So now we get punished because people like to fly with us and your country mates got bored and are watching
I suppose if we horded you with P39-D's you sit there are whine about eny still...
That's probably the kind of subtlety that's lost in discussions on this topic. The point isn't that you're ultimately winning but that there's no fighting involved in the process.
Why not pick just the right dose, like counter balancing overwhelming numbers with lesser planes like the 39, or diverting your attacks to a number of bases so that each base isn't just nuked without any contest but actually fought over even if you never really risk a total blunder? There's no such precision to the proportions, but the point is to make it more like 30-40% chance of defeat instead of 5-10%.
The problem really is finding the right dose. A furballer/dogfighter analogy: you go to the DA with someone like Bighorn. Would you keep coming for more, or say it's worth your 15$, if every single time he kills you within one or two reverses after merge? Or if he just goes limp and lets you kill him? Or if he always tries to make the fight challenging no matter how long it lasts, even if a few of them end after less than a minute? In which one are you most getting your money's worth? Effectively no one is gonna seriously say the last one is best.
An organized strike force that's dropping and capping bases with each breath is only fair play if the opposition is equally organized. This is a game, not war. Sitting in the tower watching bombs drop and frontlines move across the map like seconds on a clock, flying long escort missions where you and a dozen other escort fighters see at most 1 bogie, that's not what the game was made for. You don't pay pay-per-view to see a string of fights where each one ends not even halfway into round 1. The cut to commercials and color commentary before after and between fights is all filler, and that's what sitting in the tower or having to turn tail because you don't stand a chance of lasting more than 10sec after merge amounts to.
The same way the game isn't about pushing cockpit buttons and minding flashing lights or fiddling with slide rules, but about the actual air combat. What's the reward in steam rolling a map while avoiding any combat or contest from the opposition? A handful of perk points and changing colors on the clipboard, and an opposition that either evacuates your target territory, or logs off.
That said, as soon as I realized this myself, I never tried to lead strategic missions again, because reading the other country's level of organization was way too dodgy. It was basically up to chance whether there'd be overwhelming defense, a good fight, or nobody home. What's for sure is that no one will have a leg to stand on if they're griping about that middle scenario. If the game was
only about strategic combat, it wouldn't need physics or pilots. More like RTS or sports team manager games.
You guys have the strategic side down pat and that's fine. But you can't expect not to have a big chunk of the players against you if you remove all tactical gameplay. Tactics are the bread and butter of the game.
