Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: DubiousKB on May 14, 2013, 01:01:32 PM
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I did a quick search and didn't find what I was looking for so here it is...
Has there been a time where a pilot of a buff could have more than a single gunner/observer? I mean until I learn 999000's secret to buff gunning, I'd love to have 1 guy per drone (or more) gunning for me.
Was this ever in place, and if not, what is HTC's approach to this and why? Is it a programming limitation, latency problem? I'm sure there are good reasons for it, I'm just curious if I'm beating a dead horse here.
:D
-KB
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Although I was not around, I do believe that in the early days you could take several gunners. No formations back then and so you had one bomber with 4-5 gunners. However what would happen is that these bombers would then fly over fields or into furballs and proceed to destroy everything. They were nicknamed 'Deathstars' due to how much firepower they had and how hard it was to kill one.
To stop this happening HT implemented the 1 gunner rule. I have to say, personal opinion, I would rather only have one gunner in a buff doing as it is ment to then see a 17 or 24 come into the furball and get 10-15 kills and fly away.
Sorry, but -1
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Although I was not around, I do believe that in the early days you could take several gunners. No formations back then and so you had one bomber with 4-5 gunners. However what would happen is that these bombers would then fly over fields or into furballs and proceed to destroy everything. They were nicknamed 'Deathstars' due to how much firepower they had and how hard it was to kill one.
To stop this happening HT implemented the 1 gunner rule. I have to say, personal opinion, I would rather only have one gunner in a buff doing as it is ment to then see a 17 or 24 come into the furball and get 10-15 kills and fly away.
Sorry, but -1
Also, to compensate for not having multiple gunners in 1 bomber, formations were added.
This wish has found it's way to the forums a few times in the past few months.
One of the best replies to the last wish for it was. "You can either have 1 bomber and 2-3 gunners, or 3 bombers and 1 gunner. Do you want to make sure that plane behind you dies, or the base that you're bombing gets destroyed?"
Even though I sympathize with you on this, -1. :frown:
Respectively,
Tinkles
:salute
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Although I was not around, I do believe that in the early days you could take several gunners. No formations back then and so you had one bomber with 4-5 gunners. However what would happen is that these bombers would then fly over fields or into furballs and proceed to destroy everything. They were nicknamed 'Deathstars' due to how much firepower they had and how hard it was to kill one.
You've always been limited to one gunner in AH.
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I wondered what the "Death Star" comment in other posts. Thx for the heads up.
Understand the -1's.... But can someone speak to the +1 gunner so that I have 3 planes, 2 observer/gunners, and myself the pilot/bombardier Would that still create the "death star" effect?
As stated, when I'm in on target, I effectively have one gunner looking out for me. Just seems like i'm not getting a whole lot of benefit from upping that many "crew" without the ability to handle some of the in-flight tasks easlily (i'm not saying it SHOULD be easy), just saying it's a hard time trying to manually fly a buff to avoid ack + fighters the last few moments before bomb release.
... to be clear, the reason I cannot have additional gunners/observers is due to the overpowering nature of the resultant formation? The Death Star Effect.
-KB
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You've always been limited to one gunner in AH.
Apologies Ack-Ack. As i mentioned it was before I joined up. When was it that you had the 'Deathstars'? WB?
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Apologies Ack-Ack. As i mentioned it was before I joined up. When was it that you had the 'Deathstars'? WB?
Air Warrior.
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Air Warrior.
Ahh thanks for the correction. I thought it was AH 1.
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4Q – The “Blood Dragon”
Posted by DoK on Sunday, March 24, 2002
(From the arkives … A tale from the Dawn of Flight Sims, and my squad’s part in tarnishing it.)
One bright and sunny day, a newcomer came to B-land. His name was Ben Dover. He was truely a merry fellow who took great delight in stomping on the heads of kittens with big lumberjack boots, twisting at the ankle until the little feline brains came gooshing out.In any event, on this particular day GCB Biggles was engaged in running bombing raids down to old A3 (in the Valley of Death). Ben pleaded with Biggles to let him pilot the B17 once and eventually Biggles agreed, if for no other reason that to get some peace. Biggles had flown well so far, the AA guns at A3 were down and the A’s were in a foul mood. Ben called for gunners and several signed on. With hearts high, Ben taxied the B17 off into destiny.
