I can accept the icons, not to my taste but i can live with them, the issue i have with dogfight servers is the general approach of most of the pilots you encounter.
EAF pilots will work together and co operate to get a kill, with little or no concern who gets the final kill credit.
Yet on most dogfight servers i have experienced people firing over my shoulder to hit the aircraft i am already engaging often resulting in my aircraft getting damaged, or when i have done enough to finish off an a/c and leave it to its inevitable fate they dive in hoping to get the last shots in to get the kill and points.
These are the reasons i spend so little time in dogfight servers.
i feel uk3 is one of the best servers out there, aside from the icons. most of the other people who fly there i have got to know and there is a lot of teamwork, its very very rare you will get any shoulder shooting or stealing from the “regulars”, perhaps only occasionaly from some loner who isnt on the comms channel.
I don’t seem to have experianced the kill stealers that much and when they do I only care when people behave reckless. It is my experiance the seriousness of the pilots are usually based on two thing: 1) Range to combat zone. 2) Realism (Icons and the like).
On the less realistic servers you find a more actionhungry crowd usually not caring about survival, friendly fire or objectives to win a map.
There is nothing wrong with that approach!!!
As I wrote before; Our attraction to the game is different.
But I did NOT join the EAF to fly that way and neither did a lot of other guys in organiations like 200th Sentai, JG’something or another.
I joined the EAF to learn to fly without icons, do rl combat flying (teamwork and tactics) and experiance the emmension of the WWII pilots. Like getting lost during a sortie :eek:
If that day come when EAF SOP is to use icons I will join another organisation to satisfy my need for realisme.
And when all the games for realismefreakes like me are gone and everthing is only made for the console marked; Ill still play old modded games like Rainbow Six - Athenas Sword; Falcon 4 Allied Force, Sturmovik and GTR2 on my old computer
am i wrong in thinking you can turn icons on and off, if icons are enabled on a server, you can map a key to turn them on and off at will. so you can play in a server with icons and have yours off and be none the wiser.
Maybe, maybe not.
There is a ‘Toggle Icon Types’ under button selections and somhow I have a button allocated to it, but I have no clue of what it does
am i wrong in thinking you can turn icons on and off, if icons are enabled on a server, you can map a key to turn them on and off at will. so you can play in a server with icons and have yours off and be none the wiser.
You’re not wrong Repent.
Its Toggle Icon Types in the keyboard commands.
The Toggle Icon Types command toggles between four icon settings:
No icons
Range only
Range & ID
Range, ID and Type
You can also switch them off in game, via the mp_dotrange command.
I know where you are coming from, you’re thinking level playing field, no icons at all for anyone. However there are so many variables in this game in regard to a level playing field. Resolution, AA filtering, Cloud settings, trackIR, stick throttle rudders etc. Essentially you set up your game how you are happy to play and use your wits to get by.
All that said I ain’t no fan of DF servers, never have been and probably never will.
“The great unwashed” …I’d rather keep them at arms length if poss. One or two sensible bods that you meet regularly in COOPS is one thing, jumping into a server with 60 of the feckers is another
personally i think its about me, rather than what they are doing, i can play in an open cockpit server and not give a hoot if the others are using no cockpit or not, so long as im happy flying with a cockpit on.
that looked like you didnt know you could change the icons on/off on the fly.
im not entirely sure “no icons” is the most realistic setting, after all how close do you have to be to somebody to confirm whether it is them or not?? granted distinguishing friend or foe is easy enough with experience, but distinguishing between me, you, brigstock, mikke, joe90 whilst flying is the hard part.
in real life its much easier as people can read even car number plates accurately from great distances, in this game we cannot read 2 foot letters on the side of aircraft till we are touching wings almost. now some might say this is where comms comes into play, but realistically radio’s and so communication was generally bad back then, i have read a lot of instances where pilots would just turn the radios off cos they were so useless.
so for me having icons set for a close distance to identify friendly aircraft isnt such a bad thing, and we all have our opinions and likes/dislikes.
That is a big no. I had no clu that it was doable.
I disagree. Of course it requires me to be within 200meters/yards but is is do-able.
On my desk I have a small paper notepad where I write down mission briefs AND plane letters/numbers with Pilots names.
This I don’t really have to do with my sqd since I have a paper with their numbers/letters on the other side of my monitor.
Since I have the letter Y which translates into 25. My CO has a Q = 17 and so on. If the possible I ask my buddy to do a wingflipping. That how I regained my position as Meako’s wingman the other day in Joe90s DCG.
Even when you fly Falcon 4 (Allied Force) there is no IFF as such. You have to ask the AWACS to identifly. Alternately you can lock your targeting radar on you wingman and his ECM will go nuts, telling “Buddy Spike”!
FYI: Falcon4 is a ultra realistic F-16 simulation.
People flying it regularly are considered freaks:eek:
Just releasing a dumb bomb requires reading a manual.
I fly it from time to time but not regularly
That is correct. I just joined the EAF to fly without icons wether it is in the air or on the map
well like i said, everyone has their opinions, but i dont think comparing falcon 4 to il2 is a good comparison, in fact its only similar in that its a flight sim.
and if you can read aircraft numbers at 200m in game then your not at a disadvantage turning tags off on the UK3 server as the tags are set for friendly only and at between 250-500m i believe.
like brigs said, you set the game up how you want it, and that lets me have fun within eaf everynight no matter if we fly with tags on or off, dcg’s with externals, whatever, i like to be flexible so long as its gonna be fun.
lets agree to disagree starfire
edit: and id love to see an example being able to read aircraft numbers in game from distance
I dont like icons at all. I really dont care about how well you can see numbers on the side of an aircraft or no. Comms, experience and common sense helps negate much of this problem. I also believe Icons make you more and more lazy on your SA, you less look for the dot, you less look to identify a silhouette (which I love doing) and more just look for the icon. The more you use icons, the worse it can make you when flying with no icons imho. This is why I fly no icons when offline too.
However, if I have to, I will fly with icons on and have done many times. Sometimes I will fly on icon on servers with my icons off, but the disadvantage compared with others with their icons on is quite big. While we are taking 5 seconds to figure out who is who, the Icons on people are already on to you or know the situation better. It`s not a fair situation.
Anyway, I would prefer icons off completel, but I know that many just won`t deal with it that way. I also joined EAF cos they flew with no icons which seems the most professional and experienced way to me.
The word ‘distance’ is relative, but I believe you mean more than 200 yards away.
Just as in real life; You won’t be able to read the letters on the ass of a moving truck if it is more than 200yards away
LOD modelling in IL2 has always been pretty poor, the engine was built that way in the early days to allow for the high detailed (back then) models. If they hadn’t used very basic LOD models the game would have been unplayable on release. However PC’s and time have moved on. I would have liked to see the distances that the LOD changed improved but it never has been. Hence the reason you can ID an aircraft by it’s code when it is still relatively near.
A good example, I was in Joes normandy DCG a few weeks ago and had to practically fly right up beside a JU88 and have it fire at me before I was totally convinced it was not a B25. I could see it was a twin engined AC but beyond that it was practically impossible to ID from a distance.
That said it wasn’t easy to ID aircraft back in WWII either.
I saw a documentary on Bouglas Bader were the conclusion was he was shot down by a wingman of his in the confusion of battle and it wasn’t ubntil after the war that the details finally came to light. Even at the time the pilot reported that he shot the tail of a 109 G series. But it turned out the aircraft was Bader and the pilot got confused in battle by the rounded wings the later 109’s used.
