Night

[pembquist]

Search doesn't seem to be working so I donna know if this is an old suggestion but,  What about some night fighting scheduled in the sea or in the main arenas?  For a full blown wish i'd want flames from exhaust stacks and real darkness.  Sudden full moon rise???  Night fighters with primitive radar?

[iron650]

+1

The only issue is people log off or boost their gamma high enough so it's like day.

[Krusty]

It's not part of how AH works, the game you are wishing for. What you want is a hunting game where you stalk the prey and the risk is they get away, rather than "you become the prey" and everything in this game, from the takeoff, flight navigation, attacking, and RTB, to the enemy's flight plans, to the shadows, the search lights, the lighting effects themselves (glint of light off glass on an otherwise dark plane, some tail gunner toggles a lamp for a second giving himself away, etc) to the brief but mostly "safe" combat you enjoy.....

None of this has anything to do with how AH currently (or for the past 10 years now) works. You need an entirely different game. It's like comparing Counter-Strike to World of Warcraft. Totally different gameplay dynamics, totally different environments, interactions, gameplay mechanics.

Just totally different games.

[MK-84]

It's not part of how AH works, the game you are wishing for. What you want is a hunting game where you stalk the prey and the risk is they get away, rather than "you become the prey" and everything in this game, from the takeoff, flight navigation, attacking, and RTB, to the enemy's flight plans, to the shadows, the search lights, the lighting effects themselves (glint of light off glass on an otherwise dark plane, some tail gunner toggles a lamp for a second giving himself away, etc) to the brief but mostly "safe" combat you enjoy.....

None of this has anything to do with how AH currently (or for the past 10 years now) works. You need an entirely different game. It's like comparing Counter-Strike to World of Warcraft. Totally different gameplay dynamics, totally different environments, interactions, gameplay mechanics.

Just totally different games.

Oh my gawd....I gotta agree with Krusty on this.   It pains me to do so
Everything he said makes perfect sense as to why it would not work well here in AH.

[pembquist]

Granted it would be different but I don't know any other "realistic" ww2 air combat simulation game other than this one.  When Axis vs Allies had no icons that was a different game, the stuff in the SEA are different games.  You would have fighters fighting fighters in the dark not just bombers being stalked.  You could turn on dots all over the map, I do like the stuff you said about glinting glass, and navigator lamps.  I'll be the first to admit that its easy to think of things that in the abstract sound really cool but in reality nobody is interested in, (sadly AVA with no icons, which was really cool but empty,) but I gotta say the minute or whatever of night i've seen is real purty. I think you go to far saying that you need an entirely different game for this, jeez it felt like you were saying it was un american or maybe un aces highian.  

wishes are wishes and fishes delishes

[Krusty]

As a RULE, WW2 combat was fair weather fighting. If it wasn't clear, if they couldn't see, most times they didn't take off. Weeks on end in Italy, US planes were grounded because it kept raining. Many weeks on end the Normany invasion (D-day, you know?) was put in doubt because they didn't have the clear skies to get the C-47s in. Germans and Soviets got snowed in many times. It was more dangerous to you than to the enemy to fly in bad weather.

You did not have flights and squads flying at night. You had 1 single night fighter hunting in his own isolated geographic zone/area, searching for bomber streams most times never being seen and most times never being in danger. The ever rarer still instances of fighter on fighter were special night fighters hunting night fighters, like a Mossie NF hunting a Ju88 NF. In this case you had similar instances of hours upon hours of tense hunting, searching, following radio directions, and maybe, just maybe, you get 2 seconds to open fire on a target before you lose it again.

You would never... repeat NEVER EVER.... find a night environment with swirling furballs or base capture attempts or B-24s and Lancs carpet bombing VHs, etc.

[guncrasher]

pembquist there was never a night fight.  the only people who fought in the dark were new guys who didnt know about using the gamma to fight in the day.  you really want night fighting then lower your gamma to where the game is dark because you will be about the only one fighting in the dark.

semp

[pembquist]

I don't think I said there was ever a night fight, I've only seen something like 2 minutes of night but I take it from what semp says there was a longer night at some point in the past.  I'll concede the point that night fighting in AH2 would not be historically correct and I'll concede that most people would rather be dweebs and adjust there monitors to cheat, and I'll concede that I could just buy some dark glasses or shut my eyes if I wanted to fly around in the dark.  I never imagined there would be swirling furball etc etc.  If your saying the essence of AH is swirling furballs etc etc and that it can't accomodate anything else like for instance air racing than OK night is just a terrible terrible idea, everyones going to cheat anyway.

