Herr Prop-Wasche

Does anyone have any information on the dates and squadrons which flew each version of the Sopwith Pup? I'm working on an FM mod that would allow flyers to use either the 80hp or 100hp version at their historically correct time, but I have little reliable information in that regard. Any significant performance differences would also be appreciated.

Now I see what yoou have been up to, Bletchley! Outstanding work! Dowloading now.

Wow,great reading. Thanks for the post, Pips. I can take this information and work on some revised FM's for the Alb series. I have to caution, however, that the FM for each plane won't be perfect, but they should perform a little more as they did in real life. Perhaps I should call the mod an "alternative interpretation" of the FM rather than a replacement FM.

Very nice looking chart. Interesting that until the middle of 1918, he rarely had any more than 2 or 3 kills in a whole months time.

Another bird with high gyro is the stock N28. Try to make a single loop in that crate--I dare you! That's why I had some of my "riggers and mechanics" adjust the FM a bit so it is now able to "straighten up and fly right!"

Sorry, Olham. Looks like you are the only one interested. Dimsdale.....Dimsdale!!

Care to comment, Olham? I know you're out there!

Do it yourself! If you want to simulate missions where nothing happens, just roll a couple of dice and then manually advance your campaign a couple of days or so. You could even go in and edit your pilot dossier if you wish.

The one problem area is pilots. When I altered the pilot hit points, it screwed up the way the game determined if a pilot was dead or injured, resulting in "undead" pilots. In order to adjust the frequency of getting hits on the pilot, I think we are looking at having to adjust the size or shape of the pilot damage box. Unfortunately, that is beyond my level of incompetence and will probably require the intervention of one of the devs.

Olham, you may be in luck! With further experimentation, I have been able to create an Alb FM that will fly tight turns without losing a wing, but which suffers structural problems if dived for too long at relatively high speed. However, I need people who are willing to test this in QC because creating a campaign FM requires that each FM change must be made individually to all 11 variants of each scout. I won't tell you how far or how fast you can dive before losing a wing, but I suggest you switch warning labels back on temporarily until you get a feel for how far you can stress the aircraft--much like pilot's in WWI had to do! Please respond in this thread if anyone wants to try my QC version of the Alb_DIII_early. I will send two files to you in a zip file. Simply replace the aircraft.cfg file and the Alb_DIII_early_QC1.air file with the files in the zip and you should be good to go! Don't forget to back up the originals, first!

My understanding is that the engineers didn't really understand the problem was the twisting of the V-strut, rather than a weakness in the spar itself. Therefore, all Albs after the DII continued to have wing shedding problems throughout the whole war. Olham, if you had your choice, would you prefer an Alb that is modeled in the sim to lose its wing in high-g maneuvers, as it is now; or only in a high-speed dives but only very, very rarely (due to game engine limitations)? Another alternative would be to limit its dive speed so that you can never exceed a speed that would surely cause it to lose a wing in the real war--but then the plane loses some of its real-life performance--a good diver, with the tiny little problem of occasionally losing its wing!

Summary of "hard-core" DM proposal: Engines: Little or no loss of power from bullet hits. Fuel leaks, oil leaks, fires, acceptable. Main wings: Little loss of control from bullet hits until many, many hits--then complete failure. Cables: Indestructable or very low probability of hits? (Either or both can be done) Rudders, elevators, ailerons: Same as main wings? Reservoirs and tanks: increase hit points, lower threshold for leaks? Keep in mind that I don't have the skills to alter the size or position of the damage boxes. I am not graphically inclined and would suck at GMax. Anyone willing to volunteer?

Gulp! Methinks I will need a lot of virtual beer! :drinks: Gulp!

Aircraft Ramp Weight G Limit DII 1485 3.28 DIII late 1904 3.06 DV 1919 3.06 DVa 2000 3.17 DVa 200 2062 3.17 A little easier to read, but not much. As you can see, the g-limit for the DVa is a little higher than the DIII and DV, but it also weighs more. I would guess that the extra weight is one reason for your troubles with the DVa. As a comparison, the N11 weighs only 1034 lbs. and has a g-limit of 2.95.

[size="2"][b]Aircraft[/b][/size][size="2"][b]RampWeight[/b][/size][size="2"][b]G air[/b][/size][b][size="2"]Alb D II[/size][/b][size="2"]1485.0[/size][size="2"]3.28[/size][b][size="2"]Alb D III early[/size][/b][size="2"]1904.0[/size][size="2"]3.06[/size][b][size="2"]Alb D III late[/size][/b][size="2"]1904.0[/size][size="2"]3.06[/size][b][size="2"]Alb D III OAW[/size][/b][size="2"]1904.0[/size][size="2"]3.06[/size][b][size="2"]Alb DV[/size][/b][size="2"]1919.0[/size][size="2"]3.06[/size][b][size="2"]Alb DV later[/size][/b][size="2"]1919.0[/size][size="2"]3.06[/size][b][size="2"]Alb Dva[/size][/b][size="2"]2000.0[/size][size="2"]3.17[/size][b][size="2"]Alb Dva 200[/size][/b][size="2"]2062.0[/size][size="2"]3.17[/size] Well, that went well! Arggghh!

I'll have a look at the aircraft files and compare the DIII's with the DVa and get back with you.

