Well, it seems to have been well received, if the BBS is anything to go by. (It isn’t, by the way, as only a minority of subscribers read the BBS, and fewer still post to it)
The first thing I notice is that there’s not much happening at 10-15K. Most of the “action” that I saw occurred down in the weeds. I had decided to make this tour a 109G6 tour, but I’ll have to see how it goes in light of this observation.
I fly Rook these days, and yesterday picked a front line field which happened to be A21. It’s a 10K field, so after taking off I was climbing gently to 15K and heading to A2. Got there in very quick time – no need to have brought that drop tank on my G6. But what did I see? Looked pretty much like a vulchfest to me – rooks vulching whoever they were vulching – (I can’t read those little icon things. Wish we could have three different colours...)
At the airfield, it was wall to wall enemy LA7s – all on the deck. At the town, it was a conveyor belt of LA7s who had managed to get up, and a conveyor belt of Rook goons trying to drop troops, and yet the town was still half up! I got about five LA7s, but clearly this was useless – they were simply re-upping to go goon hunting again. There was no
objective in sight with my G6. So for the next sortie, I took a fully laden P47D30. Tried to kill the VH (missed
) and then used the remaining ord to finish the town and the FLAK that was defending it. More goons were arriving, and even as one got shot, another was dropping troops. I had to leave just then, but tried to RTB to land. I knew I couldn’t make it because I was being chased down by two LA7s. Seems like the friendlies had all been killed, or augered – probably the latter, knowing that a mouse click would give them a brand new plane with a 9K alt advantage, and the target was only 5 mins away. Gawd, I was afraid of that...
I think back to when the pizza map was new. At first glance it looked ridiculous, still does – a mass of airfields and V-bases, most of which will never be in use at any one time because the fighting is always going to take place between front line fields. At least there were the V bases around the edge – good fun to be had. And now I’m looking at Fester’s map, and what I see is... a mass of airfields and V-bases, most of which will never be in use at any one time because the fighting is always going to take place between front line fields.
What is the point of having so many bases? At any time, only about 5-10% of them will be in use. The strat targets are tucked away so far back that they might as well not exist, which is of course what the furballers want. I looked at where A21 is (rook front line at that time), and if the knits/bish were to mount an attack on Rook HQ, the route would take them to within about 10 miles of around 15-20 bases!!! Plenty of time for bardar to give that game away, and by the time they got to HQ, the Me163s would be waiting.
I enjoyed the time I spent online last night, but this map is clearly furballcentric. If that’s what people want, so be it. (But please refer to the purple text in my sig.)
So then I turned my attention to what people want out of a map. Various people (including Fester himself) were RTBing with bucketloads of kills – does that equate to quality gameplay? Well, it boosts the scores, but is there any real sense of achievement or purpose? The weed-wackers are proud of the fact that they don’t exceed 6K, and have clamoured for the fields to be closer together, so it seems reasonable that their wish was to get to the enemy field as quickly as possible. If they are then getting tons of kills at 6K, it follows that the enemy is at or below 6K, and given that the enemy won’t be far from home base, it follows that a lot of kills they’re seeing are vulches. This is borne out by guys getting a high k/h. Once all the cons are dead, that ought to be an end to it. But the fact that the slaughter continues in order for them to
get that high k/h smacks of re-upped cons, and vulching.
But vulching is popular. No-one will admit to it on the BBS, but you only have to observe. I have film of all my sorties (oops, I said the F-word), and will review these later. (Can’t post them because I’m on a temporary ISP till Monday – no FTP host) The only kills I saw at 10K or higher were the Spit I nobbled (bish attacking knit) and a 1v1 I had with a P51. As
always, the planes I’m killing the most are the usual dweeb subset – LA7/Spit ix/P51/Yak-9U
... So, get together in a gaggle, and what you have here is a vulcher’s paradise. 
But why so many fields? Why not have a thinner layer of fields between the 3-way front line and the HQ or other strat targets? That way, buffs would stand a chance of having some meaning in this game, other than being used for unrealistic 500’ dive-bombing of CVs. There would surely be some good combat arising out of defence of those strat targets. It might even make the game interesting!
I’m not a natural map whiner, and I will enjoy my time on this map once I adapt to it, but is it anything more than a glorified DA?
But Fester for having the cajones (or whatever that word is that the Yanks use) for producing this map instead of just whining about the existing maps.
Flame away, guys, flame away... and don’t forget to read that purple sig. text.
