interesting, this stuff isn't even worthy of comic books.

[Scca]

I think you've almost got it. But, it's not about the landing or not about the fight. It's about working the entire engagement not just a single enemy. It's about making all the right decisions at all the right times to kill as efficiently as possible while at the same time retaining the initiative.

For example...A TnB'er might think, "I am going to kill plane X", then engage him. An initiative fighter might instead look at the entire engagement, sector or area attempting to work out how to play with potentially all of the enemy and friendlies for maximum effectiveness while not getting limited to the point where he has to turn with plane X or die. Think of it as looking at the entire forest vs. just looking at one tree. Sure, we could subjectively say some of the initiative fighter's kills are not as "pure" in the chivalrous sense, some will be, some won't. The fun is in playing the big picture, working the initiative into opportunities to kill and getting away with it.

Great insight, thanks. 

I just made an odd connection.  Three of the main players on the pro-picker side are in the same squad.  Maybe the connection isn't all that odd after all (birds of a feather).

<S> guys

[humble]

Agree to disagree I guess.  SCCA isn't just ranting.  He's ranting about something that makes no sense, and like I said he's asking for someone to fill the missing part in his puzzle, to make sense out of it.  I think it's disingenuous to pretend there's enjoyment in being an absolute timid pick tard, to pretend that that enjoyment's on par with the enjoyment of the fight for all it (the fight) is worth.  The same way some pretend there is enjoyment out of sinking a CV with a great furball attached to it rather than some other CV in the middle of nowhere. Those guys are after the gratification of having an effect on others' fun, even if that gratification is the result of nothing more than pushing "B" from 10kft above the furball, with no more effort to show for it than calibrating the F6 bombsight.  This is the same state of mind that makes internet hackers get their rocks off by screwing with the whole world with their "denial of service" attacks on random websites.
Those guys are after nothing else than boinking with others' fun, at the expense of AIR COMBAT.  The game would be better off without them.

Moot,

The enjoyment is in the reaction. I'm very rarely put in the role of picker but its an inevitability. Now normally I'm flying in the 8-12k band in an A-20 or a P-39D so "pick" is a relative term. However invariably when balancing my offensive opportunities vs my defensive liabilities I'm confronted with both a higher con and a lower one. Normally the higher con is unengaged and often the lower con (normally cons) is at least broadly engaged/involved. As a general rule I'll initially orient to the higher con...the moment he refuses my offer of neg E engagement with an immelman I'll split S to the lower fight. My basic statement reasoning is i'm not gonna sit in the high traffic alt playing with a B&Z picktard open to  either a drive bt mugging or a guy who zoomed the fight underneath and can easily follow me up from the deck.

Now the simple reality is that very often (but not always) I'm going to orient on a target below and score some hits as I swoop on down. A week or two ago I dropped on the same 38 driver every time by chance....of course I was a "picktard" for picking off a "1 on 1". Now whats funny is each time I watched the 38 drop on a lower con...so he was in fact picked of a bounce not a "fair fight". But beyond that in the TT enviornment invariably you start as a picker and end as a pickee as new planes force the existing ones to defend.

Now the simple reality is I got such a chuckle out of the 1st time and his comments I had to look for a 38 the second time...and the 3rd and so on. Of course eventually I ran into a guy who could A) actually fly the 38 & B) had some decent SA and he promptly avoided me and eventually got me to co-e (at which point the A-20 is a 38 pinata)....

So I think the reality is that the habitual picker lives for the reaction to the kill, not the fight itself.

[DaveJ]

Well, perhaps anyone who feels this way should also look for the  "all co-alt turn fighters arena" too then. 
I think they varying styles in the MA makes it more interesting. If everyone flew the same way, bordom whould ensue.  IMHO

Nothing wrong with a bit of BnZ. Everyone does it.

What gets me are the Doras and Ponies that go in for 1 BnZ pass and extend for a sector. What also irks me are the players, like Scca said, who wait until an enemy is engaged with someone else in order to get an easy pick. That to me is pansy, timid, and "cowardly" flying if I've ever seen it.

I've no problem with being shot down 1 v 1 by a good stick in a fair fight. It teaches me what I did wrong and what I could have done better. The main reason I get worked up alot is because of getting picked while in a great 1 v 1 fight, but go figure, thats the MA for you right there.

[Steve]

Great insight, thanks. 

I just made an odd connection.  Three of the main players on the pro-picker side are in the same squad.  Maybe the connection isn't all that odd after all (birds of a feather).

<S> guys

There you go again, right after you were showing signs of progress. For myself, I'm not pro picker. I believe in choice and also the right of a person to fly a plane how they choose. That said, I also believe in poking fun at them on 200. I don't believe in pontificating on how my chosen style of play is somehow superior to another's.

