It has been a rather rough two weeks for me. I was not even in attendance for frames 2 and 3, so my knowledge of exactly what went on is limited.
I will say this, the CM Team is a volunteer group of people that HTC has given the keys to, for both of the SEA's, for the running of the AHSE's (Aces High Special Events). We are just regular people that have regular lives like everyone else. Meaning we do not always have the time to just sit in the SEA and try everything in advance to make sure there will be no problems. If any of you would like to start paying us for our time, I am sure that some of us could find more time to do testing of different things to make sure that there would be few problems during the events. But I am guessing there will be no takers for that. So you guys are stuck with what ever time we can find to do what we can.
Now, problems in FSO or any of the other events are few, when you consider the complexity of these events and all the time that goes into them. However, there are going to be times when things may go wrong. The most likely situation will be when we are trying something new, such as, base captures in FSO. I think it has been years since that has been used and the game has changed in many ways since then, so the Re-set caught us off guard. With more time and testing we might have been able to prevent this, please see my first paragraph.
We have had other problems in FSO in the past. I remember one time we had NO VOX in the SEA, so no verbal communication at all. Took us about 20 min and a couple of phone calls to get that one cleared up, but i don't remember any squads leaving because of it. That does not mean I have no understanding for a squad leaving to go to the MA because of a delay in the SEA for some type of problem. If you do not want to stick around for a few minutes to give us a chance to sort it out, we can't stop you from leaving, but you should expect a certain amount of flack for it from your fellow FSO squads. Why? well really that is what you should expect from FSO. Your squad is there as part of a team, a mission, a purpose. Your squad no matter how small, (insert patriotic music now) is part of a chain that is working together for that nights mission, and if you leave, for what ever reason, it is going to have an effect. But isn't that why almost 500 of you show up every Friday night? Because it DOSE matter if you or the other squads are there? After all if nobody cared whether or not your squad showed up for FSO, why even bother to attend? You can just go to the MA, right?
If you think that FSO is not being run well, how many times have you seen an organized (meaning everyone one has specific orders and AC to fly) mission involving 500 people in the MA? We do it 3 times a month in the SEA, with minimal problems. Hell you would be lucky to get 500 people in the MA at the same time, let alone organize them.
So in closing, I can understand why a squad might leave FSO for the night, considering what was happening. I can also understand why some of the other squads might be giving them some flak about it. And if I were the Lynchmob, I might be happy to see that people do care if we are there, and it might make me wait a few more minutes next time, so our piece of the chain is not broken.
So remember,
AHSE's = Currently the closest thing you are going to find to the real WWII Air combat experience. (even with it's flaws IMHO)
the MA = a bunch of people doing their own thing in WWII AC, also a good place to keep your ACM skills sharp for AHSE's
