Bullethead

I don't think it's anywhere near that scripted, simply because there are times when you meet nothing at all. And this can go on for quite a while if there ain't many enemies in the area. Or maybe you might have met some 2-seaters, but they saw you first and ran away before you saw them. Or maybe everybody you could have met got tangled up with other friendlies before you came alone. What I think happens is that each squadron is given 1 or more missions every time you do a mission. These all go do their own things, meeting various enemies or not, all without any regard to what you're doing. They don't even all take off at the same time--I've seen both friendly and enemy planes take off while I'm flying over their fields. You just meet the enemy whom you cross paths with as a result of everybody carrying out their own plans. So I still think the whole reason why 2-seater sightings by Entente scouts are so rare is because they always see you before they even show up on your TAC, and run away before the ever come within your TAC range.

Or how about this.... The machine catches fire and goes down by autoratation. It lands nice and softly and sits there burning. You ride it in perfectly OK, except now you're still in the bucket, in the hottest point of the fire, and you still can't get out because the blades are still coasting to a stop below you.....

Would it be possible to change that? I'd really like 2 changes: 1) the flight never ends until you say it has, even after you're dead and bouncing on the ground, and 2) when you're in some badly stricken crate whose remains are tumbling end-over-end, that you neither black nor red out. The reason I want these things are 1) to take a screenshot of my inglorious death which is the only remembance most of my pilots will ever have, and 2) to find out just why I suffered Mysterious Destruction Syndrome, so I know who to blame when I get to Hell. The lack of such things is rather annoying to me. I very frequently suffer Mysterious Destruction Syndrome (MDS), where my crate basically disintegrates for no apparent reason. I'm not being shot at, that's all I know. Most times, due to both the screen instantly going red or black, or the flight ending, I never have a chance to see what got me. Even when I go to external view, it's still black or red, with nothing to be seen at all. How can I learn from my mistakes when I can't see what I did wrong? And how can I tell which of my erstwhile wingmen to shank in Hell when I don't know which one flew into me? Right now, I have to be EXTREMELY quick on the draw to hit pause before the screen goes solid or the mission ends, and usually I ain't quick enough. Besides, I think it would be fitting penance for my various sins and wickednesses if I had to ride my burning crate all the way down from 16,000 feet. I'm not the type to jump or shoot myself on the way down. I figure I might as well get used to the flames now, because it'll be more of the same for Eternity

Yeah, I flew that one in my brief career as a German buffer :)

I'd say it's highly likely that one of your numbskull wingmen flew into you. That's exactly what ends the vast majority of my careers. It's a shame that when this happens, the screen goes red or black almost immediately, and then the flight ends. This makes it very difficult to pause the game and go into external to see that happened, and there's nothing worse than waking up in Hell and not knowing how you got there . But on those few times I've suffered Mysterious Destruction Syndrome (MDS) and have been quick enough on the draw to be able to take a look, it's always one of my so-called friends who's run into me from behind and below. So I've taken to assuming that's what happened all the other times. I find it a lot different from being hit by an archie burst or machinegun fire. The sounds are all different. You don't hear any shell explosion or MG hits, just the sudden sound of many aircraft parts breaking all at once.

I saw a photo once of a Roland painted up like a fish, with scales all over the fuselage. Another had a big long snake weaving down its length.

