Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: DrDea on December 31, 2003, 12:10:19 AM
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What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt
I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.
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AH has scores?
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Good post, actually. Short and sweet. Just like all my posts. :D;)
I've been in AH 2 years. I haven't learned much new stuff about ACM. I learned all I know (which is probably not that much - lol) in WB. But In AH, you have to know how to deal with all the gaminess that folks pull, and "game concessions" like those 800 yard LASER shots. Whenever I fly in the MA and find a 1-v-1, the other guy almost always goes for the HO in the first instance, and doesn't care about learning anything new when his next Hurr-2/N1K etc. is only a mouseclick away. If I avoid his HO, he'll flat turn behind me as I go vertical. But as I come over the top, this guy will have pulled the nose up and will be hanging there (so realistic) and will be spraying upwards. The vertical distance might be 800 yards, but some of those sprayed rounds find the target - me. :(
If you do comment on the fight afterwards (eg. Nice HO!), the other guy will get real huffy about it. Thence follows a Ch1 slanging match.
:confused: :(
From what I've read about WW2 combat, which is not as much as some, to get a shot on target at 800 yards was an extreme fluke. Gawd knows that AH has a plethora of concessions for gameplay, but I gain the impression (and it's only my POV) that the skill element has been dumbed down to allow novices to start getting kills from Day 1. Perish the thought that they'd actually have to learn something about ACM, other than point-and-click, HO etc.
The flat rate of $14.95 we all pay means that HTC needs to attract as many players as it can - and keep them. For some folks, having a learning curve whereby it takes a week or a month to get their first kill would be unacceptable. Heck, some people won't even fly 5 minutes to a fight without whining. All they care about is *that* moment, the moment they squeeze the trigger and see something go BOOM.
It is sad. Funked was so right when asked what he missed in AH. His answer was "$2/hour keeping all the tardz out". :lol Said in jest, but something I will remember until I hang up my virtual flying goggles.
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DrDrea that day ended when i came to AH:D
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Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.
CT has plenty of that :D
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anyone who flies that high is probly pretty skilless and seeing another con scares the crap outta her. She shoots in an effort to scare you off so that she can run away.
lazs
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Originally posted by lazs2
anyone who flies that high is probly pretty skilless and seeing another con scares the crap outta her.
What height did warplanes fly in WW2? I believe the BoB pilots were routinely at 15K. Guess they were just skilless.
Oh wait... I'm talking about WW2. Way off topic in this forum. Never mind - as you were.
:p
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I believe that in the BOB they fought only german planes... I believe that the ones who fought the most got to be the best too.
I don't think they were concerned with having fun.
lazs
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Originally posted by beet1e
From what I've read about WW2 combat, which is not as much as some, to get a shot on target at 800 yards was an extreme fluke.
Yes, this is a good point. I think the cause of this might be that individual bullets are not modeled, but tracers represent groups of bullets. I don't know if the game actually works this way, but if it did it would perhaps explain this effect. I.e. a random ping from one pixel is actually a large stream of bullets.
Except the radiator effect, as others have correctly pointed out a radiator is a very soft target anyway...one bullet or many.
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Each individual bullet is modeled.
It does not work they way you posted.
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Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.
Had that exact fight last night with TW9 !!!!
Started the merge at around 9K with no HO ... 2 Spit Vs'. Twisting, turning, diving, going vertical ... the briefest of snapshots that didn't really give either the kill shot ... the whole 9 yards.
Eventually the fight got down onto the deck (over the water) and it got slow. I was coming around on him, starting to get inside him, when I stalled the wing ... DOH ... had to straighten out ... game over.
The two of us were grinnin' from ear-to-ear.
Win or lose ... that is what AH is all about for me.
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Actually most of the fights I get in ARE like your description of "the good old days." When you can find the right people that is.
I find that the most fun is had when you are finding the same pilot or group of pilots mid-way between two fields and engaging them on "for S & G" basis only. You get shot down or they get shot down or both...whatever. It is almost like a mini DA within the main arena.
Nobody is going after acks or fuel tanks or the like. Just there for a fair(ish) fight. Heck i even remember calling "in" on channel 1.
These fights are actually quite easy to find and can last hours.
You just have to find the people with the right attitude to fight with and "the good old days" will be back. That is what it really comes down to, attitude. HTC can change the game a million ways and throw on any map, there is still the person who has the attitude that they are going out there to game the game (for lack of a better term) and take every advantage to get points or basically attempt to humiliate the other players and toss insults on channel 1 afterwards.
Good thing is the majority isnt like that. You are running into the *******es, go find the good guys.
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Originally posted by beet1e
like those 800 yard LASER shots
Never understand the comments of lazer gunnery beet. My gunnery here sucks. Yes I can ping up a con flying straight and level at 800 yards with 50's. But the gunnery here for me is very hard even after a couple of years. If I'm bustin 5% I'm doin ok.
You might find it interesting that after just finishing a VERY short free trial over the hill ( 60 guys on a 512 map ?? fogitabotit ) 2 years out of game, my gunnery was 11%. That is when I could find someone to shoot at...
