OFF P3 is.....

[Fortiesboy 3]

In my opinion (probably not shared by many others on this forum), :tomato2: the 17 hour average tends to overestimate the number of rookies who only survived one or two missions and underestimate the number of aces who lived for dozens, if not, hundreds of missions. Again, in my opinion, it is more fun for the sim to simulate life as it was for the aces, rather than the rookies (again, prob a minority opinion).

 

Think about what Prop-Wasche says here guys, 'cos it's right. I hadn't given it much thought till I read it, and when I did it made immediate sense.

 

I, too , voted OK, because of the options available-

However, I play it without labels, TAC, padlock, blue and red goddawful messages, HUDS, or outside views.( except I switch in labels if i survive my QC dogfight, in order to check which is my airfield to land at - Then labels are turned off. )

 

Like Hauksbee I play almost exclusively QC, in fact the CFS3 QC found in workshops. There, I can change venue, weather etc And, importantly, the FLAK accuracy. ( I don't think you can do that in ordinary QC?)

 

And I say that if you put more than 2 Dr1s against your Camel or SE5a at 10,000ft, and make them Aces, and play it as above, and survive, - then I think you sneaked an aid or two into the dogfight.

Play as I describe above, in summer, and try to see where they all are and you will probably screw your neck off-lol

They get lost so readily, and one of 'em will getcha!

 

So, it's not too easy at all. And i happen to think that too many flight simmers make the mistake of thinking that Harder means more Realistic.

 

Whatever- It is beyond question, the best combat flight sim out there, or has ever been out there, IMHO - Maybe BOB WoV AI can better OFF's AI, but overall, for me, it's OFF3.

[hood 2]

OK with me.If something is too hard for me I scale it down.

[Canvas Wings 1]

I also voted "OK" -because it can be scaled to suit your preferences. This is a terrific sim- the OFF team has done a phenomenal job, and continue that with excellent support like this.

That said, I agree scaling back the AI sight/reaction range would be a good thing, but not a big deal.

 

I also think reducing the accuracy of AA/machine guns would be a positive move. IMO, at "realistic" it is a little much. Ground fire is too accurate, as well. I almost never make a pass at a mission ground target, without getting shot to hell or downed, in one pass. And no, I'm not loitering around; I'm in-and-out, from altitude. And there is no way my damaged plane would survive a second pass; yet historically pilots took several passes to get the job done. So in that sense, I think it is unrealistic.

 

Strangely, no one else mentioned the two-seaters. Am I the only one who thinks they are unbelievably accurate? (Or are they part of the same AA/MG setting)?

Obviously, unless you come at them from below, they are going to bang away at you for all they're worth. Fair enough; however, these guys almost never, ever miss.

Just like the pilots we are simming, -rookies who on average didn't survive the 17hour mark- the boys in the two-seaters were rookies too, and probably scared spitless at the sight of a fighter barrelling in on them with guns blazing. I imagine under those circumstances, many of them couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, if it was sliding sideways to them at 100 klicks or so, and spewing bullets.

Historically, the two-seaters where relatively defenceless. (I know, they got better as the war rolled on) -but that's why they needed escorts. That's why they make up a sizeable portion, if not the majority, of the aces' victory tally. From what I read of the period, the two-seaters were approached with caution, of course- but they weren't nearly the threat to the attacker that he was to them; an enemy scout coming you way was far more dangerous. Yet here in OFF, to judge by many posts I've read, a lot of people have the same outlook as I do; we will gladly take on uneven odds even against pilots flying superior machines – but two seaters? -leave them alone; turn around a fly away. That seems backwards to me….

 

Those comments having been said, I still think this is an outstanding game with amazing support. And, like I said – it's "OK" because it can be optioned to your level of enjoyment. As far as I'm concerned OFF is well above any other combat flight sim… and it's got the sun at it's back too….

 

Edited April 18, 2009 by Canvas Wings

[tttiger 0]

I certainly agree on the two seaters. The gunners are way too good, IMO.

