Night Arena

[DREDIOCK]

Icons did not kill it, but the ability to boost gamma was not the only reason. Aces High (as well as any other sim) is a lot closer to a game than a simulator with night enabled. I don't think I would fly at night in AH because of how far from reality it gets. Unless you are flying over a city this is what you are supposed to see:

(Image removed from quote.)

Maybe a few lights in the distance and a moon if you get lucky.

If yours or anyone elses looked like this then you didnt have your monitor calibrated correctly. Thats always been the problem. People insisting their monitors were set up right when they weren't.

On a properly calibrated monitor. night time should look like  night with a harvest moon. Damn near light enough to read by and not all that much darker then dawn/dusk is now. Certainly light enough to fight by.

[fullmetalbullet]

... and everyone that I have talked to says NO to night so we are even ... look at this thread ... the majority say NO.

Sadly, it is the majority (most amount of money) that usually wins. HT is not in the business of driving more players away from the game to appease a few. There are mouths to feed, mortgages, and car payments to make.

If night were to come back, personally I wouldn't quit, but I surely would log off for an hour until the sun was back up. Some may not be so understanding and quit and that's the bottom line from where I sit.

And what is with the "dog fighters" crap ... I can guarantee you that I have participated in more base captures than you can even imagine. I play all aspects of the game, and after more than 9 years playing this game, there is one aspect that I enjoy more than the other and that is dog fighting but that isn't why I dislike night.

YOU CAN'T SEE PROPERLY AT NIGHT AND THE MAJORITY OF WWII PLANES WERE NOT MADE FOR NIGHT OPERATIONS.

i dont see why you cant see anyone. with the moon out you can still see the other guy. granted i never really flew fighter mission at night back then but i could still see and intercepter very well beyond 6.0k. so i dont see how you couldnt, and i have a crappy arse monitor from 2001 made by dell.

[The Fugitive]

It doesn't matter whether or not you could see, heck everyone had a neon icon near their plane! The point is most people left the arena when it turned to night.Were not talking 51% here, more like 80-90. Even if you stuck around it was no fun because there was almost nobody to fight against.

[oakranger]

No. Night fighting is not the same as just flying a plane at night. Most "night fighters" in real life can only catch bombers if the NF is running full power and the bomber is cruising. On top of that the entire mechanic of night fighting, from taking off, navigating in pitch black, following radio leads and contacts you can't see ("take course xxx here, 10 miles out", and "visual range," and "he's behind you now" etc) it's not even remotely comparable to flying AH at "night"

And there's no point in having an arena. Only people flying at night are the ones that don't want to be engaged. HT said most of the server logged off every time the server cycled to "night time" so they removed it. They have the actual logs and know what was happening. They made the right choice.

I believe moST night fighter/interceptor have a crew of two or more.  something that will be hard to do on AH.

[fullmetalbullet]

It doesn't matter whether or not you could see, heck everyone had a neon icon near their plane! The point is most people left the arena when it turned to night.Were not talking 51% here, more like 80-90. Even if you stuck around it was no fun because there was almost nobody to fight against.

and i believe that was atributed to the fact that those 80-90% didnt want to dogfight at night even though they could still see and engage the enemy to do "turn fights", and "BnZ" attacks. like i said i just dont see why its such a bad thing. maybe with some fixes here and there and night fighters it would be different.

[Ack-Ack]

and i believe that was atributed to the fact that those 80-90% didnt want to dogfight at night even though they could still see and engage the enemy to do "turn fights", and "BnZ" attacks. like i said i just dont see why its such a bad thing. maybe with some fixes here and there and night fighters it would be different.

And you would be wrong but then you weren't playing back then so it's understandable why you have no clue. 

ack-ack

[PJ_Godzilla]

Your missing the point. Those who fly this game for dog fighting, which are much greater numbers than those who fly bombers, will not magically jump into bombers because it is now dark out.

People who fly fighters primarily, want to fly fighters, and from a vast and past experience ... when darkness descended upon the arena ... they logged off ... waited an hour and then logged back in.

I can't see that changing just because there will be night fighters available because they really won't be fighting ... just basically hunting and killing bombers, if they can find any.

Sure, but consider the possibility that there might be another group who enjoy night fighting for wha tit is - an entirely different thing. It's kind of like tennis. You've got dubs players and singles players. Occasionally, you have true dual-role players, but it's rare. Both the dubs and singles specialist will claim to love the sport but they're really talking about two different things.

I think you and Fugi are both trapped in the paradigm of night arena as lights-out MA, as the poorly-executed prior version apparently was. To my mind, such a thing would, per Fugi, SUCK BALLS.

[FLS]

Assuming we get H2H arenas again you'll be able to set them up however you like. Windy no icon nights!   

[PJ_Godzilla]

And you would be wrong but then you weren't playing back then so it's understandable why you have no clue. 

ack-ack

So, since you were playing back then, entertain me with a couple of answers.

