Why have a "fighter" category?

[1Boner]

This was brought up ( by me) in another thread.

I thought (wrongly,so I'm told) that "attack" meant ground attack.

If you can score both ground attack AND air to air kills in "attack" mode, why bother having a "fighter" mode?

Explanations?

If indeed I am wrong in my interpretation of the word, what exactly is the difference between "attack" and "fighter" mode??

If a plane can't carry ord or have enough cannon power to kill ground targets, yet still kills air to air, how is that different from flying in "fighter' mode??

Should "fighter" mode be eliminated altogether?

Would it cut down on the 5-6 sortie 18 k/d ratios etc? With the culprits flying the rest of the tour in "attack" mode, yet killing 90% of their kills air to air??

Does it matter?

Would it make a difference in the way people fought?

[Anaxogoras]

HT says it's so that those who want to compete for fighter rank aren't penalized for not bombing/attacking ground targets.

[Anodizer]

On the contrary..  Why don't we get rid of bomber and attack scores as each can be easily achieved to phenomenal levels without ever actual fighting anything..

Fighter is really the only category that goes up or down depending on if you actually "killed" anything....  

Personally, I could care less what happens as I don't really put much thought into score..  K/D maybe just to see how I'm doing..  But actual score is meaningless to me..
Sometimes I find myself in a certain mode for almost a whole tour without ever knowing....

[1Boner]

On the contrary..  Why don't we get rid of bomber and attack scores as each can be easily achieved to phenomenal levels without ever actual fighting anything..

Fighter is really the only category that goes up or down depending on if you actually "killed" anything....  

Personally, I could care less what happens as I don't really put much thought into score..  K/D maybe just to see how I'm doing..  But actual score is meaningless to me..
Sometimes I find myself in a certain mode for almost a whole tour without ever knowing....

Have to agree with the bombing buildings in "attack" mode.

GV and moving naval target kills should be allowed in "attack" mode only. No buildings or air to air.

If you want to score kills air to air, fly fighter mode.

Going after GVs etc, fly in "attack" mode.

I thought that "attack" meant ground attack.

If it indeed means both ground and air to air, why bother having " fighter mode?

A kill is a kill.

[Masherbrum]

On the contrary..  Why don't we get rid of bomber and attack scores as each can be easily achieved to phenomenal levels without ever actual fighting anything..

Fighter is really the only category that goes up or down depending on if you actually "killed" anything....  

Personally, I could care less what happens as I don't really put much thought into score..  K/D maybe just to see how I'm doing..  But actual score is meaningless to me..
Sometimes I find myself in a certain mode for almost a whole tour without ever knowing....

Agree.   

[1Boner]

On the contrary..  Why don't we get rid of bomber and attack scores as each can be easily achieved to phenomenal levels without ever actual fighting anything..

Fighter is really the only category that goes up or down depending on if you actually "killed" anything....  

Personally, I could care less what happens as I don't really put much thought into score..  K/D maybe just to see how I'm doing..  But actual score is meaningless to me..
Sometimes I find myself in a certain mode for almost a whole tour without ever knowing....

Not that it means much, but you have some fairly good "building" kills under "attack" and only 1 actually "killed" anything.

And as far as Bombers are concerned, what else would you suggest they score on?

Bombers can be "gamey' but not fractionally as much as the fighter/attack mode can be misused.

I'm not tryin to cut you down, but now having that knowledge makes your statement fall kinda flat.

But I still kinda agree with your initial statement none the less as far as the attack mode and buildings are concerned. 

So again i will ask, If you can kill both ground and air in attack mode, why have a fighter mode?

[Dadsguns]

So again i will ask, If you can kill both ground and air in attack mode, why have a fighter mode?

Good question, I never even bother to change from fighter to attack, really have no idea how it works and what to use it for.  It has been stuck in one of them forever and never changed it.

[1Boner]

Good question, I never even bother to change from fighter to attack, really have no idea how it works and what to use it for.  It has been stuck in one of them forever and never changed it.

Thats kinda my point.

Like Bombers only get score for ground and building kills, nothing for air to air, I was assuming that "attack" meant ground attack.

If "attack" means both ground AND air to air, why have the "fighter" mode to hide behind.

You know as well as I do that quite a few guys will fly 5 or 6 sorties in fighter mode and then "hide" the rest of the tour in "attack" mode.

Kinda smells funny, ya know?

[Dadsguns]

I hope thats not the case,,,, 

[allaire]

IIRC when you are in attack mode your hit % doesn't suffer from strafing buildings.

[Anodizer]

Not that it means much, but you have some fairly good "building" kills under "attack" and only 1 actually "killed" anything.

And as far as Bombers are concerned, what else would you suggest they score on?

Bombers can be "gamey' but not fractionally as much as the fighter/attack mode can be misused.

I'm not tryin to cut you down, but now having that knowledge makes your statement fall kinda flat.

But I still kinda agree with your initial statement none the less as far as the attack mode and buildings are concerned. 

So again i will ask, If you can kill both ground and air in attack mode, why have a fighter mode?

