Ashtar wrote:


Well put ...

I would say that Blue Max was successful, not so much for what it did, but for what it didn't do. That is, at a time when you had a number of highly complex (and not very successful) air-war games on the market, Blue Max offered a quick and simple way to play games set in World War I (what we here call a "beer and pretzels" game). To do this, unfortunately, it had to throw any serious accuracy out the window. The extremely rough gradation of movement, the use of absolute performance characteristics (ex. altitude and fuel) to set tactical capabilities, and the distorted view of how the weapons work with regard to damage make it almost impossible to say exactly what the game really recreates. That said, of course, it is still a fun game.

The scoring system, as implemented here, is not well suited for its purpose (not just one-on-one contests). It favors two-seat aircraft, which shoot often during a game, and have two “people” firing. It also favors and even encourages forms of play which many people in this discussion (with whom I generally agree) call “dishonorable”.

I heartily agree that kills, not an arbitrary point system, should be the primary method for determining success in an engagement, however, when a point system exists, it, in and of itself, defines victory. Since the point system in this implementation of Blue Max is also used in the long term record keeping and statistics display, it also defines a player’s standing with regard to other players. When that happens, most people simply cannot disregard the scoring system, whether it be good or bad.

The “retire with honor” system is at best silly, and at worst a farce. Others have noted, and I agree, that the conditions which determine the “retire” or “retire with honor” results don’t make any sense. More importantly, at least to me, is that one can do equally “dishonorable” things and remain on the playing area. The issue shouldn’t be some nebulous concept such as “honor” or “dishonor”, it should be about doing what makes sense historically. Unfortunately (to return to the previous comment), the current point system does not encourage that.