Herr Prop-Wasche

Hello George, In addition to staying above 50 mph and watching the roll rate (great advice, Bullethead), there is something else you can try, but some might consider it to be unrealistic. Try going into the \OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\sounds folder and increasing the volume on the stall.wav file. The stock sound is fairly quiet, IMO.

I have always liked history and my father was a big WWI buff. I have also always been interested in flying--probably because I grew up and now live again in Dayton--the birthplace of aviation. Have visited the Air Force Museum many times. There is something more mystical and mysterious in those WWI air-birds compared to their WWII counterparts. The whole "Knights in the Sky" thing compared to the professional killing machines of the Second Great War. I think what sealed the deal for me was seeing The Blue Max and then seeing a copy of Richtofen's War at a friend's house. I've been in love ever since.

I have not altered my guns files, I have my guns set to normal in Workshop, and my playerguns setting is normal. Maybe try resetting your guns to fire at the default OBD setting and see what happens? One more thing before you reset your files. What is the date of the playerguns.txt file? If it is within the last day or so then I would say that changing the spandau's rate of fire DID change the setting. Another option would be to go into Workshop and change the player guns setting to easy and then look at the spandau's rate of fire to see if it has increased.

Digital Rights Management. It's a CD/DVD copy protection scheme.

Hear hear! Or is it, here here? Whatever it is, a raise of the glass to everyone here! And a special thanks to OBD! Good work guys!

As Creaghorn mentioned, the difference in rate of fire for the Vickers and Spandau is already modeled in OFF. Furthermore, you can alter the differences by going here: \OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\guns and looking for the OFF_Lewis_air.xdp and OFF_Spandau_air.xdp files respectively. Currently, the Lewis is modeled at approx. 600/m while the Spandau is at 500/m. Note that the thread cited by Bletchley at the aerodrome claims the Spandau had a rate of fire of only 350/m. Of course, this does not model the effect (if any) of prop RPM's on rate of fire of synchronized guns. That will have to wait for P4.

Regarding aileron cables, I have a trick you might try. In the .xdp file of your chosen airplane, in the damage box section look for the following code <Box ID="damagebox_canopy3" Parent="Damagebox_r_horizontal2"> <BoxMap SystemID="aileron_left_cable" Probability="100" Points="18"/> </Box> and change the Probability value from "100" to "80" or "90." At first, I changed this value to 65 and noticed an immediate reduction in the probability of the AI damaging my aileron cables. As a somewhat pleasant (if bittersweet) side effect, I observed more damage to my aircraft on the wings and fuselage, presumably because the airplane was not being deemed immediately un-flyable by the game engine due to control cable failure. If you change the probability of the aircraft you are flying against, you will also see this affect aircraft flown by the AI. As you noted, striking a rounded wire with a small caliber projectile is somewhat difficult. Reducing the probability of a "hit" from 100% to 80% seems to me to be a better approximation of the overall physics of the situation, considering angles, trajectories, ballistics, etc. Of course, Pol also makes a good point that hitting a pulley, etc. is also represented, so you may wish to increase the percentage chance a bit to suit your own preferences.

Welcome to the main forum pages, George. The hitboxes appear to be very close to the actual size of the wings, given the limitation that the boxes have to be made up of roughly rectangular shapes, whilst wings are slightly curved. Yes. You can adjust the strength of various components by modifying the aircraft .xdp files. For the wings, you can either adjust the number of hit points, or alter the "threshold values," particularly the so-called "break" points. I have had some success doing either one or both. One word of warning, however. If you desire to play any MP, every player in MP MUST have identical .xdp files for every aeroplane in the sim or you will not be able to fly. PM me if you would like me to send you an .xdp file of one of the airplanes with some of my modifications for you to test.