[Steve]

What gets me are the Doras and Ponies that go in for 1 BnZ pass and extend for a sector.

FWIW, I don't see the point in this either.

[Ack-Ack]

Well said.  I think SlapShot gets it.  Not only the question, but shares the confusion I have. 

p.s. The quote from Guppy in your sig is very relevant to this discussion.

Please note that some that are defending the timid 109 you encountered are the same type of flyer the 109 is.

ack-ack

[Zazen13]

What gets me are the Doras and Ponies that go in for 1 BnZ pass and extend for a sector. What also irks me are the players, like Scca said, who wait until an enemy is engaged with someone else in order to get an easy pick. That to me is pansy, timid, and "cowardly" flying if I've ever seen it.

Firstly, anyone who habitually takes one highspeed pass and extends for a sector is going to be so grossly ineffective they are a non-factor. They are the ones who get 2-3 kills an hour instead of 10+. Sure, if you're one of the unlucky 2-3 they managed to shoot the tailfeathers off of that hour it's annoying. But, be assured that their total lack of aggressive spirit is rendering them all but useless in the big scheme of things.

Secondly, as I've said a couple of times now. This sacred cow of the hermetically sealed 1 vs. 1 is a pure contrivance of gaming. Fighters and fighter tactics were specifically designed and employed to mutually support. If there was no intrinsic vulnerability to the tunnel vision that is the 1 vs 1 to the exclusion of all else we'd all be flying Zekes <insert your favorite turner here>. What makes fighter combat really interesting is exactly the fact that everytime you engage a bandit you render yourself vulnerable to attack. The longer it takes you to kill the more your energy state degrades and the more vulnerable you become. The fact that you cannot fly offensively and defensively at the same time is the ultimate "checks and balances" system of air combat, that's why wingmen are crucial to successful fighter tactics, one can fly offensively while the other worries about defense (clearing his six/cherry picking). If everyone was able to individually fly 100% offensively all the time with no fear of being attacked when attacking another the game would devolve into 300 1 vs 1 Zeke duels very quickly with very little variety, teamwork or tactics.

[Ghastly]

I think it's disingenuous to pretend there's enjoyment in being an absolute timid pick tard, to pretend that that enjoyment's on par with the enjoyment of the fight for all it (the fight) is worth.  The same way some pretend there is enjoyment out of sinking a CV with a great furball attached to it rather than some other CV in the middle of nowhere. Those guys are after the gratification of having an effect on others' fun, even if that gratification is the result of nothing more than pushing "B" from 10kft above the furball, with no more effort to show for it than calibrating the F6 bombsight.

Moot, what's disingenuous about accepting the fact that others might enjoy something that you do not, even if you don't really understand it? How do you know that everyone who does so is only pretending to enjoy it? Perhaps for some the enjoyment of landing a kill (or no kills) is more enjoyable than killing a dozen planes in a sortie if they are going to get killed in the process?  Or perhaps for some, the joy of the fight itself doesn't outweigh whatever they perceive as negative in getting killed?

With respect to the CV, if there is a battle over it, how often is it near enough to somewhere to make it a reasonable target having nothing to do with how many players are flying to/from it? How do you know that maybe even that someone with an eye for strategy doesn't feel that the resources tied up defending against it couldn't be better used elsewhere, and so it should be taken out?

The point I'm making is that there are a lot of reasons why someone might choose to play a certain way - and often times I'm fairly sure that many of them probably don't as much sense to anyone else as the player who chooses might believe.  But you appear to assume that if someone doesn't value the same things you do when it comes to game play, then the obvious prime motivation in playing differently than you would is solely to vex you, and I rather doubt that that is the case. If you feel that way, I sure can't stop you or argue you out of it - and I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to explain it so that I can understand it!

<S>

[Yeager]

This sacred cow of the hermetically sealed 1 vs. 1 is a contrivance of gaming.  If there was no intrinsic vulnerability to the tunnel vision that is the 1 vs 1 to the exclusion of all else we'd all be flying Zekes <insert your favorite turner here>. What makes fighter combat really interesting is exactly the fact that everytime you engage a bandit you render yourself vulnerable to attack. The longer it takes you to kill the more your energy state degrades and the more vulnerable you become. The fact that you cannot fly offensively and defensively at the same time is the ultimate "checks and balances" system of air combat, that's why wingmen are crucial to successful fighter tactics, one can fly offensively while the other worries about defense. If everyone was able to individually fly 100% offensively all the time with no fear of being attacked when attacking another the game would devolve into 300 1 vs 1 Zeke duels very quickly with no variety, teamwork or tactics.

