Rank on all time kills list.

Sylvester

Vice Admiral
For some background information for a character I have on the AAO forum, where would having roughly 1900 kills place you on the all time list circa 2660?
 
Now wait a second LOAF. You said that Blair is 10th on the all time list with about 1800 kills during the war, and this was quite high for someone in the second half of the conflict. The character I am writing this for served as a pilot for 17 years from 2632 to 2649, so I think that is a reasonable kill count for an early long term ace.
 
Sylvester said:
Now wait a second LOAF. You said that Blair is 10th on the all time list with about 1800 kills during the war, and this was quite high for someone in the second half of the conflict. The character I am writing this for served as a pilot for 17 years from 2632 to 2649, so I think that is a reasonable kill count for an early long term ace.

That's what's unreasonable. I don't think you're understanding what you just said. Just because 2000 kills was a virtually impossible kill count for pilots in the second half of the war doesn't mean that it's a reasonable score for the first half. There's tens of thousands of pilots who were racking up kills over that timeframe. Now you're trying to be one of the top ten among them.
 
Blair was the 10th highest scoring pilot of all time with his score. Therefore scoring better than him would put your pilot in the top ten as well. If your hero is meant to be a super ace I would give him 500-1200 kills, and maybe only a couple hundred if he is good but not the best of the best. Killing 2000 enemies is like one man alone killing two regiments worth of enemies (i.e. barely plausible unless he is using a really big bomb).
 
Now wait a second LOAF. You said that Blair is 10th on the all time list with about 1800 kills during the war, and this was quite high for someone in the second half of the conflict. The character I am writing this for served as a pilot for 17 years from 2632 to 2649, so I think that is a reasonable kill count for an early long term ace.

11th, not 10th. You have some nerve replying to me here when you've already done this on AIM.

Yes, there are 10 people who may have that many kills *before Custer's Carnival* (Blair, in 11th place, has over 2,000). You didn't ask about that - you specified 2660 in your post.

The reason we're all disgusted is because this is exactly what's wrong with RPGs (although Yellow Arrow ruined yours a long time ago) -- stupid super hero characters. Want a pilot? He must be better than Blair! Someday you'll look back and realize how stupid this sounds.
 
There's a lot of conflicting interpretations of WC in general. I think we've reached a point where we all kind of have our own ideas of what we want it to be, and even the cannon conflicts with itself a lot. For my part, I can't understand how those kinds of kill scores even make a war. If confed pilots were eating up the Kilrathi like that the war would be over in a week. In the worst of times Confed was down to what, 1/3rd of the Kilrathi's number of carriers? They would still end the war in a week with pilots that got that many kills. Not to mention how hard it would be to find new volunteers to be pilots.
 
Bearcat said:
There's a lot of conflicting interpretations of WC in general. I think we've reached a point where we all kind of have our own ideas of what we want it to be, and even the cannon conflicts with itself a lot.

It just can't be said enough, people need to stop trying to use 'canon'.

Bearcat said:
For my part, I can't understand how those kinds of kill scores even make a war. If confed pilots were eating up the Kilrathi like that the war would be over in a week.

The whole point of this thread is that only a select few people, out of trillions who lived and died in the war, ever got to that sort of incredible kill score.
 
For fan fictional purposes, it would be entirely more convincing for me to have the hottest of the hot veteran ace ninja pilots in the story to have hundreds of kills rather than thousands. Kills aren't the only measure of how good a pilot is.

Actually, that sounds like a pretty neat idea for a fanfic right there: some hotshot young pilot is all about the kills, and gets slapped back into place by a veteran with fewer kills but more skills.
 
There's a lot of conflicting interpretations of WC in general. I think we've reached a point where we all kind of have our own ideas of what we want it to be, and even the cannon conflicts with itself a lot.

This isn't an example of that at all. There's no contradiction here, it's just some kid wanting to have a jedi master captain of the USS Enterprise paladin wizard president character for his RPG.

For my part, I can't understand how those kinds of kill scores even make a war. If confed pilots were eating up the Kilrathi like that the war would be over in a week. In the worst of times Confed was down to what, 1/3rd of the Kilrathi's number of carriers? They would still end the war in a week with pilots that got that many kills. Not to mention how hard it would be to find new volunteers to be pilots.

You're just saying exactly what everyone else is, though - kill scores in those levels don't exist outside a few select characters... specifically, Blair and Maniac. The vast majority of pilots *aren't* shooting down thousands of enemy fighters -- they're dying at the same rate as the Kilrathi are.

(Are high kill scores possible for a few exceptional people in extraordinary situations? Yes -- Erich Hartmann had 352 kills in under three years of service during World War II... Maniac and Blair served for more than fifteen.)

It's also important to note that a kill score is pretty meaningless in the greater picture -- in terms of the importance of a character in the grander scheme, they don't represent much. Someone who is good at shooting down enemy fighters is *not* automatically a good leader... you don't see top aces becoming important generals and admirals and such for that reason.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
(Are high kill scores possible for a few exceptional people in extraordinary situations? Yes -- Erich Hartmann had 352 kills in under three years of service during World War II... Maniac and Blair served for more than fifteen.)

It's also important to note that a kill score is pretty meaningless in the greater picture -- in terms of the importance of a character in the grander scheme, they don't represent much. Someone who is good at shooting down enemy fighters is *not* automatically a good leader... you don't see top aces becoming important generals and admirals and such for that reason.

One of the few nations that did throw top aces into leadership roles was Nazi Germany who did it with several aces both in air kills and tanks kills. And we all know what happened to them...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It's also important to note that a kill score is pretty meaningless in the greater picture -- in terms of the importance of a character in the grander scheme, they don't represent much. Someone who is good at shooting down enemy fighters is *not* automatically a good leader... you don't see top aces becoming important generals and admirals and such for that reason.

Maniac himself would be an excellent example of this. He is even better than Blair at racking up kills at times, but he had difficulty handling being in charge of the Black Widows in WCP.
 
Ijuin said:
Maniac himself would be an excellent example of this. He is even better than Blair at racking up kills at times, but he had difficulty handling being in charge of the Black Widows in WCP.

Or his test pilot squadron in WC2.
 
Dundradal said:
One of the few nations that did throw top aces into leadership roles was Nazi Germany who did it with several aces both in air kills and tanks kills. And we all know what happened to them...

Yes, they produced the finest airforce the world knew at the time...and that was considering that they started later than the rest of the world as they were not allowed to have an airforce wing under the terms of their treaty...

Dont' get me wrong, Goering did a lot of things wrong...a heck of a lot but as far as initial organization, it was hard to find significant comparable fault with the Luftwaffe.
 
Linear time: the people who became top aces *because* of the war couldn't also be the ones who set up the air force that started it.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Linear time: the people who became top aces *because* of the war couldn't also be the ones who set up the air force that started it.

Goering was an ace from WWI, he set up the air for for WWII.

EDIT: I think a major fault of the Luftwaffe would ultimately crontribute to German's defeat. It was the lack of a long range strategic bombing capacity. The fact is, the Russians had a big territory and simply could move the factories outside the reach of the germans. Germans, on the other hand, were continuously bombed by Allied strategic bombers.
 
Which has nothing to do Germany's long range strategic bombing capacity. Are they going to bomb factories in the US? Because thats where those heavy bombers were built.
 
Halman said:
Which has nothing to do Germany's long range strategic bombing capacity. Are they going to bomb factories in the US? Because thats where those heavy bombers were built.

Which was nothing to do with bombing factories in Russia. Of course having strategic bombers wouldn't prevent their own factories from being bombed, but would have other effects on the eastern front.
 
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