Winston's Early Birds canceled

[Winston DoRight 3]

Sorry guys, it's just not fun for me anymore. Too many hardware, computer, mike, file installation problems, etc. This last session was delayed for over an hour again because people just didn't get on early and test their ability to connect. This severly cut into our flying time, only one mission was flown then the second mission was ended because of host computer problems.

 

Most everyone scattered after that. Having delayed our start for so long in order to get some sorted out, that was enough to ruin it for me. Perhaps someone can take over the sessions at this time (it's ideal for the euro players) Vasco, maybe?

 

I'm also out of practice with the realistic flight models on the "twichy" aircraft. I just can't fly the Camel and DR1 on realistic flight model. They spin way too easily and well.... I play to have fun not to punish myself. And the Aces in the missions..... who shoot you from 800-1000 ft away...... this is very unpleasant. I could have more fun by lowering my head and running into a wall.

 

All entries have been removed from the calendar and I'll check in with you guys in a month or two and see if anything has improved.

[FRO8769 0]

Winston,

 

Sorry the session didn't go good. From the reasons you stated are some of the main reasons I haven't been on. Waiting and waiting around is no fun. Your idea of a early session for people to make sure they are up to date is a great idea, but it won't work if no one does it. I'm still trying to get a hold of Stump on some idea's but he seems to be lost in translation somewhere. As soon as their is a plan or an improvement I'm sure you'll be one of the first notified.

[sitting_duck 3]

Sorry to hear that winson.

 

And sorry for the hosting problems,,,,the whole block lost power, and there wasnt much i could do...

 

 

Appreciate the fact i got on my cell, and spent a half hour with my wife at home trying to guide her thru setting up teamspeak with the new server so i could get message to you guys.....

 

(she hung up on me eventually)

[stumpjumper 3]

guys im telling you bear with me im sorry i was gone for the last month and i was afrid with allthe chnges going on so fast this might happen, haveing been running online groups for off since ph1 i knpow how it can get frustrating, but it will be worth it i promise you, the camp idea that winston and vasco have come up with is the best concept yet, but when the different dms came out thats when all heck started to breck loose, i will sit done(virtually( with my main guys from doves and hawks, and my mian online runners vasco and wisnton and we will hash this out,,,,the coop stuff is the way to go but human against human leads to to many problmes 2 fast, we all jumped into this idea way to fast and have hit this brik wall

the last thing anybody wants to do is not have fun, and go away wiht a bad taste, so once again i ask all of you to please be jsut a lil patient and let me work on this,

( illeven downe my lil el douce outfit if need be to make it work for every body)

 

thansk stump

owner and admin of doves and hawks

[FRO8769 0]

Stump,

 

I second that! Dogfighting human against human has never been my cup of tea. People get pissed at other people and it goes down hill from there. As you said coop is the way to go. Working as a squadron and completing missions as a squadron is the best way. Give me a shout on Windows Messenger when you have a chance brother.

[stumpjumper 3]

Stump,

 

I second that! Dogfighting human against human has never been my cup of tea. People get pissed at other people and it goes down hill from there. As you said coop is the way to go. Working as a squadron and completing missions as a squadron is the best way. Give me a shout on Windows Messenger when you have a chance brother.

 

 

fro was hopeing you got my email msn for soem rson dont like ym ip anymore and im hosed as far as windows messinging goes

[Vasco 3]

Winston,

 

I'm sorry to see you go, even for a short while. Enjoy your time in ETO.

 

Guys,

 

I'm going to have a chat with Stumpy and Duck in order to get things established for future Sunday sessions. Next Sunday is still on - details to follow.

 

Regards,

 

Vasco

[Axgrinder 0]

Stump,

 

I second that! Dogfighting human against human has never been my cup of tea. People get pissed at other people and it goes down hill from there. As you said coop is the way to go. Working as a squadron and completing missions as a squadron is the best way. Give me a shout on Windows Messenger when you have a chance brother.

