Inigo Montoya

Happy New Year, Bardamu!

I've noticed another change in the way vertical rolls work as well. It used to be that after I killed an opposing pilot, I could play a vertical roll and change altitude before discarding and drawing new cards. Now, if I play a vertical roll after the opposing pilot is shot down the card is expended, but has no effect. I don't get to change altitude. I wonder if this is related to same bug Cyrano01 is describing?

Great playing, Bardamu! It was a tough fight, but you pwned me hard! 8)

Why yes, Lake, I do believe you are correct!

I can double post because I have double pilots with 1000 Kills.

Whoops - double post

Congrats, Lake! And Sixx, until you have two pilots with over 1000 kills each, you can't post in this thread!

Loki and I were trying to get a game going with Mamba vs Hartmann. We tried Mamba as the game creator and Hartmann joining – No Joy. We tried Hartmann creating, then Mamba Joining. Again, no luck. Loki then had a mental breakdown and became belligerent. <18:28 Loki_88> du blödes dummes hasenhirn, ich hab schon 5 mal gesagt das geht nicht! My best translation is: You bloody harebrain! I’ve told you five times already! <18:28 Loki_88> MAMBA CANT JOIN ANYONE...YOUR BRAIN DOESNT RECOGINZE HTAT? <18:29 Loki_88> well you wanna try...hartmann gets up now,....check if mamaba can join <18:30 The Bride> because mamba cannot join - i created a game for you to join... but we've already tried that earlier this week and you found out you couldn't fight mamba with any of your good pilots <18:30 Loki_88> UP...with HARTMANN...check now it doesnt work? <18:30 The Bride> hartmann is lower than mamba so i don't expect it will work <18:31 Loki_88> asshole... We need to do something about this problem. It leads to friction in the community.

Black Mamba can't play high ranking pilots. She is worth about 10,700 points in the screen waiting for others to join. Erich Hartmann and other high ranking pilots can't join, but 4000 point pilots can. Why is that? It doesn't make sense that high ranking players can't fight each other.

Shooting down your own wingman is nothing to brag about, Sixx!

Stalin's O, I'm sorry for the confusion. I don't think I did a very good job of making myself clear. I'm not talking about a perfect 12 kills in 3 missions per week. Certainly many people have done that. What I'm talking about is quite a bit more difficult. What I did was create a new 1944 pilot. I then flew 3 escort missions and attempted to achieved 12 kills. If I failed, the pilot was deleted and I started again. When I did achieve a perfect score from scratch, my pilot was listed with a perfect 4.0 record on the All-Time section for kills/mission. (Something not done before or since.) That was the point where the number of missions was increased to 15 missions.

Well, I have to eat crow! Pete67 just showed me that people *can* join games with Black Mamba now. She will be happy to fly HvH missions. This is wonderful!

Pete67, First, I very much appreciate your civil tone. During the hour I had my friend on to play, I was writing very little in chat because I had him on the phone and was talking him through. He hadn't played for a long time. I had arranged for him to get on to prove my point that the HvH stats are easily gamed. He had no interest in playing DiF anymore and was just doing me a favor. This is why he and I weren't playing other people. With the two of us not saying much in chat and not interested in playing other people, I can see why you were suspicious. I never denied anything. What I said over and over was that HvH stats were meaningless and there was nothing impressive about me getting HvH kills. I began composing the orginal post for this thread right after Loki said I was "lucky." I pasted a link for this post into the chat during the discussion. I respect your opinion that I was cheating and not demonstrating a problem. Fair enough. Oh, I agree! And my actions demonstrate that I too would choose to do things this way. Here's some DiF history you may be unaware of. It used to be that the Kills/Mission and Experience/Mission stats were based on only 3 missions. I emailed the developers about my concern that the stats could be gamed. Nothing happened. So I strove to get 4 perfect missions in a row and eventually I did it - 12 kills in 3 missions. At that point, the developers made a change to 15 missions as a minimum. Last fall, before the expansion was released, I emailed the developers and beta testers that I was concerned about the experience one could earn flying custom missions. By flying a custom mission, you could game the system and earn about twice as much experience as normal missions. I posted about this. Nothing happened and the expansion was released with custom missions counting for normal experience. Some people began flying lots of custom missions because that was the smart thing to do. So I created a pilot and demonstrated you could get ridiculous amounts of experience. At that point, the developers made a change. So I'm with you, Pete67. I did contact the developers in the past and try to convince people there was a problem, but what experience has shown me is demonstrating a problem is more convincing than arguing there is a problem. Look at Lakespeed's earlier point about the problem he found. It's in this very thread! I posted a solution, but I ask you, Pete67, has anything been done to fix the problem Lakespeed posted on? If anyone can help me think up a demonstration so that problem gets fixed, please let me know. The reason Black Mamba had only flown 1 HvH mission (her 2000th kill) is I never wanted people to question the legitimacy of her record. When people play verus humans, it could be questioned if kills were easy or against incompetent people. There is no questioning AI games. You and I have a fundamental difference on what kind of games involve risk. Take a look at your clan website and you will see there is zero chance that your pilot will ever die in a HvH game. I had to laugh that you somehow try to suggest that HvH games are where danger is! "If you win without danger, you'll triumph without glory." Go and read your own clan website (http://downinflamesonline.com/DiFPortal/Default.aspx?tabid=116) where Loki writes, "RULES: If you meet one of our squadron pilots in a human dogfight we fly within the following rules: ...- If you make the misstake to join a human fight with one of your pilots who has no escape death left you can ask for stopping the fight and cease the fire, we will do it and don´t attack you anymore. We just want your pilot as a human kill...not your pilot´s life." Under your own clan's rules, by flying HvH missions you can respawn your Escape Death without risk. Your clan doesn't even try to hide that there is no danger. It's only in AI games that you truly face the potential you will lose your pilot. I've lost 36 pilots to the AI. So please do not suggest somehow I am the coward. I do not mean to insult you or call you a coward, but I've lost far more pilots that you have and that demonstrates that I've faced much more risk than you have. EDIT: [i thought I couldn't fly HvH with Black Mamba, but I see a change has been made and she is eligible. I will now fly as many HvH missions as people want. ] You seem to think I am afraid to play HvH games. I've flown 173 HvH missions. How many have your pilots flown, Pete67? Does 173 missions seem like someone who is afraid? With Respect, The Bride [ March 24, 2007, 10:30 AM: Message edited by: Inigo Montoya ]

Fascinating. One person assumes the one-hour effort was done for narcissism. The poster above thinks it was done out of stupidity. Another is adamant it was done for betrayal. I completely understand the varied hypotheses, but what I find bewildering is the smug certainty that each suggestion they propose is the correct one. As history has made abundantly evident, there is an inverse relationship between wisdom and certainty.

Interesting! Is this something Brian could fix? It seems like it should be easy enough to do - just give people +1 to missions along with the fatigue.