A new arena with harder settings

[Krusty]

I didn't have an AW subscription (I was into space games at the time) but I recall reading that the RR was the "main" and the FR was quite underpopulated.



Yes... just what we need... another TA with lethality at 0.0001 and only 10 folks in it at any given time.

[B4Buster]

IIRC, it was at Y29 that  P-51D pilot shot a 190 in a turn with a deflection shot. The range was so close that the guns in each wing (3 .50s) hit each wing of the 190. Being hosed down by these 3 .50s apiece caused *both* wings to break and fold up over the canopy, like "a carrier plane".

Somebody watched "Death Of The Luftwaffe" Season 2 of Dogfights 

[NoBaddy]

Somebody give Krusty a cookie....he wasn't even there and he gets it. 

FR in Air Warrior was seriously underpopulated until one weekend when Moggy "accidentally" broke Relaxed Realism and the RR weenies had no where else to play.

Air Warrior also tried having an "Ultra Realism" arena. It was a mega-flop. One thing to keep in mind when asking for "realism" is......is it fun? Does it enhance gameplay? Flying real airplanes is work, especially high performance ones. Sorry, I'm here to play.....not work.

[Boozeman]

Why?  That sounds idiotic.

Maybe because of the challenge it would pose ? If we can have things dumbed down and made easier than in RL, then why not up the ante for once?

  

[Karnak]

Maybe because of the challenge it would pose ? If we can have things dumbed down and made easier than in RL, then why not up the ante for once?

  

Because the ultimate goal is having it be fun while getting as close to reality as possible.  Making it harder than reality has the same flaw that making it easier has, it reduces the proximity of the simulation to reality.

[FiLtH]

 The way I remember it, the squad I was XO of at the time <Rattlesden> , decided one night to go over and try it out. First flight was a B25 off a cv. Krusty is right. At that time there were only 40 or so floks who used it. We ended up moving our squad there. Then we talked others to coming along, guys we flew with alot in RR, and as the numbers grew, more and more squads came. Eventually near rthe end bigpac FR was just slightly less, or on par with each of the RR arenas.

   Not saying we were the ones who changed it...just saying our squad and the JG26 guys had alot to do with its growth.

[Boozeman]

Because the ultimate goal is having it be fun while getting as close to reality as possible.  Making it harder than reality has the same flaw that making it easier has, it reduces the proximity of the simulation to reality.

Just to understand your point better, do you think that AH currently is in close proximity to reality?   

[Karnak]

Just to understand your point better, do you think that AH currently is in close proximity to reality?   

Heh.  No.  But that wasn't the OP's suggestion.

I do think that many posters here have a tendency to elevate the guys who really flew these things to superhuman levels of skill and ability in their minds when they talk about how hard they were to operate.  These were 18,19,20, 21, 22 year old kids being taught to fly and fight in these over time periods as short as a month.  If they were as superhumanly hard to operate as many would have us believe then there is no way they would have been useful warmachines.

[Tilt]

Actually  AW FR was slightly less ardous than AH std. RR was like AH with anti stall permanently switched on and no G effects (blackouts etc).

So I think Filth wants an arena several steps beyond AWFR. I must admnit that most steps beyond what we have now seem to entail "hard work" rather than "enhanced skill or judgement".

However

I despair of the "its a game its not reality" brigade.

Of course we all know its a game (I hope). But its a game based around certain facets of reality and to preserve this the game play model is best to improve/adapt change along lines that also adopt certain facets of reality to create challenges that reflect the essence of some of the challenges that may have been encountered. This does not mean that it has to adopt reality in full or any part of it that spoils the experience.

Why is it that when someone expresses a wish for some effects or characturistics of enhanced realism (whether we agree with them or not) there is this stock reply regarding how close this game is to actual reality as if this singular expression of percieved wisdom condemns the wish to the waste bin.

[CJ nitro]

I agree with a new arena. Let's keep lw orange and have another like ava but have only 2 sides. 1 axis and 1 allied able to up their respective vehicles. Make that arena have no auto speed flaps and no killshooter kind of thing. Give players a penalty of being banned to the other country or less access to some vehicles for shooting friendlies. No perk points or names in lights unless 5 kills are landed. Putting more rounds into a target to kill it doesn't seem to be the way I would like to see things go. If like to see the strat system in effect and some good slugfests. An arena that does not have even an option for autotake off. No training wheels like combat trim. This might take numbers away from the lw arenas but would be healthy to find the sim junkies in this arena and the game junkies in the others. No 2 week accounts or anything. This would negate the gried making shade owners from switching sides and shooting friendlies maybe. The more kills you land the better planes you can up without gaining some rank kind of system might help it along. Yes a new arena might be a waste. Look at the other arenas we have. Do they get much use? If ava was open and had people in it with some touch of realistic brushstroke to it I think you'd see less ganging and less complaints of arena caps. What sucks is having ideas and not knowing what would have to get coded or redone to accomplish things like this.   It might create a sim half and game half. The fights would have a bit less wash and repeat to them. The acm would mean something. If getting killed meant you had to wait 5 minutes to up from the same field again you wouldn't go into the fray without regard if you wanted to keep the fight going. These are just some ideas for if they ever did listen and do something like this. I'd hand my lw hat up for good. More rounds to drop a target though? That would probably take some tweeking on a less than every 2 weeks basis for a little while to get right. Sorry for being so long winded. Happy new year from the north country!
 

