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"Mick Mannock was an interesting charecter...seemed to delight in Killing, and yet was very protective of his squad mates...and ended up going totally do-lally bless him" No he didn't. He had been badly mistreated by Central powers people - Turkish rather than German - but seems to have taken his incarceration, which was pretty harrowing, admittedly, that when he went to war, he threw himself in. Given his Irish background and the slightly ambiguous nature of Irish nationalism in the period, which Mannock as a socialist might well have averred to, then his motivation clearly came from something other than liking others. There's enough documentary evidence to the contrary concerning his character to believe that he was simply a mad killer. My opinion, FWIW, is that Mannock was a nationalist who, had he survived, would probably have ended up on the Sinn Fein side in the Easter Uprising. As I've stated, he was an ardent socialist - let's not forget that to state such in the officers' mess in the average RFC squadron would probably have ostracised him from his fellow officers and may well have led to his initial reticence to engage - and would no doubt have been influenced by the writings of Marx and the then current political swirlings within Europe. Let's face it - the Russian front ended when the revolution occurred; the German front ended in a welter of influences, not the least of which was the influence of left wing thought within Germany. As to the original question: I tend to shoot down what I can, but given that I drive two seater buses, it's something of a rarity for me! Cheers, Si

Nah! It doesn't go like that, honest Guv. I've never been downed by detritus from enemy aircraft, although I've been through hails of the muck. The message is as simple as you'd like it to be: get very, very close and then fire. You really can't lose by so doing, and they will go down. The reason I have a pilot who started on BE2c's and is now on RE8's who has 24 kills is that I have always closed in on the enemy until I couldn't really miss. If you can't get close enough - and trust me I speak from experience - then it's because you haven't mastered the plane or become acclimatised to the AI. But you will. My initial %age stats were dreadful - probably 2-3% hits, which is quite depressing - but with repeated flying and particularly in the same aircraft type at the same time of the war, then it started going up and up. Moral: start a campaign, stick to it and take your licks - you'll improve. Given that you appear to be fairly new to the fora here, I'd suggest that the above - starting a campaign - is not only the best thing that you can do, but also, I'd add that the best possible start to your campaign would be as the pilot of a two seater aircraft. That will, if you survive, teach you more or less everything you need to know about WWI air combat, and will enable you to hop into a Camel or SE5 (or whatever) in a subsequent campaign with every chance of bagging a large number of victims. Cheers, Si

My discovery of OFF came at the end of a long, long slough due to computer crashes. I bought RB3D on a whim many years ago, and was utterly blown away by the fidelity (ahem), the graphics (ahem) and the gameplay (still unmatched, even by OFF). However, it was the time of Win95, Win98 and Win ME - in the case of the latter, an operating system has never been better named: ME indeed. I had that rubbish trash my PC so many times that in the end I gave up on RB and games in general, particularly as I flitted between jobs. What pulled me back into the fold was Talonsoft and their Battleground series, which, with a machine running XP now at hand, made me appreciate the finer points of computer wargaming again - American civil war, Napoleonic wars, I lapped it up. It was only then that I idly began to wonder whether my old RB3D CD might run, and, miracle of miracles, it loaded, but without sound and various other problems due to XP. I trudged away from WWI sims, and instead loaded the awfully spiffy looking IL2, which looked very interesting indeed, along with other s**te like Jane's Fighter Squadrons, the History Channel's Battle of Britain, Rowan's BOB and B17 Queen of the skies. All of these went west except IL2, which ran like a slideshow due to my PC. All were removed. I upgraded the PC again and reloaded IL2 only, with Forgotten Battles, and was finally chuffed to have a working air combat sim - hurrah! Leutenant Ernst Remarx plundered more than a few Ruski kites until I discovered Pacific Fighters, which I loaded in high anticipation. Back to the slideshow. Dammit! All I wanted was a chance fly a decent sim that had aircraft I'd f***ing heard of! It was at that point that, pretty despondent about IL2, and not knowing much else, I reloaded RB3D again and went in serious search of fixes for the XP problems. Of course, they existed in spades, and had done for years, so I downloaded the WF patch - still the best ever, despite the problems it can cause - and bought FCJ, which made the original RB3D simply look amateurish, which isn't a judgement in any way on the original authors, I should add. With WF2 and FCJ, my WWI sim happiness was complete: except for a few niggles; and the wish to sort them; and have a few more aircraft; and to see how else it could be improved. You know how it is. So I ended up searching the internet, like a sad obsessive - which my wife would (accurately) proclaim that I am - looking for these tweaks and improvements, but they weren't really there any longer. What was there was the enormous hype for a game called Rise of Flight which was some months away, and the almost ethereal hints about another game called Over Flanders Fields, of which I'd not been aware. In fact, I'd never even heard of CFS3. I also found out about, and, for some months, was bamboozled by First Eagles, but after I'd downloaded everything it had to offer and that others had created, I realised it wasn't the successor to RB3D and let it go. TO be sure - it's fun: but it only has the immediacy of the flying to keep you going. Forget a campaign. Anyway, after much pondering, and after hearing more about OFF, I suddenly stumbled upon Combatace.com - and, of course, the makers and players of the game. I can't remember my first posts, but I suppose I probably sounded enthusiastic but cautious. After all of the preceding, it was once bitten twice shy. Once I realised that there was a substantial campaign experience, and read that OFF was the brainchild of people who'd slavishly improved RB3D, my mind was made up, and I purchased both OFF and CFS3 on the same day. I have to say though, that having followed the FAQs (superficially) and installed CFS3, flown once, and then installed OFF, I was completely appalled by the horrible mess of colours that I saw before me - this was just junk after RB3D! Of course, it wasn't OFF that was to blame: I had an integrated graphics card that was utterly s**t, and I'd paid no attention to the CFS3 config. That done, and with a new AGP graphics card in place, the game suddenly jumped out at me. I'm currently retraining to be a java programmer, and thus I'm stuck with this PC for a year or so, but when I can afford to - once I get the benefit of the course - then, trust me, I will buy the meanest motherf***ing PC on the planet and install P4. Nothing else will suffice. Cheers, Si