 

I will only attack a Hun two-seater with two forward-firing MGs (Camel or SE5a) and over Allied territory so I can head for a friendly airfield if (when) I'm shot up. I usually can bring one or even two down with a two-MG fighter.

 

With a one-MG fighter, I just don't have enough firepower to get them before they get me. I won't even attempt an attack.

 

That does kind of fly (no pun intended) in the face of the whole historical reason for fighters, doesn't it?

 

Of course, it's probably also why MY two-seater fighters (Strutter and Biff) are so very deadly

 

So, let's not get too hasty on changing this one

 

Tony

Edited April 19, 2009 by tttiger

[chrispdm1 1]

The only problem I have with the 2 seaters is that they are able to shoot through the surfaces of their plane. its annoying to make a front quartering pass and have the observer shootat you through the wing or struts... I don't mind the accuracy too much, just adjust your attack. I always climb above and dive on them from 9 or 3 starting my dive from out of range. I find I only take hits usually as I pass underneath them.

[jayo 0]

OK for me too,i'd love to have a pilot make it through from enlistment to the end of the war,but apart from a few,how many real pilots did?

Im lucky to make it a month,but that just adds to the excitement EVERY time i fly,sometimes im physically shaking after a humdinger flight!!

 

LOVE IT

[gaw 5]

OK...........I do feel a bit lame whenever given a railyard or airfield attack.......I'll spinkle a burst in that direction from a safe distance for conscience sake knowing that if I even think of strafing a juicy stack of boxes, a rail car, or a parked plane I'll have my ass handed to me by the MG's. Maybe that's the way it was.....I don't know. I do know there's plenty of other stuff to do, whatever the mission directive is........and still come home to play the violin again.

[Hellshade 110]

I'll agree with the accuracy of the two seaters gunfire. Two seaters did make up the majority of the aces kills, and yet in game they are the hardest things flying to kill. I can get one or two at best also and my plane is always shot to peices by the time I get them. To be honest, I usually don't even bother to attack them because I'm almost guaranteed to be cut to pieces and forced to land, if I'm not shot out of the sky completely.

 

/salute

Hellshade

[Guest British_eh]

REALISM VS TWEAKS: P3D DYNAMIC CAMPAIGN:

 

Without a doubt, P3 can be tweaked to enhance certain aspects, and Invincible is certainly one, but the reality is thus:

 

The dynamic campaign generates AI that are the most dangerous yet, if attacking, mostly always from above, and mostly in greater numbers.

 

Having read the comments in this topic, it appears that this aspect is overlooked, perhaps as just being the way it was in WWI. Keen research will demonstrate that that is not the case. Although the average pilot only made it two weeks, or 17 hours, this was highlighted in April 1917. Perhaps Bletchley would have a comment? Further, this was an average for this time period, with the average pilot making it this duration, some less, and some more. What exactly does this mean? Is there a Standard Deviation to apply to this information. If 17 hours was an average, then shouldn't your average pilot make it to that?

 

I have yet to have an average pilot. Flying at DID 100% for personal choices, and to provide a measure of oneself,and perhaps some reality for the sim. and is the setting for my pilot,.................I have had 33 pilots to date and only 2 currently active. In Mission scraps,they were basically outnumbered, 2:1, and suffered a very premature death. Flying the DR1, Sop. Tripe, Sop. Camel, SE5 variants, and the Bristol Fighter, I haven't got a pilot past 4.33 hours. With a modicum of piloting skill I have been unable to survive even a two on one, and thus the pilot is yet another statistic. I haven't had an average pilot yet, and gentleman, that is I believe, the issue. Clouds can be killers, attacking a two seater suicide, and ground fire over the Front, brutal, but in the end, as a pilot trying to achieve the 17 hours, it is mostly impossible, flying in a Squad that has AI contact on a regualar basis.

 

Yes, I can change some settings, and should I thus be content with flying at 60% or 40 % Realism?

