This seems obvious to me

[crims]

Last time I checked I was sitting at Home in front of my computer....... Looks Around and the chair is still on the ground. I have never flown a WW2 airplane so I don't have much to go on. Been playing this game for a few years now and I know one thing ........ Its Fun or I would go find something else to do. Could you imagine you have to even Wait 5 min. untill you upped again Its a game have fun with it.


Crims
 

[Wingnutt]

Last time I checked I was sitting at Home in front of my computer....... Looks Around and the chair is still on the ground. I have never flown a WW2 airplane so I don't have much to go on. Been playing this game for a few years now and I know one thing ........ Its Fun or I would go find something else to do. Could you imagine you have to even Wait 5 min. untill you upped again Its a game have fun with it.


Crims
 

see you could be one of the "automatic settings guys"  your playing a game having fun, you know its not real.. not high fidelity flight simulator.. but fun none the less..
 

then there are us folks who fall out of our chairs and make simulated bullet holes in the drywall behind the monitor every time we get shot down..  we want.. more 

[caldera]

I am in posession of some vintage WWII hardware. For a small fee, I could drop by your house and put a couple hundred real holes in it. 

[Wingnutt]

I am in posession of some vintage WWII hardware. For a small fee, I could drop by your house and put a couple hundred real holes in it. 

and I ll run out in the street and call you a HO picker, then you can post the film and let the community chime in, then the thread will be locked...
in the end all that will be effected is my heating/cooling bill.

so i must respectfully decline your WW2 era drive by shooting offer. 

[FALCONWING]

aHA! Knew it!....human beings reach their maximum level of IQ as a teen, then oddly lose it as life progresses....

Its funny you would post this because i had a revelation the other night....

When I started AW I was early 20's, had no money, limited bills, no kids (or very young) and pretty much when i got off work/school my freetime was unlimited.....except for keeping the Mrs. happy

Now I have a job, management responsibilities, investment responsibilities, 4 kids including teenagers, travel sports, coaching responsibilities, rides, groups of friends we have to go out with, emails to respond too and my freetime is about nil except after 9:30 pm.

So the reason I probably couldn't/wouldn't want a more complicated game is that I would lack the time to learn it all over again.  Specifically the motivation.  At least I can afford the better stick now...I just don't want it

BTW that doesn't mean a "full realism" arena with different modeling would be a bad thing....

[caldera]

so i must respectfully decline your WW2 era drive by shooting offer. 

 

All right, I'll do it for free. When your wife comes home, you can tell her it was a horde of termites passing through on their way back to Chernobyl.

[Morpheus]

Aces High is primarily an air-combat game and not a flight simulation.  For all of the complaints about poor gameplay, part of the blame has to placed on the kind of customer base that shoot-em-up games attract versus true flight sims.

Let me list some of the easy-mode concessions that we have in AH:

• Combat trim
• Aileron trim for aircraft that did not have it, e.g. a lot of Spitfire marks, 109, etc.
• Ammunition counters
• No mixture controls
• No supercharger controls
• No radiator/cowl flap controls for engine cooling
• No engine overheats
• Weak engine torque
• 360 degree head swivel
• Flaps auto retract when airspeed increases
• No weather
• Automatic bombsight calibration
• GPS clipboard map

I'm sure all of you could expand on the list.  The thing is, AH would have been a flight sim if it had been introduced 20 years ago.  In fact, when I first tried Warbirds offline in 1996 it wasn't just an air-combat game; compared to the standard of the day it was a high fidelity air-combat flight simulation.  But AH is pretty much the same thing in a different sand-box, and 13 years have gone by...

We have all of these concessions so that it's not too hard for a new player to get in the air and enjoy the action, and so that more experienced players can also focus on the action and not on tinkering with their radiator flaps.  At least, that's the usual explanation for it.  But these concessions play right into the hands of the instant-gratification, never-read-the-manual crowd.

I have asked for high-fidelity engine controls in the wishlist and around 90% of you rejected it.  That's fine, but don't complain about the quake-style main arena gameplay in the next thread; since 90% of you complain about gameplay, I'm sure there's a big overlap.

A lot would change if some of these easy-mode concessions were done away with (the GPS map would probably stay).  Learning to manage engine temperature would be the easy part, but combat tactics would have to change.  For instance, prolonged furballing on the deck at 180mph with WEP would require the full opening of radiator flaps, which would degrade performance.  Level bombing accuracy would decrease.  I don't think these changes would spell the end of air combat in AH, but they would require you to RTFM and put a little effort into learning to fly in order to succeed, and that would be better for gameplay.

<----door

[AWwrgwy]

Indeed. If HTC implemented more realistic engine controls, they would compete better with games such as Il-2, potentially drawing away from some of their more realism-oriented player base with AH's more realistic flight model and MMO community.
I think that with a stall-limiter like crutch, more realistic engine controls would probably be a good business decision for HTC.

Wouldn't it be possible that HTC would lose more potential customers than they would gain in this niche market because the fun and action factor would be offset by the drudgery of doing mundane chores?

