Augering Attackers and Bailing Bombers (tm)

[CAP1]

Originally posted by toonces3
Hey all.

Two experiences last night.  Not the first (or last) but I have to admit that both got me wondering about why some folks do what they do.

First one- I was flying in the vicinity of a bish base.  Got into a fight with someone in my 190A5.  Went a few turns and either killed him or he egressed.  Anyway, in the meantime I hear a couple calls, "Typhie coming in."  So as I turned from the fight or chase I check my 3 o'clock and there's the Typhoon a couple thousand below and headed towards our base.  I roll inverted, pull into him and now I'm diving on him with plenty of speed.  He goes into a dive for the base and, yep you know what's coming, he goes for the radar.  I'm closing but slowly, 1000...800...600...BOOM radar goes up then about 5 seconds later BOOM Typhoon augers himself.  He had actually straightened out before he augered, which leads me to believe it wasn't just crappy flying, but intentional.

1)i see this a lot....and i figure they think they're shot up, so auger n get a fresh plane....it's faster.......me..i don't go down till one of you guys helps me, by removing pieces of my plane.

Second one- a bomber was lingering over some bish fields forever.  Eventually I got down, saw the dude was still behind our lines and surrounded by radar, so I upped a G-14 to track him down.  Long story short, tracked this guy down after chasing him for about 75 miles/10

2)YOU are one of the ones i  admire for your patience then. i sometimes enjoy flying bombers over fighters......and what keeps it fun and exciting is fighters intercepting and attacking us....regardless of outcome(although i prefer to land)....i NEVER bail in my bombers, unless thye're...again...missing pieces important to flight...like a wing :-D
when i'm flying my bombers, it's all about hitting the target, and landing the mission........don't care one way or the other bout points........it's more like i feel like i've completed the misson that way......

minutes.  I was at 20k, he was at least 5-10k higher and I didn't even have icon on him when a guy in front of me says, "I don't believe it"  Apparently as soon as the guy in front got close to icon on him, after chasing him like I did for about 3 sectors, the dude just bailed.  What's worse is he was in B-17's, over his own friendly line now, and at least 5-10k above us.  Like the other guy said, "Don't know why he bailed, he might have actually gotten us."

So I throw this question out to you noodleheads that enjoy augering into things, or bailing your bombers after your run.  Why do you do that?  I mean, it really doesn't hurt me any- I get proxy kills on you and if you think not having a radar is going to keep me from killing you, well, you're wrong.

3)yes, we do get proxy kills when someone does that....but if ya notice they count nothing at all towards our score(like we care) or rank..........  

Let's assume you're one of those, "I don't care about my score" folks.  Ok, fine.  So why do you fly if you're not tracking some sort of statistic?  Let's say you "just want to have a good fight".  Ok, then why do you kill yourself instead of fight?

Hey, do whatever you want, I don't care really, but I AM curious why you do this.  Might I make a suggestion?  Instead of taking the easy way out and just augering yourself, I'd suggest trying to make a survivable attack run.  Take the time to circle around the field and attack with your egress taking you towards friendlies.  Learn how to bomb/shoot rockets accurately.  Either get a wingman, or get yourself so fast that nobody can catch you.  I have to think this would be more fun than just killing yourself.

i've never learned how to dive bomb...and probably won't......level bombing is soooo much more satasifying......



Thanks for your time.
Toonces

[toonces3]

The only time I've flown bombers is a month or so ago.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside, but I really wanted to play Aces High.  So, I took my laptop outside, got on the wireless and played AH while I was outside in the sun.  Only thing was that I had my crappy joystick, not my full-on HOTAS, and I couldn't see too well with the sun glare.  Well, I was out there more for the beer and sun than to play AH, so I upped some bombers.

First, yes flying them is incredibly boring.  A 1,000 fpm climb rate means it's a long time to altitude.  Long flights for a few minutes of fun.
Still, I took down the vh's at a port for a base capture and landed safely.  I only flew a few sorties, but it sure seemed like flying at 25k reduced the fighter presence- I didn't see a single fighter the whole time.

The guy in my story may very well have needed to go get dinner.  Who knows?  But I see the bomb and bail thing all the time.  Frankly, I sort of felt like someone else said, that the guy dragged us along for 10 minutes and bailed just to have fun with us.  The last laugh was on him though because on the way to RTB we got into  a great fight.  I had an awesome 1v1 with a spit 8 at altitude for at least 5 minutes.  He eventually augered, but I don't think it was intentional.  Unfortunately I never found out who it was, but I threw him an anonymous on 200 anyway.

