themightysrc

I have to say, I'm perplexed that anyone could find BH&H 'too easy'. As Fortiesboy says, if you're finding it easy, crank up the settings to 'impossible, skies a blizzard of angry psychopaths', turn off every CFS3 aid known and down lots of beer before you start flying. That'll bloody well sort you out.

I'd like to point out that rugby is, in fact, two separate codes. Rugby Union is the more widespread of the two, and involves regional sales managers and actuaries who like to hang around in bars getting wankered with other regional sales managers and actuaries, prior to exhibiting their prowess by lighting their farts in the lounge bar to the delight of both players and innocent onlookers - famillies having a meal out, that sort of thing. The rugby appears to be secondary to such activites. The other code is Rugby League, which is the pro end of the game, and consists of massive Fijians, Aussies and Lancastrians with faces like meat flans hammering away at each other in huge vats of mud in subzero temperatures in grimy post industrial places such as Batley, Whitehaven, Salford and Wigan. And, yes, they do pad up, because otherwise they would end up as paraplegics in about three months.

Got to be the Albatros CIII or CIX, surely? Although there's a strong case for the Big Ack.

"I'm one of those people who'll eat anything once, so I had some of this...ONCE. Utterly ruined the taste of the rest of my pint of Newkie Brrrroon." Heathen! And what are you doing drinking that refrigerated muck when Moorhouse's of Burnley produce the sublime Pendle Witches Ale? Get thee over the pond and into Lancashire. Signed, An adopted Lancastrian (granted political asylum from Cheshire)

Ah yes, northern caviar. Not guacamole...

I'm a little mystified by all of this. Possibly, it's because I'm such a crap pilot that I rarely get to make a claim - it usually comes as something of a shock to me if that screen pops out at me - but I suspect that my mindset now when flying in OFF doesn't actually have very much to do with racking up kills. My aim as a pilot is to simply survive by not doing anything stupid - well, too stupid - and fulfilling the mission brief. Admittedly, this means that I frequently avoid combat when I might otherwise dive in, but it also means that I'm now getting pilots that last longer. I still get engaged in dogfights, but the aim of those for me is to survive and hopefully to pick off any enemy aircraft that stray into my path long enough to actually get hit by me. Am I a rubbish pilot? Yes, undoubtedly - just ask any of the MP players as to how bad I actually am. Do I now end up with pilots with relatively few claims, fewer kills but greater longevity? Yes, I do; and that seems to me to be more or less historically accurate. Our appreciation of WWI pilots is sometimes heavily coloured by the histories of the aces and great pilots - not a surprise, since it presses a lot of buttons with most of us - but I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that in the actual conflict, the number of kills confirmed counted far, far less in the eyes of serving pilots than the morale, efficiency and espirit of the squadrons in which they served, and that they mostly yearned for leave, an end to the war and survival. So, forget about getting claims just so: as Pol says, they might be rejected for all sorts of reasons unrelated to how you fill them in. Concentrate on survival.

Hi Roger, Here's a potential option for you. I work in a public library in the UK, and we provide free internet access to library members, including something like 2 GB's worth of download, also buckshee. Do you have a nearby library that you could join that also provides similar facilities to ours? It would enable you to buy HitR and fire off the download. Usually public library IT systems (at least here in Britain) have a nice fat T1 type link which would mean that you could get HitR downloaded in about 3-5 minutes depending on traffic. Just something to explore, perhaps. It's certainly worth having HitR if you already have P3, since it adds both detail, a choice of AI and those lovely little Niueports. Cheers, Si

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to leap out of your cockpit, waddle over - perspiring freely - to a nearby machine gun post in your two hundredweight of sheepskin and start having a pop at the bally Hun using a tripod mounted Lewis? Why, you could even have a Martini or glass of Mouton Cadet brought over by your batman whilst you pasted the perfidious Boasche into next week. P4, perhaps.

