themightysrc

Hi Olham, Never mind matey - that's family commitments for you... Enjoy the break and chill out; you don't need to fly. You're just addicted! Look forward to scrapping with you in MP in 2010. With any luck you'll have completely forgotten how to fly and we'll all be able to shoot you down. Cheers, Si

Oh bollocks! It's 25 to 3 and I've just seen this. Will fire up the gaming rig and see if the pathetic wireless connection will link up - probably about 30% chance, I'm afraid. Never mind - new Belkin N sat on the desk downstairs; this should be up and running before the New Year....with luck... Cheers, Si

PP, "Woot! It arrived this morning." Well? And? You're not going to let a little thing like Xmas Day get in the way of exploring OFF, surely?

Trackir 5 and those superb Peter Hart books? And CS Lewis' memoirs of life in the RFC? You lucky, lucky man. Now that's what I call Xmas!

A bit naughty, I know, but I download any patches and add ons at work - safe forever on the server... then I put them on a memory stick and home they come. However, I would appreciate more than 3 attempted downloads, just in case... HitR is well worth the money and time taken, but I've said that before.

A happy Xmas and splendid New Year to one and all!! <wipes away tear>

40 eh? that's positively young round here, I suspect! well, have a splendid day today and a cool Yule. In fact, seeing as I'm here and probably won't be back on line (I'm at work) until January, a very merry Xmas and New Year to everyone who lurks or posts here. And for once I'll break my usual commitment to not using emoticons........ Cheers! Si

Rickity, I'd just like to second that. The more active OFFers there are at SimHQ, then the more interesting the threads on that site - Lord knows the ROF ones are mostly dull until someone has the temerity to criticise the game. Certainly, if there's a more substantial OFF presence there (ie, people like us) then there's a greater chance of creating a 'trail of crumbs' to CombatAce, which is, after all, the spiritual home of the OFF community. There's a thread on there started by me a while back to post combat reports 1915 to 1918. You can always engender a bit of early war envy by posting about scraps in the 15-17 period (oh, and probably any reports from a 2 seater!).

My vote was (effectively) for a Pup campaign, late 1916. They're nice to fly without any particular vices, which I think would be a excellent entree for anyone seeking to try MP for the first time, particularly since it would mean facing slowly improving Hun forces. Anyone else have a view on this?

I have to say that when it comes to gunsights, I don't generally pay much attention to them. If you have to line yourself up with the sight, you can't be checking your tail, and who's there. In most planes, the sight is barely worth the effort, and in others - the Halberstadt springs to mind - you're better off just pumping off half a dozen rounds before you get into the potential combat area and observe the tracer. Fix it in your mind, and Bob's your uncle.

"I hope everyone is thoroughly offended by everything I say!" I'm not, but my wife is.

"i hope nobody felt offended by my lately comments." Not at all, old chap. You put your case very well, and I could even verify some of your remarks. I think the whole issue has been discussed with minimal rancour and has been a tribute to the quality of posters found on CombatACE (including yourself). Let's see what the mods come up with...

Red-Dog - please post your IP address and the address/password for the Teamspeak server. I think you have customers!

I think that Stary is speaking for a lot of owners/renters of the game when he says he won't be buying more aircraft until the campaigns, etc are fixed. What's the point of having larger numbers of late period aircraft to choose from if there's no real context for their use? The reason that RB3D and OFF drag you back to the PC week in and week out is down to the progression that they offer players. Otherwise, it strikes me that all you really have is a set of fairly meaningless encounters without any overall goal...

Mein Herr, Quite agree - if I'm out with 24 RFC tonight (I recall they're considered elite(ish)) I'll make a note of the jastas encountered, type/no. of aircraft and relative heights at the start of hostilities.

"Mightysrc....so what you are saying is the outnumbered enemy craft just bungled in and attacked anyway...(sort of aka old AI version, always aggressive) even though the odds were against them? I have yet to see this happen, so its interesting to classify it." Actually, the outnumbered Huns were simply overwhelmed by numbers, I suspect. That they didn't cut and run made me think they were a rookie Jasta - J24(w) I think it was. the poor sods in the DIIs stood little chance, IMO, as they were lower than 24 RFC when attacked.

Here's my latest experience. I enlisted Rupert de Baer into 24 RFC (DH2's) for mid April 1917, and the first mission available (damn the snow) was a full squadron patrol North West, taking in the front line. Sure enough, here come the DIII's. We outnumbered them 2 to 1 and I stood off to see what happened. Creaghorn's observation - on this occasion, at least - were borne out. I don't think the Huns had any aces present, but over about 5-6 minutes the DIII's were all - slowly - despatched by the squadron. A subsequent encounter on the same patrol with a couple of DII's was even more one sided. I don't think I saw a single DH2 go down. I finally peeled off on my own and found about 4-5 DIII's further North and took them on. I was hit PDQ and the motor made the traditional twin-tub with loose concrete block noises, so I dived out of the fight for a nearby base. The Alb's gave chase and I was shot down into some trees (but survived, thankfully). Not sure if that's at all definitive: two different sorts of AI behaviour in one mission that might have been predicated on numbers - the first two encounters we outnumbered the Huns heavily, in my last solo effort I was outnumbered at least 4 to 1. Does this have any resonance with anyone else?

