Creaghorn

that's why it is a good idea HPW can create such a DM so it will be optional who will use it. or if it would be the official DM and one has too few kills in his opinion (the holy grail for me, but for sure not for all) one can still raise the bullet impact power in workshop. not every pilot died. many of them survived the war. but 90% of the survivors did not end the war with ace status. why is it like that? certainly not because they have been yellow. they were often very good stick and rudder pilots, with hundreds of flying hours, but in all those months or years of combat they managed to get down 3 kills, if any. so there must be a reason for that. why didn't the aces have 400 kills? why did they have good months and sometimes half a year between two kills, although flying sorties every day? because it requires, as julius buckler wrote: -guts -good aiming -and a good portion of luck there were many pilots who often came back with ton of holes, but without being harmed. at least for a while. they even had nicknames because beeing such bullet catchers. also there is everywhere mentioned that in rookie stages, be it mccudden, richthofen, rickenbacker etc., they said they have seen the enemy, shot at him, were sure they hit him often but wondered why the fellow does not fall down. why the enemy is not even impressed by all those bullets. some even didn't notice it at all beeing under attack. the reason is that after the 2nd or 3rd kill they realized slowly the know how. to get really close, aim at meat or metal and then with some luck the fellow goes down. aiming well is the keyword in getting kills. currently, even with all those mods, it's enough to spray bullets around, so you slow down the enemy and then you cache him when he has lost enoguh ability to evade, and vice versa. it should be that if you spray your bullets around towards the enemy, chances are arm you will ever get a kill. just listen to the interviews in the BHAH credits. if you want to have a kill, then hit the pilot or the engine or petroltank. or hit one wing or the elevators with a long enough salves until it falls off or the canvas is completely torn apart. currently, mostly one gets shot down because he gets crippled by bullets, loses ability to control his AC, tries to crashland and than flies into a tree or rams himself into the ground. the reason why one gets shot down or why often AI crashes is the lack to control the AC. almost every original claimreport i have read so far had the same reasons of enemies crashed. AC goes down in flames out of control, probably because of wounded or killed pilot, damaged engine or petroltank, because the AC has catastrophic structual failures, losing wings etc. i have never read a real claimreport of somebody crashing because the controls were affected too much. it always had a reason as listed above. so if HPW has time to create, i would gladly like to try out such a hardcore, but IMO realistic DM where you really really have to hit meat or metal if you want to have the small chance to get a kill, or if something else then hitting with many many bullets into the same damagebox. i would go so far to make the cables completely indestructible because i doubt bullets would ever snap off cables. it's not about making them tanks. it's about hitting the right spots. therefore having to fight for the kill and get really really close. where it means more to down a two seater than a scout, as it was in real, because you had to get really close, into the gunners fire sometimes, and hit the right spots, otherwise you'll get nothing. let's get to the point where having 5 kills is really ace status and really means something. where having enough kills to get the PLM is really hard work over virtual months or years, as it was in real. where you can be proud to say, i have survived 12 months of combat and i have 10 kills. not i have 5 days and have 20 kills.

to 1st, i think that's rather a quick mission behaviour than in campaign. although in real it's realistic and poured into rookies heads permanently, that only one or two should attack a single plane, to avoid the risk of collision, and the others are behind to cover or take over if the attacker has to turn away due stoppage or loss of momentum etc. also i think it depends of the quality of AI. not only if elite or good etc., but also if they are rookie AI pilots in a squadron. to 2nd IMO damage to fuselage and wings shouldn't have a negative effect at all to the moment some wingtip breaks or canvas rips off. and then the effect should be very noticable. currently is for both, AI and yourself like this. you get hit somewhere in the wing or something and your controls are cut by about a half. then you get some more hits because it's tougher to be evasive and your or the AI AC gets almost unflyable and then you or the AI are easy meat. that's how kills in BHAH are mostly done. slowing the AC down and then making the kill. IMO it should be rather like this. if you get hit into the wings or fuselage, there control should stay as good as before until the moment some hit percentage is reached, and then the wingtip or part of the wing or whatever should fall off and cause an immediate and severe loss of control. so not a 100% control...getting hit 70% control...getting hit 30% control thing, but a 100% control...getting hit 100% control...getting hit 100% control...getting hit, something brakes visually...10-20% control, depending of what brakes. of course if flyability stays at 100%, it doesn't mean the structure isn't weakened. so if you get hit several times, it might happen that you should on purpose fly more cautious, because on a sharp turn or dive, you might suddenly lose a wing or something. so the only hits which should cause immediate effect are meat or metal, all other hitboxes should have no, or hardly effect to flyability until something serious brakes. some small holes in canvas shouldn't have such an impact as it is now. and hitting cables and stuff is practically impossible. cables break when the wingpart it's holding breaks, not because a bullet is cutting the cable. that's highly unprobable. there are many examples of pilots, regurlarly returning from a sortie with dozens of hits. albert ball is a prominent example. but i doubt the many holes had such a negative effect on his flyability. there is a reason why one had to aim for meat or metal, because hitting anything else had almost no effect at all. no shooting him slow and then finishing him up. IMO this DM should be for AI and yourself. that would reduce kills, making killing tougher, would be tougher for AI to kill you. if HPW would create such a DM i would gladly test it and try out.