Engine performance plays a large part in the flight envelope, does it not? It would seem to me that in aerial combat milking everything you can to get the performance out of your engine should be important, just as milking everything out of the rest of your airframe is, instead of having a non-penalizing 'stall limiter' of sorts.

Why doesn't anyone ever ask pilots what they did different every flight to maximise their performance cowl flaps wise?  Because nobody cares.  As far as I know, which isn't necessarily saying much, cowl flaps were opened on the ground to keep the engine from overheating.  Get moving and they were closed, and stayed that way.  Changes to fuel mixtures and manifold or throttle settings were to save fuel.  Fight's on and no one was adjusting fuel mixture anymore.  Throttle, sure, but that's obvious.

Mechanical failures, from what I've read, just happened.  It doesn't read, "We were pushing extra hard, wide open and we lost a cylinder on number 3".  It is simply, "we lost a cylinder on number 3 engine while egressing from the bomb point."

The only instances I've read of mechanical failure during stressful combat situations are on P-38's with engines and turbochargers.  More a teething problem than something that would regularly happen to all aircraft, all the time under a certain set of circumstances.  As a matter of fact, one occasion of a 38 losing an engine in the middle of a dogfight was due to it having only half the amount of oil in it that it was supposed to have.

Sure, there are 16 steps necessary to start a planes engine.  Do we care?  Will it make game play better?


wrongway

[Oldman731]

Nice try.  I can log into hyperlobby right now and see more than 700 people playing IL-2 FB.  Not all of them are playing with complex engine management...maybe around 50%.

I grasp your point that a more complicated game might sort out some of the less complicated people, and thus improve game play.  I understand that IL2 is a more complicated game (I've never played it, but it's what I hear), so probably we can glean an answer from there.  Do those of you who have played the two games find that there is less HOing, ganging and vulching in IL2, or that people there avoid fights less than they do in the AH MAs?

This is a real question, not a criticism of either side of the issue.

- oldman

[The Fugitive]

Quote from: The Fugitive on Today at 02:31:24 PM
I don't want to have to spend half my time trying to keep my plane in the air only to see the first enemy I FINALLY find to seize his engine and go down with out firering a shot.

Quote from: Wingnutt on Today at 02:33:12 PM
anytime someone brings up the game having too many crutches which makes it absurdly easy and gamy, the other side trhows in the MAXIMUM OPPOSITE possability "I dont want to spend 20 min doing preflight"  "my gun heater ans sight heaters!"  etc etc..  give me a break..

nobody is suggesting THAT level of involvement in the game.. that would be retarded (almost as much so as you insinuating that wanting that is what this thread is about)

Thank you wingnutt. Smiley  Fwiw, I'm yet to seize an engine in Il-2, but it is certainly advantageous not to fly around at 100% throttle because it keeps your engine cool for when you need to use it.  If only they had something like FSO...

So what your saying is that I'm going overboard thinking you mean the "maximum opposite".... hmm lets see

• Combat trim

no combat trim

• Aileron trim for aircraft that did not have it, e.g. a lot of Spitfire marks, 109, etc.

no aileron trim

• Ammunition counters

no counters

• No mixture controls

mixture controls

• No supercharger controls

supercharger controls

• No radiator/cowl flap controls for engine cooling

radiator and cowl flap controls

• No engine overheats

overheating engines

• Weak engine torque

stronger engine torque

• 360 degree head swivel

no head swivel

• Flaps auto retract when airspeed increases

no auto retract on flaps

• No weather

weather

• Automatic bombsight calibration

tougher bombsite calibration

• GPS clipboard map

no GPS clipboard map
[/list]

The red replies are what you believe there should be in the game right? It sounds like a bit overboard and much closer to the maximum than adding a few changes. Again, there is nothing wrong with the game, its the way it's played that is screwed up.

and just one little question....

Nice try.  I can log into hyperlobby right now and see more than 700 people playing IL-2 FB.  Not all of them are playing with complex engine management...maybe around 50%.

Why aren't you at hyperlobby now if they have it so "right"?

[Widewing]

I can't improve on this reply, except to say that the cooling systems that AH lacks have an impact on the flight envelope as well.

Il-2 engine management combined with AH's flight model would be fantastic.

Would you be happy if there were a lever to pull instead of a button to push?   Also, they're not making anyone do anything.  You don't have to fly Il-2 with complex engine management; they give you a choice.

I have 800 hours as a flight engineer in C-118s and C-131s, as well as about 100 hours in the right seat of a C-1A (and about 1,200 as crew chief). Believe me when I tell you that you do not want absolute realism. It's not fun. It's work. I don't fly Aces High because I want more work.


My regards,

Widewing

[Animl]

Aces High is primarily an air-combat game and not a flight simulation.  For all of the complaints about poor gameplay, part of the blame has to placed on the kind of customer base that shoot-em-up games attract versus true flight sims.