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Nopoop, I'm no expert either - on the ballistics and dispersion theories. But AFAIK, wing guns on planes were positioned to give a convergence - something in the order of 250 yards(?). At that range, the rounds from the guns on both wings would come together (focus on target at convergence range) to create the maximum effect. Beyond that range, the two streams would have crossed and would be diverging. At longer ranges the rounds would be dispersing - ie. you would NOT be able to fire a concentrated laser beam of .50 cals at 800 or 1000 yards. AH allows you to choose your convergence for each weapon type. There was a whole bunch of material about this in the WB tutorial - worth a read for someone like me who knows nothing about guns. ;)
Oh yeah, it's LASER not LAZER - even if you're a Yank. It's an acronym for Light Amplification & Stimulated Emission of Radiation. (Did someone mention something about a b--w job? :D)
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I know this discussion has branched out a bit, but as an answer to the HO question.... I find that when I'm in a 'furball' and may have 3 or 4 enemies within distance to engage, and an enemy turns into me or puts me in a situation where I cannot avoid the HO pass, I always fire at him as he passes, and I'll tell you why.
Above anything else, I have no guarantee that he WON'T fire on me, so if I just fly by, and he fires, I just sit there and take it, then he is still flying while I'm floating down in a chute minus a few kills probably. I came to this decision a while back, and I have to say that I don't regret it. Now I don't go looking for HO shots, and I try to avoid that pass if I can, but if it comes down to it I will fire.
If I knew who the enemy was, that would make the story completly different, as if I knew the guy was a 'regular' or a veteran of sorts, I would go cold on the merge and maybe dogfight him depending on the situation. Maybe this gives you another perspective...
--Howitzer
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Correct me if I'm wrong here Beet.
Nose mounted guns with no convergence would only require taking distance into account when aiming out to longer ranges.
Convergence set at 400 yards for a Jug for example gives you options.
At 400 yards all bullets hit in one spot.
At 800 yards they will have crossed to the original position with dispersion of course. At straight and level it's very doable taking in to account bullet drop.
And don't forget net lag. The con putting bullets into you is closer on his FE. Depending he may be less than 500 yards on his FE.
I really don't see a problem with gunnery here. I can't hit squat and haven't been shot up by cons at 800 yards. So I'm a bad example.
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Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.
*sigh* I agree. I do get a fight like this ocassionally, but i miss those days:(
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Originally posted by nopoop
Correct me if I'm wrong here Beet.
Nose mounted guns with no convergence would only require taking distance into account when aiming out to longer ranges.
Ah, not quite. The rifling of the barrel can be varied, or the barrel of the gun can be designed so that there is a measure of random dispersion. I remember an army guy explaining how those belt fed floor mounted machine guns were designed to disperse the rounds. That would mean, for example, that at 100 yards, the gun would place rounds in an area about two feet in diameter. This guy was telling me how they had to modify the barrel of the gun to increase the radius of the target circle. Of course, as the range increased, the rounds would be so widely dispersed as not to inflict much damage on any particular part. Conversely, if real aircraft guns were like LASERs, the pilot's aim would become hypercritical to the point where it might be difficult to hit anything at all.
Think of bullet dispersion as the RL method of dumbing down the aiming process, and giving rookies the ability to spray and pray. :lol
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hehe you were'nt here in the days of the super C-hog, were ya
also, keep in mind that if you are seeing him at 800 yrds, he is seeing you as 4-500 yards
"things in the mirror are closer then they appear "
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As HT has said many time before, AH models dispersion and dispersion actually increases the chances of a hit. Think Shotgun pattern.
Now don't take this as a an endorsement or diatribe. There's a whole lot of things that go into getting shot down here besides a hit.
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Originally posted by Toad
As HT has said many time before, AH models dispersion and dispersion actually increases the chances of a hit.
Yes, but with the possible exception of a 30mm cannon round, it's going to take more than a hit to get a result. My interpretation of what I've read is that a balance needed to be struck when designing aircraft guns: If the guns were like lasers, aim would be critical. A pitch change of ½° could make the difference between a devastating hit and missing completely. So dispersion was built in to increase the target area which the rounds would strike - aim becomes not quite as critical. But as range increases, the rounds are dispersed over such a wide area that a hit is all you're likely to get. In AH, we have the dispersion which makes getting a hit more likely. But at 800 or 1000 yards the vast majority of rounds would miss the target completely. In AH it doesn't seem to make a difference to some planes. But in other games (eg. WB, IL2), you have to be much, much closer than 800 yards to get any result. An occasional plink at that range is plausible. Shearing off a guy's wing at that range is BS.
