Herr Prop-Wasche

I have to bow to your military experience, so I will take your word for it on bullet dispersion. Still, aren't the bullets we "see" actually tracer rounds, and aren't tracer rounds somewhat less accurate than non-tracers? To my knowledge, the sim also does not take account of dispersal due to recoil, so every burst gets roughly the same random scatter, regardless of length of the burst (10-15 bullets vs. 50-75). So, aces who are more likely to use short bursts and rookies who are likely to use longer bursts, get the same bullet spread unfortunately. Looking at the results of my poll and from my own experience, I think a bullet "noise" setting of around 1.0 sets close to the right balance between getting a somewhat realistic number of kills per mission while still allowing the AI to occasionally shoot other planes down as well. OFF's "Easy" setting of .2 (which hardly anyone polled ever uses) allows for too many kill-fests. A value of .5 (OFF's normal setting), is also too low, IMO. On the other hand, setting it to 2.0 or above makes getting kills for the AI too difficult. Therefore, I am looking for the "sweet spot" around .75 for the normal setting, and somewhere between 1.0 and 2.0 for the hardest setting.

But, what do you consider to be the believable minimum? Opinions may differ from one player to another. Also, how does the OFF settings (.2 for Easy, .5 for Normal, and 1.0 for Hard) translate into real-life? Couldn't .4, .8, and 1.2 be just as realistic? I don't want to 'dumb down" the gunnery, either. I also recognize that imposing historical kill rates are likely both impossible and undesirable, for many reasons, most importantly, game-play. I am interested in providing players more options, while still trying to keep game play and game balance. In the end, other players will either like the mod or not. If it's not their cup of tea, that's fine with me too.

Sorry, gents, been gone a few days. One "benefit" of higher bullet spreads is that the AI may run out of bullets before they can shoot all the other AI down. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a "break away from dogfight when out of bullets" trigger, so the result is that the AI planes sometimes wind up chasing each other around to no effect. The only way for the human player to stop this behavior is to issue a "recall" command and then lead your flight out of the engagement. On a side note, I wonder if making the AI more responsive to the commands and whatever happens to the flight leader might make for more realistic behavior. For example, if the AI flight leader gets shot down, the rest of the flight retreats, unless there is a surviving Ace in the flight, etc.

We can send him an all pink Albatros DIII again!

The front-gun bullet settings affect both the human and AI pilots, so increasing the bullet spread will decrease both your accuracy AND the accuracy of your wingmates and AI opponents. With the current normal setting, life up in the skies seems a little too lethal for both human and AI pilots. I've found that many of my missions on normal setting wind up with almost all of the aircraft getting knocked out of the sky. The trick is getting the settings just right so that it's more difficult for both humans and the AI to get multiple kills, but not making the setting so tough that humans have difficulty getting kills and the AI can't get any kills! A separate setting like there currently is for human and AI observers would help to solve this problem in P4, IMO.

Those are all good points, Bullethead. However, keep in mind that shooting a machine gun from an emplaced ground position is somewhat different than firing it from an airplane, of course. In addition to shooting at a moving target that has more degrees of freedom of movement, you are also firing from a platform that is itself moving about in all directions. Additional factors that WWI pilots had to deal with that ground gunners did not are: vibrations due to engine and propeller, buffeting caused by travelling forward in the air at speeds over 100 mph in some cases, wind turbulence and propwash, aircraft movement due to input to control surfaces, swift moving targets with unpredicatable changes of direction, etc. We also don't know how much the game settings translate into real world behavior and can only make estimates. Finally, as Hass Wind says, the main reason I am suggesting we consider increasing the spread is to reduce the number of kills we virtual pilots get to more historical levels. Hellshade says that even on the hardest settings, he can sometimes shoot down 4 or 5 planes in one mission. To some people, that is an immersion killer.

Looking at the results of the poll so far, it is interesting that no one voting apparently flies with easy/accurate settings for either the front or rear guns. This makes me think the easy setting may perhaps be a little too easy. Currently, the front-gun settings for bullet spread is 0.2 for Easy, 0.5 for Normal, and 1.0 for Hard. I propose changing the setting for Easy to .5, the setting for Normal to 1.0 or 1.25, and the setting for hard to 1.5 or 1.75. This will have the effect of making your bullet "stream" wider or more random, resulting in less accuracy and lower kill tallies per mission. The drawback to changing the settings for the front-guns is that the changes will also effect the AI. Setting the spread too wide causes the AI to have trouble shooting each other down. One solution for this would be for OBD to create a separate front-gun setting for the AI and human player. There are already separate settings for human and AI observers using the rear-guns, so this should not be too difficult for them to implement in P4.

I have just edited the poll so the wording more accurately reflects the wording for gun settings in Workshop.

Will do, British_eh! I looked earlier for the Survival in the Air settings, but didn't see it. Thanks for pointing out where to look.

