Originally posted by scJazz
Please grade the 6 Day War setup by Brady player requested by Artik. Grades should be on a C curve. A+ nearly impossible to get as well as F.
This is the toughest rating job yet, for reasons which may, or may not, have anything to do with the setup itself.
I thought the map was very good. The bases are just the right distance apart, and I got decent frame rates on almost all of it. I would love to see this map used with a 1941 or 1942 plane set, as an alternative to the Libya map.
The problem, I think, was the plane set itself. It certainly looked like it would be well-balanced, spit v. spit and 109 v. 205. On the very rare occasions when I participated in fights with relatively even sides, I thought that this sort of worked out well.
But during the entire week, I participated in fights with relatively even sides only a handful of times. As others have observed already, this setup was marked by gross imbalances of player numbers. During the times I was on (usually 10-11 p.m. Eastern time) the Israeli side outnumbered the Egyptian side by at least 2-1, frequently more. This isn’t easily explained by squad nights, because squad nights are usually just Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this was happening every day.
What made it so much worse was the tactic employed of swarming a base with 10, 12 or more Spit 9s, vulching anyone who tried to get up to fight. Until now, this has been a comparatively rare thing in the CT. This week it was common. I’m used to fighting against the odds - heck, I often do it on purpose - but not when I’m doing it from the moment my wheels retract. Near as I can tell, this was not done as part of a base capture on most occasions, either. Even more unusual, this was done by long-time vets. You know who you are. This was the aspect that most troubled me.
So I’ve been asking myself, why? Map is good, plane set should be evenly-matched, why do I feel like I’m on the set of “Night of the Living Dead”? Bad map in the MA? We’ve had that before, and we’ve seen nothing like this. Squad night? Not every night, and not like this. My conclusion is that it’s the Spit 9. I think that this setup drew in a lot of people who were only willing to fly the CT if they could fly Spit 9s, and that group dragged a lot of MA baggage in with it. I believe this was magnified by some bizarre notion of squadron brotherliness, which came through to others as a “we own the CT” chest-thumper, encouraged a brotherly pile-on mentality, and culminated in last night’s mass squelch of channel one by that squad (“I can’t hear you, la la la la la”). WTF is going on here?
Ultimate grade for this setup? I’d give it a C - but I hope it’s never run again with this plane set.
- oldman
