Tell me again why....

[AKWarp]

It used to be that way, then the carbombing and ack-star ground buff base defense stuff started and it just got to the point of sheer stupidity.  

You holler about realism, but there has to be some sort of game play compromises if for no other reason than you never really die in the game.  If it is like TOD and you only have one life until next month, things might be a bit different, but with what amounts to unlimited lives, car bombing and ground based buff defenses are what's absurd.

I guess the bottom line is: we've been there, done that and it sucked...for everyone.

[BenDover]

Originally posted by WhiteHawk
Is it unrealistic?
  If there were bombers taking off from an airfiled and being
assaulted by nme planes would the gunners shoot?

You speak of realism, how often in the war did bombers up when they knew enemy fighters were lerking about over the field?


And what's pei on about? "Getting away to Argentina with as many sheep as possible"


And car-bombing was fun, hehe

[WhiteHawk]

BenDover..just raising a question.  I can see some good
points against bombers gunners activated during takeoff,
but, they just arent good enuff to justify disabling guns, in any
event.
  If the guns afre disabled, the plane shouldnt take damage until they are enabled.  it is not fair to be argue, 'You shouldnt be on
a runway in a buff with nme around therefore, disable the guns'
  That makes no sense at all.

[DmdBT]

What was that old trick in AW... bust fuel at a forward field in a 'vader then fly low towards the resupply field, pop the first c47, kill the ack at the resupply field, land, and then sit there and vultch the constantly respawning c47's until someone got wise to what you were doing and upped the field in the next sector or you were out of ammo.

Bring the AI controlled C47 resupply runs to AH!

[bfreek]

that was hella fun in Warbirds to let Otto gun and just fly easy circles ....   playing Puff the Dragon.  LOL.


you fire from a buff at 1.7k and lead enuf you can knock most attacking fighter planes out in Aces easily.

[zipity]

Originally posted by WhiteHawk
Good thinkin..1 bomb would wipe out the whole bunch.
 

I managed to do that one time back when we had laser guided bomb drops.  I was about to hit a hanger and noticed a squad of b-17s lining up at the end of then runway.  I shifted my line a bit and droped a salvo on the squad.  I killed about 14 of them and that was before formations.

Originally posted by BenDover
You speak of realism, how often in the war did bombers up when they knew enemy fighters were lerking about over the field?

Never happened all the bombers were airborne by the time the cons arrived over the field.  The bombers would take off when the cons were about 12 miles out causing the airfield to start flashing.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by zipity
I managed to do that one time back when we had laser guided bomb drops.  I was about to hit a hanger and noticed a squad of b-17s lining up at the end of then runway.  I shifted my line a bit and droped a salvo on the squad.  I killed about 14 of them and that was before formations.

It's always entertaining when you can vulch people from 10,000' or higher... I'll never forget the time back in the old DOS Air Warrior when I was making a B-17 run on field 87 (one of the capturable fields) at 25,000 feet, and had unloaded my bombload on the runway (for those who weren't around back then, the way you closed a field was to drop 8 [later 10, then 12] bombs on the runway), and saw the first bomb hit, then got a huge string of 'A kill has been recorded' messages pop up in the radio buffer. Apparently some B-land squad had upped onto 87 to take off en masse just before my bombs hit, and I wiped out the entire squadron -- and then closed the field so they couldn't take off again. My escorts and I damn near died laughing when we figured out what had happened.

It's a lot rarer to do that now, with there being no purpose in AH behind bombing a runway, but I have gotten two people who were upping fighters from hangars when I hit the hangar they were launching from.

[MRPLUTO]

AKWarp, it couldn't be said better.  Thanks

MRPLUTO  VMF-323 ~Death Rattlers~ MAG-33

[WhiteHawk]

Originally posted by AKWarp
It used to be that way, then the carbombing and ack-star ground buff base defense stuff started and it just got to the point of sheer stupidity.  

You holler about realism, but there has to be some sort of game play compromises if for no other reason than you never really die in the game.  If it is like TOD and you only have one life until next month, things might be a bit different, but with what amounts to unlimited lives, car bombing and ground based buff defenses are what's absurd.

I guess the bottom line is: we've been there, done that and it sucked...for everyone.

Gee AKWarp.  Did anybody ever think of killing the bomber hangars before attempting to capture a base or was it just
easier to lobby HTC to put this rediculous 'disable guns' rule
into effect?
  Dear HTC,  base capture is far to easy.  The maps grow huge
because of this fact.  Im not sure why the airfields are not
required to be damaged at all in order to caputure a base.
  The other day, I took a b17 form deep into injun country,
successfully bombed the airbase from 15k, and fought my way
back to friendly turf, brilliantly.  I guided my last
remaining buff, (rudderless, 2 engines out, and 2 smoking,
missing right aierlon and flap and other assorted carnage
including at least 3 dead crew) back to base and was
approaching the runway when i notice the crazed suicide
freak lurking just out of range until I touched down.  here he comes, fw190, flying headlong into the ack, full speed ahead,
guns a blazing.  I instinctively jump to my top turret, oooops.
  My guns are disabled, it should be the 190's guns who are disabled.  Luckily, the embicile missed and crashed and I got
another kill.  Hehehe, that makes 3 on this maroon this mission!
  This 'disable guns' as opposed to 'thouroughly kill airbase' thiing
has a flaw.  A small one on the surface, because of 1
traditional buff pilot angry at an attempted murder, but
if you claw a bit deeper, it snowballs into a mass of
simple airbase captures that leads to huge maps that
makes people sick that reuqires more special rules to remedy
and etc etc etc.
  Thank you for your time and goodnight

[Kweassa]

With all due respect WhiteH, if realism is what you want, then you should think about the situational aspect of 'realism' before the physical aspect.

