Most heroic mission I ever had and then game crashes!

[appraiserfl 0]

I'm not going to put this in the help session cause I know what the problem is, crappy nvidia drivers that never made my SLI 8800 ultras stable....can't wait to go ATI with the 5870x2 this month (hopefully).

 

Anyway, this is what happened.

 

I start a new campaign with Baron Hornswaggle Von Diamondwulf and its a patrol the front assingment (its 1916 and im with Jasta 2). At around 7,000 feet I spot two Neuport 17s and Im following them for a good five minutes and gradually closing on em. I get to about 500 yards and the first one gets felled with flak. To my surprise, the second one performs a split S and comes right at me and I nail him with a quick burst but its not enough to take him down. Lookin over my shoulder he is going into a steep dive, but its not a death dive. I perform a split s and follow him as he is barreling straight towards the front. Hes got me by about 600 yards and to my surprise he is strafing ground AA guns right over the front lol. Its like he is going for the AAs that took out his buddy! Well I catch him with another burst as he is making a second pass on the AA and on the next turn I get behind him and am lining up for the kill when he explodes from AA fire!

 

So, Im kinda pissed but also in awe at the awesomeness of it all and no sooner do I turn my head to the left that I notice two of my guys on one Neuport 17 at about 50 feet above the dead center of no mans land. AA and FLAK is going crazy, bullets are wizzing by my cockpit but I turn in to help out and as I close I see that it is most likely an ace (label said it was a lieutenant of some sort) and I get an awesome deflection shot right on him as he is making a defensive turn from my wingman Willy Ackerman and he smashes right into the ground and it says I shot him down! Didnt catch the name, should have taken a screenshot but wasnt thinking, cause I was so excited that I got HIM!

 

Pleased with my kill and about halfway down on my ammo, I decided to play it safe and head for home. After about a minute of flying I look over my shoulder and see that my two wingmen have stayed behind and are now grossly outnumbered by FIVE Neuport 17s! I had a tugging moment of selfishness and cowardice as I said to myself, "You did your duty, got a potential ACE KILL, and your halfway down on your ammo with only 250 rounds left," play it safe and go home and down some pints of whiskey and visit that special bordello with Angelina cause you are a HERO! And for a moment I carried on heading for home thinking about booze and hookers, but I looked back one more time and saw that one of my guys was smoking and I knew I couldn't leave em to die alone!!

 

I cranked right rudder and banked full round and joined the fray of now 3 vs 5! In the 8 plane furball I was conservative with my gunfire and scoring confirmed hits here and there, and after about what seems like ten minutes of pure white nuckle acrobatic flying 50 feet over no mans land with AA, flak and planes everywhere, there was only me, my wingman Willy and one Neuport 17 left. Out of the four downed neuports I don't think I got another kill, but Im not sure cause I nailed a few of em really good and was not watching the indicator section, so I may have gotten a few more unconfired, not sure. But alas, there was just Willy and I and the last of the enemy. We turned and burned for a while and I kept hitting home on the enemy, when I came around to see Willy fall :( (there goes my ace kill witness). Pissed, I am able to land a few more passing shots into the enemy ( I hit him no less than ten times total) and when I came around on him he was doing a severe climb, I hit him with one last passing shot and as I turned my head I saw him float back and crash a nasty death, but it did not say I killed him...maybe it was crediting the massive amounts of AA going on for the kill shot...regardless I only had 38 rounds in my guns left so I limped on home, feeling the senslessness of it all. I was thinking that while I was cowardly leaving there was 7 planes fighting and now Im leaving again and all 7 are gone, like they never existed or mattered anyway, my turning back and helping out, ultimately did not help bring any of my comrads back :(

 

I make it home to my aerodome and bring my bird down to a complete stop. As I was getting ready to climb out of my cockpit, my computer completely crashed and reset itself. I cursed MADLY FOR THE NEXT TEN MINUTES!!! I mean to have that Kind of mission and to not have it registered at all F ME!!!!!!! and FU NVIDIA I HATE YOUR 8800ultras and your FLAKY DRIVERS!!!!

 

I dunno, Im at such a loss here....

[Blue781 0]

I feel your pain.. many a mission the same thing has happened to me also.. As im running a Nividia 7500 Vista and i HATE IT!!! they are the worst drivers i have ever seen..

 

Xmas is coming soon and i have a whole wish list goin... hahahahaha But yes memorable missions like that come but once in a while.. sorry for your loss

 

Cheers,

 

Blue

Edited October 9, 2009 by Blue781

[Olham 164]

Hey, appraiserfl

That was your "OFF Baptism of fire" only. Most of us had that happening at some point - all messed up,

and the whole great mission result lost. So pull yourself together, Lieutenant, this war was not started

for your pleasure! (Lol!)

By the way - the sim is said to show better results on Nvidia cards, or so I think to have read.

But I have an older ATI card, and it's doing fine, too.

 

You did fine in returning to help your men. Don't worry about your witness killed. Most of your shot down

men are not dead and will appear on the next mission board unhurt. So all, that he witnessed before his

crash, could be still confirmed (if your system hadn't crashed, too. Lol!).

 

For ace identification, it might be good to assign "pause" to a joystick button. That's better than a screenshot,

cause in "pause" mode, you can 1. write down his full name, and 2. then turn around your scene, until you

got the perfect angle for a screenshot. Okay, it interrupts the immersion, but you could use the ace name

in your report, which is quite something!

 

And yes: it is all totally senseless, but we'll carry on!

[+matt milne 5]

I laughed when i read that. frustrating though it may be, it's adds to the ww1 experience.

 

people served with their friends for decades in colonial conflicts, surviving almost everything the world could throw at them, only to watch them be killed by some freak accident, or a sniper or some other avoidable mistake in a single day in the war.

entire regiments wiped out in 15 minutes, lifetime careers snuffed out in seconds, and all in fruitless or pointless circumstances. That was the war, and that left a severe and difficult-to-live-with sting for a lot of people for the rest of their lives.

That's how good this is, even in its errors and crashes the game can create that feeling.

 

anywho, i've found that nvidia generally gives better results for almost every game, but is frustratingly unstable. in an ideal world you'd have both ati and nvidia graphics cards in a single computer, so that you could alternate between them for specific games.

[Olham 164]

Matt, do you fly in OFF? Just thought, you'd actually belong into the OFF Pilots Maps.

In red even, as you created the music for the sim. What do you say?

I'd need your town and country then.