Then go ahead and show me your patience by finding a plane, hidden under trees so that the icon won't show, in a 500 square mile area.
The last guy I found that way almost two weeks ago, parked his plane in rugged terrain many miles away from a factory, in a clutter of trees. Several of us tried to find out what made the factory flash for a long time, as this constant flashing opened a venue for undetected NOE attacks. Vehicles could be ruled out at that time. He could have been anywhere.
Even when I finally resorted to the film method, it took me an additional half an hour to finally locate that guy in the game because of his distance to the factory and the terrain he was in. At that point he already had won, tying up something like 3 manhours or more of enemy resources.
Yeah, we of little patience, using cheap ways to counter those noble afk warriors...
Now this particular instance I can understand. This is the other end of the gamey remark I made earlier and I am not apposed to some kind of middle ground. Maybe some sort of AFK timer so after X time without moving your icon starts to show as if some local had spotted you. Though this does have issues, if you set the time to low then times like I had the other day with another guy in LVT's when the base take had gone south, there was a chance to still snag the base and it was great fun running from one group of trees to another and shutting down, firing at town and then going silent as the cons flew over to attack the base next door. or try to find out why a building just exploded. They did eventually spot me but there were times when I had to sit still and not fire for quite a while.
With a goon waiting for the field and town to be prepped I can see this "You have been spotted timer" being even more problematic as you don't usually move at all while you wait and there have been times I've waited a long time indeed for conditions to be right and it's worse now with low #'s, just trying to get the few players involved in taking a base to do the things necessary can take a bit of time.
So thinking about it and making use of Lyrics justifications. How about Hitech add a few photo recon variants and a film lab on base tied to these planes like ord is to bombers. You take your recon plane up, make your pass or passes in your camera position like buffs have to do in the bomb sight and go land. If X player is spotted in a frame when the film is "reviewed on successful landing", his Icon is then visible to your country on the map as a last known position marker. Stationary red plane or tank or for that matter CV marker that will stay until either player is killed, bails or a new photo is successfully submitted to base.
I think this might be a good compromise between the retarded AFK warrior (I view this tactic as gamey as well) and the instant I know where you are film viewer tactic. It will take a lil time to take the photos and get back down with them safely for submission and if the other team is serious about protecting the location of their forces then they will take out the photo shed, at least on the base they are trying to take. This however does not stop one from taking a recon plane from any other base that is operational, just like bombers or GV's. This recon plane could also be instrumental in base attacks when trying to locate those pesky last few GV defenders, though obviously not in all situations if base distance is to far to get your pic and land in a reasonable time, your recon might be to late to do any good but that would be much like real life ehh
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Anyway just this mornings thoughts on the subject and the more I think about it the more I would love to take out my beautiful AR-234's on a recon flight. So many times I find it as much fun helping my chosen country with spotting for guys in the storch and really getting no other reward, as it is to get kills. Granted the photo recon option might not be for everyone but everyone would have the option. Maybe a small bomber perk reward could be given upon successful delivery of film with an enemy location. The more enemy spotted the more perk? I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas to try and address the problem from both GV'r who really enjoys the cat and mouse game that AH3 provides, and country defender, destroyer of all gamey AFK warriors.
I hope this idea meets both sides somewhere in the middle. Besides it's always nice to have things added to this wonderful game. So please don't burn me guys I'm trying to figure this out from both sides.
<S> all please discuss.