Oldschool Aces High Discussion: The most Enigmatic Fighter...

    To me, the most enigmatic fighter is the P47.


    In real life, it dominated in WWII. Both High Altitude and Low Altitude Ground Attack.


    But in game, a piece of shit. Utterly worthless and undignified.


    Did Hitech fuck up (and everyone else), or was the P47 a piece of shit that just found itself continuously in the best situations at all times ? A fluke...

    One of the scenarios I played in in AH, we were P47s escorting bombers. It was the most fun I ever had in a scenario. Our bombers were sneaky and all went NOE while P47s went and set off radar sectors away from them. Groups of P47s and P51s against 109K, 190D and 262s.


    When the N came out I was ecstatic, got 200 kills in that thing every month for years. I could even beat spit 16's in it. Hated the M, no roll rate

    Well respected man about town doing the best things most conservatively


    That's an issue that came up in War Thunder. Basically they built the matches a certain way; Airfields 30 miles away from each other. And then planes that were purpose built interceptors were stomping all over planes that were purpose built long range escorts when they are both taking off at the same time.



    At 25k+ feet, the P-47 is king. But who the hell in Aces High or War Thunder is taking a P-47 up to 25 thousand feet?


    The P-51 is almost in the same boat, but it was so light and slick that it can almost hang at any altitude.



    Aces High is slightly better in this regard than War Thunder because you get to set up your own conditions in AH. You can take that P-47 to 30k feet at your leisure. You probably won't find anyone to fight, but you can do it. You really can't do that in WT. If you climb at the interceptors, they'll eat you alive. If you try to climb away from them, they'll eat your team mates alive, then they'll find you. MAYBE you'll be in your element, but it'd still be a 1v4+ fight by that point.

    AH has a lot of "useless" arena planes. They just can't compete with the A-list fighters in any way. For that reason I was always intrigued with Scenario play that puts together a balanced adversary setup with starting alts, where the scenario can go either way, and it uses the lesser used airplanes/bombers.


    Example, a Scenario that uses bf109E's, Ju-87s and HE-111's vs a bunch of Spit & Hurri 1's.


    The problem was these required registration and set times - and they didn't happen often (enough).


    End result was it was far too easy to just say "Fuck it" and drop in the arena whenever, and up a fucking LA-7.


    If I have any regrets about AH, it's missing out on all but a few scenarios. If I had to do it again, I'd only do scenarios.

    Hmm that's a good one... Holy Trinity....


    For non-perked, I'd say LA7, Fw-190D9, and P51D. Honorable Mention Spit XVI.


    LA7's were one of the bigger killjoys but at least they only excelled on the deck and had a short fuel range.

    Quote from Gina

    I think in real life the Jug was was more survivable. Like just being able to dive away from anything. In AH, you can dive away but you will never lose a faster plane. They can see you on radar and visually track you. In real life, planes got lost easier I think.


    Video game survival and real life survival scenarios are 2 entirely separate things. For example any radiator cooled plane in WW2 was fucked if the radiator or any part of the cooling system got hit. And not just by big shells. Basically any bullet was enough to "kill" the plane.


    At least so far as the Pilot wasn't likely to continue to risk his actual life with a crippled vehicle that was losing measurable power by the moment.


    But in a video game there's little consequences for your virtual pilot to ride that flaming bird straight into the ground. Aces High was better than most for only rewarding you if you made it home, but that pre-supposes you've actually accomplished anything in the air on that sortie. If you hadn't, there was no reason to be safe (other than stat bragging).



    I argued for War Thunder to make it so that planes could have different spawn conditions based on their design and loadout options. For example, my proposal was to allow planes like the P-38, P-47, and P-82 to spawn at 10K+ feet if they took drop tanks and 75%+ fuel. Basically they could spawn at altitude and cruising speed by sacrificing their weight. And in the Lightning, and Jug, that's a lot of fuel weight to be carrying around in a knife fight.


    But even by that point (YEARS ago), War Thunder was so set in their ways that anyone even suggesting anything change was set upon like a fat calf on the sahara.



    I've done a few planned scenarios in WT. They were decently fun. But I don't want to be the one to organize it and get the herd of cats all pointed in the same direction.

    I'd say the D9 was a very fun plane to fly with friends as a mission plane. LIke go heavy, and drop bombs on a base to stir the hornets nest and try to rack up kills in the ensuing chaos. We did that a lot in Elite Top Aces and it was always fun. Many time we'd start off like that, and Skyrr and his band of shitstained cunt-sticks would show up with a whole lot of altitude (since they were always tracking us with spies - such was their hatred of us) - the ensuing fight was always fun.

    Remember that MA map where the center base was at 10k and the surrounding bases were at 0? That was the time you broke out the shitty jugs. Since you couldn't just buy perks, if you wanted to farm a lot of them, you took out the -D25 model with 50% fuel, cherry picked the shit out of people until you look like you might end up with enough E to be level with the other fighters, then departed to go refuel and rearm at the 10k base. My personal best was 27 landed. Corny af and boring but 262s weren't cheap.