[Squire]

Hey Daddog, how ya been?

[falcon23]

Good questions toonces .And I can only answer from my perspective,as I mostly fly lances..

 One reason I may bail after,or sometimes even before I drop,is someone has put up a mission I want to join..

 I may bail because that 45 min to target is rarely much different on the way back,time-wise that is..And I want to expend my time carefully,lord knows I play enough as it is..

 As far as being attacked by cons.I will battle em',even though if it is someone like say lusche,or lynx,I will keep firing,it helps me to get better with my guns,even though when these two,and others show up and kill a drone,and I find out who it is,I would be better off just bailing and moving onto something else,but I want the practice..
and it will also help them to use up precious ammo,especially if other bombers are in the area..
 
Now when I run out of guns on them,or any con for that matter,many times I will bail,especially since I know that by this time,someone has put bullets in me and will get the kill,does not matter to me.But it is worthless for me to just waste more time waiting for them to kill me,although sometimes I will do some "fighter flying" in my bombers,just to test their limits,but usually by this time they are so shot up,they come apart at the seams.

  There have been times when I had a con chasing me and stayed in my bomber just to practice my gunnery,and their are times when I have bailed,usually due to reason #1..But sometimes due to the fact that I may be needed or wanted somewhere else and I may not have time to wait for this con to get "set-up" to come in and kill all 3 of my planes in one pass.

 But if a con is say,4.5-6k out,I usually do not want to wait for him to finally get to me,although their are times when I will.

 realize,I already spent minimum 45 min getting to target,I dont want to use up anymore time than I have too,to be useful to my country.

                                 toonces for asking,hope this helps,

                                                 Kevin:aok

[toonces3]

thanks for the well thought out response falcon.

Makes perfect sense to me.

[pluck]

I would guess as others stated some bail for the obvious dinner bell/door bell.  Others do it because they think they are helping to win the war at all costs.  Personally, If i dropped my eggs, I'd at least turn around and then go for some ack or something.  Hard to imagine flying a long distance just to suicide, seems pointless and boring, but some must enjoy it.  Reminds of a certain little fury animal.

[CAP1]

Originally posted by pluck
I would guess as others stated some bail for the obvious dinner bell/door bell.  Others do it because they think they are helping to win the war at all costs.  Personally, If i dropped my eggs, I'd at least turn around and then go for some ack or something.  Hard to imagine flying a long distance just to suicide, seems pointless and boring, but some must enjoy it.  Reminds of a certain little fury animal.

see..this doesn't work for me...........i tend to be more of a precision bomber......i almost never unload all of my ordinance on the first pass.......if i hit a target for my squad...say hangars on a vbase, i either loiter and spot gv's for em, or i go to the next base that the enemy may spawn in from and drop that vh too......all to help the squad. if i were to drop the vh's on the base, then auger to grab a gv with them, how would that help them capture the base as long as defenders could readily spawn in? this is why i think that dropping n bailing isn't the best way to help your country or squad. another example would be the ack hiders at air bases when we're tryin to capture......while others bomb the town, i'll repeatedly overpass the base itself, and surgically remove the ack and soft guns so we lose less planes...and again to help the squad get the objective quicker.
.......although i DO understand sometimes ya have to.

i think that what it comes down to, is that in a joint effort, the fighters are VERY important, and MUCH more fun(love my furballs sometimes) but it's the bombers that get the job done for team....we can level a town in one or two passes, we can do the same to a base, or we can just go for the PO factor and bomb strats(a lot of folks seem to get really agitated about this).

anyway, again, from my experiences, and my opinion, survival of the mission is top priority, second only to hitting your assigned targets.

<>

[Rich46yo]

I almost always fly back to base. To me completing the mission is the biggest part of the fun. Many times I will actually write down my mission parameters, targets, headings...ect and stick to them. Just last night I navigated about 5 radar zones to get to target and back. I try to fly the bombers the way they were actually flown.

                           I know Im in the minority by flying the heavies. We are a small % of the community and mostly older guys who have a lot of patience. At least those of us who fly them right.

                          To me whats cool is the few times Ive called for help and fighters actually showed up and helped me get thru. Now thats playing the game in my book. Course other times Ive called for help and found a line of enemy bogies sitting in my path. What a coincidence.

                        Thus 99% of the time I dont tell anyone where I'm at or where I'm going.

