Herr Prop-Wasche

Thanks, Olham, even if you did have to shoot at your beloved Albatross!

Devs, Looking at this report, would you be willing to consider some changes to the FM of the Spads? This report appears to indicate that the Spad VII, as currently modeled in the game, may be insufficient in two or three areas: 1) Aileron response/roll rate. According to the article, "SPAD’s had push-pull rod-controlled ailerons; this was a real innovation, and it contributes greatly to the light feel and quick response of the aircraft." Also, "Immelmann’s are effortless, as is quick changes of direction in the roll plane. It doesn’t turn as well as any of the Sopwith’s or Dr.1, but with lots of rudder and practice it can get round quite quickly." In OFF, the roll rate of the Spad VII is quite poor, making even wing-overs and half-rolls difficult to execute. 2) Stall speed and stability in the spin. From the article: "The Hisso idles beautifully, and power-off stalls occur at 47 mph, with a positive and quick nose drop... A speed of 55 to 65 mph was adequate for the approach, and I touched wheels first on the concrete at about 48 mph." These speeds are much too low in OFF for safe flight and in a landing approach. Typically, I have to maintain a speed of 70-80 mph while on approach in order to avoid losing aircraft control and possibly stalling. Later in the article, the author talks about the Spad's characteristics in a spin: "pinning the SPAD VII is pure delight. Of all the aircraft in our collection, the SPAD VII promotes the most confidence [when taking flight liberties]." In my experience In OFF, recovery from a spin is more difficult in a Spad than in almost any other aircraft. Can this be adjusted? 3) Turning ability. Here, I am a little more suspect of the writer's report. He states that the Spad VII turns better than many other planes in WWI, including the Se5: "In limited combat I found the SPAD noticeably more manoeuvrable than the Se.5, better than the Pfalz D.XII and better in some respects than the Camel or Nieuport...The SPAD is more limber than anything except the Camel, Triplane or Dr.1 and the engine is pure reliability." Even if one takes the writer's statements with a grain of salt, it seems that the turning ability of the Spad in OFF is highly underrated. I'm certainly not advocating that the Spad should be changed to become as good a turn fighter as the Sopwith Camel or Tripe or the Dr.1, but IMHO, it should at least be made to be closer in turning ability to the Se5. OFF and the above report appear to be in agreement re climb rate. In OFF, the .air file indicates that the Spad VII has a maximum climb of 1200 fpm. In the above report, the writer states the Spad VII climbs from take off to 9842 ft. in 8 min 10 sec., a climb rate of approx. 1205 fpm. I realize that the writer is most likely flying a reproduction with modern engine parts and materials and not under real-life combat conditions. Still, the Spad series in WWI was recognized as a very successful scout. Even the French, who were used to the quick turning Nieuport series, quickly adopted the Spad and foisted the Neiuport 24's onto the Americans. If the Spad was so poor, why not give that plane to the Americans? In summary, I think the Spad VII and XIII in OFF could be improved in three areas: better roll rate, significantly lower stall speeds and improved stall stability, and improved turning ability. I'm not trying to bash the OBD developers. They have access to historical materials that I could only dream of and are probably aware of information that may directly contradict what is in the above writer's report. However, everyone agrees that much of the available info about almost all WWI airplanes can be highly suspect and contradictory. So, unless we have clear evidence from tests or direct observation (not just opinion) that directly contradicts the above report, then I think we should err on the side of caution and consider tweaking the FM of the Spads a little bit. This will also have the added benefit of making the French and American campaigns a little more enjoyable.

There is a keyboard command to cycle through your waypoints in case you wish to skip some of them, to bug out and head home, for instance. Mine is Shift-W, but I have remapped my keys, so I don't know if this works for you or not.

Thank you for the advice about the Spad. Try not to turn fight. But, if you shouldn't turn the Spad, what is the best way to reverse direction? Half-loop, Split-S, or something else?

I just can't learn to fly either of the Spads. I guess I'm more familiar with the turn fighters, but the Spads don't seem able to turn at all. Any kind of turn and I am quickly going into a spin--even when I try and keep my eye on the speedometer (yes, i cheat)! With 26 kills in the Spad XIII, I'm beginning to think that Eddie Rickenbacker was the greatest pilot of the whole war! Maybe ever!

Brief update on my damage model work: I have finished testing the DM of approximately half of the planes and am mostly satisfied with the results. Once I finish testing the other half I will be ready to upload a zip file for use in QC. I also plan to send a copy of my work to OBD for testing. Most of my work has been with the threshold values of the xdp files, although I have made a few tweaks to the damage points of some of the planes, as well. I do have a favor to ask of the Spad drivers. Two of the planes I have made a few damage points mods to are the Spad VII and XIII. Although I can fly against AI Spads, I cannot fly the beasties very well myself. No matter how I try, I always wind up stalling. This makes it very hard to test how they fare against AI pilots damage wise. This is important, as I have upped the wing points slightly to make the Spads a tiny bit tougher than they are at present. I have seen good results with the AI Spads, but I get shot up too easily to make a fair analysis of how they do against the AI. If anyone can help me out by downloading the following two Spad xdp files and flying both with and against them and reporting back, I would appreciate it. Rename the files from .txt to .xdp and install in the respective Spad folder inside the aircraft folder in order to use. Make sure to back up your original Spad VII and XIII xdp files first!