 

I really liked the Human vs Human campaign with split TS channels yesterday. It made it a little more realistic albeit we shouldn't even HAVE radios but the concept was good. However there are way to many obstacles to overcome in order to get the game to run properly.

 

Co-op missions are all that I ran before but not being extremely proficient in mission builder my missions have minor glitches in them, most of which can be ignored or fixed by someone more knowledgeable. The last missions we flew Sunday were the QC co-op Zepps over Paris and USA vs Europe and everyone had an absolute blast. Maybe we should try some more of those for a while to get everyones zeal up again.

 

I know you guys probably won't like to hear this but, in my opinion we should probably go back to our damage model that was provided to us by Matt until the new Superpatch comes out. But now most people have FB's DM1.2 installed so reverting may be a moot point.

 

It is unfortunate that players are leaving or not willing to give MP a try because of all the glitches with online play. Most are used to playing CFS3 ETO or IL-2 online and have become spoiled by the mostly trouble free online play there. But the reality is OFF will always have it's problems and we will just have to deal with them as they come. If you get frustrated with the game I suggest you take a step back, take a deep breath and remember, IT'S ONLY A GAME!

[Axgrinder 0]

Well it looks like Vasco has set the guidelines for MP play for the present time. I hope Winston will come back and play based on these new parameters.

I know you play other MP sims and it is hard to devote time to something that is broke, but your a good player and we enjoy your banter and participation!

Give Sunday another chance. Don't host just play and see if you can get some fun out of it!

[themightysrc 5]

"I know you guys probably won't like to hear this but, in my opinion we should probably go back to our damage model that was provided to us by Matt until the new Superpatch comes out."

 

Hi Ax,

 

I wouldn't be particularly upset by that. I'd rather have reliable and identical setups to everyone else if that ensured clean, trouble free play.

 

It seems to me that the problems from Sunday just gone occurred mainly because of two factors:

 

- People turning up weren't configured correctly, had mismatches, etc, etc. If we're all on the same files and versions, that would surely be far less of an issue. I didn't mind the time spent sorting it out, but obviously it ate into the time left for flying. I still maintain that asking new players to either pretest during the week (which admittedly requires the commitment of people like SD and Vasco), or turning up maybe 30 minutes early to check these things out is the best option here.

- The other issue was the bloody aircraft! I've never tried Camels before, and still haven't had a go in a Dr1, but I found the Camel to be a bugger to fly without stalling - I kept checking my mixture but eventually gave in to the urge to trade height for speed, with the inevitable consequence that I ended up crashlanding in a wood (yet another bloody stall). Please, if we're going to MP, let's go for planes that don't have razor's edge flying characteristics. Sopwith Pups versus Albatros DIIIs anyone?

 

I'll be back for more, but we do need to tighten up on the preparation a wee bit more. Having said all of the preceding, I'd like to say how much fun I had, even if only 2 of my bullets registered as hits!

[Winston DoRight 3]

Sorry guys, the realism settings are still unsatisfactory to me. I'll not be locked into flying at a flight model level that I don't like or feel comfortable with considering my inability to get any practice in lately. OFF hard flight model = no fun for me. I've several hundred real hours in Cessnas, gliders and Citabria, and this hard damage model in OFF is a real joke. No sensory input, sounds or any clues of the impending stall and the ever present spin that occurs is more than I want to deal with and still be able to call it "fun". If I ever change my mind about the hard flight model or get some extensive practice in I'll rejoin you. If any one ever hosts a game with the medium flight model setting, just let me know and I'll be there.

 

I like Vasco's firm stand on excluding anyone who doesn't come perpared and tested. It's difficult to look forward all week to a sunday session and have it fall to bits at the very start, fly one or two missions and watch people leave.

 

All prizes for July Early Birds were mailed today, except von baur's. He did not reply to my PM asking for his address. When he shows up for a MP session could someone ask him to PM me his address? Or if he doesn't want the book, I'll send it along to one of you and you can add it to the prize pool for "Vasco's Early Birds".

 

BTW, Sunday's adversary flight was a blast, and I enjoyed it immensly right up to each time I lost control of the Camel close to the ground. If there's one thing you can say about this sim is that it's predictable. So what if the DR1's were flying tail first with the smoke exiting at every angle except the correct one.

