I miss being able to log in and find a furball within 5-10 minutes flying time, and being able to dive in and fight a bit before dying. Lately it seems like I take off, spend 10-15 minutes finding a fight, and even though due to the field distances I'm at 20k by the time I find any enemies, the fight is a bunch of c-hogs and nik1's on the deck and more c-hogs up at 30k.
Whichever group I go after, and whether I'm alone or in a group of squealing Pigs, if I don't play the time/alt game or gangbang the one poor sucker who isn't flying a late war ubercannon plane, I end up dying from one or two pings from some 400+ kt chog or whatever exceedingly brave soul decided to risk diving 10k for a chance to HO me.
I have completely given up on field capture because I am unable to figure out how to beat the ostwind. I got pinged at d1.8 (my FE range, not his) by a flakpanzer while flying 90 degrees away from it, and my P-47 was instantly shredded. I tried to strafe down one of the small type acks at a field (it was the only one up), and even though I opened fire while still far far outside range (I started firing before the ack did), the ack managed to put it's first and only dozen rounds straight through my forehead.
I ignore the ground war entirely, but can't seem to find many decent furballs to fight in. The most fun I've had in AH since the con was a furball between ummm 14 and 15 if I recall correctly, two of the closest fields in the arena. At it's height, there were 15 of each side mixing it up in pure A/A combat, from the deck up to maybe 15k. Fun fun fun! Killed a little, died a little, and spent 2 hours replaning as quick as I could and wepping back to the furball. Drag and bag tactics suddenly worked again. A D-Hog could beat a spit because the spit had a dozen other planes grabbing it's attention. I haven't done that since I flew WB. Sadly, I logged on tonight and the closest thing I could find was taking a P-47 up to 35k and schwacking bombers then running from the occasional P-51 that had climbed to 40k. something like 3 hours and 8 sorties, 9 kills. That's pathetic.
Anyone else remember the last symmetrical WB terrain? The one that drew around 400 players a night into two arenas? It was the last one before the 3D version, and it had 4 close fields right in the center. I really really miss that terrain. Even a spit couldn't climb much over 15k between two of those fields, and the furballs were epic. I'd spend hours furballing in there, and apparently lots of other people enjoyed it too 'cause I never ran out of people to shoot at even though there were 4 countries.
The good old days are gone, and they probably weren't as good as I remember them. I AM sure however that I couldn't climb to 25k between fields, and the battles were much more continuous and easy to find. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm not quitting either.
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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!