might also be that, since you flew partially through a cloud, there are transparent cloud layers sometimes where you can see the enemy, but the enemy can't see you because for their eyes it's not transparent. happens every now and then.

ave maria o fortuna

duel of the fates everything from battlestar galactica gladiator

there's really a ton of choices. but if i have to choose, then i'll take this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI the current no.1 song of my 6 month old son btw is

i wanted to use my 1000. post for something better, but now it's getting ridiculous. first of all, germany has NO such censorship and is one of the most liberal, too much liberal countries in the world. you'll see any kind of scum here because of that. unemployed people hardly have the need to work at all because the country is paying their apartments, food, tv etc. it's a paradise. so please don't get the impression germany is a strange country and has some kind of weird censorship or whatever. it's not north korea or china. it's the opposite. you'll see news and reports about events many other countries, including usa etc. would prevent to show to hide the truth. of course some things are ridiculous, like cencoring blood in ego shooters, or cutting the most violent scenes out of horrormovies. seeing splatter is the reason why i watch splattermovies in the first place, not because the story is good. but anyway. also it has nothing to do with nazi regime. it's rather to prevent those loser youths to think it's cool to shoot at people and to prevent them mixing up real life and games. it's to prevent human failures to go into schools running amok etc. it might be senseless, but that's the idea behind it. reason why some clips are not showed in youtube is simply a copyright issue and argument between german youtube and sony and some others. no censorship. sony wants money if there are clips of their songs. youtube does not want to pay money for something people load up there. so youtube decided not to show any of the clips and songs which are under ownership of sony until there is a court decision. that's all.

what also should be considered is the completely different feel in the air. IMO it's lot tougher to estimate distances and to have a good feel for aiming in a 3 dimensional enviroment, where your never had the same chance to develop them over the years, like on the ground. as an example, i can rocket baseballs (catcher) pretty accurately to all bases and 9 of 10 times i'll hit the others chest or better say the correct side of the base in tag out height without even to think about it. but when i'm standing on a balcony and have to throw the car keys down or snowballs or whatever, even if it's just several meters, then it will land anywhere miles away, just not near the intended target. i simply have not the feeling for the distance when it's getting 3 dimensional. i think with aiming in the air it might be similar to a lot of people. harder to estimate the deflection etc.

yes. the brain is a strange godcreated computer with all kinds of surprises.

i think one of the biggest differences of RL shooting and shooting in a sim is the missing g-forces. ever beeing in a car as a co-driver while trying to read a book? it's possible, but you have to concentrate. ever tried reading a book while on a sharp turn? probably not. that's why most people would stop reading, wait for the g-force or turn to be over and then try to refocus again. now imagine doing the same in a rollercoaster. i think the principal is the same in a buffeting aircraft while trying to aim, probably lot worse. also that's the reason why deflection shooting while curving has to be mastered because you have to fight against g-forces and still align with your guns and aim at the enemy. why surprise was the main weapon while when a dogfight occured, then it was mostly too late for a kill in a sim it's very easy compared to RL because your head is always still. you don't experience g-forces. your vision is always the same, even if the screen tries to convince you that you are in a turn.

