(80 character reply limit?)
Hi,
I would pay an additional $15 per month for something like you suggest. But what you suggest would be in the thousands of dollars if doing this in real life civilian or sign a 10 year contract with the Navy. I did regular enlisted Navy and my 1st hitch was 6 years. Navy wants their money back!
I requested the same idea back in 2007 when I came into this game. I got very good instruction from REN in basic views setup and his philosophy and got to sit in his lap out on one of his sorties. I got very good instruction on the proper way to land on a CV from Widewing. I would love to find as good a guy for in game aerial combat and I think I may have found a good trainer in my current squad I recently joined. There are a couple books out there to purchase to get grounded in the basics. "In Pursuit" and Shaws book. But for me, it is very hard to keep enemy, if you are lucky, just one guy enemy, in view constantly the entire fight and me thinking in a constantly changing 3D environment, and if you are lucky to get a good shot, actually hit him.
As to the percentages, how many guys actually shot down the enemy in WWII considering the thousands and thousands of pilots trained to do it? There were not very many aces considering the number of guys.
As to real life, I doubt many guys in this game would even make it through WWII combat pilot school. The military is very good at getting what it wants through their training programs.
What I want would be like what a Navy flight school would do and learn from scratch, each phase. All phases of Navy school in whatever you want to pursue is 2 weeks of school, they test you, hopefully you pass to go onto the next phase. If you fail, they recycle you once or twice, if you still fail at that phase they find something else for you to do or KP or clean the head for 6 years. Not everybody has "the whatever you want to call it" attitude to be a military combat pilot. Russian flight school in the beginning to fly jets, they stick the beginning student in a 5G centrifuge to see if physiologically speaking, your body is up to it. I have quit this game a few times out of frustration, but there is something about this game that is fun as @#$% that even dying all the time is still fun and I come back to it.
If you get frustrated in the game, just walk a way for a week or two until the withdrawal symptoms overwhelm you to come back. Fun game.
I play this game fairly well, everything else, except I suck at fighter combat.
And it doesn't help if your opponent, about 50% of this game are gamers playing a game winning any way they can by doing the HO and the RAM or gaming the quirks and the idiosyncrasies the gamers find to kind of "cheat" . I realize you cannot cheat in the game, it never happens.
The other thing that is a definite element to consider is the quality of the computer you are using, the quality of the operating system and the quality of your Internet connection to compete on the same plane as your opponent. I doubt you will find many real combat pilots playing this game.
As real as HT has programmed this game it is still not real enough. For instance the real P-39 had a terrible problem of getting itself into a flat spin. During flight school Chuck Yeager's 1st bailout was in a P-39. I have tried getting the in game P-39 to get itself into a flat spin, I can't do it. I think that is why Russia got so many from Bell. I knew a guy that worked in Buffalo during WWII. He said every plane he made from 1942 to 1945 had a Russian star painted on it. How realistic is the game as to the real flight characteristics in real life? I think HT does a great job, but this simulator is not a multi-million dollar project the military would be using just for one plane.
I like the idea and I am game for it or maybe somebody produce a CD or DVD to purchase. The last post, this thread, I read has a video training process that I am definitely going to study.
I have tried other games and flight sims. Yeah, I have played computer flight sims since 1985, nothing compares to this game---it is great.