 

I hope you all continue on and have fun despite the many problems and inequalities. You all have much more patience than I. As my daughter would say "I'm now entering into my grumpy years."

[Axgrinder 0]

"If any one ever hosts a game with the medium flight model setting, just let me know and I'll be there."

 

Winston,

 

Just to let you know I run all my games with a medium flight model. So if I ever post a game I will let you know.

[stumpjumper 3]

think the majority has spoken, belive we may need to split the fm for now and run at med, which is fine by me

[von Baur 54]

Flight models:

Personally I like the hard fm. Most of the scouts in WWI were highly unstable and often killed as many of their pilots as did enemy action. And for someone to hop into one without any training and take out every enemy in sight is, IMO, unrealistic. No disrespect meant, Winston, but one cannot compare a Cessna to a Sopwith Camel. And I'm guessing if you got hold of an accurate (built to original specs, including a rotary engine) repro you'd find that OFF is a cakewalk. I agree completely that the lack of tactile input in a simulator is a major drawback, which is why the first stick I bought was force feedback and as long as it's possible I will 'fly' with one every time. You get that mush as you approach a stall and it gives you the warning you need. Richtofen's Skies didn't support ff and I had the same problem you have with slipping into stalls in OFF, Winston. And I won't say it doesn't happen to me here, but I can usually feel it coming on in time to correct and avoid it. If you don't have force feedback, I highly recommend getting one.

 

Yes, I was one of the ones who had a mismatch Sunday. I felt particularly bad after taking the harsh stance I had in Sitting Duck's thread. The fact that there were two Fortiesboy's 1.2 dm's somewhat (but only somewhat) diminshes my culpability, because I don't have time to sort through every post on the forum and I hadn't seen that it was changed but still had the same name. It also shows what can happen when there are so many fm's, dm's and whatever else can get in the way of successful multiplay. And it hammers home the absolute need to have and stick with one setup and not change it on a whim or because something new has come out.

 

I'll go along with reducing the number of aces but I've also had no-namers in QC hammer me at over 1,000 yards so I'm not convinced that extreme marksmanship is the sole property of aces. More significant, IMO, is the fact that with this dm our airplanes come apart as easily as do the enemy ac. Which means that not only does the AI have greater accuracy, there's also the fact that any hits are likely to do significant damage. So whereas before one might take a few hits but sustain little damage, now your wing is coming off or your engine is sputtering after the opening volley.

 

As far as which type of mission, I'll always take humans on each side. The greatest challenge and test of my abilities is against other people. This doesn't necessarily exclude co-op missions but I think they need to be crafted, with all aircraft flyable and within the operational zone. Speaking as one who's respawned into a plane that was probably 50 or 60 miles from the action (and therefore the other players) that's not a lot of fun. I'd rather just accept not respawning as my penalty for failing to stay alive than be taunted by being put back into an airplane that has little to no chance of getting any action. The seperate TS channels for the different sides works well. Anyone who's flown with me online knows I like to keep the radio chatter to a minimum for realism's sake, but I'm also comfortable with using it when necessary. After all, while it's true that 90 years ago they didn't have air-to-air communication what they did have that we don't is 100% immersion in this. Flying and working together was something that these men did from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed. They practiced their tactics and hand signals (which we can't use at all) day in and day out and never 'switched sides to keep things even'. This is a level of communication we can't hope to match and I have no problem with making limited use of TS to compensate for it.

 

I plan on continuing to fly online and I hope you reconsider, Winston. The loss of one significantly diminishes the rest. But I will repsect you just the same if you choose to stand by your decision. Apparently Vasco has posted an outline of his plans and I'm going to have to look that up to make sure that I'm on the same page as everyone else, come Sunday.

[sitting_duck 3]

Axgrinder did a great job of setting precedent a while back....plain and simple,,,the host determines the manner in which the game is played.

 

Would assume that in these session where we switch host to get a better connection for everyone,,the person scheduling will still retain the contol over game settings and such.

