ATAG Dedicated Server is up!

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Just wanted to comment on Farber's post...

Most Red's probably hide around base defenses because most Blue's can do the same and hide in their ability to climb...with the current state of the FMs there's not much a Spit can do when met at Co-alt with a 109 but watch it go vertical and rocket up another 5000ft upon contact. Even when the Spit has the altitude advantage, a 109 can easily overtake them if the Spit pilot isn't careful or skilled enough to be aware of the situation.

Spits have to work 10x harder to get to a proper altitude that a 109 can reach with relative ease...this leads to most solo pilots (the majority of the server at most times) not dedicating the couple minutes it takes to get to 22k ft and just taking refuge in the lower populated airbase areas, or they've probably attempted the climb, made contact with 109, then watched it zoom up even then and got frustrated.

Cause and effect. Players are going to "game the game" unless encouraged to do otherwise. I'm hoping Wolf's new mission will alleviate this base-babysitting/base vulching mentality, and we can finally put the "Battle of Hawkinge" mission behind us.

I disagree. The battle of hawkinge as you put it, is because most reds, not all, spawn at the front line bases. That makes easy pickings for a cannon equipped 109 hovering above. The reason this accumulates and turns into the hawkinge show is because more reds spawn in at hawkinge to try to get the low flying 109 that was already there because of the decision of the red pilot to spawn at hawkinge in the 1st place. People's bad decisions shouldn't be blamed on mission design. Every single red pilot could take off and get to 20K without ever a thought of a 109 in the vicinity during the entire climb if they really wanted to. There's more than enough airfields spread out all over England to do just that.

The same can be applied for the 109 fields. I generally take off quite a bit inland so by the time I reach the coast of France I'm already at 4-5km at altitude. Actually most of the 109's I fly with on coms generally take off inland as well.

I do agree that the FMs are not the greatest, but at altitude, real altitude, the spit performs much better than it does on the deck, where as the 109 starts performing a lot worse. The higher the engagement the more even (not saying it's even) the better for a spitfire.

Altitude also takes flak/AAA completely out of the picture. So my suggestion is to simply not spawn anywhere near the front lines. When everyone on red figures this out, there won't be anyone at hawkinge for the blues to shoot at.