This is excellent thinking.  Made this retarded thread worth reading through to get to.

[evenhaim]

Yes I do remember Ren ... was always fun to fly with and against him.

There is a good handful of P-51 pilots who would turn back into a Spit 16 and come out on top ... only because they have tried many times before and have succeeded and failed, and at each encounter LEARNED something.

Anybody in this game who is an "absolute" killer in their plane of choice ... has died hundreds if not thousands of deaths to become deadly, no matter the situation, in that plane.

I see a lot of post about Agent360 and his abilities in the K4 ... does anybody think that he just woke up one day and became "deadly" ... from what I have read, he has spent countless hours in the DA ... both winning and loosing (and loosing more than winning at the start) and learning to fly the K4 to it's ultimate best. I have yet to run into his K4 but one can only hope.

Had Agent360, or Messiah, or Furball, or Stang, or Killnu been in that K4, this thread never would have been made.

But skank sucks....

[Scca]

It is inferior. Picking and running is the shallowest form of gameplay there is. That's pretty much the general consensus around the AH community.

I agree.  It's equivalent to picking a fist fight with someone, walking away, only to return when your friend gets involved and hitting your opponent in the head with a hammer when their back it turned.

Sure, on paper it's a win, but there are few people that would say you really won the fight. 

[SlapShot]

I think you've almost got it. But, it's not about the landing or not about the fight. It's about working the entire engagement not just a single enemy you've arbitrarily chosen to engage. It's about making all the right decisions at all the right times to kill as efficiently as possible while at the same time retaining the initiative.

For example...A TnB'er might think, "I am going to kill plane X", then engage him then sequentially engage another depending on the outcome. An initiative fighter might instead look at the entire engagement, sector or area attempting to work out how to play with potentially all of the enemy non-sequentially for maximum effectiveness while not getting limited to the point where he has to turn with one particular plane or die. Think of it as looking at the entire forest vs. just looking at just one tree. Sure, we could subjectively say some of the initiative fighter's kills are not as qualitatively "pure" in the chivalrous sense, some will be, some won't. The fun is in playing the big picture, working the initiative into opportunities to kill and getting away with it.

Beautifully explained ... under just those circumstances.

I consider myself a dyed in the wool TnBer ... but under the right circumstances, I will turn into a BnZer (I do know how to BnZ).

If I am flying in an F6F and encounter multiples, and if they are below me, I will scan them and mentally pick an order in which to attack them so as maximize my advantage. I will not pick the 1st guy and then start a TnB session with him. If I can't get him on the 1st pass, it's up I go, re-evaluate and then back in again. I will continue this until all are dead or I made a mistake in judgment and died as a result ... because I really don't care if I die ... I am there for the challenge and it is the taking on of the challenge that is the reward for me ... not getting wheels on the runway.

Now, on the other hand, if I am flying along in an F6F and I see a lone 190/109/whatever, I will turn to engage and let the chips fall where they may and could only hope for a palm sweating, heart pumping fight ... win or lose.

Never ... and I repeat ... never will I turn tail thinking ... zOMG there is a 109 and he just may hand me my arse so I better bug out and maybe come back and whack him while one of my countrymen has him all tied up.

[toonces3]

Firstly, anyone who habitually takes one highspeed pass and extends for a sector is going to be so grossly ineffective they are a non-factor. They are the ones who get 2-3 kills an hour instead of 10+. Sure, if you're one of the unlucky 2-3 they managed to shoot the tailfeathers off of that hour it's annoying. But, be assured that their total lack of aggressive spirit is rendering them all but useless in the big scheme of things.

Secondly, as I've said a couple of times now. This sacred cow of the hermetically sealed 1 vs. 1 is a pure contrivance of gaming. Fighters and fighter tactics were specifically designed and employed to mutually support. If there was no intrinsic vulnerability to the tunnel vision that is the 1 vs 1 to the exclusion of all else we'd all be flying Zekes <insert your favorite turner here>. What makes fighter combat really interesting is exactly the fact that everytime you engage a bandit you render yourself vulnerable to attack. The longer it takes you to kill the more your energy state degrades and the more vulnerable you become. The fact that you cannot fly offensively and defensively at the same time is the ultimate "checks and balances" system of air combat, that's why wingmen are crucial to successful fighter tactics, one can fly offensively while the other worries about defense (clearing his six/cherry picking). If everyone was able to individually fly 100% offensively all the time with no fear of being attacked when attacking another the game would devolve into 300 1 vs 1 Zeke duels very quickly with very little variety, teamwork or tactics.

Great post!