Get. Up. Very. Very. Close. Indeed. And. Then. Get. Closer. Still. When. You. Can. See. The. Stitching. On. The. Pilot's. Helmet: Fire.

I've been away from the OFF fora for a little while - life has intruded in a major way - and didn't see the original thread at the time. Pawgy, I think it takes quite a lot of guts to come back and issue a mea culpa to people, so my opinion of you is already high. Please keep trying with OFF. Inevitably, you'll spend much time comparing it to ROF, which is unsurprising if it's your other WWI flight sim. That's all well and good, but I suspect that you really won't see the very best of OFF until you start a campaign. I've never played a game like this in terms of sheer immersion, and it's all down to that fabulous campaign generator. To be sure it's not perfect - as anyone here will tell you, and we all have suggestions for the next iteration of OFF, however it is the beating, living heart of the game, and once encountered QC or any of the other options available are simply not enough. I sympathise deeply with your problems trying to get the set up correct. It's fraught with difficulties, and it took more a considerable time experimenting and reading up in the FAQs and tips & queries before I could coax the best out of my rig. But good it is when you experience it, even with a lowly rig like mine. Feel free to ask all the questions you want here, and you will find that people - unfailingly - will bend over backwards to help you get the best out of your system. If there's anything you'd like to ask me - ask away. My major tip, once you've sorted out the technical knick-knacks and settings is that you fly the campaigns, having read the excellent primers available elsewhere on this forum. Cheers, Si

Well there you go. I had a job in a local authority sorting out the libraries, however due to spending cuts that's my job gone down the road. Simply gone. Can someone please explain to me how I - the IT specialist in the local authorities library service - caused the financial maestrom that's hit us these last few few years, because I'm f***ed if I can explain it, and, at the age of 48, I'm looking forward to a life on £65 a week (job seeker's allowance) until I "retire". I'm looking at all of you who've championed neoliberal economics for the last 30 years, Am I angry? Damn right I'm f***ing angry - your economic and political bulls**t is materially harming my life.

