somehow the nits had succeeded in discretely steaming TG20 west of the Rook's main island. As it was heading NW through sector 5,7 NathBDP and Ripsnort organized a strike mission on the HQ, involving just about every piece of blue steel imaginable (Hawgs with 75 fuel and bombs, F6Fs with DTs for cover and a TBM as an extra target). As we approached the launch time, the carrier was in sector 5,7 7. Two pilots, hoping to beat the FPS rush, tried to take off early -- the first one four minutes before the scheduled launch time. They spawned on the deck, and after repeated admonitions on channel 2 we got them back in the tower. In each case, when they spawned, the sector counter in 5,7 revealed their presence.
At the appointed time, some of the planes launched, and the friendly sector counter in 5,7 maxed out.
Some launched later -- I don't know whether automatically or not. I had to manually launch my bird.
After takeoff, we headed NE in a massive stream to the HQ. I was behind the first group but fairly close to the front. We climbed to 10,000 feet and levelled off for the run into the HQ.
Resistance was light and disorganized, but it was sufficient to harass our pilots and distract them. The escorts turned back to go after the F4U that dived into the middle of the stream; then a stream of 109 G-10s made passes at just about everybody. All of these planes started above the formation.
I put my bombs on target, then stayed over the target area to provide CAP. I strafed the HQ some more, and destroyed another building in the target area. I tangled with some 109s. Then, with no ammo in the box, I headed back to the CV with minimal fuel. I came in steep, hit hard, caught the last wire, and the bird screamed to a stop. 2 seconds later the engine died from fuel exhaustion.
The HQ was levelled, and secondary strikes were conducted in the area.
I'm afraid this story does not have a happy ending. Numerous persons accused us as a whole of cheating by flying off the map, or by running the carrier off the map. Some took it quite personally.
Let me clarify the issue at hand:
Outside of the sectors on the map, the sector counters do not work; friendly units show up as dots, as do enemy units if they're within radar range. Since enemy units produce no sector counter, flying off the map is rightly considered cheating (or more accurately, "gaming the game"). It uses a known shortcoming of the system to procure an artificial advantage.
To the best of my knowledge, at no time were any units involved in this raid off the map; heck, there wasn't any need to be anyway: we had so many people coming in so fast, nobody could have organized an effective defense. In any case, we only climbed to 10,000 feet. The advantage of going off map would be to reach a stratospheric altitude before running in on the HQ. But even this advantage is of little use to dive bombers. If we wanted to cheat, we'd have taken the CV off the map, gotten TBMs, climbed to 35,000 feet and level bombed you guys.
The most cogent argument I've heard is that the fringe of the map, which runs through the western part of sectors 5,X, is "off map", and sector counters do not work there.
Well, they do work there. Here's a section of a screenshot of 5,7 I took right after I trapped.
4 dots are off the fringe; if only these were registered by the counter, it'd be only two blocks long. Instead it's maxed out as it's indicating the dots on the fringe as well (and the sub-500 traffic arriving and departing the CV).
Sorry, the fringe does not impair functionality of the map.