 

So, seems to me in order to accomodate everyone who has different ideas on whats fun, and whats not fun,,,what we need is more hosts,,,offereing more variety in the sessions.

 

Personnaly,,,I like shooting down stuff,,,so give me unlimited ammo,,,lottsa stupid ai to shoot down,,,but thats just me...so if this what i want,,i have to put up sessions along those lines,,and the same would go for the rest of us.

 

And almost hate to say it,,but i did try and get a consensus on a procedure for starting the sessions, but for whatever reason,,,got very little response. Had we managed to come to an agreement, it would have helped solve one problem in sundays session.

 

Have said it before, and will say it again,,there isnt any one of us who hasnt had problems getting the correct files installed. So dont want any of the people that had problems either sunday, or in previous session to feel bad about how things played out. Just a little bump, and sure we will all get over it.

 

Keep on trying to find the times to do more scheduled sessions, but something always seems to come up. But will make an effort to get something up somethime between now and sundays game.

 

have a mp tuturial tonight, and will help anyone who needs assistance in hosting games.

[themightysrc 5]

"And almost hate to say it,,but i did try and get a consensus on a procedure for starting the sessions, but for whatever reason,,,got very little response. Had we managed to come to an agreement, it would have helped solve one problem in sundays session."

 

SD, one reason why you might not have got much response is that at the time very few people (who have now done MP) knew the ins and outs, and may well have felt unqualified to proffer an opinion. I know I did.

 

Now, of course, having done all of one MP session, I will treat everyone to my sage insights, on the basis of having crashed once, got completely lost another time and having hit practically nothing, whilst presenting a juicy target to other people. Ah, the voice of experience.

[themightysrc 5]

"have a mp tuturial tonight, and will help anyone who needs assistance in hosting games."

 

Nearly missed this - SD how late would that be? We're GMT here, well actually BST.

[sitting_duck 3]

src...your opinion, as well as anyone elses,,no matter how long or short they have been playing,,is just important as the next guys...

 

will be online around 730edt....and will try and stay on for at least till around 1030 edt....

 

if no one is around for any help,,,will attempt to build some missions.

[themightysrc 5]

Oooh, sorry petal, you're about 5 hours behind, and I've got work in the morning!

 

As for my opinion, well I guess I've had my say above. I'm willing to support MP, but let's ensure that everyone knows what's expected of them by the hosts, and when it's expected. Crack those two simple points and I think the rest is mere detail.

[sitting_duck 3]

petal???

[griphos 0]

I've hesitated to throw my $0.02 in, because I haven't been flying lately, and so haven't been participating in the discussion much. And I've also hesitated to put something out there that might discourage or turn away potential recruits for MP. Plus, I love OFF. It's a fantastic sim. And if it were the only MP option out there, I might have stuck with it even with all the difficulties. Blame Ax! He's the one that seduced me into IL2 online!

 

But, in that spirit, I do want to say a little about what has kept me away lately. I am a relative newbie. I certainly wasn't part of any pre-Phase 3 online play with OFF (didn't even know it existed)! But I worked with Stump and Ax and Duck and later Matt to try and help get MP workable in OFF since BHAH came out. I was in there chopping wood and trying to brainstorm about how to make it all work better. I thought Matt's installer was a HUGE step forward in the right direction.

 

Then came the dm mess (sorry, that's how I feel about it). I thought it was a mistake to finally get to the place where one double-click on an easily downloaded file got everyone on the same page and ready to connect back to having to check in and make sure you had the right files that were going to be used for THIS particular session. I wasn't one of the participants this last Sunday but it sounds a lot like the last Sunday I was when I determined to give OFF MP another chance and tried to join up and got mismatches. Duck and Vasco and everyone else were very gracious, but getting me ready delayed play at least 30 minutes. And the really frustrating part was that the reason was that I had downloaded and installed the beta tools for switching between online and offline planes that Pol (or Winder?) put out to try to help us in MP, and that made it harder to actually get the new dm files in the right place. I worked with Vasco to test those. They were supposed to help. My point is that I worked to get the right files installed and tried to stay current, and then went on a trip for a week or so and when I got back, everything was changed. I don't think that's a good strategy.