My best wishes to Olham - maybe the best poster here - at Xmas and New Year. f*** it. My very best wishes to everyone who strays in here and reads this. May the future be so much better than the present. My best, Si

Hi Dej, Thanks for the kind comments - I seem to saying that a lot just of late, don't I? I've already talked through the implications of writing with my beloved wife, who, being the star she is, is willing to have me work at it, on the basis that I'm still looking for other work - which I will be. It's my profoundest wish that all of this could have come along at another time - like, some 20 years after I'm dead, for example - however, we have to work with what we are sent, and that means, for me, a radical drop in living standards (ie, guess who'd just moved the mortgage to a different, higher payment scheme? Yep) but, I hope, without the fear of losing our house. As it is, I'm looking at contracting and anything else I can lay my hands on. As they say, never let a good crisis go to waste. I suppose in some ways, it's got me out of working for the local authority - much as I loved it - before the government completely f*** over the library services of the UK. Mark my words: 10 years hence, decent public libraries will be confined to affluent areas in the South and South East; in other words, the places where they are least used and appreciated. I cannot begin to express my contempt for what is being done to the UK in the name of supposedly saving our creditworthiness with the amoral gamblers that put us in this situation in the first place. I would happily piss on their burning remains, given the unwarranted suffering that they and their handservants in government are in the process of unleashing on us. Well; I've said all that before. But in my heart I maintain a burning hatred for the Tories and their spineless LibDem sycophantic chums. And I'm not particularly sorry if that offends anyone. Time to get back to the job applications and the writing. At least I now thoroughly understand how Pride and Prejudice works as a plot, however, unlike the 'writers' of Bridget Jones' Diary, I will not be plundering that source. Happy New Year everyone. Cheers, Si

I'm more than happy to indulge in MP OFF - it didn't happen this Summer because my wife's mum has been diagnosed with Loius-Body Syndrome and we've been spending what little spare time we have either at the hospital or else visiting my aunt who apparently is in the first throes of terminal pelvic cancer. I quite understand the frustration of MPers who've gone to all the trouble of setting games up, and I guess I should apologise for not having said anything about my absences. Sorry gents. It looks like I may well now have more time on my hands, due to being turfed out of a job that I loved, so MP is again more likely, so please keep me posted as to where and when, and I'll do my best to attend. Cheers, Si

May I wish everyone who works on or reads CombatAce a very merry Xmas and a prosperous and safe New Year. Cheers! Si

"None have previously asked what I called a 'Stupid' question, would the term 'Idiotic' have been more fitting" UncleAl - don't you think that that's exactlythe sort of attitude - sneering I would say - that pisses people off? Why don't you simply NOT post replies if all you're going to do is get s**tty with people and leave them with a bad impression of CombateAce? Don't you think you ought to take a few moments before you post replies that are simply offensive to people?

Thanks all. Wodin, in particular, I feel for you. I know only too well what's likely to happen in 2011: the current government, to my utter disgust, have managed to insinuate to their chums in the media that it is the poor and disabled, the underpaid and those in civil service that are somehow to blame for our current woes. They've managed this disgusting deceit without blinking, and, of course, the Daily Wail and the cheerleaders on the right have now decided that it's the vulnerable who are at the root of our problems - it is a deception of incredible magnitude and mendacity that utterly ignores the root of the problem, namely, the reliance of most Western economies on casino banking and the biggest Ponzi scheme ever devised, backed up credit agencies whose credentials should have been shredded after Lehrmann's but curiously remain intact. So prepare for a terrible New Year. We continue to limp along - both individually and collectively - as the leeches (and I can't find a more descriptive or accurate word) in the financial sectors drift along on a sea of tax-payer funded largesse, picking off their seven figure bonuses and threatening to leave the UK for distant shores if we don't support their blackmail. Their moral squalor is beyond my powers to describe, and I would cheerfully hang the lot of them from the nearest lampost, such is the wanton destruction that they have caused. I hope you have a good Xmas, and I hope that you escape the cuts to the poor and disabled that are to come, and which are apparently deemed to be the price that ordinary people have to pay for this insane state of affairs. My best, Si

Jav and Lou, I actually welled up a little when I read your posts. Perhaps that's me simply trying to get some of my anger and sorrow out into the open. I will do it. I may never be published, and perhaps the whole thing might only ever be read by one or two people, but I think it worth a try. I'm immensely touched - believe me, you don't know how much - that you should compliment my writing. I've spent years telling myself that I can't do it because I'm not a full time writer, without focusing on how I might become such a thing. How stupid of me. Times are looking dark here, but if I do this - and I think I can, given my knowledge and background - then I damn well will. I don't quite know what I'll be producing, it may be a novel, a play or a script, but I'm going to write it and hawk it round. I guess I'd better change my main protagonist's name... Thank you for taking the time to reply. It means a lot. Cheers, and the very best to you and yours, Si