Let me list some of the easy-mode concessions that we have in AH:

• Combat trim
• Aileron trim for aircraft that did not have it, e.g. a lot of Spitfire marks, 109, etc.
• Ammunition counters
• No mixture controls
• No supercharger controls
• No radiator/cowl flap controls for engine cooling
• No engine overheats
• Weak engine torque
• 360 degree head swivel
• Flaps auto retract when airspeed increases
• No weather
• Automatic bombsight calibration
• GPS clipboard map

I'm sure all of you could expand on the list.  The thing is, AH would have been a flight sim if it had been introduced 20 years ago.  In fact, when I first tried Warbirds offline in 1996 it wasn't just an air-combat game; compared to the standard of the day it was a high fidelity air-combat flight simulation.  But AH is pretty much the same thing in a different sand-box, and 13 years have gone by...

We have all of these concessions so that it's not too hard for a new player to get in the air and enjoy the action, and so that more experienced players can also focus on the action and not on tinkering with their radiator flaps.  At least, that's the usual explanation for it.  But these concessions play right into the hands of the instant-gratification, never-read-the-manual crowd.

I have asked for high-fidelity engine controls in the wishlist and around 90% of you rejected it.  That's fine, but don't complain about the quake-style main arena gameplay in the next thread; since 90% of you complain about gameplay, I'm sure there's a big overlap.

A lot would change if some of these easy-mode concessions were done away with (the GPS map would probably stay).  Learning to manage engine temperature would be the easy part, but combat tactics would have to change.  For instance, prolonged furballing on the deck at 180mph with WEP would require the full opening of radiator flaps, which would degrade performance.  Level bombing accuracy would decrease.  I don't think these changes would spell the end of air combat in AH, but they would require you to RTFM and put a little effort into learning to fly in order to succeed, and that would be better for gameplay.

A FR arena has been suggested, and filed under G.
<shrug>
ANimL

[CAP1]

Last time I checked I was sitting at Home in front of my computer....... Looks Around and the chair is still on the ground. I have never flown a WW2 airplane so I don't have much to go on. Been playing this game for a few years now and I know one thing ........ Its Fun or I would go find something else to do. Could you imagine you have to even Wait 5 min. untill you upped again Its a game have fun with it.


Crims
 

that would be the last day of my subscription

[715]

I would suspect from these replies that there are not enough full realism people to adequately populate a separate arena.  I know AW had engine overheats and random gun jams.  There was no WEP key, you just firewalled the throttle and had to monitor your temps- if you overheated the engine could seize. It wasn't really a terrible burden, but it was quickly removed because most people disliked it.  The random gun jams (not bullet caused gun damage, just random jamming of a gun) was extremely unpopular because it introduced a random unfairness and was also quickly removed. 

You can't make full realism optional in the MA to "not disadvantage" those that choose auto mode and still give a performance advantage to those who choose realism.  If realism is slightly advantaged then the non-realism is, by definition, slightly disadvantaged.  And  I don't understand how optional realism would improve MA game play if almost everyone was choosing "auto" mode?  Almost everyone would just keep doing what they are doing now wouldn't they?  To make it really work wouldn't you have to force realism on everyone and wouldn't that be quite unpopular?

[Wingnutt]

Wouldn't it be possible that HTC would lose more potential customers than they would gain in this niche market because the fun and action factor would be offset by the drudgery of doing mundane chores?

no loss, game could be played as it currently is, have the extra fidelity as OPTIONS..  no manditory..  you can still run everything with automatic everything, you just wont be able to extract maximum performance from the aircraft compared to doing it yourself.

Why doesn't anyone ever ask pilots what they did different every flight to maximise their performance cowl flaps wise?  Because nobody cares.  As far as I know, which isn't necessarily saying much, cowl flaps were opened on the ground to keep the engine from overheating.

you wouldn't be flying at 100% throttle from wheels up till wheels down, especially at low level.. well you could at your own peril..    the prolonged stall fighting on the deck at full wep even more so.

what about cowl flaps??  well if you get her nice and cooking hot during a hard fight, how about the option to open the cowl flaps to cool the engine a little quicker, of course this would come at the price of some speed.. but you could regain your we quicker..     none of that is totally realistic.. but it would add to the game to be able to manage engine heat in some way.

Changes to fuel mixtures and manifold or throttle settings were to save fuel.  Fight's on and no one was adjusting fuel mixture anymore.  Throttle, sure, but that's obvious.

mixture changes are made with altitude aswell, more importantly, in combat pilots could.. at their own risk.. purposefully run the engine slightly lean to gain more power.. this came at the risk of early detonation and engine damage but it was done..  in fact i remember reading a spitfire pilots comments regarding a talking to he go from a mechanic after he came to him with a handful of spark plugs with melted ends..

Sure, there are 16 steps necessary to start a planes engine.  Do we care?  Will it make game play better?

reading comprehension fail.. in regards to engine managment, nobody is asking for totally realistic systems or even anything close..  just slightly more in depth managment.

Believe me when I tell you that you do not want absolute realism. It's not fun. It's work. I don't fly Aces High because I want more work.

not one single person has suggested 100% realism... nobody..    just something somewhere between that and arcade style.