ok karnak here it is in a nutshell ...
when things were (i will take out any projections of intent) more simple like in WB-2.xx or AW everyone was very sure where his planes advantages and disadvantages were relative to the rest of the set. when a player tried to force his way into another planes envelope there was very little chance of success at all.
the very last thing you wanted to do was bleed e, and heaven help you if you were in an e- situation vs. a superior turn-fighter.
the turn-fighters had to work hard to keep out of a solution while trying to turn the energy tables and or get a solution on the boom and zoom fighters, conversely the boom and zoomer would never give up any of his energy unless he was very confident that that little bit of harder turn would result in a kill.
each plane had "it's fight" and the game was a contest of wills to see who could work the fight to their favor and a victory. because back then there were very very few victories outside of your envelope.
since WB-3 in the IEN or HTC offerings those envelopes have been altered to the extent that the clear advantages of the two energy state fighters are lost. now no longer does the slower lower plane pose as much of a relative maneuver threat as he used to, and so many of the rules of ACM have gone by the wayside.
in my opinion this reduces the challenge of the game and has changed it fundamentally from the historic reality.
it used to be "speed is life", now the first thing almost every energy advantaged player seems to want to do is blow all his energy and park himself on the e- fighters 6 because he knows he can get away with that. over shoots are as rare as 4 leaf clovers.
it has retarded what should be a high speed ACM simulation into a mutant WW-1 Luftberry and Immelman oriented game with WW-2 "aircraft"
imo that is a shame, and the games are lesser for it.
IMO the biggest factor contributing to this is the exaggerated low speed stability of the bigger fighters the flaps allow through generous drag penalties and reduced difficulty over all. the limited availability of high speed low deflection flaps compounds the problem and further moves the games into that "furball is all and flaps is life" distortion that we have currently.
some accuse me of wanting my plane "better", not so, or at least not so simple. i want all the planes to show both the benefits and liabilities of their respective designs in equal measure, and thereby restore the clearly defined envelopes and all the great parts of the simulations that we lost with them.
addressing the flap issues is imo where that needs to start.
i hope that is clear enough.
i really miss that part of those games.
+S+
t
i don't want to be mistaken, i am not saying there has been no progress, i just think we have lost something that made the games special, i would like to see those aspects improved.
thorsim,
I think you may be mistaking success for the right thing to do. Just because somebody in AH might use an extreme flap setting and still win doesn't mean that the flap setting should have been used. Every test I have seen of AH aircraft has shown that extreme flap positions reduce turn rate and bleed speed like mad. Making a mistake doesn't necessarily mean that the person loses the fight. Combat settings decrease radius, landing positions decrease radius even more, but also reduce turn rate and bleed excessive E.
Perhaps it would help us if you would describe the exact effects you see in AH and describe the exact effects you think should happen based on your knowledge so that we're all on the same page, rather than guessing at what the other person really means.
