Yesterday my patience for the 20k Pony squad ran a little thin. So I poked them a little on 200. They aren't bad people, this is not an attack on any person or persons. Yes everyone can play as they chose. But the ensuing discussion made it clear that some don't believe sportsmanship has a place in this game or what sportsmanship is. Some seem to believe the definition of sportsmanship is being polite on 200. But Sportsmanship lives in the way you play the game.
I know at times we try in this simulation to emulate the tactics of the war. It makes thing seem like a real simulation. In the real war packs of Mustangs would patrol the skies at 20-25K looking to clear a space for bombers or to engage fighters. Those fighters would be 25K Dora-9s or 109 G-14s and K4s. It was life and death. Few chances were taken and no one involved considered it fun. Running, not turn fighting and only BnZ-ing fighter that had lost there SA is how the vast majority of kills in the real war were obtained.
If you are in a pack of ponies trolling at 20K and diving on Yaks trying to turn fight Brewster's at 200mph at 5k you are not simulating the "tactics" of the war. You are inserting yourself in someone else's fun and ruining it. For many players ACM is the fun in this game. It's why they come to air combat sims. This first pass from high alt could be forgiven if you continued to stay engaged and entered the fray. But instead, if engaged, you run. 2-3 sectors at time. This "strategy" described as "smart" or "realistic" gameplay is nothing more than an unsportsmanlike attempt to deny a fellow player any chance of "out flying" you. It can only be used against players that are already engaged in ACM with other players and or players with slower plane...which is everyone if you fly a pony at from 20k. It succeed only in situations where this gameplay is parasitic.
I would like for a second for those of you that play this way, and those of you that defend it, to think what the game would be like if everyone played that way. Groups of fighters taking a 15 minutes to climb out to ensure they were higher than everyone. Every higher fighter group at equal numbers at equal alt you see, you turn and run away from. A sky full of posturing planes that never engage if the fight is fair, always avoiding, and if engaged everyone flees at top speed. There is no furball to get your easy BnZ kills from. There is no heavy slow F4U to BnZ because no one is prepping fields. The game would be so boring everyone would quit and there would be no game.
A game is played for the enjoyment of all players. If you aren't making the game fun for the opposition, if you aren't giving them a reasonable chance to out "fly you" and win, there will cease to be an opposition which is the end of the game. By definition your gameplay style is bad for the game because "never dying" is the wrong objective in a GAME. That's the objective in a real war. The objective in a game should be to win by learning to out fly, out shoot, and out bomb your opponents. If that was everyone objective gameplay would improve greatly.
No I'm not suggesting every fight is perfectly fair. Yes I know base taking objective call for vulching, ganging during a base assault. But don't let those scenarios be a the excuse for strategies purely committed to ganging, picking, and running. It just...lame. Dying isn't that terrible. I do it all the time.
Play hard, fight hard, engage the enemy! It's much more fun for everyone.
Vinkman
