Couple of things for me:
I love the damage model. It's second to none in the air combat sim world right now, I think. I absolutely love how connected it feels to the aircraft. I can take damage, look out my starboard side and see I'm trailing smoke and then scan my guages to find out what it could be. I keep the damage notices turned off for this reason (I highly recommend!). You get such a good feeling of being in that aircraft when things are going wrong...assuming you get
time to assess what's going wrong
It needs some tweaking, sure, but even in its current state I believe that, yes, it's the best going.
I love that, despite the problems with the game, there is a whole group of players trying to get on with it and make it work. Mission designers working around the problems. Players making adjustments to their strategies to take into account the problems. Plenty of people not giving up on what is clearly a classic in the rough. Salute to them! You know who you are.
I love the ships! I never thought this would be something I love about a
flight sim, but it's true! Just watch a ship get bombed and sink and you'll be amazed that they've put that level of detail in for a combat flight sim. Masts and stacks come exploding off, great fires, the listing of the ship, the water coming up around it - it's quite something. Makes me want to be a bomber pilot!
Almost.
I love the feeling you get after a combat you survive by the skin of your teeth, coming out on top. Bullet holes in your wings and a fuel leak from your tank, but you got the guy and you're heading home. It's a thrill that very few games know how to replicate and might be unique in many ways to combat flight sims. Cliffs of Dover has this feeling many times a night for a lot of us. Very few games offer that reward for playing smartly. Almost
every time I get shot down, I can point to the reason why and 9 times out of 10 its because
I did something I shouldn't have or didn't do something I should have. There are those instances where superior equipment or superior skill will always win out, but in those cases I usually feel that I
knew it wasn't my fight to win and I shouldn't have engaged. It's rare to get a game that offers that much fairness to a player in nearly every situation.