Herr Prop-Wasche

WARNING! DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE BULLET DISPERSION SETTINGS USED IN OFF AND IN MY REVISION!!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF Settings: Easy = 0.2 Normal = 0.5 Hard = 1.0 My Settings: Easy = 0.4 Normal = 0.75 Hard = 1.25 Personally, I think my Normal setting of 0.75 represents the best compromise between realism and fun. In the past, I have used the OFF setting of 0.5, and was still able to get multiple kills in one mission (and I am not a good shot)! The setting of 1.25 is for hard-core players who want to limit their kills to somewhat more realistic levels (still can get multiple kills). However, at this setting, the AI (except for Aces) will have much more difficulty getting kills.

I've been doing some additional testing at various bullet dispersion settings and think I am about ready to come up with some "alternative" gun setting values. Generally speaking, the settings will make the bullet dispersion slightly wider at all difficulty settings, with "Easy/Accurate" set slightly tighter than the current "Normal" setting, the new "Normal" setting set almost exactly midway between the current "Normal" and "Hard" settings, and the new "Hard" setting about 25% more difficult than the current "Hard" setting. I've found that I don't notice that much difference between the OFF Hard setting and my new Hard setting, but I do notice a difference between the new hardest setting and the old OFF Normal setting. Also, at the two highest settings (the OFF Hard and my Hard setting), the AI is not as good at shooting down a lot of planes in one mission as it is at easier settings. This should result in fewer whole flights being wiped out in one single mission--although it can still happen occasionally, even at the hardest setting. In my next post, I will give you the detailed differences between OFF's settings and my settings, so if you want to maintain the "mystery," DO NOT read the next post. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

I really doubt that my DM has anything to do with your CTD, Duke. There are no graphic changes in the DM, just some revised numbers for hit points and hit probabilities. Send me a copy of your Alb_DIII_QC1.xdp file and I will take a look at it, though.

Seeing that you hail from "Down Under," I suspect a heat problem. Increase your cooling, clean out your case and fans, perhaps install a better fan on your video card. If the problems go away when the weather gets cooler, there's your answer.

The WWI Scenery folder is the method through which OBD has worked much of their magic on CFS3 to come up with OFF and HITR, I believe Pawgy. Somewhere in the OFF.exe is a program written by Rex Hannover that loads much of the material located in the WWI Scenery folder into CFS3 and converts it from WWII to WWI. For example, look in the Difficulty folder and you will find a folder for AI and settings for gun settings etc. More than that, I really can't say, as I am not an expert programmer and I do not have access to the OFF executable file.

HA HA, LOL!!

Glad you have come back to OFF, Pawgy! No hard feelings from anyone on the forum, I'm sure. I don't know if it will make you feel better, but there have been several people whose initial experiences with OFF were not satisfactory. A few even left in a huff. But almost all of them eventually came back! The CFS3 engine that OFF is built upon can be a finicky beast and can be difficult to get set up initially. But the reward for persistence is immense. You have just begun to scratch the surface! Try not to get too discouraged about the learning curve involved in flying these virtual planes. As you have found, OFF is highly customizable for different skill levels. I myself will never be a very good pilot or fighter because of a genetic condition which makes me a little shaky and occasionally spastic in my hands. However, with time and certain adjustments, I have become reasonably adept to the point where I can survive for as long as several months at the front--as long as I don't run into too many aces--I still have a very hard time outflying them, which is as it should be! If you have questions, ask away! You have already met Uncleal, our resident crumudgean, and survived, so it should all be downhill from here. See you in the virtual officer's club!

I will have to share that quote with my 82 year old father. He loves dogs, but can't have any as he is now in a retirement center. He still tells stories of him and his childhood dog, Snoozer, going rabbit hunting in the tall prairie grass. Snoozer would jump high in the air to spot the rabbit, disappear and take off after it, and then spring into the air again some 50-100 feet from where he was on his previous jump. Repeat ad nauseum. Snoozer is still his favorite dog.

Thank you, Olham. I had forgot that the Soviet Union objected to his release on humanitarian grounds even though the other Allied powers had sought his release. I also had the date of his flight confused. I thought it was before the war, but it was early in the Spring of 1941, before the invasion of the Soviet Union. He wasn't found guilty of war crimes, but for "conspiracy to make aggressive war," along with one other count. Apparently, he sought to convince Churchill to make peace with Germany in exchange for an agreement to look aside when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. It's interesting to speculate what might have happened if Churchill had taken up the offer (assuming the offer was authentic), but by then Churchill knew that the Nazis couldn't be trusted.

Pulling a Hess must refer to Rudolph Hess' landing his airplane in England for a supposed "peace offering" to England before the outbreak of WWII. I don't know if he crash landed or not, but he was interred for the duration of the war and held in prison as a war criminal. Can anyone enlighten me as to why Hess was held as a war criminal in prison for the rest of his life since he left Germany before the war and never returned?

From his photo, Max appears to be quite the character! I'm sure you have had (and will continue to have) many adventures together. I am glad that his condition is manageable.

She is indeed a beauty! Looks to be of museum quality, tho. Be careful that Widowmaker does not come by to scuff it up a bit!

Oh noes! Not Worms Armageddon!

Welcome to OFF. I don't remember the answer to this question off hand, but while I don't think you have to complete all mission objectives in real time, you do need to spend time out of warp--particularly at the mission objective waypoints. There are a series of sticky-threads that will answer your question better than I can. Look on the general info forum.

One thing I have noticed in OFF (or any flight sim for that matter) is that you and your opponent's aircraft do not do a lot of "bobbing" up and down in the air. I imagine that that would add a lot to the difficulty of in the air shooting as opposed to that done on the ground.

Well said, CaptSopwith! I couldn't add a thing to your post, except to say that I have also enjoyed the WWI flying community since the late 90's and the Delphi forum--such a long time ago, it seems. I raise my glass to all of the contributers, posters, followers, and even lurkers of all things WWI related--but especially to OFF and the developers at OBD software. Cheers!

Interesting notes and contributions from Bullethead, Hasse Wind, Polvoski, and Creaghorn. A few post ago, BH mentioned shooting from a moving vehicle on the ground. He said, if I recall correctly, that he was able to learn fairly quickly how to adjust for the bumps and ruts and still maintain accurate fire on his target. One difference I just thought of between ground bumps and air turbulence is that air turbulence tends to be more unpredictable than the effect you get from travelling over the ground. At least with being over the ground, you can get a pretty good idea of the general "bumpiness" of the terrain and adjust your fire accordingly. You can also eyeball the terrain and get a good idea of how rough it is going to be. Since air turbulence is invisible and unpredictable, you should have a much harder time compensating your aim. Plus, as pointed out above, you are moving at a higher rate of speed in the air as opposed to the ground. Finally, I imagine the aircraft engines of the period were not as smooth running as today's engines--even in military vehicles. For all of the above reasons, I still think it is harder to aim and shoot accurately from these WWI aircraft than from a ground vehicle. However, I do agree that the difference is probably not too dramatic. I also agree with the discussion about the rear guns. If the arc can be improved, than the spread should probably also be adjusted to reduce the lethality of the rear-gunners just a bit.

Welcome back, Olham! Beware the Frog on his hog! Watch for the Yankee and his hanky! Don't forget the Brit with his kit!

Interesting. Thank you Duke and Bullethead. Yes, but what we should get and what we actually get may be two different things!

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.