C'mon guys! Only 16 votes so far! I have some ideas about setting/changing the bullet spread settings in order to cut down the number of kills for experienced pilots without making it impossible for the AI to also get some kills, but first I need a little more feedback about how the settings are currently being used. If you fly BHaH, you have to choose your gun settings, so please vote! Ultimately, I want to adjust the settings so the difficulty ratings actually have some meaning for every type of pilot--new, experienced, and even ace pilots. Currently, I think the Easy and Normal front gun settings are a little too easy, and allow both human and AI kill tallies to be too high; and the Hard setting a bit too hard for both humans and the AI. For the rear guns, I think the bullet spread for the human is about right, while the spread for the AI might need to be increased a little bit in order to slightly increase the survivability of scouts going up against those nasty two-seaters. Any thoughts on these issues?

Thanks again. Lou!

Thanks, elephant. Glad to hear that you got your OFF download and that you enjoy using my DM. HW--Glad to hear that you enjoy my N28 FM mod. I'm afraid that my other FM modding has slowed down quite a bit. Tweaking the FM of just one plane is a MAJOR undertaking, and I have recently found myself spending most of my available time just trying to make a living so I can afford the hardware upgrades I will need when P4 comes out (my current rig just barely has enough juice to run P3)! I may be able to come out with a more limited in scope FM mod for a few planes, but even that is a ways off, I'm afraid.

I am a very patient man--just as long as I get whatever I want NOW!!!

vP--Since I once asked about a RNAS "navel" squadron, I am also no stranger to typos! HW--There once was a cheap sparkling wine sold in the USA called cold duck, so a cold bear may not be so far behind!

A cold bear?!! How does one get a cold bear into liquid shape? And, might he or she take offense? I would not be offended, I assure you!

Absolutely a fantastic and phenomenal job on both the beautiful medals and the research on the criteria for awarding these baubles. Thank you, Lou!

Dear Creaghorn, Any chance of making your changes to the Ace Dossier available for download? I would love to have a corrected dossier for MvR, for instance!

Here is a link to a key assignment card put together by Home Brew, showing all the keyboard and joystick commands you can use for OFF: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=39122 In order to set up your joystick and keyboard commands in a way that is most comfortable to you, you have to start a flight. Once you are in the cockpit, hit escape on the keyboard. This will bring up a menu on the right side of the screen. Click on "controls." Another menu will open up, allowing you to assign and reassign commands to your keyboard and joystick. Make sure that you save your commands as "Mine," and there you go.

The best thing about 2010? It's Over!!!

Just so everyone is on the right page... The DM includes changes to ALL of the aircraft currently available in BHaH and has had several versions. The latest, and recommended version is 2.5, which includes the "pilot never dies" fix. The FM changes, however, only include changes to the N28 so far, and I have only released two versions of the FM: a beta version sent out to a few posters for testing, and a release version for use by the general public. I am currently testing some FM changes to a few other planes, but no other FM changes have been released yet. I hope this helps clear things up. Let me know if you have any questions.

Hee, hee. Mercifily, I think I am just about finished patching my DM. I'm close to getting burned out over fixing the DM as it is! At most, I may have one more patch, but I don't forsee releasing it any time soon. I understand about sticking to the standard DM in order to avoid mis-matches, so that is not a problem for me. What I should have mentioned, but forgot, is that I am currently without high-speed internet connectivity. I hope to remedy this within a few weeks, but I am probably excluded from on-line play until then. In the meantime, I'll keep abreast of your plans for MP on the forum.

Happy New Year everyone! Just be sure your and isn't followed by too much

You are more than welcome, sir! Don't get too worked up over UncleAL. He can be a bit cranky, and his sense of humor takes a bit of getting used to, especially if you are new to the forum. He means well, though, and he can be a wealth of information if you can get past the crustiness.

rjw-- This is a known game design/BUG issue involving CFS3. For some reason, the Microsoft game developers decided to make the results of your flown mission and the campaign after-action report independent of one another. Apparently, CFS3 randomly determines how many of your wingmen die or get hurt during a given campaign mission. The OFF developers are working on fixing this problem, but one obstacle is that the CFS3 engine does not report enough details to help the devs determine the specific circumstances of each "real" death or loss of your wingmates during an actual campaing mission.

Guys, I am interested in MP but I'm afraid I would be unable to participate on a regular enough basis on Sundays. Both of my parents are in a quasi-nursing home facility near my home, and I frequently go over to visit and check-in on them late Sunday mornings for a few hours. I also prefer to fly using my mods (naturally), but I don't want to force everyone else to also use my mods in order to keep away from game mis-match errors. If necessary, however, I can disable my mods in order to join the rest of the gang. My largest concern is the scheduling problem. How much flexibility do you have in your flight schedule? Can I join in in the middle of a mission?