Aces High II was designed by an Air Warrior. Have you ever played Air Warrior? AWII/III was coded to give the player roughly a fifteen degree "cone of reduced lethality" from incoming fire on the nose. That meant all incoming on their forward arc (cone) up to a fifteen degree deflection had it's lethality reduced by over ninety percent. Why was that modeled? Ho whines. Not history. Not practicality. Not inability to code otherwise. Not unplayability of the game without it. Ho whines - plain and simple.
Why didn't HT model it? Well, I suppose you'd have to ask him the specifics but it seems rather obvious he never thought it was needed. HT likes as realistic and practical model as possible. Shooting your opponent from whatever angle with your opponent facing whatever angle just happens to be that. Has HT tweaked the game to modify player social interaction at all? *cough*ENI*cough* But then, that's not the flight model, the aircraft stats or anything ... it's a capacity-driven arena balancing tool.
So .... even though the owner and designer of the game (and his staffed `grammers) has knowledge of and the ability to code the magical nosecone of reduced lethality he doesn't appear to have HO issues. Neither does the vast majority of the player base. That leaves it a "deal with it" issue. "Deal with it" could entail sucking it up when it happens and not whining about it or starting a campaign to enforce your personal ethics and standards regarding programmed elements of the game on the rest of the community - in part or as a whole.
It can also involve learning how to effectively reduce the odds of your own suffering, tactically speaking, whether it involves HOing, vulching, other guy cheating through altitude grabbing, suicide bombing, ack-running, anything any player (new or not) has whined from the beginning of time when they were defeated "unfairly" in this game of more than just air dueling. Don't like getting HOed? Don't like getting vulched? Don't like getting cherry-picked? Don't like odds greater than 1:1 ... 2:1 .... 3:1? Learn to avoid it all. Yes, West Virginia .... there is a San .. errr ... there is a way. It's called SA.
HO avoidance: Heh. What can be said? You turned to face the enemy or he turned to face you ... or both. How did you get there? Are you in a low e-state? Did you see this coming? DO you see this coming? *blam* Did you see that coming? How's your rudders, mate? I bet if you had more e and didn't set yourself up in a position to get vulched or HOed so easily neither would happen as frequently. OR you can petition the rest of the community not to do it to you anymore. How about a barrel roll (if you have the e)? How about upping from a less likely spot to encounter something you're too low and slow to avoid as easily as you could if you had your ship at it's optimum corner speed?
Vulch avoidance: Same as above, really. Are you defending a base from capture? Are you outnumbered? Do you really expect to be allowed up and up to speed even at treetop level unmolested? Do you always plan on the generosity or chivalry of your opponent to
dictate your fun, much less odds of success? I wouldn't recommend it. If you're gonna tilt at windmills best learn to enjoy doing it and not complain. Or at least stop it with the 459th version of the chivalry campaign. Everyone has a bad day/night/week .... doesn't always mean their personal misery requires the rest of the community to modify their behavior to become the cure.
Ack running: Ask yourself ... why is ack even modeled? "Oh, I dunno Arlo .... to give the Ack-lieds (or Ack-sis) a place to run back to?" Close but no cigar. It certainly wasn't modeled to make that an impossibility, though. Ack is a defense. Yeah, you know this. It makes it harder to go in and bomb a base to smithereens or sink a fleet without at least something in your way. What's this got to do with "Ack-running?" Since when does the existance of something on the map .... be it an ack battery .... a windmill ... whatever .... supposed to dictate where a player flies and fights in either an offensive or defensive role? If there was no ack at all, players would be thumping their chests and looking for a way to berate and embarrass other players for having denied them a kill ... or an easier one (which I find mor-ironic from the standpoint that some of the same "ack runner!" whines eminate from players who also whine that they're not being presented enough of a challenge by their skilless opponents) ... no matter what the circumstances were. The player who dove back to ack went defensive. It doesn't matter if the player lost confidence when it came to facing your superior mad AHII skillz or was bingo or pilot wounded or what. Your choice, at that point, is to follow him in to finish him off or fly the periphery to see if he returns. Sounds too simple? Well, it is. Does this mean nobody will ever feel frustration? Now what type of challenging and fun game would this be if that never happened? (heh) But it isn't grounds for a class action whine-suit to be filed on the AvA staff or a pact enforced on the AvA community involving "proper behavior." As much as some try to paint the AvA to be "The Grande Chivalry Arena" ... I, personally, disagree and never saw that there but on an individual basis. Nor did I ever really require it to have fun.
Player .... mind thy own ethical standard. Feel free to set the example for it but c'mon ... if it's something that's not an issue for the game designer/owner ..... don't run me over with your bandwagon or try to shove the "bird of unethicalness" argument up
my nose. I will not stand by the petition (once again). I will not enforce my or anyone else's personal standards (or lack of them, for that matter) on another player. If I was active staff again, I wouldn't enforce anything outside of AHII TOS.
(Disclaimer: The above is merely the long-time, long-winded opinion of Arlo [low stat, skilless dweeb that he is] and does not necessarily reflect the actual views of Hitechcreations, HTC, HT, Skuzzy, Pyro or anything officially affiliated with Aces High II - aka AHII - nor the body of it's staff, paid or volunteer.)