1. what night fighter did you fly?
2. what was your target? A stream of RAF bombers or were you countering enemy night-fighters?
3. Who was your GIB? Was he proficient in the use of the Dopple Reiter?
4. What were the icon rules?
5. How much did the ambient light intensity vary?
6. If the answer to 5. is of significance, did you ever find it possible to dogfight at night?
7. If anser to 6 is yes, what kind of ACMs were most useful in night fighter vs. night fighter combat?
8. What was your favorite night fighter and why?

The only thing that's "wrong" here is claiming Thing A, because Thing A once existed, is somehow Thing B, even though Thing B isn't even a well-defined concept yet. I suspect, if you wanted to, you could probably help to define a concept for a night arena that actually WOULD be interesting. Screw "same as, only dark". I buy that it SUCKED.

[SlapShot]

i dont see why you cant see anyone. with the moon out you can still see the other guy. granted i never really flew fighter mission at night back then but i could still see and intercepter very well beyond 6.0k. so i dont see how you couldnt, and i have a crappy arse monitor from 2001 made by dell.

I flew AH night time from 2002 until they got rid of it, so I know all too well what it offered. I never said I couldn't see anything, it was just hard to see. There was a significant loss of depth perception in regards to where you were altitude-wise and where the ground/ocean was ... even with the moon lit night. Without the glaring neon icons, you would have totally lost your target after the merge and to re-acquire after the merge would be brutal.

Even with the icons, it was very hard to see your opponents wings and try to react to its movements. This is probably the main reason why there really was never and true night time dog fighting in WWII. The high percentage of loss of man and machine was probably the impetus.

I applaud your gumption concerning this, but I don't see it happening unless HT makes some significant changes to "night" and is also able to prevent people pumping up the gamma on their monitors to make night into day.

[Charge]

1. what night fighter did you fly?

Mossie

2. what was your target? A stream of RAF bombers or were you countering enemy night-fighters?

Random bombers that where around when night came and still wanted to drop on our bases.

3. Who was your GIB? Was he proficient in the use of the Dopple Reiter?

 

4. What were the icon rules?

Normal MA icon rules. In sea event the range was 3k and it was very difficult to find enemy unless there was a radar track.

5. How much did the ambient light intensity vary?

It did not vary once the night came, it was quite short time, however. What it enabled was to make strategic moves without the enemy seeing. But MA is all about furballing anyway so that is of no interest...

6. If the answer to 5. is of significance, did you ever find it possible to dogfight at night?

Dogfighting was very difficult and engaging the bombers was rather difficult too, but despite that, fun -IMO that is.

7. If anser to 6 is yes, what kind of ACMs were most useful in night fighter vs. night fighter combat?

IRL night fighters were mainly aimed at bombers, not against other fighters, however if it was F vs F, normal ACM was applied, although hitting something was difficult.

8. What was your favorite night fighter and why?

Mossie, because.

 

-C+

PS. I know people left the arena when night time came and I have never understood why, thus I wished them good riddance. However I did not observe a huge loss in numbers. We once had a SEA event where we chased bombers with 110s and it was lots of fun, but we did not have huge numbers there so I guess YMMV.

[K-KEN]

I like seeing a renewed effort here. I think my last go at this finally got Dale (HiTech) to post.    It was my wish to also have an entire arena. But like many have said, it's like eating vegetables....some folks would rather die! 

[Old Sport]

Perhaps consider a dedicated Night Arena with a regular and plentiful supply of AI bombers (though players could fly bombers too) since night bomber missions would be a yawn... Mossie pathfinder missions might be interesting, if a bomber stream actually depended on you getting your incendiaries on the right target. I wonder how you'd code that...

Search lights could also be interesting. Long ago I met a Lanc front turret gunner, who apparently at least once got caught in the light. He said the defensive action was to dive into the light, front gunner firing at it (and he re-enacted that with grim intensity, like he was re-living being terrified out of his mind) and then the bomber pulls out, hopefully breaking from the searchlight's beam.

Best.

[Krusty]

EDIT: Going back to night in the MA /EDIT

Dogfighting wasn't done at night. Ever. Very little flying was done at night. It was more dangerous for the pilot and the plane than it was for the enemy. With RAF and LW night bombing being an exception to the general rule, the rule was "fair weather flying only"


Why do you think June 6th has such importance? It was the first day in weeks with clear weather to fly over the channel.

There were long periods of times, weeks or more, where Soviet or US planes could not and did not take off in one theater or another due to rain, snow, or what-have-you.

Forget about night.

[fullmetalbullet]

Well for me despite what anyone else says. i think they should bring it back. and plus why cant you guys wait an hour for the sun to come back up, its not like its gonna last an entire full RL night. so i think an hour isnt o bad. plus as i said before if all you wanna do is furball and make no contribute to the war effort to try and win then goto the DA.