Beastie boy

Hi All, I've just re-installed OFF as I have a lot of free time at the moment as I'm recovering from a long hospital stay. So I thought it would be good to try OFF again. Installation and pathcing was fine and got a campaign going. Then the troubles started. 1) it seemed every aircraft I came up against could out climb and out trun mine. it hought it odd that an FE2B could climb and fly at about 150 mph whem my Halberstadt could only just hit 90 in a slight dive. So it was impossible to catch up. Then miraculously at about 190 feet (managed to cut a turn) or so acording to the label it slowed down until I got to about 120 feet then it was like the thing put on an afterburner and raced off back to 1000 feet or so. I also tried QC with a halby against a DH2 and got him but he could out turn and out climb me. So I tried it in a DH2 against a Halby and quel suprise he could out turn and out climb me. 2) this FE2B when I got into range, he seemed to be able to shoot though it's prop and fuselage. I was about 20 feet below and directly to the rear at about 12 feet and was made into swiss cheese. Also i was hitting him back in the engine / prop area, bits were flying off but no damage. 3) My wingman shoots me down. Had a scramble mission, great, get in the air target a plane and tell the flight to attack. Target another and tell wingman to attack. Then I get engaged but Gymer. Great after 15 mins of dueling ( he managed to always stay above me so i had to fly almost on a stall to get abywhere near aiming at him) and I finally get him to smoke and then BAM!!!! Red damage signs everywhere. On checking the replay and looking back at the time, My wingman thought it would be good to help out and shoot through me at my target, promptly shooting me out of the sky. I replayed the mission 3 times and the bugger did it every time even if i told him to rejoin. So after reading through the forums I decided to put on the damage mod and the Weight mods. So new pilot new campaign. A patrol mission YAY. So I'm the leader and take off. Then my wingmen take off well they taxi really fast and then all crash like lemmings. Now I've heard this may happen with the weight mod but why? They are adjusted to the same weight as I am and I can take off and climb just fine so it can't be a weight issue. So now I'm on my own, I manage to catch a flight of FE2B's which incidently still seem to out run my Halby regularly, they still seem to get up to 150 mph whilst climbing, but randomly slow down. Anyway I was in my patrol Zone and when i turn and chase them I get failed goals come up and mission failed. What the ? I'm in my patrol zone doing what i was suposed to do, anyway I get 2 of the blighters and head for home after loosing my engine to blind spot fire again, Sigh. So I glide back to my side of the lines and land (not bad for 20 miles from 7000 feet ), deadstick. The landing goes well no breaking sounds I slow down and the mission ends. When I get to the debrief it says I crashed and destroyed my aircraft, and I get no claim form. So I guess my question is what the hell can I do. Either I get every plane out turn / climb / perform my own, or I end up with no wing men and so can't put in any claims. This makes it pointless to invest any time in OFF at the moment. Also I have all the AI gun settings on easy and still they get hardly any spread on thier guns and can hti you at 500+ feet and take you down with about 20 rounds, where as I can fly 50 feet up their tails put 500 roiunds into them and get NO!!! damage what's so ever, is it me? do I have a duff install or what? Any help would be appreciated, I've been waitng for months to get home and play OFF again and now this. also I have HITR and applied all the patches as per the install guide, and the mods have been applied with JS mod enabler in the right order. Thanks BB

Err..... shouldn't you have to land? the last waypoint is a landing waypoint so why get goals completed if you haven't landed, doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure every pilots last mission goal is to land, unless they're suicidal of course. Sounds pretty wrong to me for the Sim everyone claims is realistic not to have to land to successfull complete a mission, so i guess if you died between the last waypoint and landing that's sucessful? By the way i love OFF even with these really annoying faults still the best WW1 sim around. BB

