Viper,
You make some very valid points. I get totally where you are coming from, but for me personally I am on the fence of CM's making adjustments in most cases, not sure it is truly a necessity. One has to realize, as said earlier.... Being purely defensive , already gives the advantage, and it has been the rule of the day for what now? The last 3 setups I believe.
The dedicated Axis only squads? We all know the answer to that one for the most part.
When all is said and done, Stampf pretty much drives the nail home. Squad, camaraderie, Sure maybe a few tweaks here and there could, and possibly should be looked at, who knows.
Our squad could care less about numbers, or scores. It's all trivial and irrelevant at frames end. We take our assignment regardless of what it is or what the odds may be and set out to carry it out successfully. What we deem successful and what others may deem successful, is probably as clear as mud.
In frame 1, we were definitely successful, and to be honest. We really should not have been. Heck numbers to most people would most likely suggest otherwise, but you have to look at the bigger picture. Target, strike package force size, defensive force size, mission objectives as laid out by the Cic's, losses vs damage inflicted vs rtb planes. If your escort, it simply boils down to how many bombers did you escort in, vs damage, vs how many made it home.
Not long ago, we were escorts for a bomber mission. We shot down a couple enemy, not many really overall though, but all the planes we escorted in to target, returned to base. That was a 100% success in our eyes, even thought we lost a couple of our own.
We have a very set criteria we look at before we deem a mission as a failure or success, and it has nothing to do with kills, or name in lights kind of stuff for sure. Yes, just getting all together for a couple hours and doing what we do, does in fact play into it all a little for sure
In the end, if I were going to make any kind of constructive inputs at all, it would probably be along the lines of " let's not make one side purely defensive month after month. Change tends to keep things fresher.
Bring on frame 2!!