Toad - important 'realism' factor.
Pilots would have to 'certify' before being allowed to fly, and once they 'die' (be that crash, get shot down, bail or go linkdead) then they are out of the game until the war restarts.
There would also be no score and no automatic tracking of kills, just hearsay. There'd be no radio comms, definitely no text communications.
Pilots would also not be responsible for choosing their flights or missions; they would be determined by a hierachical structure of non-fliers representing the military, and many of the missions would be simply being up in the air to defend your home base, with little or no chance of seeing actual combat. And you'd have to spend long hours on the ground waiting for the scramble order, you wouldn't simply pick a plane and click on 'fly'. If you are unable to stay online for long enough, you might well miss your squadron's scramble call, and return to find you are under court martial for being AWOL.
Or perhaps the purists suddenly only want to model the actual combat sections of the pilots experience. Oh - odd concession. If that's what you want to model, with all the rest of the realism factors, all you really need is a one-on-one combat simulator. Maybe as many as 8 on 1. But you don't need a massively multiplayer game.
Alternatively, you need a terrain covering from Britain to Russia, Norway to Africa, and you need tens of thousands - hundreds of thousands - of pilots online, many on the ground awaiting scramble orders.
Those of you like Tac looking for an imaginary puritanical-sim, go somewhere else please, like Fly or something. AcesHigh has the potential to be the best convergence of game and sim around. Our aims here should be to provide feedback and suggestions to lead AcesHigh to have and encourage as much realism as possible. Unfortunately that 'realism' may sometimes not be puritanically correct - players thinking won't be affected by altitude or oxygen or cold, pilots will never react in fear of their lives, people are never going to pay for a game that they can only play once till their first game over, because there's no learning curve at all involved.
And these concessions are only the tip of the iceberg.
Fighter's feel that bombers closing fields is unrealistic. But if bombers have cities to bomb, there is no reason for fighters to bother with them. Look at how little concern players show for the cities or HQ right now. You can generally bomb them with impunity. Bombers are a crucial part of the war. Bombers are what air superiority was about in WWII.
Infact a sim of pure fighter combat is unrealistic, in all but a very few scenarios. Pacific? Sorry, you need ships. Europe? Well that limits your planeset, and if there are no bombers, well, erm, why would you be flying fighters? They were escorts for or cap against bombers.
Lastly people need motivation. They need to see bombers as a threat. Bombers need to see fighters as a threat to lone bombers. Fighters need to see the guns on a six-pack of bombers as a threat to be tackled carefully. The guy in the solo spit who finds a pack of 6 bombers needs not to be thinking 'if I throw myself at them maybe I can wound 2 badly before I'm fataly damaged'.
It works in some parts of the game - people see the vehicle hangar and fighter hangars at a base as important targets. But then they seem averse to the destruction of the enemy's fuel and ammo supplies, because that only inconveniences the home side when they take the field.
At the end of the day, what truly, mostly, really counts, is the accuracy of the modelling of the aircraft in the sky, the travel and lethality of the munitions, the handling of the vehicles on the sea and land, the damage models, and the engagement-mindset that the game framework imposes upon pilots. Pilots should be encouraged to prefer surviveable engagements (there seem to be a lot of pilots who aren't)
