Errrr...
First, icons are always a burning issue in any game. Second, I'm with funked on this.
What's wrong with the current system?
A. Visual identification of enemy planes occurs at way too far a range. This encourages an unrealistic sort of cowardice and discourages sneakiness. If you can see and ID someone from 5 miles out, just about all engagements are decisive: if you get into a fight with someone, one of you is going to walk away. It's pretty hard to make the other guy lose you when you need at least 30 seconds to get out of icon range. In addition, the element of surprise is greatly reduced. Some of y'all might think this is a good thing, since it "helps the newbies", but in actuality it isn't. A player learns how to run the view system and check six far before learning to precision the ACM necessary to win in a dogfight. Giving someone the opportunity to score a low-six bounce is both rewarding and realistic.
B. Information on the position and numbers of enemy aircraft is way too precise. This isn't a pay-per-play game. My guess is that if we enabled this stuff only in the tower, we'd see b efore too long players doing at least part-time GCI. And no, it's not a simple analogue, as information radioed to pilots was more vague than the dots on our screen, and was certainly not real time. Come on, I'm over my own base, and there are 5 enemies and 3 friends in the air. I can glance at the map, and see not only where the enemies are, but which ones are being engaged by friendlies, which ones are harassing friendlies, which ones are threats to me, which ones are about to bomb the base, and which one just happened to sneak up on my six. Really folks, did those GCI guys make six calls (Blue 7, bandit 50 yards your six!)?
The sector bars themselves are excessive: We all know that each sector square indicates 1-2 A/C, and when a square shifts from one sector to another, we have a very good idea of where the plane is at exactly that moment. Heck, the sectors (and the pixels of overlap between the "painted" and "real" sectors) have become an integral part of my flight plan, which probably should not be the case. Further, the "ground observer" argument is a little absurd: when 1 plane taxis onto the runway at a far rear enemy base 150 miles away, we know about it immediately.
I like sector and unit info in the tower only.
Even better (a compromise would be to put this into the cockpit) would be to do something like what BOB/SWOTL had: update the map every five minutes or so. Even better: every five minutes, update it with the info from five minutes ago (you login, you get the sector counters from the last update, the dots don't appear until the next update). Damage to the communications infrastructure could increase the age of the data (i.e., updates reflect the situation 10 or even 20 minutes before).
C. Range within 1000 yards. Well, having flown for a while at 800x600 (currently I'm between computers; be back next week), I'm of the opinion that you need some sort of indicator of closure up to 500 yards (how about redshift?
). Still, having the range down to the last yard is absurd and a ridiculous aid to gunnery.
Dinger
