Originally Posted by dys

the vast majority of air missions are anti-personnel in current conflicts, most notably in iraq and afghanistan, where it'd be otherwise too difficult or dangerous to send in ground troops of your own to neutralize targets.
as for responding to neutral flags
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t.../screen001.jpg
before
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t.../screen011.jpg
after

ww2 was a war fought by the Blitzkreig, where fast movers and heavy armor were the name of the game. air power in this era changed the face of the conflict, but this just does not apply today in our current conflicts. same for vietnam, and the eradication and exposure of the Ho Chi Minh trail. army and marnine liasons were stationed to detect troop movements and to call in air support to utilize napalm and high explosive munitions to destroy the troops and clear the jungle to deny the enemy cover.

the last time america has seen any remarkable armor support was in the first gulf war, and where it was needed, air support was utilized. today, as in the case of pr's basrah, we just don't have armor to destroy, and the mission is drastically different. you said "In my view, aircraft are anti-vehicle platforms first, fast response to neutralized flags second, with anti-infantry a very distant third." in today's insurgent warfare, air support is 1) anti-infantry ground cover, and fast response platforms (including vehicles) 2) high value target elimination. anti-infantry is anything but third. i'd argue that the same applies to the game. if insurgents spawned in little cars all over greater baghdad in real life, i'd guarantee you that they'd be the number one priority targets. i'm all open for discussion though.

Ordinarily, I would agree with you. Neither am I trying to shoot anyone down for their comments here. However, it appears that any argument "based in reality" is not applicable to a game, even for one so named like with "Project Reality". There are several places in this very section of the forums where arguments like this, my own among them, have been heard but not necessarily accepted by the majority.

At the same time, I'm not trying to say that aircraft don't have a role to play or even that they shouldn't attack infantry formations. What I am saying, however, is that there is a time and a place for mentioning one's achievements. Had this thread been about, "Look at this. This is something that worked well under these circumstances and it involved me doing x, y, and z. Have a look at the results," then there probably would not have been a problem. But to make it a raised pedestal from which to boast about it manifests a false sense of pride in something that, for all practical purposes and taken by itself, is no great achievement.

Let's face it; bringing pain down on infantry from way up on high is not all that hard. I know this just as well as the next pilot. Yes, flying takes skill, as does the gunnery seat. And yet again, a pilot really is only as good as the rest of his team allows him to be. Raw skill will only take a pilot up to a certain point. A good pilot with a good team will always be better. Thus, any comparisons that are made based purely upon score alone, while not distinguishing between what roles were played in achieving them, are hopelessly skewed. The most obvious is of course that many of the best infantry will never see the kind of scores and/or KD ratios that a mediocre pilot/gunner will see over the long term. There's no common frame of reference here that would make any such comparison useful or even noteworthy.

Which brings us back to what Root and others have had to say; that personal score is meaningless when set against the whole. At the end of the round, the only thing that means anything at all is whether or not your team scored well; whether or not your team won or lost. Everyone had a part to play in that, big or small. Even the meat-shields had a role to play if their team won the round in the end, which might well have been as simple as drawing fire away from the heavy hitters.

Personal score is a display of skill, perhaps. Team effort is a philosophy - and a very correct one - that I think has contributed much to the growth and success that TG has seen as a community.

Q: "What is your best high score in a single round?"
A: "Well, I don't know... Doing what in comparison to what?"