Pol, I certainly don't mean to denigrate your work in any way. You guys have done a fantastic job of researching and modeling and testing and remodeling and retesting and so on every model of every aeroplane in this wonderful sim. I'm sure the amount of time you and the other OBD team members have spent on getting everything as close to perfect as possible must be in the range of thousands of hours. So, there is no way that I, or any other single person could even hope in their wildest dreams to come within even a light year of duplicating your accomplishments. I have no illusions that very many people are interested in or will even contemplate using my mod, if I even release an update based on HITR. I see that a grand total of 12 people have said they may use the mod, if I release one. So, most of my work is purely because I get a kick out of it. For what reason, God only knows! I just thought some people might enjoy hearing about some of my "experiments." I mean no offense. Cheers!

Not sure that lip stud is regulation, soldier! (Looking quite good though)!

Mmmm, Pilsener Urquell!

A couple of patches ago, OBD cut the hit points for the engines by half. In general, I agree with their decision. However, I feel they may have been a little excessive, so I am currently experimenting with increasing the hit points a bit and slightly adjusting the threshold percentages. So far, I like what I am seeing. With the engines a little sturdier, the dogfights seem to last a little longer and to be more intense. My goal is to make the engines last a little longer before they show a noticeable decrease in performance while still allowing for an eventual loss of power, flamers, and explosions.

BH, Which planes don't show any bullet holes for you? I have definitely seen bullet holes on the Albs (all series), the Fokker DVII, the Se5a's, and the Spads (to some extent). Can't recall the others at the moment.

Damage depends upon at least (probably more) factors: size and placement of damage box, total number of damage points, and threshold effects, which are triggered when a certain percentage of damage points have been taken by the object. In order for the last two to be a factor, a projectile must enter into the area of the damage box. As Pol said above, the damage box for the aileron cable is very thin (he didn't say how thin, however) but it extends along the fuselage for a total of three damage boxes. You can cause damage to the aileron cable by striking any of these three damage boxes. Damage to the pilot is caused by a projectile striking one of two damage boxes. The first damage box has the pilot as the only object, so any projectile entering this box will damage the pilot to some degree. The second damage box is shared by the pilot and center fuel tank on most planes. If a projectile strikes the second damage box, whether the pilot or the fuel tank is hit is determined by comparing a computer die roll with a percentage contained in the xdp file in the "damagebox" section. Currently, I think this is set to 60% for the fuel tank and 40% for the pilot. Therefore, you can increase the vulnerability of the pilot in several ways. The first would be to enlarge or to change the position of the pilot's damage box. If you feel the pilot is not hit very often, then a possible cause could be that he "sits" too low in the cockpit, or in other words, his damage box is not "tall" enough. Either the devs or someone familiar with gmax would have to fix this, if this is the problem. A second way to increase the vulnerability of the pilot would be to decrease his hit points in one or both damage boxes in the xdp file. Finally, a third way to increase the vulnerability of the pilot would be to increase the likelihood of a projectile striking the pilot if the projectile enters the damage box shared by the pilot and the fuel tank. For example, instead of the default chance of 40%, you could raise this to 50% or higher while at the same time lowering the chance of hitting the fuel tank. Based on my experiences with the sim, I feel that the damage box for the pilot might be raised a couple of inches. But then you also have to account for the eagle-eyed vision and dead-eye-dick shooting skills of the AI. Raising the pilot's damage box might cause the number of human pilots killed by head-shots to increase dramatically. Then, OBD would have people complaining about that! So, there is no easy solution.

I just had a thought. One possible solution to the super-sniping abilities of the AI on human flown aileron cables would be to alter the "Probability" section of the aileron cables damage section of the xdp files for all QC aircraft. Currently, if the AI fires a bullet into the damage box for the aileron cables, there is a 100% chance the bullet will strike the cable. What if I lowered that percentage to 65% or even 50? These cables are rather thin, so wouldn't a probability below 100% make sense for the aileron cables? And, because I would be altering the QC files only, this would only reduce the AI chances of striking a human controlled aircraft's aileron cables in the campaign. This would work for campaign but would not work for those who fly QC only because both the human and AI pilots use QC aircraft in quick battles. How would you feel if it were harder for the AI to clip your aileron cables? Fair or unfair? A cheat or a reasonable compromise to overcome the limitations of the CFS3's AI and damage modeling? Of course, I could edit the files of all of the planes so that EVERY plane has aileron cables which are harder to hit. Any thoughts? I will be out for a few hours, so don't worry if I don't respond right away.

