Karnak,
I get more ticked off at the people who ditch perfectly good aircraft when you fly near them. I'm not going to accuse anyone of doing it, I wouldn't even know who it was since I never get a kill message to know who it was. I've had it happen more times than I can count whether it be a goonie that sees me coming, a fighter that realizes he's in trouble, or a bomber that bombs the base and then runs for the ground so as not to get killed or to be able to grab a fighter faster to come back. I think that is one of the things that really sucks and is rather low. Sure, I've seen the smoking pole that you decapitated land on the ground in what could only be a act of god, but more often I've seen people ditching for silly reasons in the middle of combat.
For all the "Chute Killers Suck" posts, it's been pretty rare for me to get chute killed. It's happened, but whatever. I don't do it, only by accident or charity (the 20K ripcord pull). You get the kill when someone bails since you get the kill for the aircraft, not the pilot. Just make the ditch thing the same, leave the wreck on the ground for a timeperiod to ensure that it wasn't a cheapo ditch or a total fluke. If you've got buddies to protect you for that instant, then you get away scot free, if you are away from the action you'll have no problems, if you ditch in the middle of combat or out of an act of god, well, you may not steal the kill from someone who forced you down.
I'm sorry Karnak but when someone ditches to save their butt, that's fine, but when you ditch you'd be risking the fact that you could get strafed while on the ground before you could get away. I couldn't imagine that getting unstrapped and out of a 109 would be something that would happen 1 millisecond after you stopped. I'm not sure the 3km thing is totally fair as they'd most probably grant the kill the same way an Ack kill gets given. Of all fairness to HT and group, what other way would there realistically be to do it without some silly scoring. This way whomever forced the ditch would most likely have a chance to follow it up for the kill.
but then again, that's just my opinion and I rarely have the opportunity to ditch. Seems I have too many missing critical aircraft components to think of ditching most of the time. I'm waiting for the aircraft damage list to include parachute bail out and have nothing happen when you pull the cord...
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Soda
The Wrecking Crew