homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War Does This Bother You, Too?

Sounds like you got shot down to me!

He got the message while still in the air, so he was not "shot down" yet. I think if you get your engine knocked out but manage to land at a 'drome, it should not count as a shoot-down.

"Shot down" in RoF means your aircraft was forced out of the fight. If your engine dies due to damage, you are unable to fight. However, if you fly on servers that use Vaal's stats algorithm, you will often find that credit is not given for every in-game shot down message. I just ignore the in-game message except to note that the other guy is damaged enough that he is forced down.

Also, that engine shut off tactic is a big reason folks with dead engines get shot at. If you're shutting it down just to avoid the kill message, that is gaming the game. So if you get shot when your prop isn't spinning, I see no room for complaining.

When I get oil or notice engine damage, I try to disengage to return to home base. Regardless of scoring, I know if I landed or not and I like to try to land safely (as I certainly would do in real life!). If I can, I cut throttle as I have found you can fly a lot longer with a damaged engine if you don't stay at max throttle.

While we're at it, here's another rant: people who get credit for shooting me down when they fly into me.

As someone who can still count his online kills on one hand despite many hours aloft, the credit for a kill is important - especially when someone else seems to get it at my expense. I do think the system is a bit broken - I've seen "Father Ted shot down XX" when I don't remember hitting anything - so I try to ignore the messages now. After all, IRL, you couldn't always know the fate of planes you shot at.

As for being shot at whilst gliding, I guess all's fair in love and war. I bet it happened back then, too.

That does bother me too a weee bit, I think the other person also gets a credit too though??

BUT I've purposely rammed people when out of bullets to down them, many times living and crash landing. Especially I do this in heavy bombers when someone is close on my tail and my tail gunner is dead... So I'm glad that rammers do get some credit...

My problem with ramming is it's far too unpredictable. This goes for other sims like Il-2 where you can do it as well. I've experienced it both ways, where I shred another plane and experience minor to no damage, and have been shattered like cheap glass while the other guy continues to fight with no adverse effects.



I hardly think shutting the engine off so it doesn't catch fire and result in your roasting alive is "gaming the game."

Besides, I don't play on servers online, so that is no concern of mine. There is no human gunning for me.




The Jedi Master

That's just ego.
Let it go - who cares.

It amazes me how attached some are to these kinds of things.
Nobody is thinking about you or caring whether or not some message says that you got shot down.
Just fly and have fun - you know what happened during the mission.

You should re-read what I actually said. I helped you out by reducing the quotes above to the relevant bit.

I've always considered my streak to say if I was really shot down, or just forced down. Land behind enemy lines due to engine failure or killed in the air/in a crash, and streak ends. Otherwise, someone can get credit but the streak still continues.

I agree, kill streak is the stat I care about. I can get shot down, crash, engine die, whatever, but still survive. K/D isn't impacted until you get player killed and then it starts over. Regardless of game stats, that's how I treat it.

That's brilliant! The current chat system is too narcissistic.

RoF is unfortunately air quake. If you fly in a manner resembling real life you are punished for it. If you play it like Team Fortress you are rewarded. I don't blame the players but I do blame the game design.

You can play it however you want to. The air quake thing makes no sense. Yes, people will fight in certain areas and furballs will happen but flying around solo hunting, which happened in WWI, for two seaters or to pick off people in the furballs or just out there scouting on their own works to.

Being forced to play a certain style is boring and I can't stand it.

No, my player actions are up to me but the play dynamic is mostly not. What if I want to play in a manner where the enemy will overwhelmingly desire not to engage if outnumbered 10 to 1? The decision is in the hands of the other player, not me. What if I want to do a 3-hour sortie? If the host has map rotation on 45 minutes I have no choice. What if I want the score screen at the end of the round to place the person whose actions were desirable in the context of the actual war over someone who killed 9, died 7?

Being forced to play something technically brilliant but vapid and impulsive is boring and I can't stand it.

Vapid is overstating the issue, though yes, there are some vapid players. I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. New MP missions on SYN server are exploring ways to get more historically realistic air warfare.

Ultimately nobody is forcing you. Play SP, or if you just "can't stand it", uninstall and goodbye, though we need all the MP players we can get (vapid or not) so your loss from the roster would not be an acceptable solution IMHO.

I've not seen 10 to 1, obviously that's an exaggeration - but you can't influence players and what they engage. That is not game design, that is the players of the game. Multiple planes engaging fewer, or even single, opponents did happen in WWI.

Map rotation is the server operators decision, not game design. If you want a longer rotation, start up your own server.

The score screen is arbitrary values put together. How do they know what "influenced" the war - the person that bombed the most plane factories, the most airfields, destroyed the most balloons? You can't quantify an influence on the overall battle without setting some value for it and then it's going to be who destroyed the most what.

And again, this is how you want it to be played. Maybe other people don't want it to be that way. Personal choice, but you want to force how you want it to be on other players.

Obviously I don't hope for disappointment and the opportunity for criticism. I want satisfaction for the game to be roughly like what I know WWI plane combat was like with teamwork and the tension between aggression and fear. RoF is often like re-enacting the battle of Waterloo with water balloons. Yes it is "fun" but it doesn't do the subject matter justice. What is maddening is that I know RoF can be much better than it is most times. I'm sure somewhere there is a private group that uses hand signals and tactics and doesn't consider 8 victories to lose half of the squadron a good day. They brief before the mission but don't gab in Teamspeak during the flight talking about pizza rolls and TV shows.

The difference between playing RoF like Ace Combat for "teh lulz" is that those players can get their arcade fix in many places. For someone that wants to play historically there is only RoF, no where else.

Online "wars" or whatever title it could be granted, have been that way across many air combat environments. They simply have the atmosphere for it. The dogfight servers or whatever name they could be labeled, have always been the pick-up game type venue. Join, find a fight, engage, and either get shot out of the sky or return to base in whatever condition.

There has never been a game out there that has recreated the battles it sets out to portray, save for the historical scenarios where it's all setup and preplanned ahead of time simply because forcing people to play a certain style forces many away.

Having been involved in online air combat sims/games since Confirmed Kill v.93, the closest I've seen to having what you want is historical scenarios that take a lot of planning and cause a lot of gray hairs for those involved in setting them up. At least in those environments, everyone that is partaking in it is there because they WANT to be a part of that type of environment. Those that don't, stay away and stick to the 24/7 pickup style combat arenas where everyone can play how they see fit.