No tracers option - discussion

[oboe]

How many of you guys use no tracers?

Personally, I think an experienced player using the 'no tracers' option may be one of the biggest unfair advantages the can be used against brand new players.

The poor noobs are just bigging to get the feel for the angles and ranges necessary for good probability firing solutions (and evasion of same) while dogfighting, and find themselves stitched to pieces by guys they don't even realize are firing at them.   I don't see it helping to get them hooked on the game.   If I am getting chewed up, I'd rather see a few tracers go by my cockpit too, so I know he's missing sometimes.   With no tracers, it seems like every round is a hit, because you can't detect the misses in any way.

Just seems to me like an option that will turn noobs off to the game, or appear to them as a hack.

Long way of saying I've decided that even though 'no tracers' was really used sometimes in RL, its one of the most lopsided and unfair advantages experts can use against noobs, so I think its bad for the game in general.

Thoughts?

[moot]

I wouldn't mind being so unscrupulous as to have tracers on my MGs only.
"Helpless" newbs just need more trigger time, which they'd get if they had the courage and patience like everyone else needs to at first.

[GreenCloud]

helll no..if you got a guy behind you ..an dhes under  1k...just beleive you r about to get ur azzz shto off unless u start turn'n

[SuperDud]

oboe, it wouldn't help even if the vets had tracers on. When they fire, they rarely miss. Even if they miss, and they're on your 6 and you're a n00b, you're dead anyway. And like all of us, you gotta take your lumps as a new guy. I died countless times from guys I didn't even see, but I got through it. Like moot said, just takes time to get use to the game. If they like it, they'll stick around regardless of tracers. Just my opinion:D

[LTARokit]

AAAHHHHHHH,  Nothing like the sight of tracers filling the sky, at night, from a dozen or so Ostis, protecting a field from incoming nme mission (unless ur the one incoming of course ).  AS for air to air, I thought in RL tracers were always used, like every 5th or 10th bullet??

[SuperDud]

LTAR, not 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure in some cases tracers were used as a sign of being low on ammo(at least for USA)

And yes I think it was every 5th or 10th round.

[TrueKill]

i think every plane had tracers every 5th round for most planes but iv heard that ponys were every 10th round would love to see the colord tracers. german cannons used i think it was blue and ruskys green and US i think was eather yellow or red but eather way would love to see pretty colors fly by me before i go poof:aok

[Cobra412]

I'd have to find it again in my books but some squadrons had tracers removed from their aircraft.

[Mini D]

There should be no game concessions put in place to allow for lapses of situational awareness. Newbies should learn that any enemy aircraft pointing their nose at them is a threat, not just the ones with the pretty lines coming out of them.

SA rules the skies. Newbies need to learn this first and foremost.

[oboe]

True Cobra - I just read in Caidin's P-38 book that Tommy Lynch ordered his squadron to not use tracers in their ammo load.   Thats what got me curious and I started trying it myself.

I've run into a few others who don't use them; always hated dealing with them myself.   Then I started thinking about it from noobs point of view, and can see how it might be discouraging or confusing for them.

SuperDud - even the best vet probably has gunnery accuracy less than 30%; I think that means even with an expert gunner behind you, you are gonna see quite a few of his tracers fly by your cockpit.

Take a current 18-25 yr old, who's only experience with WWII air combat is the recent movies he's seen (Pearl Harbor, Hart's War, etc).   When he's in the air in AH with an enemy plane behind him and sees tracers flying by his cockpit and hears strikes and feels his plane come apart, it may remind him alot of the combat scenes in the movies.   But if he's flying along with an enemy plane behind him, and suddenly his plane explodes and he sees someone awarded the kill, mightn't that seem more like a hack to him?

[Cobra412]

Oboe it may seem like a hack but that's where the veteran players should correct them. You can't take what you see in a movie and think it is the norm or the only way things happen.

[oboe]

True, and vice versa.

I'll never forget seeing some poor noob bail out of his damaged plane over a CV fleet.   Well, of course the entire fleet ack opened up on him as he drifted down in his parachute (never would happen in RL).

He got real hot and laid out some nasty names on the open channel about people shooting chutes.   I tried to explain to him the fleet ack was just AI but I think he had already logged off in a huff.

[moot]

There should be an automatic 5lbs ACM manual made to materialize a few feet above newbs heads the first time their SA gets them killed. The front cover would read:
ACM and SA: What you don't see will kill you.

[J_A_B]

I don't see how the no-tracer option gives an advantage to any one group of players, considering that everyone has that option.

New players who try to aim by using the tracers to correct their aim are only handicapping themselves and wasting lots of ammunition.


J_A_B

[Gatr]

Gatr... Does not use tracers....
You need to be so close in this version of this game they r a waste of time turning on....
Chhomp...
ERRPPP!!!!
Man I love this game
Gatr
81st rules.....