Biggles knew something was up when Ben did a crisp vertical banked turn to A3 right on takeoff, milking up the flaps and landing gear as he completed the turn. “I’ve been practicing offline”, said Ben with a slight smirk. Biggles wasn’t completely satisfied, but decided to just let it drop. Ben climbed the B17 to around 1000 feet and settled into a standard target approach. The A’s then picked him up on radar.
“Hang on to your asses, here we go.”, hollered Ben. With which he barreled down to the deck, levelling off at about 10 feet. Ben was having great fun lopping the heads off cattle and Jehovas Witnesses as he sped along at naught altitude. The A’s were greatly miffed and showed their displeasure by augering dead astern of Ben’s B17.
(http://www.gonzoville.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/blooddragon_sm.jpg)
Now they were approaching A3. A-land fighters were crashing left and right, unaccustomed to pursuit at such low altitudes. “Someone get into the chin turret and shoot the one on the pad!”, ordered Ben. “Won’t get enough hits for a kill”, shouted one of the gunners. “Trust me”, said Ben. As they crossed the fence the B17 shuddered lightly as Ben loosed one stick of bombs on the empty take-off spot of A3. Just then several A fighters appeared, the chin gunner started firing furiously.
“Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom” went the bombs. “XXXX detroyed, YYYY destroyed, ZZZZ destroyed” came the messages from the host. “3 kills!”, hollered the chin gunner. “Bombed em,” said Ben, “all gunners aim left over the wing.” At that moment Ben racked the B17 into a tight, tight, tight maximum performance pylon turn over the takeoff spot of A3. He was at 250 feet with flaps down and pulling around 3 G’s at 80 knots.
The A’s kept popping up, but the massive fire of 4 B17 turrets dispatched most of them before they could even get airborne. The few that did, even Zero’s, found they could not keep on the tail of the B17 before the gunners laid waste to them. “Keep shooting!”, ordered Ben. Round and round they went, Ben holding the turn by using the amazing autopilot feature of the B17. Indeed, Ben’s rigorous flight testing had discovered that at low altitude with everything hanging, the B17 under autopilot could turn tighter and at lower speeds that a Zero under manual control.
(http://www.gonzoville.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/blooddgn.gif)
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The A’s were finally starting to register some hits, so Ben decided to beat a retreat. “We need escort home, B’s!”, he called on channel 2. “On the way.”, replied the B fighters. “OK, I’m gonna swing wide the pass, nail anything on the pad as we cross.” Ben eased up on the stick and the B17 swung wide to the south. Then he sucked it in and the nose swung crisply across the end of A3. Again, there was a slight tremor as Ben loosed a stick of bombs, skipping them in off the turn.As if on cue, A fighters appeared at the takeoff spot. Seconds later they were destroyed by the stick of bombs. Ben pulled in the flaps and enterred a shallow dive down to 5 feet. All the gunners were aiming aft. The A’s finally got sorted out and began their pursuit. They were closing and the B border was still very far indeed. But B fighters were closing fast. Ben and his sturdy crew needed to buy some time.
The A fighters were now within 1500 yards. “OK, hang on.”, Ben said to his crew. He then cranked in a 90 degree banked turn right on the deck. Steadying the turn with light doses of rudder and stick. The A’s blew past, taking hits from the gunners as they flew by. A few A’s crashed, not watching their altitude closely enough.
Once, twice, three times, four times they went around in the gut wrenching turn. The B fighters finally were on the scene and Ben went wings level and headed for home. Minutes later they were over home turf and safely on their way to B2. Ben asked his gunners how they did. They were all laughing quite hard, but managed to report approximately 17 kills. Ben swung the B17 around in a break-turn approach to B2, dropping flaps and gear as he decellerated. He gently set the battered ship down. Once on the ground, Biggles stopped laughing long enough to ask Ben who he REALLY was. “C’est DoK”, replied Ben.
And so was born the Blood Dragon. Over the next few weeks, The Spanish Inquisition would fly almost non-stop Blood Dragon raids to A3 and C1. Sometimes as many as 2 Dragon ships were orbitting low over the enemy fields. The devestation was impressive, often as many as a dozen enemy fighters would be clawing at the tail of the Dragon ship, just barely above stall speed, only to be blown away by the punishing gunnery of the ship’s crew. Sometimes the ship would have to literally drive back to home territory as it didn’t have enough lift to maintain level flight. Often the mighty Dragons would land back home with only the autopilot left for controls and on only one or two engines. Ben’s record for a Blood Dragon was 34 kills neatly landed back at base, not counting bombing points.
