themightysrc

"If bounced by enemy patrols they were 'expendible', with their fate in their own hands and skill in defence rather than attack" I'm not sure I can agree. The whole point of the observation planes was to make the observations and get back. Photo plates lying in the mud or inside the German lines helped no one. But, yes, what a way to fight an air war, even though Trenchard was proven right in the end...

"Perhaps you read the first post again to remember the question. The question was not, if the German Jastas had any chance to win." You're quite correct. I've outlined some of the reasons why I felt they were - individually - successful against Entente forces, but FlybyPC puts the whole thing into a strategic perspective, which I tried and perhaps failed to do clearly. Still, a highly interesting subject, and one that's clearly close to our collective heart.

"I suspect this is where the subject starts to get immotive. They weren't effective. They lost the air war. The Jastas shot down lots of aircraft and were much feared by RFC pilots, but in the wider picture they never stopped the RFC achieving the objectives which they set out to achieve. The Jastas enjoyed tactical success in winning their battles, but never secured the strategic innitiative necessary to win the war." I absolutely concur with this. For all the individual battles that the Jastas won - and they won many - the RFC in particular were never stopped utterly from getting the two seaters where they were needed, more or irregardless of cost. The battles were largely won, but the war still lost. "There was more value to be had from dedicating your airforce to gather your intelligence, rather than dedicating it to prevent your enemy gathering his." My point exactly, but much more cogently put. "The Jastas never stopped the RFC doing what it wanted to do, they just made more costly. Despite suffering tactical difficulties and losses, the strategic innitiative remained with the allied forces throughout the war, through the good times and the bad. In contrast, the big objective of the Jastas was to destroy as many allied aircraft as possible, frustrate their objectives and deny them air intelligence. In these terms, they simply failed to do it. They not only failed to achieve this ultimate objective, you could actually argue that despite the numbers of aircraft shot down, the strategic contribution made by the Jastas was largely irrelevant to the progress of the war. " In terms of destroying aircraft, they were largely successful - but see the rider below - however in terms of stopping the Entente forces from operating over enemy soil, they undoubtedly failed, although lack of numbers exacerbated and influenced a poor strategic decision. One other factor that's not yet been mentioned is the lack of suitable allied aircraft until 1917, compared to the German air service. The Germans were lucky enough and bright enough to develop aircraft that were, in the early years, simply better than their Entente equivalents. It would be a brave man indeed who would argue that Entente pilots had parity of equipment until late 1917, when both scout and two seater development had caught up and led to the later years aircraft that proved so successful. I'm thinking here of the Camel, SE5, DH4 and Brisfit in particular, although taps to N17 and SPAD scouts, as well as Breguet's two seaters. Once equipment parity was established, then it was simply a matter of time before the German air service succumbed.

"But that isn't too important for my question anyway, because attacking two-seaters with rear gunners must have also been dangerous; and my major question is, why they had comparably small losses." I think that many of the posts thus far have fed in elements which go some way to giving you a largely definitive answer: 1. German pilots were generally better trained and more experienced (and hence developed better tactics) 2. German pilots fought largely on their won side of the lines, and hence were less likely to be captured 3. They chose their fights carefully - AG Lee is clear on this, as are other authors - and worked at picking off two seaters and stragglers 4. Two seaters were dangerous, but were plodders and underarmed compared to German scouts 5. Until mid 1918, they chose the battleground; the RFC were responding to a strategic directive There's more to it than that, but I think it's enough to explain why the Jastas (well, some of them) were so effective. My 2d. Cheers Si

