I'm sorry but anything you think you've "perfected" was perfected long before you ever saw a flight sim.
Where are Lion, Popeye, Eagl7, Dogg and the rest of the Red Barons of AW when I need them to prove a point.
agreed... my old AW3 RR skwad (Grave Diggers) had it down to an art, with assigned targets/roles for certain flights. We'd roll the entire map's bases every week, lol, and own the map. The simplest tactic that allowed us to do this was extending our CAP outwards toward the bases that could defend against the one we were attacking.... interdiction.
So even tho most of us older players who've been around have evolved into furball farts, we still know what it takes and how to take a base. This is why the "war" never really bothers me - we all have our own learning curve, style and preference for type of action.
To those, including myself, who think too many are stuck on suck, i'm reminded of some quote by someone (Yeager?) who said something to the effect that 10% of the guys got 90% of the kills.
The biggest difference in squad ops I've seen over the past few years compared to earlier is the lack of coordinated tactics. Always going NOE deprieves a skwad of the learning experience for proper tactics, i.e. a ftr sweep ahead, a flight assigned to cap, escorting the goon/buffs (the weakest link in current tactics is proper escorting - and the easy availbility of m3's as opposed to goons only makes it less of a percieved need.)
Another weak link in squad ops is counter ops... I never see appropriate organized counterattacks or tactics used to defend a base being attacked with interdiction tactics. This game has a lot of strategical and tactical options that are left on the table unused.
Meh...