This isn't just a problem for DiD guys eschewing the visibility aids. I make shameless use of TAC, labels, pause, and the target-player external view, and I have exactly the same experience. I never surprise anybody, and when I'm flying an Entente scout, I never even see a German 2-seater on radar. The only times I've seen German 2-seaters at all is when I'm flying a 2-seater myself. In my 1 brief German career, however, I came across a flight of unescorted Quirks considerably lower than myself, who pressed on regardless. That was a happy day, but I digress.... Here's what happens to me when flying an Entente scout... When unidentified dots 1st appear on TAC, I immediately pause the game and check them out with the target-player view. If they aren't friendly, then they're always German fighters. About 90% of the time, they're higher than I am to a greater or lesser extent, and are already diving towards me. Most of the rest of the time, they're co-alt, and occasionally they're just slightly lower. In these cases, they're still reacting to me, climbing and trying to work around behind me. I've watched this happen many times--if left alone, they will eventually climb up, circle around, and swoop on my tail. The only way to avoid this is to attack them at once or, if you don't want to fight them, try to out-climb them. Very, very rarely I've come across German fighters far below me. This usually happens when I'm deep over Hunland and they've just taken off, but sometimes it's near the trenches where they've been fighting other friendlies before I came along. These are the only ones I've ever been able swoop. But even they always see me coming and are turning and dodging long before I reach them. There are 3 implications to this. First, German scouts can see rather further than I can even with TAC, and they use the time they thus gain to grab an altitude advantage, or at least try to, before I see them. The 2nd implication is that German 2-seaters see just as far as their scouts, which is why I never see them at all even on TAC. And 3rdly, German eyes are infallable, which is why I never surprise anybody or catch even a glimpse of a fleeing German 2-seater. I don't believe the Brit AI sees as far as the German AI. Brit 2-seaters run away, too, but only after the Germans show up to me on TAC. The strange thing, though, is that if you fly as a non-leading German bomber pilot, your AI boss will press on regardless. So I'm thinking that German 2-seater AI is different depending on what role you're playing. Anyway, I've just come to accept all this as a fact of life in OFF. The vast majority of my fights are going to start with me being swooped by Alabtri, and it's up to me to rise to the occasion. C'est la guerre :).

Please don't think I'm complaining about how things are at present. With the standard damage model and realism settings up around 100%, I think you all have nailed the realism of the "hardware" side of things (except for the "Realistic" setting on AI Gun Fire (Range), but I can live with that ). The airplanes fly like I've been led to expect, the guns work like I expect, and the planes are as vulnerable to them as I expect. Bravo! So it's a very dangerous world out there. If you don't have a strong sense of self-preservation, then you're not going to last very long. And I agree with you that probably none of us virtual pilots, even those who fly "cautiously", are quite as careful as the real guys were. However, even flying cautiously, we still die in droves. Sure, we're not 19 anymore, but neither are we feeling the physical exertions, discomforts, and privations of the real guys, so that kinda balances out IMHO. Besides, most of us have been flying real and/or sim planes for many years, so have a lot more experience than they did. So I think the main reason for the near impossibility of long-term survival at high realism settings is that the AI pilots fly considerably less cautiously than we do. This of course is next to impossible to quantify, and I realize that not only is AI tweaking about the hardest thing to do, but even once tweaked it will still never be as good as a good human. But it's definitely happening, and I'm pretty sure an overly tenacious AI is the main reason both for the short pilot lifespans and the sometimes very high kill totals obtained in that time. So if possible, perhaps you could tweak the AI some? What I see is too much tenacity once in a fight. Once engaged, each AI plane individually appears only to break off combat if it suffers serious damage. Maybe they also leave if they run out of ammo, but if so I've never noticed it (usually because if the AI has that many firing opportunities, one of them kills me ). The engaged AI planes, both friendly and enemy, appear to ignore such important tactical considerations as: that they've blown all their E and are now forced to turn-fight in planes built for E-fighting that the fight is getting down to an unfavorable altitude for them that the fight is getting far down below their assigned patrol altitude that the fight is taking them down into heavy concentrations of enemy AAA that the numerical odds have swung heavily against them during the battle that damage below their current break-off threshold has already compromised their ability to fight effectively As a result, fights in OFF last longer and are seemingly way more bloody than in real life. The player is presented both with more targets to kill and more chances of dying in a given amount of time. Fights are almost always decisive rather than being mostly inconclusive. So it seems to me that it would be helpful to tweak the AI to pay more attention to the above factors. This is both friendly and enemy AI planes. Have planes fight for a while, then withdraw, either to regain E and then re-engage, or to go on about their business or maybe RTB. If the enemy decides to all it quits, then the player is less likely to kill so many of them or die himself. And if the friendlies have had enough, it would likely impose similar caution on the human :). As mentioned, I hardly ever get shot down, and usually don't take much damage, either (at least when flying scouts--FEs are another matter!). So I figure I fly both well and cautiously--I keep my 6 clear and I don't take stupid chances that put me in line for a lot of incoming fire. I try hard not to get tangled up with and fixated on anybody, at least until the fight scatters out, so I can maintain my SA. I'm deathly afraid of collisions from a blindspot, which is usually what kills me. In real life, I figure I'd rarely get a kill flying like this. But in OFF, I not uncommonly get 5 kills in 3 sorties. This isn't what I'm trying to do, it's simply survival. The enemy just won't quit coming at me even when he's clearly disadvantaged, so it's always him or me, and when he's at such a disadvantage, it's usually him. And then the next sortie some dipstick on 1 side or the other rams me in a swirling melee when all I'm trying to do is find the edge of it But I'm not complaining. Such AI tweaks as noted above would just be the icing on the cake. OFF's a lot of fun as-is and I've rationalized the high scores of my short lives as you can see. I figure what I'm doing is about as good as can be done, so I'm happy with it, even if nobody lives long enough for me to write a good series of AAR posts about him. And I have to admit that I feel a lot better now, knowing that most other folks are having the same trouble reaching 17 hours

