hello gents,
This is my first post so please forgive me if I inadvertently violate some cultural taboo. There seems to be quite a division of opinion around scores. I've found the same thing any time i've tried to implement any sort of metrics; whether it is on a game or on the job or even in the gym. Some people just don't like being measured and others don't like things they can't completely understand or is flawed in any manner. I always fall back to the intent of the activity when trying to decide such things.
My take on scoring in AH goes like this: its supposed to be a simulator (says so right on the homepage) and, therefore, balance is very important. We have a squadie who is a great pilot but refuses to land. He just flies until he is killed or runs out of fuel. Occasionally he'll run out of ammo and then he'll land, if its close enough, to rearm. If its not close enough he just bails. As a result his score sucks.
To my mind, that type of attitude, whilst fun, is more appropriate to an arcade style shooter and not to a sim. The game dynamics are designed around individuals attempting to survive and score reflects that. If you don't care about score then it doesn't matter anyway but don't get upset because someone else wants to know how well you are corresponding to the games balancing mechanism.
We would also never consider kicking the guy out because he is extremely cool and his flagrant disregard for score and the games balancing mechanism gives our squad a definite edge up. In the end, scoring is just a measure of how well an individual performs against the games overall intended purpose and nothing else.