 

With three years flying this sim, time behind a stick in a real plane, flights in a 1945 Grumman Biplane and hundreds of hours in a twin engined King Air 350, I can appreciate flying, and even understand the dynamics of.

 

I would love to fly at 100% Realism, and have a pilot make it to 17 hours.

 

Regards,

 

British_eh

[themightysrc 5]

"I agree with Sig that probably what bums some folks out is watching the "realism %" setting drop to a lower percentage in order to have a better fighting chance against AA by changing the AI Gun Range to "Normal""

 

So ignore it, and ignore DiD, which is simply a personal choice anyway.

 

Have to agree with most of the posts put in so far - I voted OK, as I am well aware how rubbish a pilot I am, which is why I die so much. My only issues are with missing aircraft from squadrons (hardly a major issue) and the fact that OFF turns an otherwise fine PC into a crawling wreck if you don't have a pretty recent piece of kit to run it on.

 

Overall, it's a happy 9.5 out of 10 from me.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

After much debating and thinking about the issue, I finally voted too hard--but just by a little bit. I was torn between choosing OK or too hard and finally chose too hard because of three factors: 1) AA gunnery a little too tough, especially 1915-1917. 2) Not enough two-seaters to shoot at and the ones that do exist all seem to have Ace observer/gunners! 3) Killer clouds. Okay, four factors: 4) Enemy AI that attacks in packs and usually from higher altitude, while friendly AI either ignores enemy or flies off on some random jaunt while my butt is getting shot off! (pause). Four factors? Did I say four factors? I meant five factors. 5) CFS3's annoying habit of killing your pilot on a so-called "crash" landing. Seems too many pilots are dying from blood poisoning or something after stubbing their toe on a bad landing.

 

Admittedly, these are all minor problems and most can be adjusted in the settings. Furthermore, I know I have overstated some of these issues (such as the AI "problem") a little bit. However, because of some of these problems, the campaign game has become a bit of a chore for me and I now almost exclusively fly QC. I'm all for keeping OFF as realistic as possible--just make sure there is enough spread in the settings to accommodate the more casual player, as well.

Edited April 19, 2009 by Herr Prop-Wasche

[Mr_Dirt 1]

Voted OK because you can adjust the sim to easy or hard settings. If the sim is made to easy it becomes an arcade game. This sim is about history. If you fly without fear your life is short. If you practice the rules of aircombat you fight to survive. To me that is how it should be.

[Rick Rawlings 138]

I'll agree with the accuracy of the two seaters gunfire. Two seaters did make up the majority of the aces kills, and yet in game they are the hardest things flying to kill. I can get one or two at best also and my plane is always shot to peices by the time I get them. To be honest, I usually don't even bother to attack them because I'm almost guaranteed to be cut to pieces and forced to land, if I'm not shot out of the sky completely.

 

/salute

Hellshade

 

 

This is almost impossible to duplicate in the game. I have never gotten more than a 10 scout to 1 two seater ratio. Attacking from below is do-able, even without particularly getting shot up, but there just aren't that many two seaters around, it seems. I always see way more fighter squads than 2 seaters, even deep in western France, which was not the way the German doctrine worked, as I understand it. I'm sure track IR also makes the attack a little easier, even thought they do sometimes shoot too well. I shot down one CII a while ago that caught on fire and went into a spinning dive. As he was spinning and burning, the gunner hit me with a burst that put my plane out of commision and I had to head home!

 

I don't know what the answer is, but I salute Winder and Pol for putting up with asking our opinions. I am just thankful the true successor to Red Baron got made and am looking forward to whatever improvements they come up with for this phase and for whatever goodies they have in store for phase 4!

 

RR

[Jammer28 0]

Well it seems as if everything comes down to the “realism percentage”.Never mind that you can scale numerous aspects and tweak it the way you want it.