A bit late in here, and given that I bailed out early, a little cheeky; but thanks to Winston for hosting and the other guys who turned up. A fun time indeed. Cheers, Si

UKW, Why not try the Saturday stuff (Winston's)? I frequently - probably to the exasperation of other players - have to bail out of long MP sessions (I can't usually afford much more than 45mins - 90mins, depending on circumstances), but I can say without hesitation that everyone has been very accommodating of my flitishness. Indeed, it's got to the point where I've turned up late, been welcomed into a mission that's already under way and no-one's said a dicky bird about it. That's just class. Everyone knows that MP requires some commitment - but so does firing up your PC to play BH&H solo. I'd say, just bob in and try a mission: you don't have to sign up for the whole war, or even the whole evening. And apart from anything else, it'd be very nice to meet some more OFFers online, regardless of how long they could stay; as I've already said, I could hardly be classed as hard core, but nobody minds. And that, I guess, says an awful lot about the sort of people who do MP - they're pretty much the sort of people I'd be happy to know IRL and with whom I'd be happy to share a beer/cup of Earl Grey. Cheers, Si

Slarti, When you've finished putting Fjords on Crete, have a look at the USB phones/mike combos in PC World (no, really!). Mine cost me about £20, and it is superb - no arsing about with those poxy little jacks, just stick in the USB port and off you go. The colonial chaps will be able to sort out the rest with you. Cheers, Si

"a new pilot may be hesitant to join into MP is the fear of gettting hammered" I've been doing MP for a while now, and I can confidently state that even with some hours of MP under my belt, neophyte MPers would be in absolutely no danger whatsoever of being shot down by me. I'm beginning to take an almost perverse pride in my inability to shoot things down, and Winston will probably be able to confirm that I'm also rubbish at taxiing on the airfield. Scratch 3 N17's, eh? I'd recommend MP to anyone, unreservedly. It's fun, straightforward and everyone I've met online has been immensely helpful and forebearing. If you can afford the time - and we now have a choice of Saturdays and Sundays - then it's a uniquely enjoyable experience. About the only investment I had to make was in a headset (phones and mike), and these are, in any case, my default sound setup nowadays so as not to scare the cats and long-suffering spouse. Cheers, Si

"I also believe that it's possible that your gunner has died. I'm pretty sure this is modeled as I flew a mission last night where an Albatros approached me from the rear and a the same altitude. My gunner did not fire even when the Alby was within 100 ft. After taking quite a bit of damage on his firing pass, I jumped into the back and there was 200 rounds of ammo left. I figured he was dead. I'll be doing more testing on this." that's interesting - surely an adjunct to this should be that if you're gunner's dead you shouldn't be able to F8 into the back seat? I mean, with the best will in the world, dead people do make extremely poor pilots.

Hi Ironhat, Welcome to the mayhem. It sounds like you were in a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter to me. They're a good choice to start with; as you've already seen they're manouvreable, relatively quick, well armed for the period and can kick the living s**t out of Fokker EIIIs. For increased fun, but fewer kills, hit your F8 key during a tussle and drop into the rear gunner position. HPW is on the numbers about warping - it's caught me out a few times, thinking I was heading home but actually heading back to Hunland! Make sure you have a voluminous bin by your desk - you'll ned it for the piles of dead pilots that you'll inevitably collect over the next few weeks and months. Also have a handy picture of your partner and loved ones near the PC, as you'll need to remind yourself occasionally what they used to look like before you got sucked into OFF. Cheers, Si

Well, it's a campaign if you wish to consider it thus, but it's not dynamic, which is my idea of a campaign. The Bloody April campaign in FE was a similar beast, but wasn't satisfying for similar reasons.

