Here's several instances that have convinced me that the method of attributing kills is seriously in need of attention.
Last evening I fly to a nearby enemy field and spot a B-17 making a landing approach. I notice that he is trailing white smoke from one engine. I swoop down and attack about 20 degrees off of head-on. The Buff's wing comes off and he crashes about a half mile from the runway. I get an assist.
Later, my squad is attacking another field, I catch a SpitV at the top of his loop, apparently undamaged, and explode him with 20mm fire. I get an assist.
Still later, I attack an La-7, showing no signs of damage, my cannons shoot off his left wing. I get an assist.
Finally, I spot a Dora trailing coolant, as he lines up to land. His engine is still running. Just as he touches down, I explode the 190 with 20mm, while dodging ack. I get an assist.
What's wrong with these examples? In two cases, had I not killed the aircraft, they would have landed successfully, with no one getting a kill credit. In the other two examples, I killed fighters that displayed no visible damage, and were fully capable of destroying any aircraft on which they could bring their guns to bear.
In each case, it is obvious that they had taken some hits along the way. However, nothing even close to fatal.
In the real world, kills would credited to the pilot who actually shot down the enemy, not to someone who merely pinged him at some earlier point.
This current system of assigning kill credit is fundamentally flawed. Kills should be credited to the pilot who makes the enemy aircraft unflyable, period. Whatever happened prior to that is not as important as the final destruction of the enemy. Assigning kills based upon who did the most damage is illogical. Why? Because that aircraft can still drop its bombs, or otherwise kill friendlies until it is actually destroyed.
HTC really needs to address this issue, as it causes a great deal of aggrevation to those who work their butts off, risking being shot down, only to find they receive nothing more than a useless assist. It's especially annoying when it's obvious that the enemy would have landed safely but for the last minute intervention.
Let's have a common-sense kill credit system, that assigns kills based entirely upon who made the enemy aircraft unflyable. Anyone scoring hits prior to that should get an assist. Anyone scoring hits after, gets nothing (being kill stealing worms anyway).
Can anyone make a decent argument why this should not be the case? Don't offer the argument that "you get as many as you lose", so it all evens out. All that does is prove my point that the system is flawed. It should never be a case of luck or averages. It should depend entirely upon what you did or didn't do, nothing else.
Proximity kills: Dumb. If you don't kill it, you should not get credit. If you die via AI ack, no one should get credit, just limit it to a death, just as if you crashed on your home field.
My regards,
Widewing