Thank Heavens! Or is it black magic???

You are welcome!

After the plane crashes, you need to unlock the padlock to get your views back.

Thanks for the update! I have no problem with the registration idea, we can't let the blasted pirates scuttle our chances for P4! The changes/modifications sound great, too! Cloud buffeting and the too early exit when killed (and I get killed a lot) are my only major gripes. One additional small suggestion, which should be easy to implement. For the dialog boxes, like the weather info box, in addition to using the mouse to click "Done" to dismiss the box, could you add a command to allow us to use the "Enter" key? I find that using the enter key is frequently faster and more convenient than fumbling around with the mouse.

Damage model and bullet strength also effect visible damage.

You might shoot an email to OBD support. They are very helpful and prompt with their replies.

Are you using one of the alternative DM's? If there is an error in the xdp file the affected plane will refuse to load and BHaH will lock up, requiring you to terminate the program using task manager (XP).

Hellshade, in addition to cycling your target type, you can also cycle the distance of your TAC from 8 to 4 to 2 nm by pressing the Ctrl-T key.

Don't forget to delete all CFS3 folders (including hidden folders) after uninstalling CFS3 and then to defragment your hard drive before trying to reinstall CFS3. You might try running a registry cleaner, also. I use CCleaner. You can get it here: http://www.ccleaner.com/download

OvS, you can find my Intermediate DM at the following thread: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=41308 DM's with adjusted threshold values can be found here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=41821 However, these are only partial DM's for a few planes. Look at the first couple of posts and then near the bottom of the thread for more. FB and I are independently working on completing two new DM's. His will be based on the hardcore FM, while mine will be based on a substantial revision of my IDM. Both will have substantial changes to the threshold values in each plane's xdp files, with the goal of making damage show more easily while not markedly affecting the overall DM. I hope to have a version of my revised IDM with threshold changes available for QC in the next couple of days. Not long after that, with the approval of Pol and Winder, I hope to have a version available for the entire campaign. If you try either of these out, be sure to let us know what you think. FB and I are eager for your feedback!

Has anyone else tried the new obs balloon settings? The files are easy to edit, and if you don't like the changes, are simple to change back again.

I don't have RoF and don't plan on getting it in its current incarnation, but from reading Hellshade's post, RoF reminds me of how I felt when i bought EAW after flying Red Baron3D: pretty with nice FM's, but ultimately sterile and boring because of the lack of a dynamic campaign. Of course, this was before all of the 3rd party mods came along that immensely improved EAW. Reports of the poor AI in RoF are especially troubling. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that RoF's developers are very interested in 3rd party mods, judging from the on-line sign-in requirements, which at least partially appear to be present in order to discourage such modding. If people become dissatisfied with RoF, I wonder if OBD might be able to benefit by working more on the online performance of BHaH?

You don't need to go to all that trouble, Voss. I deleted my CFS3 install immediately after installing OFF and haven't had a hiccup since. Of course, you still have to have the CFS3 disk in the DVD drive in order to play OFF unless you are one of the lucky ones with the rare Ubisoft version.

Back on topic. I think I have been able to succesfully modify the files so that balloons should be harder to shoot down now. To do this, go to OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\vehicles and open the following folders: a_obs_balloon, g_obs_balloon, and h_obs_balloon. Then, open and edit the .xdp file inside each folder. For some unknown reason, you have to increase the a_obs_balloon.xdp and the h_obs_balloon.xdp point values from 20 to 200, while the g_obs_balloon.xdp points need only to be increased to 100, or else the balloon becomes almost indestructible. I guess German engineering really IS better! On a side note, I was wondering if moving these folders to the aircraft folder would result in all balloons destroyed by the player as counting as kills instead of only the one actually assigned in a balloon busting mission? Devs?

Uncleal, helpful as ever! Actually, you can rescue your pilot by going into \OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\campaigns\CampaignData\Pilots and editing your pilotDossier.txt. Go down about 35 lines to where it reads something like "Prisoner of War" delete that, and replace with "In Service." Save and exit. Viola! Your pilot should be back on active duty. However, you have to live with yourself, knowing you are a cheating scoundrel!

Incidentally, I have just found the location of the xdp files which you can open with a text editor to increase the hit points for observation balloons so they don't get destroyed so easily. I doubled the hit points from 20 to 40 in my installation and will report back later to give you my observations. You can find the files here: OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\vehicles Look for the following folders: a_obs_balloon, g_obs_balloon, and h_obs_balloon. Open the folder and then open the .xdp file to alter the hit points.

I tried to look at the Spad FM using airwrench, but the button you have to push to make the plane editable seems to be disabled. When I make any changes to the .cfg file by hand, the plane gets rejected by OFF as an "unofficial plane unsupported by OFF," and the mission aborts.