ATAG's 1st Bomber Night this Weekend

[salmo]

Bliss,
Sadly, my experience wasn't what I had hoped for. Here's some comments. Please take then in the positive vein that they are given, the bomber-night concept is a good one.

1. Start time
Advertised start time was Sat 23.00PM (Australian Eastern Summer Time). I came across you post here advertising the match had started at about 7.30pm AEST. I jumped online in a Spit1 to find my base was crawling with 109's straffing everything in sight. All I could do was takeoff & get in a low (<500m) dogfight. Inevitably I lost every time. Also, the red pilots on TS reported all targets had been at least partly destroyed.

I have no problem with "vulching" over bases, after all war... is... war. The issue I have is about the match start-time. By starting before the advertised time you placed red pilots at a disadvatage becuase blue was already at the red bases & had already destroyed targets before most reds came online.

I became so frustrated with my online experience, that I abandoned the match & sat down & wrote a "match script" that counts down to start time & destroys planes that takeoff before match start

May I suggest that matches start exactly on the advertised time in future. Somethingh akin the the United Squadron league matches.

2. Match duration
Having the match extend ove the entire weekend seems a little confusing to me. What happens when all targets are destroyed in the first 6 hours of play? What happens if someone gets online at an ungodly hour & is virtually the only pilot online? Maybe the match could be played over say 3 hours, but replayed at convenient times throughout the weekend.

3. Team organisation
I got onto the ATAG TS server & found several ATAG members flying blue & a slightly smaller number of licorice-allsorts flying red. When I enetred the red channel pilots were asking where the enemy was; where the targets were; what they had to do etc. Quite frankly, it was a major disappointment to me to find players unprepared for the match when you had taken the time to post recon photo's & a match scenario etc.

May I suggest that players "register" for these events. The registration should include a declaration that they understand any rules & have read maps, instructions etc. The registration need not be absolutely binding, but at least you might get an indication of numbers & better prepared pilots.

4. Battle map
The numbers on-line were relatively low (6-16 pilots). By having 3 widely seperated targets, you effectively split these number further, so that there were very few planes over any one target.

May I suggest one primary target, and say 2 secondary targets no more than 10km from the primary target. this would tend to concentrate game play better.

Cheers
Sal