 

But, really, the main reason I'm reluctant to join in anymore is that OFF's (CFS3's) MP engine is deeply flawed. OFF in dogfight mode is just not playable for me. It may be my lag, but it is simply not at all appealing to fly against planes that don't actually fly like planes! Trying to use any kind of real world set of skills to maneuver on an enemy when that enemy can fly standing on his tail backwards (and I don't mean a hammerhead, I mean standing on his tail and flying backwards around and around in continuous circles) is silly, in my opinion. I don't mind getting shot down. I even kind of enjoy it when it is the result of going against someone with superior flight tactics that I can admire while he puts bullets in me. But to get shot down by a guy I'm just about to get a clear shot at because in my game he's in front of me, but in his game, I'm in front of him, is silly. I don't think this is just my individual experience. I think the MP engine doesn't get it right. It doesn't seem to know how to calculate intercalating positions between the packets in a way that keeps the planes flying like planes.

 

So, I made up my mind only to fly co-op. Like some others (but not everyone) I prefer flying with a group on a mission and getting that mission accomplished. I enjoy the camaraderie. I like flying an assignment, even if I don't see action. I like trying to keep station or covering the bombers or cooperating on bringing down a set of balloons or whatever. But on the last couple of sessions, even flying co-op, even though the AI planes flew much more like planes, they were often so jittery that I couldn't really aim. I just had to shoot in the general area. It worked. I shot planes down. But it was less than ideal. I don't know why this is so. I remember that when I flew some of Stump's missions in coop with Ax or Duck when we were just getting going with BHAH MP I didn't have so many stutters and jitters.

 

So, those are the issues that make me reluctant to join anymore. I don't care what flight model or damage model we use. I can't really tell much difference in the damage models, and I like the flight models as hard as possible, but don't care what we do together online. I can fly them as hard as I like offline. I just think we need to settle on a set of files that everyone needs to fly MP and put them in Matt's installer, and have everyone install them and then stick with those. I think it would be best for them to be whatever most people use in their offline game. I think we will mostly chase people away if they have to install/reinstall files everytime they want to fly MP. And if we pick files for MP that most people will not want to use in offline, then that's what we'll have to do. At least I can say it will chase me away.

 

So, these are clearly the opinions of someone who has largely given up, and so maybe aren't worth much. I just thought I'd voice them, though, at least as the reasons for giving up. And I haven't totally given up. I keep reading these threads and hoping that these things will get sorted out. I have hope. I sure want Stump, or someone, to pull it off. And I'll be thrilled if these things get setttled, and, given that anyone would want me to, would be delighted to be able to join you guys in the skies over Flander's fields again.

[themightysrc 5]

"petal???"

 

Er, sorry. Northern English venacular!

 

I also refer to people as 'pet', 'duck' and 'love', which goes unnoticed in my region, but causes mirth and raised eyebrows elsewhere (even in the UK).

 

I won't even begin to explain the perils of referring to non-fellow-Northerners as 'cock' - a very commonly heard affectionate form of address...

[GaryR 0]

I've hesitated to throw my $0.02 in, because I haven't been flying lately

 

I stepped back a while ago because the net code simply sucks and dogfighting (humans) is a joke. Add to this the "Falcon 4 syndrome", an anomoly i've seen before where there are 200 different versions of a sim causing nothing but grief to internet multiplayer. When Falcon 4 Allied Force came out it was a godsend, ONE version of a sim, everyone on the same page. While it's great OFF is open to modification it isn't great for multiplayer. Even on an untouched, original install I had to spend an hour with Duck downloading and copying his files just to play, yet a week earlier (with no mods or updates added) we were fine! Regardless, all the whining in the world won't change the fact that unless the source code of CFS3 is released AND a super-coder is around that can re-write the connection code this is as good as it's ever going to be. You want real internet multiplayer, gotta look elsewhere...