I suspect Dutch is correct - there's no campaign in FS-WWI per se, although there are some themed collections - for example, the Pup missions in North Africa. That's liveable, however the lack of time compression (not an issue for diehard DiDers) means that missions can be a bit tedious, and of necessity have to be started very close to where the action is expected. That in itself mitigates against a 'proper' campaign, since flights from 20 miles behind the front lines to a target 10 miles inside enemy lines become prohibitively time consuming. Having said that, FS-WWI is good fun for the occasional quick flit, so I might well download the latest version to see how it's improved from the last one.

Rather than rehash, agree or disagree with the posts above - and to be honest, they present a fabulous wish list which I'd be delighted to see filled out - I think that my P4 wish now, given that we might well see new aircraft as part of the deal, would be to have new fronts. I'd be utterly knocked out to see what OBD could do with the Italian Alps, for example, or Mesopotamia, Greece or wherever else. I've seen it in WWI-SDOE and was mightily impressed. I'm guessing/hoping that OBD could bring those theatres to life. Apart from that: Big Ack, early German/French two seaters and you're done. Oh, chuck in a SSW DIII/IV if you're feeling kind...

Hi Winston, If I can make it for the odd punch up I certainly will - teatime on a Saturday, eh? I'll leave my missus watching Dr Who and sneak off...

Long before the Snipe turns up - and, frankly before the EV/DVIII - I'd have preferred to see various two seaters and common(ish) single seaters. We all know what those should be...

Morris, are those parachute straps I can see on your shoulder?

Hi Joe, Phew! You've certainly decided to take something of a leap into the dark.... First of all, you'll need a powerful PC, with plenty of memory (RAM) and a very good graphics card to run OFF. I'm afraid it wasn't built for Macs or Wiis - more's the pity, in a way. So that is what you'll need to explore first and foremost. Secondly you'll need to buy OFF itself. Before you commit, you should take the time to read the OFF forum here and ask as many questions as you want - people will gladly help. Have a look on Youtube and the OBD website (they're the people who wrote OFF) and check out some of the videos on there. Whilst you're around, you would be advised to read up about some other WWI air combat games - notably Red Baron 3D, First Eagles and Rise of Flight. They might be what you're after instead of OFF, but the chances are that you'll probably end up buying all four in due course! If you're still set on OFF, look at the OBD website and examine the best (not minimum) specifications for a PC to run the game. Unpeel wallet, buy suitable rig, cry a bit, live on potatoes and bread till next Xmas. Whilst that wallet's open, you'll probably want a decent force feedback joystick. This enables you to experience the shudders and shakes of the aircraft - helps to avoid stalls. Also, you'd be well advised to buy TrackIR, as device that tracks your head movements and translates them into screen view: in other words, when you look left, you look left out of the cockpit; when you look up, you're looking up out of the plane, etc. Invaluable. Right then. I think I've just recommended that you spend about a thousand bucks there. Hope this helps! Cheers, Si

To be frank, I like the dark mood of OFF (well, that's how it looks on my PC). If you want atmospheric, then a Pup scudding over a greying, storm cloud filled sky in early 1917 - as I've seen innumerable times in OFF - is certainly a sight to chill the soul or warm the heart, depending on your viewpoint. I like the slightly gothic look of OFF. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: that's how, in my mind, WWI looked.

Just as a matter of interest (or not, depending on your POV), I'm also a gamer outside the tight confines of OFF. I have a fairly regular group of friends - all originally non-gamer types - who were suckered into playing Diplomacy many years ago and now play all sorts of games in regular get-togethers at our various houses. I'm guessing that I'm not unique, although perhaps the circle of people I play with is (ie, they have lives, all discovered deodorant at an early age and didn't get into gaming until their late 20s/early 30s), but I was wondering if other people out there in OFFland also enjoy stuff like 6 Nimmt, Winner's Circle, Vinci, Ticket to Ride, Citadels and suchlike?

SD, Doesn't work - well, not with Firefox...

VB, That link brings up a window in Firefox - any chance of moving the file to the download area? I could cut and paste, but I'm guessing it would be easier as a download for most people. Cheers, Si