[sluggish]

No map and no icons.  Only dar available in the tower.

[CJ nitro]

Even pilots back then had maps and chartlets I'd  keep the maps but agree with the dar. Icons at maybe and a big maybe at 400 or less just to keep the collisions down but would be willing to part with that all together as well for the sake of keeping it on the not so easy side of things. Not a bad suggestion though really! Now if only it would happen. Has there ever been a wish granted to its fullest or do we drop these ideas here on our own deaf ears? Just wondering what the success rate is of this wishlist forum. 

[Saxman]

Even pilots back then had maps and chartlets I'd  keep the maps but agree with the dar. Icons at maybe and a big maybe at 400 or less just to keep the collisions down but would be willing to part with that all together as well for the sake of keeping it on the not so easy side of things. Not a bad suggestion though really! Now if only it would happen. Has there ever been a wish granted to its fullest or do we drop these ideas here on our own deaf ears? Just wondering what the success rate is of this wishlist forum. 

As has been discussed REPEATEDLY, icons are there to compensate for the limitations of the game. A plane that could be clearly identified at 1000yds in real life is just a black speck at the same distance in the game. Monitors don't have high enough resolution to properly render these aircraft.

Additionally, in the game we don't have depth perception, so while in real life it was clear if a plane was flying towards or away from you you DON'T have that visual reference in the game. The icon counter, once again, compensates for this limitation.

[BnZs]

Aren't there several anecdotes where veteran fighter pilots try one of these sims and comment that it is *HARDER* than flying the real thing?

Okay, there are four areas where AHII's realism might be questioned:

1-Stall-limiter. Actually, I don't know if these even warrants a mention, since few people use it and it is basically a disadvantage to anyone who does.

2.-Combat trim. I've flown Il2 and honestly, manual trim doesn't raise the workload all that much. Now there are some planes which don't *have* three axis trim...if you have a twisty stick instead of pedals, that is annoying, trust me on this. Honestly, considering extra difficulty trimming/and or flying not perfectly trimmed presents on a computer and joystick, I favor leaving it as is.

3.-Engine management. This is another thing from Il2 which doesn't really change all that much IMHO. AHII's engine management is not complex, but it *does* limit you to staying within conservative settings. There is a factor people don't think about: With a "realistic" level of control over engine management, you could run your engine in a way that would wear it slap out after a couple of sorties, a factor you do not worry about since you get a "new" aircraft every sortie. AHII's system prevents that. There is one further objection, systems that use water/water-methanol objection never run out of it-there is that. However, IIRC, most of these systems had at least 10 minutes worth of fluids, which is alot of WEP time, at least by MA standards. So this is another change I can take or leave.

4. Auto-retract flaps. This is the one change that might have an effect on gameplay. After lots of incidences of having flaps torn off or jammed, people might be as reluctant to use flaps as heavily as we do in-game, and would stick with the maneuvering settings that have a wide safety margin at high airspeeds.

[CJ nitro]

Saxman I do agree with you on the resolution of screens and pixels of the digital world we play in. I do think taking the icons and not having them shown until much closer would give a better element of surprise both in the air and on the ground. Icons for enemy gvs should not be shown to aircraft. I know there's things that have to be in the game to simply make it a bit more playable since not everyone has a hotas setup and all. Just think that if there is to ever be an arena with harder settings like the op was wishing for, we need to take out the wrenches and remove some training wheels is all. With in game comms it wouldn't be hard to distinguish friend from foe. We do that already in fso events. It is easy to forget that not everyone has the irtracker setup with the dual core 4gbram system. At the same time there is obviously a good amount of players(
judging from what ive read on this bbs and conversations I've had with others while in game) that  would most likely fill an arena that was more sim than game. Please keep in mind that this is the wishlist area and any idea here that hasn't been tried out yet isn't always something that needs to be suppressed or made fun of in my eyes.

 Ill try anything they come up with for this game. Id love to call it a full fledged sim. F4s vs ponies and zekes vs 109s kind of kill the idea of this being close to sim. They won't model a plane that hasn't seen combat but allow 3 fictional countries to duke it out in a completely non historic match up is a bit against the sim grain. A lot of people just want that more sim than game side of the fun. Meant not to be offensive. I just agree with the op and have once again gotten really long winded. if anyone read this whole post.