It looks as though some folks want to have it tweaked to their satisfaction AND want the realism at 100% or better. I’m no different really. No better than the next guy for I too want the prestige of flying at 100% +. You bet I would like to have bragging rights for 100+. But I can’t. I fly anywhere from 40% to 90%. Sometimes zero. We all get focused on the number. Same as we did with the number at the end of the claims. That’s why the devs too k it off. 

If you want to have 100% realism and the way you want it then continue to give your realism input to the devs. 

As for me I tweak and tweak and tweak. Just yesterday I saw an over looked adjustment for player flight density. Ticked high and now, sometimes, I have 6 or 7 in my flight. I won’t keep it there but it’s nice to fly that way sometimes. I don’t think that tweak reduces the realism percentage but I will take claims to easy if I shoot down an EA over a friendly aerodrome and land there. Realism percentage be damned. After I lose 3 or 4 pilots on DiD I switch to either easy or easiest. For me the frustration is part of the fun.

It’s all there guys. Just don’t get hung up on a number. 

 

Jammer

[Siggi 10]

The thing is this chaps; if it's too easy your achievements will count for zilch. If it's middling your achievements will count for middling. If it's hard your achivements will be impressive, IF you get any.

 

I've learned that patience is the key, as it is with any kind of hunting. That's long-term patience I'm talking about, not in-flight patience. And it's not patience for the kills, it's patience for the hours. I'm now happy to complete a flight with zero contact, because I'm going for the hours. But knowing that over the long term I'll get a kill here, another there. On my terms, minimum risk. And no attacking ground-targets other than flying over above MG range and 'dropping grenades'.

 

Fly at very high altitude, so as to avoid most contacts. Watch for friendly archie, order flight-members in first and watch.

 

2-seaters, I dive on them at high speed, spray one and get clear. The last time I did that they still knocked out my engine and I had to force-land at a nearby aerodrome.

 

So, to summarise my simple Dicta:

 

a) Fly at high altitude.

b) Avoid combat unless on max favourable terms.

c) Go for hours, not kills.

d) Avoid ground targets.

e) Dive on 2-seaters from above at high speed, one pass only.

f) Never ever go even near to clouds, never mind into them.

 

Don't play it like it's a game of pinball. Go for survival, with glory as an accidental by-product. :yes:

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Well I voted for "OK" because in my opinion it's like all of baby bear's belongings were when Goldilocks found them...JUST RIGHT.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

If 17 hours was the AVERAGE, and the average is close to the median, then about half the DiD pilots should EXCEED 17 hours. But from what I'm reading on this forum, hardly anyone flying DiD comes close to reaching 17 hours. So how can 17 hours be "average"?

Further, this was an average for this time period, with the average pilot making it this duration, some less, and some more. What exactly does this mean? Is there a Standard Deviation to apply to this information. If 17 hours was an average, then shouldn't your average pilot make it to that?

These are both good statistical observations. As someone with a little grad school experience in statistics (okay, I took two classes), the average can be a deceptive measure of central tendency in certain situations. This is especially the case if we don't have a standard deviation supplied with the average. The standard deviation in a set of scores helps to identify the spread of scores around the average. A low S.D. generally indicates that most of the scores are clustered close to the average while a high S.D. indicates that most scores are relatively far away from the average in both directions. Of course, the S.D. is not available here, so I won't worry any more about that.

 

OTOH, when a distribution of numbers or scores is skewed in one direction or another, the average tends to be distorted in the direction of the skew. For example, if we assume that the number of pilots who did not make it to 17 hours exceeds the number of pilots who did make it that far (a fairly safe assumption for WWI, I think), then the average is going to shrink accordingly. In these cases, the median is the better measure of central tendency. What was the median survival time for aeroplane pilots in WWI? My bet is that it was higher than the 17 hour average. If that is accurate, then the difficulty that most of us are having in reaching only 17 hours is even less reflective of reality than it actually was in WWI.