Some interesting and cogent remarks thus far. I think there's a sober and rational analysis to be had by looking at aerial warfare in WWI in a holistic/macro way. Whilst it's easy to get sucked into the excitement and perceived glamour of the individual aces, the air war wasn't about that in the slightest - except perhaps for public consumption for morale purposes. As has been stated, the purpose of flying was to return information for the armies (at least initially). No more, no less. Get your observation planes in the right place in theright numbers, and you gain a strategic and tactical advantage for the ground forces. That's why Jastas existed - to stop this. It's also why the RFC was so committed to carrying the fight into German territory: after all, if your scouts are over your lines into German areas, then German two seaters stand less chance of performing their work. I would hazard a guess that the percentage of two seaters brought down by the Jastas would be higher than that for Entente squadrons, since the Entente squadrons appear to have spent much time shielding their own observation planes (which naturally Jastas would make a bee line for!). As already noted, German two seaters tended to fly much higher than their Entente counterparts, perhaps a recognition that height was the best form of defence against Allied scouts. All of these points tend to feed into a wider analysis of air strategy in WWI, in my opinion. Because the Entente strategy was to get over the lines and establish supremacy there, and to enable their observation planes, inevitably the response was to try and counter this in the most effective and economical way possible - as the Germans did, quite successfully, until 1918, when the numbers overwhelmed them and the apparent quality of their pilots began to drop off due to losses. It's a fascinating subject, and one that should be utterly devoid of rancour. I'm at a loss to read that it's led to blazing rows elsewhere, and I can only conclude that CA forums are apparently a much more learned and discerning community. One last thought: Olham, do you have the stats on what sort of aircraft the Jastas brought down? My suspicion is that as a percentage, they took down more two seaters than scouts, compared to their Entente counterparts - for the reasons I've outlined - but I'd very much like to see evidence, although I do seem to recall that MvR's tally of 80 had a very large percentage of two seaters. Cheers, Si

If you've not had reply from people here by now, I think it's probably time to email the OBD developers. BTW - welcome to OFF, and I hope you enjoy what you've submitted yourself to! Mosey on over to the General Discussion area to find out what's going on of late. Cheers, Si

If you want to watch something even vaguely accurate about WWI, I'd suggest either All Quiet on the Western Front (because it captures the futility and paranoia perfectly) or else the BBC series Wings, which takes in the human agonies from the British POV. Don't bother with Hollywood. To be frank, my take on the Blue Max is that it's a pile of s**te.

Hi Lima, Depending on what you're after try this file (having backed up the original, natch): I'm currently reloading all the Good Stuff I had, and this is part of it - mostly opaque labels, with all white TAC blobs, regardless of who they are. I will swear by this as a game aid. YMMV! Cheers, Si ViewUI(1).xml

Good luck to all you colonials - I very much hope that Irene's visit is both brief and uneventful.

HI Olham, I wouldn't say I feel 'heavy', but Vic's 115+ hours is my best achievement in this game, and although his dossier got f***ed over during the recent reload I was forced to make, I feel right in continuing on from where I left off. I may edit his record to suit, although I'll never be able to recreate the claims record for the 24 he knocked down. It doesn't weigh on me in the least: it proves to me that I've done something right - for once!

Hi Tilman, Welcome to the forum and the skies over Flanders - I hope you enjoy them! As to your specific queries, I don't know the answer, but the devs on the OFF site can probably suggest something. Alternatively, the General Discussion area is a good place to ask these questions as well - more people there! Cheers, Si

Those illustrations by Hauksbee are simply stupendous. I really wish that I had that sort of ability - written reports pale into comparison.

"I think the best way to promote OFF is get more videos made and stuck on YouTube. Once upon a time, I had around 20 movies on youtube, but I noticed the short clips, one to two minutes long were getting 3 or 4 times more hits than better movies which were longer. I had one movie 9 mins long, but it had a slowest turnover of views by far. Bottom line is, if you want lots of hits & activity, keep it short." This is absolutely spot on. You can discuss endlessly with other gamers how OFF is the dog's bollocks, but they'll always come back to 'Well, CFS3 looked s**t on my PC, so why should I bother with OFF when ROF exists?". To a degree they have a point: once bitten, twice shy. Brief vids of OFF do the picture-better-than-a-thousand-words thing effortlessly. Once people see that OFF is not CFS3 with some rickity old kites, then selling the dynamic campaign and its profundity is more or less a cinch, because that's what most people actually want.