On the historical lecture from krusty all I can think to say is what does your first paragraph have to do with night?  Its not fair weather its darkness and I know you know that Bomber Command bombed at night.  I would never presume that you are ignorant of WWII military history so please don't go all "Normany invasion (D-day, you know?)" on me.

If you thought I meant that the LWMA should have 6 hours of darkness imposed on it because I think its cool thats not what I meant at all and I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

Its not like there is any chance that there is going to be night, (night again, from what semp said,) in the prime time main arenas I just thought it might be an interesting thing to have in some small way, like the no icons were, maybe a scenario with a late 1944 night raid with a few night fighters opposing it.  It seems like there is plenty of space in the arenas that goes unused.

[OLtos]

I have played Aces, off and on, for years. 

Yes there used to be a night time.  In fact, you can set up the off line practice arena to have night.  Daylight/darkness hours are a configurable variable.  Night never worked as well as it should have because the Icon visiblility range did not change from daylight to darkness.  Therefore, you never really suffered the visibilty penalties of true night flying.   But the biggest thing was and is that all of the electronic capabilities that came to life in WWII night ops, are just not included in the game.  No radars, such as the Black Cats used.  No radar controlled glide bombs as used on the "Privateer" B24 varient of late war usage.  No signal intercept divice as used by the Germans to home in on the British navigational radar.  So, none of that was ever in place, so night flying was just a visual pain in the youknowwhat.  I enjoyed it myself, and my solution to darkness was to close all the blinds and darken the room. It was more fun that way.  Anyway.  That was night back in the day.

OLtos

[Butcher]

One of the main reasons nobody fought at night was an example of a Panzer 4 that lost its tracks to an anti tank gun and the crew bailed, in the middle of the night they returned to repair and drive the tank back, in a bad twist - the infantry division in the area just captured a few russian 76mm anti tank guns, and were busy setting them up when the Panzer 4 came over a ridge and was alerted and started firing, wiping out the 3 guns and handful of troops.

Turns out the Panzer 4 got lost in the process, ran over a mine field setup by the Russians and was a total loss.

Any case the problem with night fighting is we don't have radar equip aircraft in Aces high, the radar we have is a luxury showing nice little dots where the enemy is. One would think "lets those a radar ring around an aircraft" - well its possible, but not likely anytime in the future for Aces high.

[The Fugitive]

Aces High had night. There was a 30 minute "dusk" period, followed by an hour of "night", followed by 30 minutes of "dawn". The "night" the game can generate now is much better than the night it use to. The problem is/was the majority of players would log off during those times, and the few that stayed would just bump up their gamma setting "defeating" the idea of night. So HTC decided that loosing most of their players, or people cutting the corner with the gamma trick "why bother" and it was turned off. There was a BIG discussion about it a couple years ago with a core group pushing HARD to get it back and HTC said flat out ain't going to happen so give it up.

[Beefcake]

Dagnabbit Fugi beat me to it.

Basically you don't want night, trust me you'll grow tired of it really fast.

[The Fugitive]

Ya it was one of those things that was cool the first few times and then it was just a pain in the butt. Im sure if they added "wind and weather" like some other have suggested it would be the same. Cool at first, then just a pain in the butt. A lot of wishes are like that, engine management, preflight checks and so on. While they would be cool for the first few times they would quickly kill the fun.

[Drano]

Hey ya want night? No problem! Make your own arena. Make it a night arena. And wait around for people to flock to it. It's your $15. If you want to spend it sitting in the tower in an empty arena don't let anyone here stop ya.

Just so ya know if you did that I'd chuckle every time I logged on, checked those arenas and saw the "1" next to it and know it was only you.

[ImADot]

Done with the right color palette and light levels, night is a lot of fun and totally playable. I had my arena up last night for around 4 hours to test colors and arena settings. At one time there were 5 or 6 people in there. I turned on my night settings for 10 minutes or so, and everyone had a good time. It was not pitch black, but you knew it was night.

I had almost as much fun hosting as flying.