Well, I guess I've made a decision. I know I can write, and I know that I'm versed in IT. Failing any offers (thus far, none) of a job, I'm going to see how I can become an investment banker and see if I can be rewarded for pissing other people's savings and investments up the wall. But seriously. I'm going to write, and continue writing, until I can tell the entire world to f*** off in the hard times. I'm sure I can make it as a novelist, or, at least, a full time writer. I look at the efforts - even in the Guardian and the BBC - of others and wonder how they get away with it. Let's see if I can. Until that comes to fruition, I'll whore myself out as a contract programmer, if I can, as a tutor or lecturer, if the work's there, or as a PC handyman and allegedly "knowledgeable" IT person. At 48, I'm getting too old to do this sort of s**t, just because the prevailing economic thought is insanely slanted against people and for corporations, but we are simply the casualties of an ideological struggle elsewhere that benefits a tiny minority who have no need for further riches or power. That's my view, anyway, and I don't give a stuff if you don't approve. Thank f*** my wife, having supported me in one career change, is willing to stand by me again. Merry Xmas to everyone here. I hope you have a good one, and a New Year that isn't as horrible as mine is likely to be. If I spend less time here - and probably less time flying OFF - at least you'll know that I've not disappeared off the face of the Earth. Peace to all of you; let us hope fervently that better times are in the (near) future. Cheers, Si

UKW "Sorry about the Job...Public Sector was always gonna be hit hardest...Labour spent and spent and spent...and now, we have to pay it back! The days of paying 1% into your pension, and sitting on a Gravy Train working for the Government is over!...Yes, it's harsh and tough...but that's what the Private sector has been like since year dot" I'm not going to get into a barney with you, but I suggest that you do some research into GDP and deficit spending over the last 30 years. You might just surprise yourself. Also, until I took this job in the libraries, I'd been in the private sector in IT for 20 years. I know the score. I was simply shocked at how the guilty could get away with their actions whilst the innocent get shafted as a response.

Thank you everyone. I was very angry when I started this thread, and I guess it should have been pulled by the mods. My thanks to them for putting up with me. My sympathies go out to Von Paulus - I thought I had s**tty prospects, and then I read of your problems. They make mine seem trivial. I sincerely hope that you find a way forward for yourself. For everyone else: I've had a little time to think it through, and I will be applying for jobs forthwith. Apart from my extensive IT experience (what haven't I done, I wonder?), I'm also a qualified teacher/lecturer although I don't suppose there will be many colleges taking on in the UK for some years. The Guardian's reported today that the unemployment rate in the UK has now climbed to 2,500,000, and is set to rise further. I'm not despairing. All I really want to know is why I and others like me are being put out of jobs - that are worth doing - to ensure that the banks have enough money to pay their gamblers million pound bonuses when they should in fact have gone on trial for what they did to the economy, both here, in the States and elsewhere. It simply seems like me and people like me are being treated as irrelevant so long as the money merry go round can continue for those most closely glued into the financial systems. I can find no reason or sense in it. Thanks again for your patience. Si

"Thanks to Dej for an outstanding write-up" Ahem! "You will enjoy this as much as flying the aircraft." Actually, probably more!

Merry Xmas, Captain. Look forward to seeing you back here when you can. Cheers, Si

Excellent stuff - I'd forgotten how good those videos are. Jaa - feel free to nick any of my posts in the 'Reports from the Front' thread to repost there if you think it'll help. Cheers, Si

Good move - and much kudos to your wife. She must really love you mate!

Very, very funny indeed - Eddie Izzard is quite probably the funniest bloke in the UK. I saw him in Manchester a few years ago and nearly coughed up a nadger I was laughing so much. The combination of soaring imagination and the utterly banal reduces me to a puddle.

No. 11 - I know, I know....!!!!

Olham, Well no. 13 is in the UK - you have a double decker bus and traffic driving on the correct side of the road. I'm guessing from the wharf buildings that it's somewhere in the North of England? I don't think it's Manchester though. As for 14 - sorry, not a clue! Cheers, Si

cpt, There's probably an answer, but I don't think I'll be providing it - try the OFF support team, and take your PC down to a decent PC doctor. SP3 was, AFAIK, always slightly suspect, so a clean XP install - or maybe W7 now? - might be useful.

Merry Xmas, Soppers old chap. Do turn up for the recon mission on 3rd Jan next. We're out to Cambrai, 40 squadron have promised support and we'll need you there! Have a lovely break...