I find myself empathising with most people in here. I am on the middle ground. I don't
have to have "instant action", 2K off the deck. Those long climbs provide the opportunity to discuss with squadmates the plan for the current sortie, for example. But I can see that some people would not want that. But at the other end of the spectrum, we have scenarios. I've been involved with WW2 sims for 5 years now, and have flown only about 3 scenarios. And the reason? I find them absolutely mindnumbingly fücking boring - to paraphrase a certain retired BA/BCal DC10 captain, talking about the job he left. I guess Mr. Toad gets all the cruise climb he wants in real life.
Because of the chasm that exists between
"short hop climbs to 2K, instant action, bag a few kills and auger" sorties, and the
"super realistic spend 1½ hours driving to a target to drop 2 bombs and then read a boring AAR about it the next day" scenarios, I tend to seek out a greater degree of realism, but within the MA. Not for me the Lala7 wonderplane, or the inertia defying N1K. I prefer to fly midwar planes and imagine how they might have been deployed in WW2 based on what accounts I have read.
Last night, I was with about 10 guys defending a Bish CV. Only one plane for that job - the F4U-1C. Got 17 kills in three sorties - many of those being low B17/LANC/ju88, and other suicide dweebs. Miraculously, I landed all three sorties. But that is NOT the kind of "action" I want!
Most of the cons inbound were suiciders, upping, re-upping over and over again. It just comes down to a numbers game - as boring as a 2 hour scenario. Finally,
five P47s came in to bomb the CV. Only one got eggs on target. Three got acked and augered, one was shot by one of my guys, and one escaped with a smoking engine. WTF! The stupidest, idiotic sortie I ever did see. I had O'Club business to attend to, so logged off.
People are condemnatory of Pizza/Trinity, but I think they must have short attention spans. I have no trouble finding what I want. Excuse the crowing, but I think it's important to provide evidence with one's assertions. Only 3 or 4 of these were vulches - of guys who tried to re-up. The rest were team efforts, but one was an excellent 1v1 with a P51.
I will be quick to add that I am no hotshot. I just know my own limitations (what limitations? lol) and those of the plane.
Mr. Toad said
Closer fields don't hurt the climbers and the help the others.
The problem with close fields is that they provide a haven for LA7 opportunist vulchers. Cripes, there's enough material on this board about it.
And a plane like a P47 is lumbering at low alt. You have to get it to 12K amsl to get the best out of it. What chance do I have to do that, if there are LA7s taking off only 5 minutes away? Limited, and that's why I prefer Pizza and Trinity.
I can see that there is some mileage in Lazs's idea to have an arena split into late and early war, with a mountain range separating the two areas. But if we're going to have an impermeable wall between the two groups, we might as well have two MA. And if the wall is
not impermeable, I guarantee that we'd have late war planes creeping round the corner to prey on the early war planes. They tried a similar scheme in WB about two years ago (Generations) and that's exactly what happened.