Merry Christmas, everyone! And BUMP!

Did you audition for Cirque du Solei right after?

Happy Christmas and a Merry Birthday, OvS!

Added poll question about AI's ability to hit player's aircraft aileron cables. Revised third poll question to clarify it is about components on AI aircraft only.

Thank you for the replies. So far, it seems most people are pretty happy with the latest DM. In truth, I haven't had a lot of time to fly yet with the new HITR expansion, so maybe the devs made some changes from the previous DM and have improved it. Another testament to the devs devotion to improving their product as much as possible. If I may venture an opinion here, I think one reason people don't mind the wings coming off or the engine losing power on the AI planes is to "even the odds" somewhat in combat against the AI. I agree with FB and others who argue that it seems to take human players longer to disable an AI aircraft than the other way around. Even rookie or intermediate AI pilots seem to have laser aiming systems installed on their guns and cause pretty serious damage to my craft with just a 1 or 2 second burst. They also seem to be excellent at hitting my aileron cables on their first pass. Humans are less able than the AI to concentrate their fire on a specific part of the aircraft so it is not surprising that we tend to hit the largest component instead. Perhaps the wings blowing off is a fair tradeoff? What would people think about strengthening the aileron cables a bit? Are there many others who feel that their aileron cables are a little too easy for the AI to hit? Or is it just my imagination, LOL?

I am curious about other users opinion's about the current damage model in 1.46, so I have set up a poll. Overall, I think the DM in BHaH/HITR is very good, especially considering the limitations of the CFS3 engine--the OBD team members aren't miracle workers, after all, even if we sometimes think they may be! However, there are at least two areas which I feel could use a little improvement. However, before I discuss these two areas, please take a minute to vote in the above poll. . . . . . . Now that you are back, my first impression is that entire wing structures are too easily separated from the rest of the air frame by streams of bullets. Too frequently, an enemy plane will be flying along and getting shot, without much apparent damage or effect on maneuverability, when suddenly the whole wing blows off at the root. This strikes me as unrealistic. More likely, bullets would put holes into and rip fabric, but not destroy the entire wing structure. I suppose wings did come off in real life, but more likely from over-stressing a heavily bullet-ridden wing in a dive, not in level flight. N.B. I think the wing-tips are okay, it's mainly the wing-root that bothers me here. Others opinions may differ, however. The second area I would like to improve is engine damage. Several people have noticed that if you pump enough bullets into a quicker adversary such as an Se5a, they will slow down until you can get in close enough and finish them off. In general, this probably did happen in real life. However, I think the effect is a little too pronounced too early in combat. In other words, I don't believe that relatively 'minor' engine damage should cause such a disproportionate loss in speed as we seem to have now. Another current effect of 'minor' engine damage is loss of power, which causes the damaged airplane to go into 'glide' mode because the aircraft can no longer maintain altitude. Again, this effect is fine in a heavily damaged engine, but a relatively undamaged engine should be able to at least maintain altitude. Strengthening both the wing roots and the engine slightly, I believe, will improve dogfights by making both the player's and the AI's craft somewhat less resistant to sudden wing loss or sudden loss of engine power--at least early in a dogfight. This should result in both somewhat longer and more interesting dogfights, as a damaged opponent, while weaker, will still be capable of maneuver and even possible counter-attack. If enough people express an interest, I will most likely go ahead and release an update to my DM. Fixing the wing and engine problems shouldn't take very long. If enough people can agree about any other problems with the DM, I will consider doing something about them in a later patch. I look forward to your responses.

BH, I'm glad that you are finally turning your amorous attentions to the French lasses. The sheep have been complaining and I think they are all worn out!

Not to take this thread too off-topic, but I had to add this sketch, as I am a bit "peckish":

X xxx xxxx x o xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx o xx xx o xxxxxx xxxxxx o xxx xxx o xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xx xx Merry Christmas to All!!

Olham, Are you familiar with dead parrots?