F4UDOA
Greetings ;=)
First several paragrafs argueing that this and similar games are number dependent by will, and also (more serously IMO) by will denies the lessons from actual air to air combat.
Last paragraf sums up my view of Eric Brown - you can jump down there if you wish ;=)
I have a great deal of respect of you guys digging in numbers, calculating.Especially because of the attitude towards tales and encounters of pilots displayed by the creators of this game - and also by the current profiles of WB.Unfortunatly this attitude has been adobted by a large part of the communities of these games.Either you have hard numbers or you have nothing seems to be the slogan.
This is practical for a couple of reasons.
Firstly it will stop the can of worms opened by the large number of apparantly conflicting tales.When seeing the mudslinging that is taking place in regards to the numbers, imagine if you can the kaos that will emerge when people presents a few selectet tales, to justify their claim of uber or under.Insisting on numbers leaves this whole segment out.
Secondly the sole basis of this virtual world is numbers.If you get new numbers you might be able to insert them into your Flight Model(Tm) without too much hassle and get a reasonable result.On the other hand if you collect a string of combat encounters - well defined and trustworthy as some of them are - the problem of transforming actual *new* knowledge to numbers is still immense.You might even have to redefine your (expensive?) Flight Model(Tm) every time you transform.
Without going into details I think that the shortcommings of a purly theoretical Flight Model(Tm) will allways be evident.AH problems around stalls, spinns, torque, E-retention ect have been discussed in the past.Of course in RL there is a reason why new planes are not rolled directly out from the assembly line into service.
All because of this the people of these communities who have the talent, education and time to collect new numbers have my respect.Without you these games would stall: indeed AH seems to be the only one where new numbers have a possibility of being incorporated - at least for the time being.
But thinking that we presantly have a Flight Model(Tm) that is an actual simulator is a mistake IMO.
This is why I dont stress Eric Brown confusing numbers or doing horses comparisons as gravly as you - but rather put emphasis on his enourmus experience.That is why the duel Lovel v. Galland is interesting, and why the fact that Galland flew Fw A8 is important.
regards
danish