I can't quite catch Collishaw (or how I play this sim)

[tttiger 0]

I just finished my second campaign flying the Sop Tripe as Raymond Collishaw of Naval 10.

 

I got 25 kills, a decided improvement over the 17 I got the first time I flew as Collishaw.

 

But the real Ray Collishaw got 35 kills during the same period of time!

 

Makes me appreciate how great some of the real aces really were!

 

Just for grins, I'll share how I play OFF. Maybe someone will like the idea and use it or even improve on it (no, we won't have a scoring ladder, my ego is just fine without one):

 

In my flight sim background, which goes back at least 15 years, I never liked dogfight arenas (Aerial Quake).

 

I prefer Coops (human and AI planes working together on the same mission), which have to be played on line.

 

And I really like Dynamic Campaigns as in Falcon 4.0, where if you bomb an airfield you actually close it (for awhile) and you really affect the course of the battle.

 

OFF, however, is an historical sim, which makes makes dynamic campaigning impossible because history already has written the script (a brilliant script, I should add with great thanks to Shred).

 

Soooooooo, how do I make history into a game?

 

Simple.

 

I fly as a real historical character (preferably a top ace) using the dates and unit of his actual career and and compare my record against his.

 

Shred has made this part easy because he puts the unit in the right place on the right date. When the pilot arrives in the unit his name appears on the OFF unit roster. When he departs, it disappears. Those are the dates I use for those pilots.

 

The dates and stats you need all are readily available here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/

 

For starters, I picked the top scorers for each type of RFC or RNAS aircraft such as Collishaw in the Trips, MacLaren in the Camel, Fullard in the Noop, Beauchamp Proctor in the SE5a and McKeever in the F2b (l also recently finished a McKeever campaign -- I got 27 kills, the real McKeever got 31: These guys were REALLY good!).

 

I don't play Dead is Dead (although I suppose I could, I just don't have the patience for flying hour-long missions without warp or restarting a pilot every time he is killed nor, at 63, eyes good enough to play without labels). Nor do I use "Uncle Al's 23 days in hospital and I call him dead" (owing to a quirk in OFF even a very minor crash can put you in hospital for 23 days).

 

My pilot never dies.

 

But that hospital penalty can be really expensive in terms of my final score. If there are three sorties a day, a 20-day hospital stay costs me 60 sorties in which I could possibly get kills in each. Some of the pilots (or the planes) did not serve all that long (Collishaw only flew the Tripe for four months, making his 35 kills using "Black Maria" truly astonishing), so if I lose even one month that's a big setback in final score.

 

By using a real top ace (as opposed to making up a fictional, say, Captain Norman Bates), I set myself the highest possible goal based on real scores in the real war. I haven't topped a real ace yet but I'm going to try another camapign with Collishaw beginning today. I'm getting closer to beating his record....

 

A variation on flying a "campaign" is flying a "career" and I do that, too.

 

The trick is to find a pilot who spent his whole career in a single squadron that flew many different planes.

 

So, I have a Captain Robert Little career going (I had to fudge a bit: Little flew the Sopwith Strutter in Naval 3 before going to Naval 8 for the rest of his career. Naval 8 also flew Strutters, so I started Little out in a Naval 8 Strutter). Little, who was the top Australian ace in WWI with 47 victories, flew all of the Sopwiths -- Strutter, Pup, Tripe and Camel -- which makes for a great and very long player career.

 

Similarly, I have a Georges Guynemer career going. Guynemer spent his whole career in Esc. 3 and flew all the Noops and Spads. Actually, he only scored one victory in the Spad 13 before he was killed. Considering I find the 13 impossible to fly, I probably will die before he did.

 

Not saying it's the best concept possible but it's keeping me amused.

 

Kinda fun trying to be better than "The Right Stuff" really was. And, hopefully, it is a salute of respect to the memory of the aces whose names I am using.

 

 

ttt

Edited March 15, 2009 by tttiger

[Fortiesboy 3]

Simple.

 

I fly as a real historical character (preferably a top ace) using the dates and unit of his actual career and and compare my record against his.

 

 

So do I. My three pilots are 1 German and two British. But they fly in QC.

The first, Heinz Souppe, is doing quite well in his Dr1, but he hasn't yet come across my two favourite british Aces , Tesco White and Asda Brown. They can be quite crusty characters, but deep inside they are quite soft really.

I can't find much reference to them in the history books, though. They were probably not too well known.

 

[Rickitycrate 10]

tttiger, what a great idea, I printed this post to act as an idea guide for something for me to get aound to sometime. I can see that a hospital stay could really impact your chances. I'll try Rickenbacker perhaps as he had a hospital stay himself. Thanks for sharing your approach.

[Olham 164]

Hey, tttiger

Somewere in a post not long ago, someone wrote, how you can transfer your pilot from one Squad. to the other.

It's done by changing a line in the pilot file, I think. That way, you could also try all the other aces.

 

But does the campaign work all right, when there is a real ace Raymond Collishaw, and you use the same name?

[tttiger 0]

Hey, tttiger

Somewere in a post not long ago, someone wrote, how you can transfer your pilot from one Squad. to the other.

It's done by changing a line in the pilot file, I think. That way, you could also try all the other aces.

 

But does the campaign work all right, when there is a real ace Raymond Collishaw, and you use the same name?

 

 

Sure, it works fine.

 

You'll often see your "real" counterpart taking off on the same runway (if you're flying with labels on).

 

The computer seems to figure out I'm the fake for scoring purposes.

 

 

ttt

Edited March 15, 2009 by tttiger