For the past month or so, I've been showing the ropes to my good buddy USMARINE who is an IL2 vet and just joined AH last month..
If you look at any of my past score history, (since you are so interested ) you'll see I haven't dropped hardly anything and if I did,
it was out of shear boredom..  And if I did score something on attack, it was by mistake and I never realized it until I actually looked..

When people actually have kills under attack mode, that's one thing....  But to have an outlandishly high attack score with hardly any kills
is something else altogether..  Again, to each his own how they play..  If some guys find amusement in destroying static targets, by all
means, they should do what makes them happy..  

Attack mode should be just that....Attack..  Not shooting or dropping on static targets..  Dropping on static targets should be left to the bomber category..  The bomber category should stay the way it is....  For the attack category, they should remove any type of scoring associated with hitting static targets..  The only things that should count are things that can shoot back:
Manned Guns, Planes, GVs, etc.

One thing I'd like to be scoreless under the bomber category is sinking of ships....  If you want to sink a CV, use ATTACK aircraft and dive bombers..
Doing it with B17's, B24's, or Lancs is lame, imho and only takes 2 or 3 tries before you "get it" and can continue to be successful with it..  And
not that this is a WWII sim, because it's not (according to HiTech), but when where ships ever bombed from b17's or the like?

[E25280]

Sounds like yet another "Make them play my way" whine, but I will give it a shot . . .

Why have fighter vs. attack only . . .

Because some people like to see how they fair in pure air-to-air combat.  Only hits on airplanes count toward hit%.  Ground kills and buildings blown up do nothing for the category, but then, most people who care about their "fighter stats" likely wouldn't be bothering with such things anyway.  Fly to the enemy, shoot him down, rtb if possible, and later contrast and compare how you fare against other people who were doing the same thing.

By contrast, in attack mode (which, counter to whatever that was that adonizer was trying to say) is about destroying ground targets and facilities (yes, even static ones), and therefore hits on buildings and vehicles will count as hits.  This results in an inflated hit% vs. what you will see in an individual's "fighter" stats.  This then also makes it generally useless to judge your pure air-to-air combat ability, if that is your motivation to look at stats at all.

So, you ask, why allow air kills to "count" for attack sorties . . .

Well, why shouldn't they?  A person flying attack isn't doing so in a vacuum.  Odds are, if he is the "attack" sort, he is trying to capture a base.  Wow, in an air combat game, people will actually up airplanes to stop such an attack on their base!  The "attacker" must therefore engage in *gasp* air-to-air combat in order to be successful in his base-taking endeavor.  If he is successful in his air-to-air combat after he drops his two bombs or strafes down whatever building, why shouldn't he be "rewarded" with a kill?

Remove the fighter category, and you have quite a few furballing types who would be upset that they can't compare their uber-l33t skilz to other "real" pilots and have their hit percentage look puny compared to a bunch of die-hard toolshedders.

Remove the air-to-air attack kills, and you will (IMO) degrade gameplay because even more people will be concerned they aren't flying the "proper" category to actually shoot at a plane or a building despite team-mates in the area requesting help.  Having a flight of P-47s swoop in on a town, drop ord, and then run away from the defenders because their kills wouldn't count does not sound like a change I want to see.  Do you?

[stickpig]

The original concept is good. It just has to be used the way it was designed.



It just depends on the person using the system. You can use it the way it was meant to be used or you can abuse it.

[Crash Orange]

Attack mode should be just that....Attack..  Not shooting or dropping on static targets..  Dropping on static targets should be left to the bomber category..  The bomber category should stay the way it is....  For the attack category, they should remove any type of scoring associated with hitting static targets..  The only things that should count are things that can shoot back:
Manned Guns, Planes, GVs, etc.

Auto-ack can shoot back, and it's a more appropriate target for jabos than for strategic bombers.

And not that this is a WWII sim, because it's not (according to HiTech), but when where ships ever bombed from b17's or the like?

They were attacked by high-level bombers all the time (Midway, for example). They just weren't hit very often, except when immobile in port (many ships, the Tirpitz for one, were sunk that way). But if our bombsight is hyper-accurate for land targets, it may as well be hyper-accurate for naval targets as well.

And twin-engine bombers like the B-25 were highly successful at bombing naval targets in low-level approaches. I'd be thrilled to see skip-bombing modeled in AH2. It wasn't often done against anything like a carrier task force, though, because of the ack, but then neither were attacks by lone tordonuts or dive bombers.

As for the existence of fighter and attack scores, counting air targets for attack but not ground targets for fighters, that makes perfect sense given the plane sets and historical roles of these aircraft. They could be used as interceptors, bomber escorts, or jabos, but in the latter role air-to-air combat was always a likely prospect.

I like having the option to have fighter missions when I'm just out looking for a scrap but attack missions when I'm on a base-taking mission.

[Dadsguns]

The original concept is good. It just has to be used the way it was designed.
It just depends on the person using the system. You can use it the way it was meant to be used or you can abuse it.

I think that is what is being asked pertaining to the latter part of your comment.
How can it be abused?