What happened to missions?

[Zener]

I distinctly remember one time in AH2 I was coming back from a flight up into the Zoneysphere hunting some bombers.  As I was RTB, I started descending out over the water and about 15K or so I spotted several formations of bombers and a group of dots low on the water.  So, I called it out on country channel... "NOE raid on XX AF coming from (whatever the direction was)."  A bunch of folks upped at that field and were starting to engage when I finally got down low enough to come in from behind and sprayed a few bullets into their goons.  For the rest of the night all I got was PM after PM about having a shade account, cheating, etc. because their mission got busted.  All it was was simply the power of the eyeball and them not ever looking up to notice I was up there.  Player experience has to count for something when it comes to predicting where an attack might come or what a giant, moving darbar represents.

What I've observed as far as lack of missions go is that there is often little or no warning.  It's rare to see a text that says, "Hey, I'm going to put up a mission in about ten minutes, takeoff about 5 or so min after that."  Instead, I see "Mission UP... JOIN!"  But there aren't a lot of folks on the ground or ready to land at that moment, so not many join.  Instead of trying it again with some notice, the mission poster gets upset over lack of participation and simply stops trying.  Well, sorry I didn't just bail after getting my bombers to 20K at long last, but be reasonable.  Not everyone is sitting in a tower waiting for a mission.  Give people some heads up and I think the chances of a good sized mission will increase.

 

[Zener]

I will be tracking you guys for 30 minutes, trying to figure out where you are going, getting in a position to intercept and then I will see another friendly doing the same, maybe from a different base and angle, roll my mouse over the player and inevitably, "Snailman" comes up.  Then the race is on because that bastage steals my kills!

...and will become a Bishop this weekend.

Seems to me the only fair thing is for Snailman to come escort us this weekend and now you'll be in an environment where any stolen kills won't be yours.  He might even use his Zener bullets on you.  They are easily identified... they go Tink, Tink, Tink BOOOM!!

[Zoney]

Seems to me the only fair thing is for Snailman to come escort us this weekend and now you'll be in an environment where any stolen kills won't be yours.  He might even use his Zener bullets on you.  They are easily identified... they go Tink, Tink, Tink BOOOM!!

Snailman defending..................I'm not sure you can do much better than that.  I think the best bomber defenders are those that attack them often.  You learn what it takes to keep the aggressor out of the area that he can make passes.

I used to fly buffs a lot, in the Zoneysphere and learned from being attacked and killed which angles were the hardest to defend from.  Those buff runs taught me at least as much as actually attacking buffs with interceptors.

[Chilli]

{snip}  Now, sometimes when there are multiple bogies, you do see excellent engagements when you have multiple contacts and you work together with 6 calls, coordination of planes, and other collaborative style gameplay tactics. That is what I think most of want to see happen.  + 100 Hammer meet Nail Head

It really doesn't take a server full of combatants to have a ball (I prefer furball). 
I know a bunch that will leave an attacking CV standing just so such gameplay is extended. 
  <<  More of those and I would hope more of these >>    would soon follow.