Despite placing myself at an enormous disadvantage by doing so, I still persist in doing what I said, and turning off icons and refusing to use the map inflight. It completely changes the way you play the game.
Take the flight I just had in the CT before loggin off a few minutes ago as an example. I took off from a British airfield in a Spitfire Mk-I. I flew along the coast line to make visual navigation a little easier. Once clear of a peninsula that I had marked on the map I turned NE to patrol over a base in SE England that the Germans had captured.
I saw a speck in the sky far away and turned to fly towards it. He turned sharply towards me as well, so I assumed that he must be enemy and had positively identified me at that point. I jinked right to avoid the HO pass then laid into a hard left hand turn to try to end up on his tail as he blew through the merge. Tracers shot past and as he zipped past on my left side, I confirmed that it was a Bf-109. I lost sight of him against the ground clutter during the turn as he went behind me, then regained sight as he climbed away at high speed to set up for another pass. Trying to maintain SA, I was desparately looking in all directions to prevent being bounced by any wingman he might have. I noticed another con rapidly approaching from hi alt. Soon I was desparately fighting for my life against 2 elusive enemies, a 109 and a 110. I spotted a flitting shape passing under me to the left, rolled in on it, only to realize that it was a friendly Spitfire (identified by the elliptical wings) just before I was about to open fire. I pulled up sharply just in time to foil a firing pass by the 110. Seconds later the other Spitfire took a snapshot against the 110 drawing white vapor from one of its engines. This made the 110 easy to track now and I pulled hi then rolled off the top to dive back down on the German. He turned back for one more ho pass, but I went into a left hand chandelle, dropping neatly onto his hi 6. I continued diving to get clear of the arc of his rear gun. He yanked into a left hand turn to try to keep sight on me with his gunner but I easily underran his turn and stayed low then pulled into his lo 6 trail. At a range that I estimate to have been around 300 yards I opened fire with my 8 machine guns. A 3 second burst fireballed the 110. Now I yanked sharply into a turn to make sure nobody was behind me. The tension and adrenaline were far beyond anything I have had in the MA except when flying perk planes. Now I was hopelessly lost due to all the manouvering from the dogfight. I headed South to find the coast. Spotting a radar station that I assumed to be a friendly one from the map, I turned to set a new heading using that as fix, but tracers rising towards me told me that I had made a mistake. Rapidly manouvering through the curtain of fire rising towards me, I went south again, navigating using the coastline to find my home field. Finally I spotted home, and entered the pattern for the break and landed safely.
That mission would be nothing remarkable in the MA where I routinely have missions where I shoot down 2-5 aircraft. Flying handicapped like this puts a whole new outlook on the mission.
Just surviving takes 100% concentration, much less actually getting kills. When you do get a kill though it is extremely rewarding. Recently in the CT during the Sicily setup, I got 8 kills in one mission with icons on and using the map. It was cool, but nowhere near as much fun or as rewarding as that one 110 kill was with the icons off.
You feel really paranoid, like somebody is sneaking up on you all the time. Specks in the distance get the pulse racing, since you cant tell if they are friendly or enemy until they get extremely close.
Even just flying around is an exercise for the brain since you have to constantly be trying to keep track of your position so you dont get lost. I dont use autopilot either so doing the math for navigation can get tricky as well, if I am using dead reckoning instead of visual, since looking away for too long can mean getting off course or even running into something. Navigating and flying no autopilot all the time solves the problem of boredom to and from the target area.
Flying like this isnt for everybody, and personally I dont care if I am the only one that does. And of course there are still days where I dont want to go to all the effort and just go and up a P-51b in the MA, but my favorite way to play AH is hard core, CT, icons/map/autopilot/autofuelswitch/autotrim off.
The point of this lengthy post is to say that yes there are some people that will do this even though it puts them at a disadvantage, and to try to point out how much fun flying this way can be. Of course if there were an arena where all icons were off, that is where you would find me, but since I suspect that such a place would have even worse attendance than the CT, I dont anticipate such a setup any time soon.
I think everybody should play the game in the way that is the most fun for them, and I appreciate the versatility of a game that allows me to play the way I like it, while simultanously somebody else plays in a completely different manner that they choose.
