Herr Prop-Wasche

Lima's mod should be ready very soon, maybe today. When it's ready, just install it on top of DM 1.25. JSGME will display a warning, but you can safely ignore it. If you want to uninstall my mod later, just be sure to uninstall Lima's mod first. Incidentally, you can also use Lima's mod on top of version 1.1 of my DM. The two-seaters will have the changes contained in DM 1.25, but the scouts will still be using version 1.1.

Just a friendly reminder that version 1.25 is a NEW version of my Ultimate damage model. You can certainly still use version 1.1, but I really do think that the new version is much better than 1.1--especially for the fire effects and the better balance between scouts and two-seaters. Also, the mod works best if you set the forward gun accuracy to Hard. I've found that Normal and Easy produce too many easy kills. Thanks. We now return you to your regular program...

33Lima-- PM sent re: Arc Mod for HPW Ultimate DM 1.25

You are quite welcome. And thank you for writing this computer program that brings 3P to life! Ah, that makes sense! I agree with you about the bully and the coward now. If you are interested, I have a file that shows some of my thoughts on tables 3a and 3b. I adjusted some of the ratings between player classes. Changes are noted by cells with a light blue background. The attached file is at the end of this post. Fantastic! I may be incorrect about this. I did have one mission scrubbed because of weather...and now that I think of it, I did have to advance time because I got an OFF error message, so those probably account for my extra encounters. Plus, it was late last night and I may not have been thinking clearly. 3P Table 3a 3b.doc

Does this mod decrease the lethality of AA on top of the decrease Bletchley already added to his flak mod, or are they roughly the same? And, how much lower is the rate of fire? Thanks.

Now that my 1.25 DM has been released, I finally had a chance to play around with OFFbase a little bit. I like it! It's fun and adds another dimension to the OFF experience. Great idea, Lothar, to include NPC on NPC interactions. Couple of questions/observations: Are you still using Tables 3a and 3b from Bletchley's 3P rules? If so, I have a couple of suggestions for attitudes or relationships between different player classes, if you are interested. I also noted that you have Bully and Coward as friendly towards each other. Personally, I would have them as hostile toward one another, but maybe that's just me. Also, is there any way to indicate to the human player the level of prestige of the NPC's, for comparison purposes? I'm not thinking necessarily of telling us how many points of prestige each character has, but more like a ballpark figure, such as high, medium, low. In real life, humans generally are pretty good at or have a fairly good idea of the "pecking order," or how each compares to others in terms of prestige, dominance, etc. Finally, I noticed that you can trick OFFbase into giving you more encounters than you might be entitled to by simply exiting out of BHaH and starting it again. Other than that, the program works great with no bugs so far! Thanks for this gem, Lothar.

Don't feel bad, Creaghorn. I was just wondering the same thing! For those who may still be confused, here is the link to HPW Ultimate DM 1.25: http://combatace.com...hpw-ultimatedm/ Happy flying, and be sure to let me know of any bugs that may be flitting about.

Installing the new DM should have no effect on your already existing pilots and campaigns, so it should be safe to go ahead and install it. You can always revert back to 1.1 if you don't like 1.25.

All righty then! The update of the DM to 1.25 has been submitted for approval and should be available in the downloads section within an hour or two. I hope you like most of the changes. Installation instructions and a summary of some of the major changes are below. Perhaps the most major change was made to the "threshold values" for pilots and observers so that both now have a "break" level of 75% instead of 100%. I am very interested to hear if this seems to have any effect on the likelihood of pilot wounds--both fatal and non-fatal--to both human and AI pilots. I think it does. Let me know if it seems overdone to you. The other big change was to the engine values and both the likelihood of fires and the overall special effects of fires and explosions. Be sure to let me know how you like it and if you see any oddness. And above everything else--have fun out there!

Oh, I should also point out for all you Fokker dreidecker fans out there-- I slightly increased the wing hit points and made the Dr 1 a little less fire prone so it should stand up to battle with the Camels and Se5a's of this world just a little better. Don't worry. All of my changes are really very small and should not effect game balance all that much. The devs already did a great job with the original DM--in all of my DM's, I've only had to make mostly minor adjustments. The biggest adjustment I've made with the Ultimate DM is to the engine hit points--they are, on average, seven times as "strong" as the original--but still blow up nicely. Muhahahahahaha! Oh, and if you do find something odd in the new DM, please be sure to let me hear about it.

