Found something I wrote in August 2003 archived in an old newsgroup. Guess things really don't change much after all
"I’ve been flying a lot since I started up in AH a little over a week ago. I’ve flown everyday and too many hours, to the point my wife is getting that “I’ve lost him’ look again that she had at the time I was so far gone in Airwarrior. This is NOT a good thing by the way, so I have to watch it. My son has also been flying, even more then I have. With that in mind, and knowing it’s only been a little over a week, here are the good, bad and uglies as I’ve seen it so far.
What I like about AH:
-The eye candy is great. Clouds, weather, the terrain, etc. It makes for a great time just site seeing.
-I love the airplane set. A20 is a beaut. I’ve enjoyed every plane I’ve tried.
-The mouths seem a lot less so far. The only bad channel 1 night was Sunday night when some idiot got to talking politics and religion, which drew many people in to the point it was irritating.
-It’s been fun seeing so many old faces in the skies.
What concerns me about AH:
-The land grab is to the point of idiocy. Everything is about stopping the other guy from taking your land. So it’s pork all the fuel at any base that might impact on the fight. Unless you are willing to take off from a long ways away, the role becomes one of two. Either you are under the mob, getting vulched,trying to survive a 6 on 1 fight, or you are in the mob, vulching and getting caught in a crowd following the one unlucky SOB who got off the ground. I’ve vulched more in a week of AH then I ever did in AW.
-I have yet to have a co-alt one on one fight. The only one on one fights I’ve been a part of are when the other guy is way above me and he comes down trying to nail me or to get me to try and follow him up. I almost had a co-alt 1 on 2 fight yesterday. I was in a Spit V and came upon 3 baduns picking on a lower good guy. I went in on the one closest to him and shot him off his tail. This was a Macchi205. The other two were a 109 and a 51D. They were a bit above me but I felt like it was worth the dying just to have an actual ‘dogfight’. I turned into them and much to my surprise they turned and ran. It became clear soon enough that they were taking me to 4 of their higher buddies, but you'd have thought the two of them could have clobbered me on their own. Instead I get one more before the other 5 get me.
-I still suck, but not as bad. I guess trying to survive in those mobs, makes you better fast. The pleasure now is not from killing folks so much, but seeing how long I can survive as the mouse in a mob of cats.
-I don’t like the one pilot, multiple bombers bit. Added to this is that they can gun for themselves. My Son is not the WW2 aviation fanatic I am. I’d guess he is a lot like many of the players in AH though, and I watched his transformation in a week. He went from taking P40s to fight as a challenge, to grabbing a flight of 3 B26s and “porking them back”. His time is now spent wrecking airfields, and then gunning for himself. He was clobbering 3-4 fighters a flight while on autopilot, with the massed guns of his 3 26s. And he was landing them. But it went from being a fighter pilot to porking everything in a week for my kid, despite my efforts to talk him out of it.
-As near as I can tell, everyone fires headon. I know that part of my problem is that it was hammered into me in AW that headons were evil, and I’ve not lost that yet, but its amazing to me how that seems to be the favored method of attack. I’m doing what I can to duck out of the line of fire, but that doesn’t always work. So it becomes watch them dive in, I turn in to try an negate the alt and speed advantage, they blaze away nose on, if they miss the act is repeated. I’ve taken to nosing down and trying to get them to auger, which amazingly has worked on a number of occasions as they misjudge their speed.
-Something about the “Joe blow landed 10 kills” message doesn’t work for me. From what I can tell 9 of 10 of those kills were vulches so it somehow misrepresents the accomplishment. The old AW kill messages were better. Even if my name would be showing up on them as victim all the time.
What I wish for in AH after a week:
-Unperk everything. Let the idiots all fly 262s if they want. But limit the fields they can fly from to where it wouldn’t be overkill. This might take away from the need to land everything for the sake of the points bit. Stay in and fight. Who cares if you die since no one is really dying anyway.
-Make a map that limits the land grab focus. Limit the fields that can be taken.
-Take away base fuel porking. If a country really wants to pork the fuel, make it a refinery way back in each country that would take a real effort to get to. Maybe even have more then one Refinery. The buffers could have all the fun they wanted going deep. Squads could make this a mission with bombers and escorts, and it gives the defender time to get planes up to negate the attack. Pork and auger 51s are a bit tough to slow down.
-More for the buffers. Give them aircraft factories to hit. Maybe the 262 factory gets hit. No more jets for a while. Hit the Tempest or TA152 factory. No more of them for a bit. Once again, the point being that the bombers would have to work at it a bit to get their points.
-Make it tougher for the tankers high crowd. Throw in bridges that could be destroyed if need be that they’d have to cross. Create choke points where the fighter-bombers could slow them down. One night I kept killing the same guy in a tank. Somehow he kept appearing just south of our field. My son and I kept upping in Tiffies with Rockets over and over just to keep the tanks from wrecking the field. While it was fun for a while, it occupied a lot of pilots for a long time to the point of getting ridiculous.
-One pilot, one bomber. If he wants a gunner, he needs to find one.
-Make radar for sectors, not just the country. Once again, more of a challenge for the guys who like to bomb and it doesn’t leave everyone blind.
Guess that’s it. I’m sure everything I’ve said has all been said before a million times, but what the hell"
"Not sure what's different, other then possibly I don't suck as much as I used to, but I've been having a blast in there lately and I've been flying just about every night. While porking is still the norm, there have been spots just about everynight that spoken or unspoken, the bombing/porking has stayed away which have lead to some great furballs. I'm still dying more often then not, but the SA seems to have gotten a little better cause more are dying before I do which is great fun.
I also, finally had a great 2 on 2 fight that started by accident, but the guy I ended up winging knew his stuff. A couple of Jug drivers were the baduns and they were clearly working together and instead of running away they stayed to fight. It went from 15K to the deck with everyone getting hit. My wingie was streaming fuel and I took some hits, but in the end by working together we got em both.
Afterwards the channel 1 talk was how much fun it was and what a good fight it had been for all. THAT is what I remember from the best of the AW days. It felt good to find that in AH.
While many still seem more concerned about landing everything and only engage when they have complete advantage, there are those who just like to fight regardless of the odds.
My end of the night was part of an ongoing fight over the water involving all kinds of planes. Once again, folks were working together, calling out bandits and clearing each other's tails. When I headed out of the fight out of ammo, low on fuel and alive, much to my surprise, I was reminded of why online flight sims can be so damn much fun. "