Hi guys, i have had very different experiences, I have had a lot of lone wolf patrols and had at least 20 kills in visual of witnesses, noth Allied and Axis both in the air and on the ground, and NEVER had any of them accepted, in fact my claim per acceptance ratio is less than 5%. I don;t know if it's the way i word my claims, but i have the Lat and long of the start of the engagement, and the crash site, i have any witnesses in there, i have the aircraft description, and the burst lengths in there, and still they get turned down. Is there a successful recipe for what to put into a claim form? I always get a form even when i had no witnesses. As ofr how this worked, It didn't matter if you had witnesses or not any opilot on either side could put in a claim. If it turned out it was a divided kill then they got 1/2 kill or some fraction of a kill. The way the claim system is used in OFF is way broken. If it knows who shot how many bullets into what Aircraft as you say it does then then all of the claims made should be accpeted, what noone has confirmed is if it knows who the witnesses are, if not then why do you need one? you could put anything in there, like the great Spaghetti monter in the sky and the sim wouldn't know the difference. I know in WW1 it was difficult to get even the most plainly good kill accepted, that's why as patrols rarely wandered far from the home airfield that the pilots landed if possible and cut out tial nombers etc as proof or actually landed at base got in a truck / car and searched for their kills to get the physical proof, That isn't moddled in OFF, Would be good if it wast hough, even if it was a cut scene or just a selection option. Most of the time all the pilots had was a crooss on a mpa, after all they didn;t have time in a dog fight to write down all the facts OFF seemed to need. Well i suppose they could try but they'd be dead kind of hard to fly with no hands wor wrtie one handed i would think, especially if you are being shot at form either the air or the ground. Try it some time get in a dog fight 1 v2, kill one and see how long you can write down the markings, the EXACT position etc. The claims system needs an overhaul to either make it more user friendly, or according to you guys, Manfred got 80 CONFIRMED kills, so he actually shot down hundreds? I don't think so, maybe 10% got turned down maybe a bit more, but he and Voss did a lot of lone wolfing, at least acording to what i have read about them. Also think on this, we have an advantage in lables if you use them, they didn,t also hwo in the hell are you supposed to know who is flying what plane? You could put down your wingman as a witness but he could have been a mile away in his own dogfight, maybe a system could be used to get a chance based witness signature on the claim? I don't know, but it's damned frustrating shooting down 20 kills and only getting 1 confirmed, It just isn't relaistic, with all the inteligence that was shared by both sides, more often than not a kill was confirmed by the other side abnd sent by message drops to the other side, so records could be kept up. My two peneth worth any rate It's broken badlt and needs a fixin, or at least a stramlined form so you know what you have to record to even have a chance to get a claim accepted.

Hi All, If OFF is a WW1 true simulation how come you can't transfer or request transfers between squadrons? Also Aces were allowed personal aircraft. Some of them also had aircraft different to those normally assigned to the Sqn. The difficulty arose in getting spares etc. The more influence the Ace had the more lee way they were given in what they flew and how they flew it. I for one will welcome the new individual skins I like my black planes :) but I d miss the option of transfering and the lack of ealry decent fighters especially on the allied side. I like to play form the earliest possible time and see if I can make it to the end of the war. Right now if I want ot start out in an Eindecker in 1915 I have to wait for a long long time for a halby then go straight to a DVII. Yes i could go straight to Richtoffens Jasta but i loose out on almost a years worth of flying, and god knows how many possiblr kills. It just doesn't make sense. The pilots were moved around all the time as to where the need was greatest. Richthoffen was always getting the best pilots as and when they got over 20 kills or so. That's why he was so successfull. So wouldn't it be better if after so many kills you could apply or be transfered to get the better planes as your performance would prove you deserve? I think so but we don;t have that yet. Also where's the Morane parasole? most of the 1915 fighter Sqns had them, they are in the Sqns but you can't select those as the plane isn;t modeled, has been in the Sqns since phase 1 but no model in the sim? Yet we get a much awaited expansion with a load of the same but minutely different late aircraft? What about filling the gaping holes in the early years? Bristaol Fighters are fun yes any with practice and a bit of skill you can be very deadly with them but the morane was a much more efficient machine being a EIII based rip off :) Any hoo I cant wait for the new features and hopefully later on some more early birds and maybe hopefully a transfer system. Keep up the good work Guys n Galls. # BB

Hi I don't use a Saitek but i managed to use my range analogue axis for my mixture on my Thrustmaster Cougar trottle and it works a treat. I can climb and when the engine grops of i lean it out and can hear it come back to optinmal performance. However the modeling for this is rather stunted. For example whilst climbing to 5000 m in an albatros I have to adjust once at 1500m to about 1/2 mixture and then at around 3000 to about 1/4 mixture instead of leaning it a bit by bit as i climb. The hardest thing is to richen it up to the correct level in a turning diving dog fight, it gets some getting used to, but it works just fine. I had to use the generic mixture to map the axis to not the MIX + or - keys. Hope that helps. All I had to do was select the mixture double click and move the axis so it was picked up. BB