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Originally posted by beet1e
at 800 or 1000 yards the vast majority of rounds would miss the target completely. In AH it doesn't seem to make a difference to some planes. But in other games (eg. WB, IL2), you have to be much, much closer than 800 yards to get any result. An occasional plink at that range is plausible. Shearing off a guy's wing at that range is BS.
and such is it in AH... i've taken a ton of long range plinks and have seen sprites but no damage. sometimes i do see something fall off or take a hit to go red damage - in most cases the guy probbaly already had some rounds him in from earlier, i just lucked out getting the critical hit to push it over the edge.
abt the furthest i've ever truly torn up someone would be abt 650yds with .50's and that took a nice steady stream on target.
also one factor that has been discussed ad infinitum with this issue is net lag... mirror... objects...closer...appear... yadda yadda. this is true. the net coding *has* loosened up somewhat from 18 months ago or so and the discrepancies between what two people might see *has* increased somewhat. not a lot to make it totally "wtf?!?" but enough for me to be able to tell the difference. so 800 to you might be only 600-700 to the guy taking the shots or even.
simple test, take a buddy up in MA find a nice quiet part of a sector close to some action. pace each other, one lead one tail... stablizie speeds compare what you both see... let the distance increase... compare again. do it with 2 or 3 other guys, i.e. a yerpeon like yourself... a kiwi or pac rimmer and then find some yank who has cable and a decent routing to HTC, then find one who has dialup. you might be surprised at what you discover.
i guess it was a necessary tradeoff with the huge increase in player base and wide variety in connections/routings. it's not as bad as it could be, but it is very much playable. this, however is where a vast majority of "cheat/hack" accusations are coming from. and unlike years past, there are exponetially a lot more people who are truly ignorant about connections, cpu cycles or even computers in general who find AH, like what they see and fire it up.
gah! i need to go bathe after this WoT.
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Originally posted by lazs2
anyone who flies that high is probly pretty skilless and seeing another con scares the crap outta her. She shoots in an effort to scare you off so that she can run away.
lazs
Lazs...
Do you always use a shotgun to hunt fleas?
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Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.
Well, I have been here since Beta 1 and the things that I have found to be different are not listed here. All of what you said did happen, and still does. However, it did not happen as much as many people here seem to believe it truly did.
The biggest difference between now and then is the price (well, since AH went pay to play). The lower cost (and the closing or declining appeal of other sims, such as AW and in some way WB) has caused the player base in AH to increase dramatically. I am not saying that this is bad by any stretch, just that there are more people. When you get more people, you will see a lot more stuff than you ever did before. People did "dweeby" things back then, but it wasn't quite as apparent when there were only 200-250 people on during prime time.
The only other thing that I have really noticed as being different from the "good ol' days" is that a lot of the people I flew with and against back then are no longer around. That is the only thing that I truly miss from AH past.
Oh well, that is just my 2/5 of a nickel's worth.
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Not sure if any of you have ever read the book Fighter Combat:Tactics and Maneuvering by Robert L. Shaw but if your that interested in air to air engagements I'd suggest you read it.
The guns on many aircraft gun platforms are fully adjustable to what ever range they want. No different than setting your convergence on AH. Look on the net for Point Harmonization and Pattern Harmonization for more info on this. The minimum and maximum effective ranges of any weapons platform can be found out there also. Many factors come into how destructive a particular weapon is. Getting hits out past 1k is not impossible and neither is the possibility of incurring damage out at that range either. Accuracy is the main thing I see folks complain about. I'll have to find it again but I wanna say the maximum lethal range of a .50 cal round is out near or past the 2k mark. This is the point at which the round still has destructive/penetration abilities against a given target. Every target being different depending on how it was manufactured ofcourse. It is also said that optimum firing range was that of 700 to 800 ft using Point Harmonization methods.
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Originally posted by lazs2
I believe that in the BOB they fought only german planes... I believe that the ones who fought the most got to be the best too.
lazs
IMO you believe wrong.............
It was about the bounce, about numbers, about wing men (LW), about climbing desparately to an enemy to stop his bombers with little thought for your own safety (RAF).
Desperate tactics are practiced in the MA too............ but frankly if you have out witted your opponent and he has only desperate tactics left then he will use them.
The HO merge is annoying.
But if we will play the tactic of alt advantaged boom and zoom (and will not be sucked in to the fight) then eventually HO or near HO will be the outcome. Our opponent will realise that eventually his e will be drained to a point where his 6 is vulnerable and either bug out (if its an option) or force the head on/near head on to either risk the shot or gain an angle.
Frankly Dr Dea is right we do not each other enough infact the MA is a whiners charter whereby the typical view is one where others are aparantly always at fault ....... but frankly I look up this thread and see some espousing "rule" sets to suit their own play style.
I see many "experten" here who assume it is there cod given right to claim the kill of their victim.............
If the opponent is forced into desperate measures then the experten could give themselves some credit for that.
If our experten was not ready for the acts of desparation then may be he is not so experten as he would wish and yet has some stuff to learn. (As do we all)
Maybe our experten could even suggest a better merge tactic for his victimn that helps the future play........in a manner that is not that of some moaning old vet who has to train his lunch in how to get on the plate.
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Good post, Tilt. I really like the "lunch on the plate" part!
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are you saying that the pilots with the most combat experiance weren't the best?
the tactics in WWII were pretty darn boring... same ol same ol... wouldn't want to simulate that part. The only time things changed was when new weapons came out... and then... only till the pilots on both sides got "experiance" with the changes.
In the ma, we know the FM's and gunnery of every plane that ever flew. There is no surprise. The only variety is the fact that you can mix so many FM's in one fight.
lazs