I've recently decided to try and get up in the virtual air more often and be part of the in game population and not part of the group sitting outside the game wishing the population was bigger, and find that to make this fun I have had to change my mindset about how I play the game.
Ever since I started flying the sky's of Aces High 23 or 24ish years ago..... Having trouble remembering when I started now lol. All I know is I'll be 49 this year and I was in my early 20's when I found AH ok?
Now back to the thought I was trying to convey.
Ever since my beginnings in Aces High, I have always been one to get enjoyment out of winning the war or at least cause severe damage to the opposing side to help enable my side to win the war. This becomes more of a problem when the population is low due to simply not having enough people online to take advantage of any grand tool shedding strategy and destruction I may visit upon my enemies. The larger strategic game has always been something that sets AH apart from other games along with having the room to paly this bigger game. How ever I pretty much stopped playing when the population go so low that, along with so many old squad mates being gone, it felt like what I liked to do didn't really matter any more when, all I could see was a furball here or there. While a furball can be fun, I find I get bored of just spinning around in the air and shooting or getting shot and it won't hold my interest long.
The other night though, I had a little light bulb go off in my head. Bish were fighting Knights while Rooks were on there way to taking the map. A few people were on country chat trying to get our fellow bish to change their area of operation and go hit Rooks to stop the win. Now granted this needed to happen so we wouldn't lose the war and that is important to me but I looked at the map and decided that the actual fun was indeed at the Knight base that we were attacking. They were putting up a good defense and so instead of uselessly hitting rook bases that wouldn't matter if I hit them with no friendly people on that front, I took my bombers over and started doing some test runs on the hangers (it's been a while) with good results and a bit of action along the way. After we took that base Bish started changing to the Rook side and I, along with my brother, thndrEGG (yes I am the one responsible for bringing that guy into the game)
proceeded to tool shed and dropped the FH's and VH in one pass, twice in a row enabling Bish to snag the base in short order.
I guess the main thought I'm trying to convey is with low population numbers, try not to worry so much about the total war and go to where the fight is. And I do mean fight because a buch of guys just attacking empty bases for quick captures is just kinda sad ok? I think this is totally counter intuitive for me and those like me that want to win the war but I think it is an important mind set change that some of us need to make, at least temporarily in order to still have fun and remain interested in the game, even if doing this is not really helping our side win the larger fight, while we try to get the population back up to more fun numbers where the larger war can be much more fun.
Now with this in mind I have thought back to the glory days when I was Bomber wing lead for the Birds Of Prey (BOPS) when, for a while I changed our wing name from the BOP Merlin's, to The Fun Police in honor of all those who came to the forum to complain that we were ruining all the good furballs by hanger banging so we could take the base. I will once again be Sporting the Golden sheriffs star of the Fun Police on my aircraft and invite the enemies of Bishland to try and stop me from banging your hangers! And don't worry folks. If I don't see an actual attempt by our country to take the base you are at I won't pester you if you are just having a good fight. However if we have people trying to get troops in all bets are off! <S>
P.S. If you shoot down or get shot by MrPickle, throw him a <S> please. That's my son and I just got him an account. I just realized that he is probably the same age I was when I started flying.. We getting old guys lol.