Not to make this thread about me, but did anyone have any thoughts on my post, above? Are my suggestions the direction you think you would like to go, or do we have some other suggestions for the DM? Also, I am close to releasing a mod to increase the bullet spread a bit. At the hardest level, it does become more dificult for me to shoot down more than one or two opponents per sortie. Furthermore, I can make it even harder if desired--but that begins to cause significant problems for the AI, making it a little too tough for the AI to shoot you down.

This is an FM issue rather than a DM issue, Olham. More specifically, it has to do with the maximum positive and negative G-forces modeled for the Albatross. As I recall, in HiTR, the Albs have very low g-ratings--only the Nieuports have a lower rating, I believe. So, it's possible your wing exceeded either the positive or negative maximum g-forces set for your Alb DV. I have corrected this in my own personal FM for the Albatross and made it possible for the Alb to sustain wing damage in a sustained dive instead. Even though I have adjusted this, it is still very difficult to break an Alb wing during a sustained dive--too difficult in fact. This is perhaps why the devs left the Albs as they are. Perhaps they were torn between letting the Albs unrealistically break wings during a turn and never in a dive, versus having the Albs never breaking wings in either a turn or a dive--also unrealistic. Indeed, all of the aircraft have this problem. They can all dive at terrifically high speeds and not shed a wing, but are much more likely to lose a wing in a high g manuever. Unfortunately, I think this is a limitation of the CFS3 engine rather than something the devs chose to do. In short, either myself or someone else can adjust this, but the solution will probably never be entirely satisfactory. It's also a lot of work to do on each plane!

Very atmospheric, Dej. I like it a lot! If I may, my only criticism is of ole Moritz. He looks a bit like a ceramic statue of a dog rather than his real-life counterpart. Maybe if you roughen up the texture of his fur a bit. Still, it is a very minor detail on a very fine picture which I will be proud to download and use as my desktop once it is finished!

On the second point, Hellshade, this can probably be done. Actually, my current 2.5 DM already has some of these features. Furthermore, my latest DM (not released yet) has made the cables even more resistant than in 2.5. The other stuff, such as the wings and fuselage as Creaghorn suggested, can also be tweaked. My understanding of the CFS3 DM is that most, if not all, aircraft components lose effectiveness on a proportional basis (Caution: I'm not 100% sure this is the case, but I think it is). For example, if a component has 100 hit points, than the loss of 10 hit points means that the component is now only 90% effective. Furthermore, certain events (wingbreaks, fires, fuelleaks) can be triggered once a certain percentage of hit points have been used up. Therefore, it should be possible to make certain components, such as wings, maintain their effectiveness longer even after hit while still allowing for catastrophic failures by increasing the hit points but decreasing the percentages for certain failures. As an example, assume an engine has 100 hit points but gets a fuel leak at 50% damage, and a small fire at 80% damage. Currently, a loss of 20 hit points on such an engine causes the engine to run at approximately 80% effectiveness. By doubling the hit points to 200, 20 points of damage would now only cause 10% loss of effectiveness. If you reduce the fuel leak from 50% to 30% and the fire from 80% to 50% at the same time, the engine would then get a leak at around 60 points of damage and catch fire around 100 points of damage. These are just examples, of course, the real trick is getting the balance just right. However, it is certainly doable.

I would be happy to help you with the FM stuff, Olham. Although I don't claim to be any where near the expert as anyone on the OFF development team, I think I have learned a thing or two while fiddling with the Albs and N28. The main difficulty would be getting enough good flight information about the real-world performance of the D VI.

Look for a file named OFF.log I'm not sure where it is located or if it has the information you are looking for, but you might try that as a starting point.

There are separate rear-gun settings for the AI and human, but no separate setting for the front-guns. With the front guns, you make BOTH the human and AI better shots by setting the front-guns to Easy, and worse shots by setting it to Hard. With Easy, you can get more kills, but you won't survive as long. With Hard, you will have a harder time getting multiple kills in one mission, but you are also likely to survive longer. You might try setting the guns to Normal, Pawgy, for a compromise between the Easy and Hard settings. Fortunately, there is a way to get seperate rear-gun settings for the human and AI, but you have to do a little file editing. Find the WW1_Scenery/Difficulty/(Easy, Normal, Hard)/RearGuns folder. Inside this folder you will find files for the Vickers, Lewis, Parabellum, and Maxim machine guns. The AI files are the ones that look something like this: "Lewis_air_obs.xdp." The files for the human rear-gunner looks like this: "Lewis_air.xdp." Inside each file is a setting named "Noise." To make the human rear-gunner a better shot, lower the number. To make the AI rear-gunner a Mr. Magoo, increase the number to at least 2.0. Hope this helps answer your question. Good luck!

The "Other Sim" with the initials "ROF" has announced a career mode. See topic here: http://combatace.com/topic/63307-rise-of-flight-new-career-mode-update/page__view__getnewpost Notice the "career" only covers the last 700 days of the war, however.

Finally, I'm also working on a small revision to the AI rear-gun dispersal settings, because if you use the harder front gun settings, you will find it even more difficult to shoot down the two-seaters without also adjusting the rear-gun dispersal settings somewhat. Again, this will not be a major alteration to the current settings and should not cause too noticeable a difference in gameplay. In the end, I'm just trying to offer a few more options for some OFF'ers to try. Not everyone will agree with or will enjoy my additional options, nor do I expect them. It will probably take me up to another week or so before I am ready to post all of my gun setting changes. Until then, fire way!