Hey TD is this doable?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

I'm not talking about realism.. I'm talking about fun.

I've got no problem with player-controlled AAA if TD wants to do it. Heck, I don't even mind if there's a server option that allows people who have been shot down, even killed, from manning AAA guns or even taking up a new plane. But, it should be a server-admin controlled option.

For the option of manning planes or guns if you're shot down, it would be simplest to just allow that option if the player is a) alive, b) unwounded, c) within X miles/km of his home base. That gives people some incentive to try to nurse a badly damaged plane back home. But, the server admin should have final say on who gets to "respawn" and the criteria required to do it.

So, +1 to Bearcat's original request.


As for my mini-rant about camping and its causes and solutions, I know exactly why onliners don't like campers. I'm just pointing out the problem of camping comes from grossly unrealistic scenarios. To me, that's as much of an immersion killer, and detracts from my enjoyment of the game, much as a grossly unrealistic flight model would. That's one of the reasons that I don't fly online. But, I also respect that different people play the game differently and enjoy different aspects of it. I happen to like realistic operational and tactical details, and love campaigns which try to faithfully recreate historical situations, but that's just me.

But, if you're flying on a server where opposing sides spawn from just one base each, you can practically see the enemy base from your airfield, and people can join and leave the game at random, I can see a real need to artificially discourage camping.

One way to get rid of the camping problem by allowing people to do air starts (if the server admin allows it, of course). To make things even more random, the server admin could have player-controlled aircraft spawn at random altitudes, random vectors, within a range of altitudes and within a range of grid squares on the map. To make things a bit fair, the server admin could set parameters that you can't spawn within X km/miles of an enemy plane and/or that you can't spawn in a position where you are advantaged or disadvantaged by an enemy.

Another simple way to discourage campers would be to subtract points from the offending team's score if you orbit an enemy airbase for more than N minutes. After all, artificial situations require artificial rules, just like any other sporting contest. Again, this could be a simple setting designated by the server admin.

There are probably other methods which might work as well.