 If an enemy fighter chases a crippled bomber home, and no friendlies meet it, or there are no acks to defend you, basically that buff sortie is at a 'failed to return' consequence.

 To make it short, if you are in a situation where you are exposed, that an enemy fighter will try and vulch you while your buff wheels touch the ground - it means for whatever various reasons, you have practically mismanaged that particular buff sortie, and probably just asking to be shot down.

 If there was any, any sort of cooperation at all, your friends nearby would've covered your landing.

 ...


 There's an even simpler solution to your problem, besides asking to go back to a miserable system where many people complained about it:

1; Ask your friends to escort you.
2; Ask friendly planes to cover your landing
3; Plan a better escape route.
4; Don't touch down at undefended fields.

 Either that, or limit the numbers of aircraft on an airfield. This 'bottomless pit' where unending numbers of buffs in formations just upping and upping and upping... soaking up the precious ammo of the vulchers, is probably the most 'unrealistic' thing of them all.

 I'm very sure HTC will NEVER go back to Ack-stars and carbombs.

[WhiteHawk]

Originally posted by Kweassa
I'm very sure HTC will NEVER go back to Ack-stars and carbombs.

Ok.  I'm not naive enuff to think that this thread is going to
change anything HTC does.
  1.  Carbombs have nuthing to do with guns enabled.
    I guess if somebody can answer me this question I would feel
better that AH isnt going the way of the suicide speed burnin jabo  man instead of fighter sweeps, CAPS, intercepts, escorts and bomber formations.
    When HTC was made aware of the ackstar problem, why didnt
they say "So kill the bomber hangars."  Why is it out of the
question to kill bomber hangars?  Why would HTC chose to
disable defensive armament with very short range, as opposed
to require the attackers to PREP THE DAMM AIRBASE BEFORE
you vulch??
  Who gets killed by the ackstars and what are they doing so
close to an active airfield?  Its every bit as dumb for an
airplane to be buzzing an operating airfield as it is for a bomber to try to take off from a capped airbase!?!?  The 'disable guns until alt>0 '  answer just astounds me.  it really does.  
 Q.  Why is it better to disable guns until alt>0 as
      opposed to destroy nme airbase as much as necessary
      to capture it?
      I realize the realism thing is just not possible in some
   cases, but here it seems to me that this is a 'turn the radio
  up so i cant hear the engine knocking' cop out.
Oh well, theres my 15 bucks worth:)  
 Thnx for keeping this debate civilized.
 

[BenDover]

You
Are
Gay



Just thought I'd make it a little un-civilized;)

[WhiteHawk]

Hmmmm....BenDover calling someone gay eh?  Did your uncle
give you that callsign there farmboy?

[AKWarp]

Guns enabled on bombers on the ground have far more to do with OTHER things besides shooting at vulchers (although that does still factor in).

Buffs would often drive aorund on the ground shooting at everything they could.  You think an m16 has a buttload of .50 cals?  Try a formation of b17's taxiing toward your osti or panzer with their guns blazing....you'll understand the meaning of "lead enema".

Again, I refer to the unlimited lives in the game.  A buff formation appears on the ground with guns blazing, he dies, he immediately reups, and the viscious circle continues.

Take out bomber hangars you say?  Right, that happened too, but it's near impossible to do so with the whacked out bombing system we have now and 20, frame rate robbing buff formations all scattering about on the ground trying to be an ack-star BEFORE the buff hangars get taken out (don't forget, bases flash well in advance of you arriving to kill it).

Making maps larger was done to accomodate the double fold increase in player numbers that were crowding the smaller maps.   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.  The small maps now only last a day or two at best.  Most of them are nothing but a giant furball (but I guess that's ok for the furballers, huh?).

Spreading bases out and some of the terrain features create a challenge..it means the teams have to act as just that...a team...it takes strategy, although I've noticed a bad trend lately in poor team playing.  Not a big deal though, it's a game, if you have fun, that's what matters.    

The system we have now is by far better than any in the past...even if I think the new bombing system sucks...but that's ok, I simply don't do high alt bombing anymore.  External, rear view dive bombing in a b17 formation is much more exciting anyway.

Personally, I'm much more concerned with issues like rubber bullets, the whole issue surrounding the problems with GV's (I like fighting in GVs) and things that make the combat system awkward or frustrating in terms of consistency.  Now some of that stuff borders on absurdity.  Not having buff guns on the ground roll is a non-issue as far as I am concerned because of the past experiences in the game when things were different.
Again, we had it that way in the past and it sucked...for everyone.

See, not everyone sees your point the way you do or feels the same way about it.  HT makes certain changes based on the masses, not on what one or two of us think or want.  As much as we hate to admit it, realism can only go so far in this game.  Fact is, really, if it were as real as he probably has the ability to make it, a good majority of the folks in here couldn't even get a plane off the ground imuch less worry about gunning in a buff.

The system in place now is better than any in the past in terms of playability and what can or can't be done.  Issues with warping, rubber bullets, inconsistencies with damage, etc are things that I think HT should be looking at....but, that's my opinion.

[BenDover]

Farmboy?

And the name is an old joke, unlike you.