LoBaron
Posts: 3843
Joined: 1/26/2003
From: Vienna, Austria
Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: TheElf
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ORIGINAL: Nikademus
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ORIGINAL: TheElf
Someone's take on a Catch 22 mission. Agian you can hear the comms and get a sense of the personalities. lot of good guys, few are actual pilots but they spend a lot of time on this sim and have learned well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niZ30PsEQdk&feature=related
So do you get alot of air simm guys thinking they can take on you real pilots in real aircraft? 
An interesting question. Most of the guys I come across online don't have any idea who I am or what I bring to the table. I am just another guy online. Like I mentioned before there is a steep learning curve in this sim. One of the disadvantages I faced was not being able to rely on knowing my own aircraft. Not like I did the Hornet in my prime. I also couldn't rely on modern jet BFM. It just didn't apply. Sure come principles translated, but the reality was WWII ACM was quite different from anything I had done before.
Another reality check was that you can't survive in a multi-plane engagement without backup, and some luck. Team oriented players tend to be more successful. Disciplined team oriented players were very successful. Disciplined team oriented players who know their aircraft and their enemies were almost unbeatable. So there is a stratification of players. Once I figured out how things worked I adjusted my play. Sure, I could go out by myself and be successful. I once knocked 4 or 5 Zekes out of the sky by myself, but I did so VERY conservatively, and ALWAYS from a position of advantage. When I felt I had lost the initiative I ran, and I didn't look back. I'd climb for 15 minutes just to regain energy and SA, and then re-enter the combat zone. If I ever felt that I was being rope-a-doped or I had numbers against me I took my shots and maintained my energy and exited the fight. The Zeke is tough. Even in a Hellcat. A 1 v 1 vs a competent aware zeke is not a fair fight. 2 v 1 against a zeke is even odds. Unless you have, in my experience at least 5k' of altitude advantage, AND you are accurate with every gunnery pass. One miss can turn the tide. I have always been amazed at the Zeke's ability to climb and continually pressure you even from a lower altitude.
For every scenario I felt in control there was one where things devolved rapidly and I was fighting for my virtual life. Usually it was as a result of getting greedy...just one more kill, or one more pass to finish off that wounded bandit, and then WHAM! 20mm starts hitting home form an unseen bandit. Then it's dive to the deck, get fast, and hope he doesn't have an angle. I always said I wasn't about getting kills. I was about landing every mission. There were guys who would go out and get on the leaderboard by flying risky. They didn't care if they eventually were shot down, as long as they took 2-3 bandits with them. To me a successful mission was about returning safely, and landing. If I got no kills but lived to fight another virtual day THAT was more a measure of skill than any number of kills. The kills came though, and the only way to advance on the leaderboard was to "land" your kills. They didn't count if you got shot down, at least as far as the leaderboard mattered.
Real world...there just isn't anything to compare. The BEST fighter pilot today? He's the guy who is out there every day doing it. Right now I'd be lunch for some aggressive young JO (junior Officer) whose current job has him flying BFM every day. There just isn't any replacement for going out and doing it. There are tactile, seat of the pants sensations that can't be translated to the human mind with ones and zeros. So, would I expect to have an advantage over a simmer in real world chops? Absolutely. But only because I've been there. He hasn't. Anyone else would probably have my lunch for at least a week or two until I got the feel again. Proficiency is the word. Train to fight, fight to win. That's why we spend so much money on our military....THAT's why our boys got beaten up a bit by Japan's War savvy warriors in the early going. They had been doing it...for real. We hadn't.
I agree on your assessment. In fact I know Zeke vs. Wildcats servers and bomber night by name, and always slightly envious watched the online guys while I tried to get
an AI as close to real as possible and knowing I´d miss half of the thrill.
My problem with online play is exactly what pointed out as important. To be successful you need teamwork. You need to meet at a certain time, you need to be active on TS,
you start to feel obliged to your squad mates - which is only natural.
My job is very communication centered. I was IT Operations for a couple of years and now am IT Architecture. Both jobs require a high ammount of meetings, conference
calls, team jour fixes and so on, and from my personality I prefer to write instead of talk. Neccesarily I do talk, but if you spend the whole day like this it is often enough for my taste.
I had some time where I played an online MMO called EVE. I was quite successful playing lone wolf, but there is only so much you can achieve without joining
a corporation. And at the moment you join you have hundreds of new "friends" to whom you "feel obliged to", just get online to say high, have a bad feeling if
there is some corporation ops but you don´t want to join in, talk crap on TS (yes, most of em where adults, but even then...) and no more good old lone wolfing
anymore because everytime you log 100 people say "Hi".
There is one game I would currently buy a headset for and this is World of Tanks (because: short, fun battles, you can be deadly as lone wolf, my friend and Ally plays it,
and after 15mins everything is over and you can log), and if you ask my Ally, Rob Brennan, he would tell you that I won´t ever buy one because he unsuccessfully tries to
get me on TS for about a year now.
(I am soooorry, thanks for the patience old friend!!)
So, this is why I prefer offline to online play. I want to be successful, SA, teamwork and comms are the key, and this is where I lack on purpose.
Sakai007, thanks for confirming Erkki on the AI stuff. You guys are really tempting me to search for my 1946dvd...
< Message edited by LoBaron -- 3/14/2012 8:06:25 AM >
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S**t happens in war.
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