 

So, again, what best represents the true reality of flying and fighting in a rickety canvas airplane in WWI? I don't think we can ever have a completely accurate answer to that question. Therefore, we have to rely more on what feels right, rather than what is right. But this leads back to my subjective opinion versus yours. My feeling is to make OFF slightly easier at the hardest settings but without turning it into an arcade shooter. Perhaps we should have a "super-duper hard" setting?

[+Polovski 460]

How about we change the 50% and make it show 100% on the screen? :)

 

Seems to me everyone is getting really hung up on a number. There are AMPLE settings to make it easier for players.

 

Big brother is not watching you on this one honest.

 

Ground fire will be easier in the next version, and there you have more hours added for free. Also we'll adjust the numbers slightly depending on settings, and (almost) everyone should be happy. The workshop settings are to cater for everyone's personal "realism" ignore the number, just set it how you like and fly and enjoy and no one will give two hoots.

[Parky 8]

Whoever the guy is that claims it's too "easy" and he's "ripping it"....dude, "full real"?? You need to turn off the labels, targeting cone, tac, easy flight model and invincibility. That should give us better than 90% in the poll who are quite comfortable with the way things can be scaled already.

 

You sure you're playing the same sim??? Geez

Edited April 19, 2009 by Parky

[cptroyce 0]

Siggi- >> I'm now happy to complete a flight with zero contact, because I'm going for the hours. But knowing that over the long term I'll get a kill here, another there. On my terms, minimum risk. <<

 

For those interested in "realism" in OFF..IMHO nothing could be more accurate. That is the way I fly..complete the mission as best I can and get the a/c on the ground, to fly another day.

 

In RL that is what one would do..the exceptions were perhaps the "legends" of the air war..but most died before the War was done, and in there 20's.

 

I'm with you Siggi.

 

Royce

[catch 81]

How about we change the 50% and make it show 100% on the screen? :)

 

Seems to me everyone is getting really hung up on a number. There are AMPLE settings to make it easier for players.

 

Voted OK. Pol is right. I realise WM has to take customers complaints into consideration these days. But this is a non-issue.

[Guest Barnstorm]

Winder-

Maybe I erred in voting "OK", but overall that's how I perceive the difficulty. That said, in trying to balance "realism and immersion" with difficulty, I am reluctant to drop the Realism below 100%, so not be an "arcade pilot". To be honest, the ground fire is VERY accurate and deadly in "normal" setting. It seems only on or two hits can disable my a/c even with the 1.30 patch and "Hard Mode" engaged. The same can be said for the rear gunners in "Normal" setting. The problem (psychological as it maybe), is lowering the settings and having the "Realism" scale drop below 100%.

 

The BHaH product is an outstanding piece of work and the OBD staff are excellent. Thank you for your dedication to our addiction.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Barnstorm

[Hasse Wind 46]

Ground fire will be easier in the next version, and there you have more hours added for free

 

Great news! Maybe something could also be done to the extremely deadly two seater gunners? In my opinion, their fire is a bit too accurate. I understand they shouldn't be too easy to shoot down, but now two seaters seem like they're the most dangerous opponents in the sky.

 

Anyway, great support as always!

[Fortiesboy 3]

Whoever the guy is that claims it's too "easy" and he's "ripping it"....dude, "full real"?? You need to turn off the labels, targeting cone, tac, easy flight model and invincibility. That should give us better than 90% in the poll who are quite comfortable with the way things can be scaled already.

 

You sure you're playing the same sim??? Geez

 

I think his name is Biggles. He's a bit superior you know, he even had some chap write books about him.

 

Yea, like you said, he needs to turn off a few things and then vote again, IMHO. :yes:

[Olham 164]

Whoever voted "too easy": you should only vote about "campaign" flying.

In QC, you can have some quick successes, and survive these single flights.

But surviving 17 hours in campaign fighting with three or four sorties a day, is another match.

Or did you fly in Elsass/Alsace, far from the front, for German home defense?

Or British home def. with RFC 56, near Dover?