You mean to tell me:
1) every fast moving dot is a fighter and could never be (e.g. a set of moss16s or ar-234s?)
2) every slow moving dot is a bomber and could never be a climbing/throttled back fighter?
3) every dar bar launching from deep within enemy territory is a bomber and could never be a heavy, slow climbing jabo intending to get height and speed before crossing into an active dar ring?
4) every dar bar originating from a front line enemy base is a fighter and never could be a set of low buffs?
5) I should rely on player scouts readily available to check out every encroaching enemy contact? Yeah O.K., I guess all of the complaints about "not being able to find fights" pertained to being unable to engage those pesky scout planes and not due to the fact that there were no friendly players in the area at the time to observe the enemy planes.
6) bombers only hit strat targets, which are always deep within friendly territory and can never be spread out from sea to shining sea?
7) bombers never fly over hot spots where they can get lost in the shuffle of low furballing planes who may or may not have anything to do with the intended target(s) of the bomber?
8) bomber dar bar (whether as 1 player set or several) is easily discernible from others midway through the route when a player first logs on or starts evaluating options after being preoccupied with other aspects of the game?
Why does anyone care what the radar dot is? It's useless anyway. Example: incoming bombers at 15K going 280 mph will first show as a dot 12.5 miles out and will have dropped on the field a mere 2.7 minutes later. A fighter with a sustained climb rate of 3500 fpm will have reached an alt of only 9.5K in that 2.7 minutes. It is physically impossible with AH's unrealistically short radar ranges to scramble and intercept bombers.
No that is not what I was hoping for or intending. There are two aspects of the game that I like the most: "flying" level bombers and "hunting" level bombers. On the hunting side, I do like setting up to defend what I feel to be juicy, high value bomber targets and attempt to intercept BEFORE they get to that target. At the risk of sounding like an "instant action COD fanboy", however, I am only one player with a scarce amount of time and energy attempting to defend a high number of potential targets over a vast landscape. I thought this would be beneficial not so to defend the very field that bomber is within 12 miles of whacking, but to determine if there is possibly a more distant target (such as strats) on the bomber pilot's mind. As it is now, best case scenario is that I'm in the tower and I wait for that contact to close 12miles within site of the field in order to observe altitutde, vector, and type data to plan accordingly. If the target is pretty immediate, then I'll likely be chasing it home - but if it passes by the field to a target beyond, then there is a chance I could intercept before a drop. I'm trying to cut down on the time wasted trying to figure out if an enemy contact is a single set of buffs or simply a heavy jug intending to pork a frontline field. The main positive I see in this plan is when an interceptor is already in the air and torn between several enemy contacts lurking around nearby targets. You are not able to both fly and observe from a field and a friendly eye to report for you is not always available.
Dar is not always literally "RADAR" in this game. A huge amount of intel on inbound planes was gathered and quickly passed to central command. This is a hard fact not just my opinion. My Mom for instance worked as a spotter during WWII. They had towers setup in a grid pattern for this. She showed me how they were trained to identify and report differing plane types.
+1 for the idea.
Yes! I almost tacked on this perspective to my original wish, but held off and kept to the technical side of radar since that is the actual field object we have in game. I always thought the dar rings we have are simply visual representations for the pilot's benefit illustrating the data the controllers would be feeding to them. In addition to what was detected by radar, observation posts would also transmit visual sightings of numbers, altitude, vector, and plane types ultimately to the fighters in the air. My wish is to simply add to that visual representation by differentiating between "formation capable planes" and "non-formation capable planes" within an active dar ring.
Dang I'm sleepy. You guys give me a headache. Goodnight <S>