[Ghastly]

He had actually straightened out before he augered,

While you may never know for sure, this sounds to me more like the pilot may have pulled too hard and blacked out ( perhaps he hit autolevel while waiting to come out of it) than an intentional auger.

[Iron_Cross]

People, let's remember that their is absolutely NO incentive for bombers to land back at base.  

Why spend 45 min returning to base?  For perks?  No, Bomber pilots have nothing useful to spend buff perks on.  Sure we have the 234, but why bother with that.  It has a piddly bomb-load so can't damage anything greatly, maybe get 1 hangar down.  Wow I'm really excited about that...NOT!  Hell you could take Bostons up and do the same.  If Hitech, gave the buff community something worth sticking around for, something to strive for, then you might see a reduction in the bomb & bail crowd.  Otherwise, meh, why bother.

Personally when I fly buffs I try to make it back.  I know the temptation to just say 'screw it, why bother'.  I've been on the other end of a bomb&bail, and know  how s***y that feels.  Just saving my perks so that when something useful to spend them on comes around I have them.

[scottydawg]

I remember a thread (but am too lazy to actually look it up) where the concept of removing damage from a bombed target if a bomber augured/bailed to avoid enemy contact/wasted time.  I seem to recall HiTech chiming in that it was an interesting idea.

Or I could be totally mistaken.

[Lusche]

Originally posted by Iron_Cross
Sure we have the 234, but why bother with that.  It has a piddly bomb-load so can't damage anything greatly, maybe get 1 hangar down.  

Just a side note, a formation 234's has 9900 lbs ords. Enough for 1 CV or 3 hangars, not one.

[KayBayRay]

Well, since this is one of the few posts on this topic that is not a "WHAAA you dont fly like I think you should so you're a jerk"... I will give you some of the reasons why "I" have bailed or augered from time to time over the many years I have played AW and AHII online.

In flight on a long range mission:

"Ring-a-ling" (phone rings)... its the Wife.. "Honey I am ready for you to pick me up"..... enter enter enter... shut down... gone.....( DOnt even need Wife ack)



"Crash... Boom... Bang" one of my 6 kids collides with another kid or a wall... "WHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" ... enter enter enter... shut down .. gone...


"RAWR"  "RUFF RUFF"  Dog and Cat going at it under my feet or on the furniture knocking stuff off the walls.... enter enter enter.. shut down... gone...


Hanger Banger Mission:

IN.... drop ord... think... uh.. I could spend 10min returning to base to land the zip point doodle points I could get.... or... I could just freakin auger and up and be back in 10min to drop this puppy and take it.

Cappin base and Squad CO says.. "SOmbody grab a goon and bring some drunks in here".... auger or bail... grab goon and take the base.


Workin on a capture and the Squad CO says "Hey we need some GV's downn there to support or defend... bail or auger to grab a GV...


Furball:

Wing gone, flames spewing out of engine, no flight control response... think... well I could just be a "Crash Test Dummy" and sit here till this bird explodes or I could just punch out and up and return for some more "White Knuckle Fun"......


These are just some reasons why I have either bailed or augered from time to time playing these games. I dont see that I am any different from most other players so I figure most have similar reasons as I do to cut out.

For the Power Whiners... Spare me the diatribe about not playing your way. This is a GAME and thats how I see it. I pays my $14 a month and I plays "My Way". I make it a point not to get in peeps faces if they tick me off I just ignore them or move along to where they aint. I make it a point not to pul CS crap on others because I dont appreciate it when done to me.

Later,
KayBay

[Rich46yo]

Originally posted by Lusche
Just a side note, a formation 234's has 9900 lbs ords. Enough for 1 CV or 3 hangars, not one.

                              You fly the 234 for the fun of it. After an evening of droning along in 270 mph trucks its actually great fun jumping in a 234. I cant wait to run with my squadies in it. And its fun to bomb a furball airbase while being almost invulnerable. I think the 234 is a grand perk for the Buff guys. Not just flying it but its place in history as well. Tho its not a 3 plane bomber in my book. Turning the drones at speed is very difficult, at least while using rudders, and especially since the 1 234 option turns like a dream.

                              Very thoughtful of AH to include it and great fun to fly.

[Bear76]

Originally posted by Sweet2th
Oh yea BAby! i do that all the time.Then i get in a N1k and cherry pick and run away, or in a La-7, or in a HurrMkII-c then brag about how hard core i am in a make believe GAME.

The truth will set you free:lol