But the days of the Blood Dragon were nearing an end. Already the A’s were learning to use stationary bombers with gunners as AA emplacements. This could be suppressed for a while by using DoK’s low-level skip bombing technique while in the pylon turn. But soon, with the increased firepower of the FW-190 and the reduced ammo of the B17 gunner, the Blood Dragon faded into history. But for those that flew in them – DoK, Biggles, Pax, Flush Garden, Trips, Boomer, Petie, Tango Circus, and Shoestring – the memory of raining death on the enemy from a slight perch 200 feet over their runway will always bring a smile, and maybe a little drool.
http://www.gonzoville.com/games/4q-the-blood-dragon/
(http://www.gonzoville.com/wp-content/2rip_gonzo.gif) (http://www.gonzoville.com/category/hunter-s-thompson/)
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Great History! :aok
:cheers:
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IIRC you could fill all of the gunners positions in Air Warrior. Was great fun filling up a B-17 with gunners and flying around blasting everything out of the sky that got close enough. You were pretty well defended if everyone did their job and I can't recall ever being shot down in a death star. I understand the reasoning not to have this in AH and am not advocating for any change to the current setup, but I gotta say it was pretty fun.
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I don't believe macleod or Tinkles facts are complete. I've heard that lag was a bigger issue with multiple gunners than the alleged invincibility of the deathstars.
I don't recall running into deathstars all that often in AW and if you did, it wasn't likely you had a bunch of shooters like 999000. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Deathstars were fun, but if the invincibility myth was an issue, it wouldn't translate to today's AH because gunnery is harder than it was in AW. And if the 1 plane/deathstar or 3 plane/1 gunner theory was an issue, they could simply restrict deathstars to 1 plane and formations to 1 gunner very easily. But they don't, and the most likely reason is lag with multiple gunners.
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I was just on Wikipedia...
Did it really cost $10/hour to play Air Worrier??
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I was just on Wikipedia...
Did it really cost $10/hour to play Air Worrier??
Depends. ;)
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I was just on Wikipedia...
Did it really cost $10/hour to play Air Worrier??
it was free at the beginning as long as you had an aol account. then they swiched to 10 cents a minute. I tried playing it for a couple of months but it was way too expensive. then we found out about gamestorm and it was about 15 bucks a month for unlimited plus all the other games. I dont think many played thru aol after we found out about gamestorm.
semp
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IIRC you could fill all of the gunners positions in Air Warrior. Was great fun filling up a B-17 with gunners and flying around blasting everything out of the sky that got close enough. You were pretty well defended if everyone did their job and I can't recall ever being shot down in a death star. I understand the reasoning not to have this in AH and am not advocating for any change to the current setup, but I gotta say it was pretty fun.
It was a freakin' hoot.. Keep in mind, you couldn't join in flight.. everybody had to be in place when you spawned.
We'd fill up the fortress and fly deep behind enemy lines bombing obscure targets that netted ridiculous point values. We even had a 'Million Point Mission' award for bombing such a target with enough gunners that the cumulative squad score was over 1,000,000.
Mossies were deathstar destroyers.
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it was free at the beginning as long as you had an aol account. then they swiched to 10 cents a minute. I tried playing it for a couple of months but it was way too expensive. then we found out about gamestorm and it was about 15 bucks a month for unlimited plus all the other games. I dont think many played thru aol after we found out about gamestorm.
semp
before aol it was several dollars per hour (I seem to remember $7, but I could be wrong)... either on genie or CompuServe.
I know I couldn't afford it at the time so only got to play the free trial period.
then hitech made confirmed kill / warbirds and everyone got to play for free during beta testing. that was good times.
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On GEnie it was $6 an hour after 6 pm EST. If tiy logged on earlier than that it was $12 an hour, even if you started at
5:59pm. It was General Electric's net, and they didn't want us gaming yahoos on it when their folks were still in the office
I guess :D
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My sound card company in the early 90's paid for me to play AW so I could answer sound card calls for it. Never told them the sound issues were no different than any other game at the time. Played a lot of free AW because of that. Thrust Master was a business partner so I got freebies and repair parts to help play the game. No one knew my roommate and I had our PC's right next to each other and flew wingmen. No need for cans and wax strings. We had ShoutCOMM and could look at each others monitors while we played. That was some good winging back then. Anyone know who deadf grew up to be in Aces High?