Hi all, PC reformatted, reloaded CFS and OFF, added HitR, hit a snag (airfields error message), advised by Pol that I might have to start again, have deleted OFF and CFS and I'm just about to reload the whole lot again. Question: to load OFF properly and get it up to HitR level, what patches/superpatches do I need, and what's the loading order? Thanks, Si

Cheers!

Thanks all - I appear to be back in business (barring a bit of tweaking in the Workshop.... There's only two things I wish to add back in, which I lost when I had to reformat and reload, and whose source I can't remember and have been unable to track down on this site. 1. The opaque labels and white TAC dots mod. I can't live without it. I know it was a fellow OFFer who did it, but his name escapes me... 2. The HDR and bloom mod (I think it was called). You know the one - it turns a normal day into a miserable looking one, but brightens surfaces directly touched by sunlight. I'd like it back, because it's so lugubrious. All I can remember is that it's a single file that goes in the main OFF directory. Can any kind souls help me by either posting on this thread, or, better still, in the OFF downloads section? Cheers, Si

Cheers HW!

Hi Pol, Thanks for the reply. I thought I'd done all the relevant updates, but I might well have missed one of them - there are a few! I'll probably delete OFF and CFS from my rig and start over. Just as a matter of interest once you have OFF P3 on your PC, what updates, and in what order do they go on? Cheers, Si

Hi Pol, Many things sorted, including OFF, as I took up a new pilot and downed some Huns - hurrah! So, my OFF P3 was fine. And then I added HitR and the associated upgrades. Now, when I try to fly a mission with my (sole) pilot, I get "Populate Airfield Facility: Aircraft Set Up error" and then "Mission file failed to load". What's the issue? How do I get round it? OFF was fine until I chucked in the updates and HitR, now it's gone tits up. Any help appreciated. Cheers, Si

"Sounds like another possible option in the Workshop. Low Detail and High Detail Trees depending on your rig." Would clutter the Workshop screen even more..! Apropos of which: I trust that P4's Workshop will be tabbed by category? It would make sense, whilst giving more space to add all these tweaky goodies.

Hi, Where can I find a basic idiot's guide to using the MB package? Does one exist? Cheers, Si

Thanks Pol - I'm on XP SP3 as it happens, but if I ever get employed again, a new PC with W7 is a priority (after a car, carpet, new sofa, holiday, some windows, etc, etc), however I'll check out the running order for the updates, all of which I have downloaded, thankfully. I'm only just back from a week away after the second family death in two months, so OFF matters haven't loomed large. I'll try to get myself sorted out ASAP. Cheers, Si

Right - latest update. Sapphire Radeon 2400 drivers reloaded, along with Directx9.0c - everything is working when I try CFS3 (cue sound of mass cheering). Trackir sort of behaving itself (not in CFS3, but I think I F9'd when I shouldn't have). I'm confident on that. Sound - perfect; Sidewinder 2 doing exactly what it should do. All I'm missing, apparently, is this: C:\documents and settings\me\application data\microsoft\CFSWW1 over Flanders Fields\ConfigOverrides.xml Is there a quick way round this? I've done the CFS3 obligatory chasing Me109s around in a Spitfire IX (actually got one too!), which I'd supposed created this file? Haven't loaded anything else in the way of OFF updates or HitR. Advice? Cheers, Si

Thanks to both 33Lima and plug_nickel. I'm exploring this as I speak - I can confirm that th device drivers for the ATA/ATAPI controllers as just as they should be. The fact I could (and still can) 'see' the CFS3 disks sort of confirms that too. I've already patched XP to SP3 and CFS to 3.1 (I think - I can't confirm because I can't get very far due to this DX8 error message nonsense). Thanks for the tip on the loading order for all the patchs and HitR: let's hope I get that far! I'm loading DX9.0c as we speak, so I'll soon know if I'm back in business. Fingers crossed. On the off chance (Ha! Ha! OFF chance! Hilarious!) that everything springs back into life, does anyone have a copy off their CFS3 vid/etc settings? It would probably save me a lot of vital flying time! Cheers, Si

I bet you've never brought back a dead or dying observer in your own aircraft, thobut. One for OFF:P4!