Hi Creaghorn, Well, there's only one way to find out - I'm going to enrol a new pilot this evening in a DH2 squadron in Bloody April and go looking for trouble! If you're right, I'll lose all my squadron (albeit slowly, maybe), if I'm right, I'll see them all for supper. Cheers, Si

"it precludes it in the new AI the same as in the old, because they were different reasons. mainly because AI doesn't retreat. in neither AI." Well, if that's the case, then I'm imagining seeing the dogfight I was in last night. I'm not sure I've seen enough of the new AI to say whether the new AI doesn't retreat in the same way that the 1.32g and earlier AI didn't retreat. All I can say is that after a scrap between about 8-9 Tripes and about 12 DIIIs, there was no huge pile of burning DIIIs, which would have been the result under earlier AI. If I were to reverse the experience and take a dozen DH2s into a fight with 8-9 DIIIs, I'd be interested to see if all the Briddish got shot down - more or less an outcome under the old AI - or whether I'd get a historically accurate outcome of something like a DIII or two downed, perhaps 3-4 DH's downed (I'm using downed here as unable to continue, rather than a spectacular fiery demise) and everyone else scattered? That's the reality of WWI air combat that I'm talking about.

"i always said that i prefer rather campaigns with 300 hours and 3 kills than 5 hours with 20 kills." Well, the pre-HitR AI precludes that. That's the problem. "the "one side wiped out" syndrome has nothing to do with this old or new AI. that's a different story." You really think so? I suggest that you read back some of the previous threads on here. You'll find plenty of references to complete wipeouts of opposing aircraft, and not a few references to all one's wingmen being shot down and leaving the player as the sole survivor (but not for long). How 'realistic' is that?

"wouldn't surprise me if the "i die after 2 hours" simmers prefer the new one, and the "i have every now and then a decent career" guys prefer the old one. know what i mean?" Well, if you're saying that the rest of us are crap pilots, I suppose I'd have to put my hand up and admit I'm a crap pilot. That is the point you're making, isn't it? "there are always people who want to have it easier than it was." I suggest that you read a few accounts from pilots who served between 1914 to 1918. Surprisingly enough, they don't report sniper AI, fights where one side fought to the death and racking up multiple claims in a matter of hours at the front, as is possible in OFF. If OFF is to be a historical representation of the lives of airmen on the Western Front for this period, then it should reflect the reality of the combats that occurred. That doesn't involve 2-3 claims for victories every other flight, and that is (or perhaps, was) only too common in OFF prior to this add-on. If people genuinely want the WWI air war experience, then perhaps the Rambo AI of previous releases needs toning down, since I can't find many - or any - examples of squadrons fighting to the absolute death, ie, 100% casualties in the historical archive. I can, however, find multiple examples of this being reported in OFF combats by posters here. See the difference?

Well, my scrap yesterday evening in a Tripe facing several DIIIs took us down to tree top level, and I was glad not to see the rather silly low level Immelmans that were previous fare. If the AI pilots have finally had their fortunes read to them, then I'm happy. At low level, it felt like a dogfight, rather than a cross between Groundhog Day and the 110 metre hurdles.

"No further criticism and analysing please - it will be changed; give them time." But surely the point is that there are probably quite a few players who like the way that the 'faulty' AI works, and we all know that OBD people read these threads: witness changes made in the past to the game. I like the 'faulty' AI, and find it much more realistic in terms of outcomes in fights. How often have people posted here about knocking down multiple enemy aircraft in missions? Rather a lot. How many players have a massive pile of dead pilots under their desks, dead with less than half a dozen missions, down to psychotically crazed AI pilots who apparently don't give a monkey's about their own survival? Again, rather a lot, I would think. I'm not asking the devs for patsies as foes: I'm asking the devs not to return the AI pilots to their previous state - mindlessly aggressive and with no sense of self-preservation. If the real air war had experienced the sort of casualty rates you get in OFF (pre HitR), then there wouldn't have been enough pilots left by 1918 to hold a reunion in a Portakabin.

I think I broadly agree with Gous here. I actually do prefer the 'new' (AKA, broken) AI, and spent some of yesterday evening in a slowly evolving and growing dogfight - it started out with me and the chaps from RNAS 8 in our Tripes against about half a dozen or so DIIIs being flown in a rather cagey manner - perhaps understandable given what they were facing. Certainly in the past, said Albatroses would have been on us in a flash and fought to the death: in other words, the 1.32g default. Now however, they remained high and only when we made determined efforts to bring them to account by climbing to meet them did they start to come down on us (booming and zooming). Quite intelligent tactics really. Things hotted up (we could only despatch them very s-l-o-w-l-y) when about another 8 of the buggers turned up soon afterwards. I didn't detect much in the way of reticence from them! I lost count of the number of aircraft in the fight, and I'm certain that it grew further, and the fight spread over a wide area, dropping in height as it went from about 12000 feet down to tree top level by the coast (those rows of deckchairs on the beach near Neiuport are a very nice touch, BTW). End result: a long and satisfying - and to my mind, extremely historically accurate - encounter. Not the total annihilation of one side or the other; not about 20 burning wrecks dotted all over the landscape: a few shot down Huns, and one or two of my fellow flyers put down or wounded. And that's what WWI aerial fights were like, if the accounts I've read are up to snuff. My 2d.

" some can't hit a barn door at 10 paces (no names)" Aw, Pol, thank you for being so discrete! There are times when you really don't want to be name checked, and this is one of them. Oh s**te, that's given the game away...