Too late!

German guncam footage is rare as a rule, but that's not saying the LW didn't get to shoot during WWII. Most of the film was lost/destroyed. However, I believe you are on the right track, the 109s did not as a rule spend time strafing airfields, they were kept busy at height.

I rarely get killed taking off... but i rarely get on the ground without having 3 or 4 planes straff me while i got my flaps and gear down for a landing and its still rare i don't make it down... so... doesn't matter if im flying spit's or 109's but i got nothing against vulching cause there's no rule saying they can't, but i personally find the fight more fun than the kill, so i don't.

I had some guy swearing at me the other night. It was a real insult and ruined my night. I escorted a 110 over the channel. One spit managed to get off the ground. I circled the base until the 110 headed back over the channel. As the spit closed in on the 110 (about 1km over the channel) I dove down and gave him a hell. He was determined to take out the 110 so he flew too strait. His crate was done and he bailed.
All good,until he abused me and called me a spawn killer with some choice 4 letter words. There was no talking to him. I like the no rule servers because it's the most realistic. Also no rules mean no arguments. If you don't agree you should go to another server. Simple.:(

Hi Drewpee,

No way you should have to take that crap. Don't know if this happened on the ATAG Server, but I'm sending you a PM anyway.

Snapper

Its a rare occurance lately for me to spawn on ATAG red bases & not have flak going off over the base. It's rather disconcerting & quite frankly, I've taken to leaving the ATAG server when the blue boys are persistetly over the bases.

Don't get me wrong, war is war, & no quarter should be asked or given, but I think we need to find ways to discourage players from hovering over bases loking for the easy kills. More flak needed at bases? A proximity timer script increasing the chances of some aircraft system failure if over a base too long?

No worries Snapper. I've got a memory like a sieve so I wouldn't remember the guys name but it's nice to know bad behaver is frowned upon. I've started to use Fraps so in future I'll be taking a screen shot of this kind online rubbishing and sending it to your mods:)

PS, I love your server and it's now the only one I fly on. Please don't change.

Another perspective that we are addressing is that for a number of pilots there isn't enough to do, so "airfield suppression" (vulching) becomes a prime activity. This naturally keeps the action low as defending pilots seek to drive off the intruders -- all the while bombers of both sides are flying high above unmolested and unescorted. This is an over-simplification, of course; not everyone vulches, and bombers do get escorted and do get shot down.

Trust me, we have tried beefing up flak batteries, plus static and AI air defenses, even assigned limited numbers of the pre-patch "über Spitfire IIa's" to a coastal airfield. This generated tremendous controversy at times and was met with only dubious success at the best of times. Up 'til now our hands have been tied with the limitations of the CoD coding. In many cases our AAA efforts resulted in gamestopping lag on the airfields -- the extra processing load was too much for the existing code to handle.

Certainly positive incentive is preferable to negative. With the coding performance improving, we can design missions where BOTH sides have a lot to do up high. Further, if the bombers get through it will be detrimental to the losing side, beneficial to the winning side. Players will be rewarded for getting their aircraft back to a friendly airfield, penalized if they don't -- that kind of thing. All these design efforts are to encourage gameplay to evolve towards a more realistic (as possible in a sim) Battle of Britain experience. We don't have a Goering or Dowding to dictate Rules of Engagement, so we will work on mission design instead.

Any and all suggestions are always gratefully appreciated!

To be honest, I would really advise using the rear bases. I take off from Gravesend and/or Maidstone once in about every three sorties. You never have to contend with pesky 109s above.

In fact, even Manston is "hot" only about 30% of the time in my experience. In fact, last night there were 60+ on the server, and I used up ~30% fuel (what's that 25 minutes?), in a 5,000ft circuit above Manston/Ramsgate and only 1 single german turned up the whole time - and that was a twin engine, not even a 109.

How did I miss this!?

Gimpy is onto something here...

But I want to give my 2 cents on this subject for I am sick and tired of the REVERSE vulch. Where you are flying around over enemy territory and get killed (black screen) by Bofors. Pfft. I mean...like who could really hit a speeding bullet like me in my 109 right? Jesus.

I think its about time we put an end to REVERSE vulching as well.

Now to determine at what height you must follow the poor guy up to in order to engage.