i have the impression that latest since HiTR the radar eyes are reduced and you can see weigh more often enemy formations flying by without them attacking you. so that's already a great improvement (if my impression is correct, although not officially announced in the release). so if there is a clash, then the goal is to make the AI abandon the fight in a realistic way without becoming easy prey. the problem then would still be the player who wouldn't be happy that the danger is over, as it would be real, but who might then become a terminator and collect the enemies. so the solution might be something like it was in real. if the player is over enemy lines, and the AI abandones the fight, they should dive for the deck. if the player follows, the chance is greater he gets shot down by groundfire. if the fight occures over friendly territory, then the enemy AI should look to stay above and to become as unreachable as possible. additionally there should be automatically some point of regrouping or flying home, as it was in RB3d. when you or the enemy leave the fight, then they circled above a town or something for several minutes until everybody regrouped again. so after some short minutes of fight, over the players own territory, the enemy AI should try to escape by gaining height while flying homewards or to a distant spot for regrouping, while if you or friendly AI over friendly territory decide to abandon the fight, then wether to dive to the deck for regrouping, or also trying to gain height while regrouping. the AI over enemy territory of course should be smart enough not to follow too low to get into the reach of groundfire. sorry if i repeat myself again, but maybe sombody wants to try it this way. currently my fillgap solution is to abandon fight and continue flying to the next waypoint alone or with my wingman, and then when far enough i warp, so my squadron is regrouped again. so i simulate abandoning the fight and regrouping again. and sometimes it might happen i meet the same enemy squadron, who is also regrouped again, at some stage later again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsGMmaSAFW8&feature=related personally i use mostly the no-tracer mod, sometimes the tracers only mod. together with the hard front guns setting and no visible effects from the distance. so that's hard enough. since i don't see the bullets and there is a wide spread, i have to get very close or shoot from long distance with missing a lot. also i break from the fight when sensing a disadvantage because survival comes first. it's mostly not the empty guns or the kill which ends a fight, but the disadvantage in which i can get and so i retreat to live another day or make a second pass. it's easy to get many kills and die soon. so the problem is not that the killing is too easy, but also surviving long enough. not knowing when to retreat works for some hours, but sooner or later it kills your pilot. rather soon i think. my current pilot (i always have just one campaign, all others are just for sound testing etc.) has now 20 kills in virtual 1,5 years of combat, and when i attack it is, at least for me, hard enough to get one kill, mostly none, and also beeing able to retreat without getting into situations in a disadvantage.

and that's absolutely legitim

guys. i remember the impatience when we were all waiting for p3. i remember how it was when we were waiting for HiTR, waiting for urgend patches etc. some people were so impatient within the time that it went almost ridiculously bad mannered. this stage is of course far from reached yet. probably it may come again when it's almost finished and just a matter of days or weeks for release. but, what i had to think of at that time was maybe a bit too philosophical, but IMO it helps me when i'm impatient. IMO there are two ways of patience. an easy patience and a hard patience. easy patience is when you know something is going to come, definitely. you just have to wait for it. period. like a child who is looking forward to his birthday or xmas etc. it's tough to wait, but you know definitely that it will come, so that's easy patience. hard patience is when you have to wait for something, without ever knowing if this patience is going to pay off. like somebody waiting for a new heart or kidney or something like that. or you have somebody lying in coma etc. it's very tough to wait and to be patinent, and maybe it's never ever going to pay off. that's hard patience IMO. waiting for p4 is definitely the first version. so enjoy the easy patience. it's definitely going to come

here the corrected MvR file drop it into C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\campaigns\CampaignData\Aces MvRKill.txt

if you watch it from about 6 minutes, then you'll know about how accurate a mg was on an AC.

it's just a small, corrected textfile. will post it here asap.

here i am

you are for sure right. but i think things in japan were different. they had a different culture and a different attitude. of course there is always legendbuilding everywhere. that's why the red baron is so famous and why rommel is so famous and many others. but the honor in japan was a completely different thing than in the western world. and telling the untruth was one of the most dishonoring things a japanese can do, so i doubt that historians cheated with numbers. of course the story of him, beating a whole swordschool and then taking it's masters head is partially a legend. maybe in real he went there and they just talked it out while drinking sake. who knows? but musashi writes in his book "the five rings" how to manage fighting multiple enemies at once. those tactics you can adapt to any weapon of war. e.g he said that one should always attack the edges on the group because that's always the weakest spots. adapted in airfighting that means, get left-end-charlie for example. personally i'm pretty sure that there is much truth in this story, simply because they where zen warriors who did nothing else the whole liftime than practicing arts to it's absolut perfection. swordfighting, bow shooting, writing, even how to perfectly pour tea into a cup. and one swordfighter against multiple enemies is still a kendo-version in japan nowadays. i think you mean the Battle of Thermopylae. as long as i know the old historians claim xerxes had 500000 soldiers, while rather hollywood talked about a million. you might be right because historians say nowadays that there were not only the 300 spartans, but also other soldiers. the 300 fought bravely against hordes of persians, that's verified, but they also said that leonidas might have done some tactical errors, which led to the surrounding and then the loss. the old greek historians rather talked about leonidas beeing betrayed instead of accepting that leonidas might have done errors (seems to happen more often in history as it seems). anyway, holding out several days agains an army 100 times bigger, to gain time is worthy enough to become a legend.