Thanks guys. No download yet, Olham, although I do appreciate your enthusiasm! Hopefully, a download will be ready by tomorrow at this time.

I gather from the news report that he shot up 200 feet into the air and the parachute did not deploy. Awful.

I've been having too much fun with the campaign and my own add-ons to have spent much time on user built missions, although I'm sure that some are a blast. I'll have to give some of them a go.

That, indeed, is terribly sad. What's worse, is that it seems it was entirely preventable. I hope they find the bugger who designed and tested those ejection seats!

Oooooh, me likey!

This may be perfect for my brother and my nephews. They are mostly into FPS and fantasy stuff, but don't play a lot of flight sims because there is no "story" to go along with the scripted missions in most modern flight-sim camapaigns. Of course, I will also have to tell them about comabatace.com in order to truly feed their addiction! In fact, it might be a good idea for everybody who plays P3 to buy a copy or two for their friends and family in order to introduce them to OFF, whet their appetite for P4, and put a little coin in the pockets of our humble developers!

Me too--I'm trying to finish one in Psychology--without much success, I'm afraid. Your project is really taking OFF, so to speak. Your explanation of encounters and their effect on friendships and morale makes a lot of sense, and as an economics Ph.D. candidate, you probably know a whole lot more about zero-sum games than me, so I will shut my gob. I can't wait to finish my testing of my latest version of my DM so I can dive more into OFFBase. Can't wait to see how the NPC/NPC encounters work out!

Wow. This is an awesome new addition to your program, Lothar! Where did you learn about the Prisoner's Dilemma and the difference between zero-sum and non zero-sum games? One additional suggestion I have--is there any way to randomly vary the type of "game" the player and NPC are playing in an encounter (without their knowledge) thus requiring the player and NPC to choose either cooperation or competition in each encounter? In other words, if the encounter turns out to be a zero-sum game, and the player chooses to cooperate and the NPC chooses competition, the NPC "wins" the most points, while the player "loses' points. If both choose compete, then both potentially lose a lot of points. OTOH, if a non zero-sum game, if both player and NPC cooperate, then they both win points, but if they both choose to compete, they both gain little. There are other variations in outcomes that I can't remember--I have to get out my psychology textbook--but my point is that not all encounters with other people are attempts to dominate or win "prestige" (zero-sum game); some actually are about cooperation and building friendships (non zero-sum game).

I believe that Gotha's will be in either the initial release of P4, or in a plane pack that will be released soon thereafter.

In what ways are you not satisfied with the encounter system? Just curious.

I bet he has problems duplicating that on the range!

Any thought of factoring in secondary personality characteristics into player/NPC encounters? Right now, all characters in OFFBase only have one personality type. What if they could also have secondary personalities? For example, if my personality class is Romanitic, maybe I also like to gamble (Gambler class) and spread rumours (Rumour Monger class)? I don't have a lot of time to flesh this out more right now, but I think this might add even more sophistication to my interactions with NPC's--especially if they also have secondary characteristics which might influence how many points I win or lose in an interaction with them. For simplicity sake, I would limit the number of secondary personality classes to just 1 or 2, but if you already have an interactions Table set up, then it should not be too difficult (with the computer) to calculate the number of points per encounter. What do you think?

I had exactly the same trouble with Gmax, couldn't get it to work. There is a utility by the CFS3 people which lets you see the hitboxes, but you can't edit them. Grrr.

Are there any tales of an observer droppping his machine gune over the side when switching mounts? Oops!

Yeah, I increased the HP's for the Alb engines just a touch, but I don't know if you will like all of my changes to them. I found that they weren't catching fire as readily as I would have liked, so I made them slightly more susceptible to that. OTOH, Camels caught fire a little too easily, so i tried to decrease that a bit. I think part of the difficulty with the Alb engine is that the engine hit box is a little more exposed on the Alb than it is for the other inline engine's, possibly explaining why they get hit so easily. You will have to talk to the devs to have something done about that...