Ironhat

Thanks for the tips guys. Hopefully the suggestions will help other newibes to get at these guys and live to come home.

Just started a Brit flying this AC. Overall i like it, except for the standard brown paint that looks like , well you know. Hit a German airfield with bombs and took out 2 fighters with bombs. Second mission was attacking german trenchs. Hit them with bombs on the first run and hurt them bad. Then made the classic mistake of going for a second pass to straff the trenchs. The mg guys shredded me good and the bird went in. Knew that was a mistake, lol.

Thanks for posting the link. Only thing i noticed is the pilots seem to be much older than those pilots in the real war. I guess they are the ones who can afford to have a flyable WWI fighter. Really great job these re-enactment groups do.

Newbie here to OFF and the board. I'd be interested in any comments from you that have flew bombers in OFF. Only had the game a couple of days and flown only fighters of both sides, 4 pilots. I just made a new English fighter pilot and had him start early in the war with a RNAS squadron. When i checked the stats on the Nieuport 11 i saw it had a rear gunner and one forward firing gun. Oh well it looked more like a bomber or recon plane but what do i know, it's very early in the war. Loaded my first mission, it's an escort the bombers to a German airfield type. Take off not expecting much from this old kite after flying several late war fighters. Yes it was slow but it turned pretty darn good and was much slower to stall than some of the others i had flown. We got the bombers to the target and headed home. Just before crossing the lines we encounter 4 German fighters going home an below us. I am flight lead so i dive on them and come in behind the last guy and hose him down good before over shooting him. Darn he was flying slow in a E III Fokker ?(hope i got that right). It was that early war single wing figher. As i passed over him i rolled left and went into a shallow dive to build up more speed as the kite was down to about 55 mph. My rear gunner popped off a few rounds and hit him with 2. Short story is after a couple of more passes i nailed him. I found the ac actually easier to to dogfight with at low altitude than most of the late war fighters i've tried so far. It turned very fast and i never stalled once. After a few more minutes i had shot up another pretty bad and another guy finished him off. The rest of the flight finished the other 2. I decided to warp home, flying straight and level but heading the wrong way. All hell broke loose as i hit warp. The plane jumped to 3000' and warped so fast i could hardly believe it but in the wrong direction ! Finally 500 miles away from home the game froze and no way could i get it going again, even tried alt + tab. Finally had to shut down the pc and restart the game. When i got back in game there was no sign of this mission and my new guy was on inactive status. I loaded him up and got another mission. This was a photo recon over German lines and bases. I noticed i could load bomb on this ac so i loaded up 4. Took off and went to controls and checked for bomb bay and bomberdier keys etc in case any of this worked. I think there were no bomb sights at least this early in the war ( where there ?) but better know what keys do what. After we got the mission goals done i targeted a building and made a level run on it at about 5000', hit B7, ouch no bomb view just a detail map lol. Back to pilot view, hit key to open bomb bay doors in case there were any. No idea if there were are not. Selected the bombs and dove on the building, did a visual drop from about 3000' (more of a guess drop). Later i find it hit close enough to give me 2 hits, on what i have no clue. Going back we again catch several German fighters near their airfield. Jump them and i shoot down 2, again my rear gunner is popping off rounds from time to time and getting some hits in. This squadron will move up to single seat fighters in a bit so now im thinking of making a bomber pilot to see what thats all about. OFF is getting more interesting by the minute. Please tell me your bomber experiences.

Yes it was a Strutter. I'm pretty sure the menu also said Nieuport 11 , so maybe it was my mis reading the menu or it was a mistake on the menu. AC was biplane, one forward firing mg and a rear gunner.

I've played CFS3 for years and been frustrated with how the AI aircraft of the same type i'm flying out preform my air craft. I just got OFF and Hat in the Ring a couple of days ago and just love it other than this old flaw carried over from CFS3. It sure takes a lot of fun out of the game to see a group of enemy planes at 9,000 feet engaging my flight zooming around like crazy while my budies engage them while i can barely keep my kite above stall speed no matter how hard i try to stay in the fight. PLEASE no replies like learn how to fly. I know how to fly on the pc and in real life. This is a major flaw in the basic CFS3 engine and i sure would love to see the OFF devs fix it if that is possible. Great additon to the WWI sims but PLEASE correct this devs !

Once again thanks for all the replies. It's refreshing to post what to me is a problem with a game and get only mature answers. It's much clearer now as to what is going on here. I guess due the the touchy nature of these old birds it just seems more magnifed even than what i experienced in CFS3 although even there i had a hard time nursing P-47 over 10,000 while the 109's flew over head mixing it up with my fellow pilots. I intend to stick with OFF and learn as many of these old crates as i can, Keep the sun at your back and keep checking six !

Thanks for the replies guys. I fully understand those old WWI birds take different techinques from our modern aircraft. I also understand one must learn the + and - of each aircraft and use them against the enemy. I'll try lead only and starting at high alt. although i must say i like taking off and going from there. All that said i guess i'll just have to live with this problem built into CFS3 until someone corrects it if they ever do.

Running Windows 7 hp 64. Only problem ive had is an odd crash a couple of times right after take off on a mission. Alt/tab gets it back to the mission screen and loads the mission fine and everything is ok from there. Have no idea what that is about. Other than that it runs fine.