hi jim, the aces dossiers are mostly, if not missing at all, historically accurate. and that's how it should be. not aproximately correct, but exactly as the history books say. however i found out long time ago that there were some date typos in MvR's kill board. in some others either. that's why his kills and dates are kind of screwed up and why he has for long time just handfull kills, and suddenly 52 or so. i corrected the data in my MvR file and now everything works as it should. if i remember correctly then the kill stats of bishop and mannock are mixed up or something like that. others don't show kills at all, but i think that happens when there are more pilots with the same surname. i think that ranks are correctly progressing with aces. but not with MvR because of those mentioned typos. for AI pilots ranks are purely coincidental.

actually i didn't play any pc games regarding samurai yet. what i played most with friends was the board game "shogun", which is a little bit similar like the game "risk", just with many more options and possibilities. for instance you have not only soldiers like in risk, but samurai, footsoldiers, daimyos, musketeers (not d'artagnan but the soldiers with muskets), ninjas you can hire for assasinations or espionage. we even invented additional rules which were not in the game, like rainseasons, where the soldiers can only move with half speed (half dice), or half speed when passing the mountains of the Kwanto area etc. was really fun. even secret agreements among each other etc. musashi's 5 rings are a tough read, but a must. also to read "bushido", way of the warrior. btw. musashi did exactly that, what uma thurman did in kill bill vol.1. he was insulted by a member of a sword school, the next day he went there and asked the master to come out for a duel. instead he had to fight his way through to him against dozens of enemies at once. he was the one who perfected the way of fighting with two swords. he said it's stupid to die with a sword in his hand, and to have the other (Wakizashi) in his belt. was a cool guy, wasn't he?

my link is the very same, just in german

here you have the making of a katana. i was once in front of a window of a jewelry. there was an original katana for sale from about 1610. for about 8000€. reason it was so cheap is because there were traces of fights and the condition was not too good. i went inside like a small child. i told him i wouldn't buy it because of no money, but i would like to see it. the owner led me to a room in the back where he showed me his collection of different katanas of different eras between 1500 and 1650. all original. some of them were of daimyios. they looked so brandnew, like they were built yesterday. i was even allowed to take them out of the scabbard and hold them, wondering how many heads must have been taken with it. but it went even better. he led me to another room where he had a pole of bamboo mats rolled together standing, asking me to try out the sharpness of the sword at this mat. one must know that bamboo mats were rolled together as a pole, because they had about the same consistence as human arms and legs. so if there was no criminal prisoner near, where to try out the sharpness of the sword, the samurai used those poles for testing. was amazing. btw. a good short baseball cut has a similar bat motion as a cut with the katana. no simple hacking but more a mixture of hacking and pulling to use the sharpness of the blade to it's fullest. i almost didn't feel the cut through the bamboo at all. almost like in the danny kaye movies where he cuts with his sabre a candle and then blows to it where it then falls down. was a great experience, maybe only those know to appreciate, who a interested in the culture and history and way of life of this era.

yes. the samurai were lightyears in front compared to european knights. in battles samurai wore also heavy armor, but made from bamboo, more resistent than metal armours, but very light and agile. in fact, a good samurai sword is still one of the most prefect things, mankind has ever made. even to this day in the era of technology. the downfall of this culture began when the borders for foreigners were opened again and the tenno tried to adapt everything from western culture.

don't know this quote, but i would say that's s not samurai related, since the katana swords had only the front side of the blade. european swords in medieval times had swords with two sharp (compared to katanas, still as sharp as a brick) edges. but similar to your quote is the legend about the difference of the two most famous swordsmiths masamune and muramasa. about masamune's swords it's said it's peaceful and calm temepered, while the muramasa blades are bloodthirsty and evil (maybe the inspiration of star wars light and dark side of the force?). another method a samurai had to find out what spirit his sword has, is to hold it into a stream while swimming leaves were passing by. at a sword with calm spirit, the leave is going to flow around the edge, at a bloodthirsty sword the leave will run through the blade and will be divided into two pieces.