Lucky you! I'd think 150-200 pounds of meat hitting your plane at 100 knots would probably break something off.

Hmmm.. I'm currently recovering from a bought of dysentery picked up from fishing in nasty bayou water. The doc put me on a bread and water diet, no cheese, and put me on pills that will make me puke if I drink any booze. I envy these old pilots

I think the main reason for the severe attrition most of us experience in DiD is that the AI lacks respect for the lethality of combat. Remember, these planes were dangerous toys, born and bred to kill, and they were quite capable of doing so, and rather quickly, too, given the lack of any armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, etc., in their prey. The more realistic the modeling of the guns and DM, the more this will become apparent. The longer you're exposed to this threat, the more likely you are to die. I think real pilots respected this a lot more than the AI does. They all knew that all it took for them to die was to be squarely in the enemy's sights for a single second. 1 bullet, 1 shell fragment in the right place, and they were graveyard dead. And the impression I get from reading every memoir I can find is that the majority of pilots (at least those who survived to write memoirs, and most of the foes the record meeting) were rather circumspect this regard. They didn't like being in big melees because they knew this made them vulnerable. And not just to getting shot, but also to collisions. The impression I get, therefore, is that if there weren't many planes on each side, they more or less paired off and each pair had their fight (or not--maybe 1 guy would run). Then everybody found himself alone and went home. Or if there were lots of planes on both sides, often it was a bunch of minor skirmishing without either side willing to commit to an all-out brawl. That did happen sometimes, but it seems to be the exception. But what happens in the game is that if the AI wants to fight at all, it goes fangs out. This is both friendly and enemy AI. And then it stays in the fight far beyond when the prudent human would call it a day. If it leaves the fight after this, it's only when it's severely shot up and escape is already impossible, no matter how far the numerical odds have swung against it in the meantime. IOW, once the fights starts, it won't end until everybody on 1 side is dead. As a result, everybody involved, both human and AI, is exposed to what seems to me to be rather more threat of bullets and collision than would have happened in real life. It's like the risk of several real fights is compacted into 1 computer fight. In which case, if the guns are realistically lethal, and the planes realistically vulnerable, the odds of dying in any given OFF fight are several times higher than they were in real life. Let's say the odds of dying in a fight in OFF are 3x higher than in a real life. I, of course, have no way of knowing the real answer here, but let's do this for the sake of argument. In that case, the life expectancy of your pilot should be about 1/3 that of a real pilot. And that would mean that all of us who usually die about 5-6 hours into a career are right on average ;).

Same here, although I go further and see what sort of stall characteristics it has, what tricks it can do, and whether I can break it :)

I've had a guy get as many as 10 hours, but most die after about 6. The vast majority of them die in collisions; very few are actually shot down.

So did you actually hit him? Did it break your plane? Or did you just fly through him unharmed?

I of course don't know how it works, but can only give the opinions I've reached after my experiences so far.... It seems to me that most, if not all, of the non-historical pilots in a squadron are the same rating as the squadron itself, at least initially. Maybe there's some variation amongst them, but if so it doesn't make enough difference for me to notice. This is the only thing I'm pretty sure of. I've still got a bunch of questions, such as: Do my AI buddies "level up" if they get sufficient kills and/or flying hours? Do replacement pilots show up at a lower quality than the rest of the squadron and have to "level up" to reach the squadron norm? If either of the above happen enough, does this raise or lower the overall squadron rating on dates other than those shown as you page back and forth in time while creating a pilot? If you're in the squadron when a date with a hard-wired quality change comes along, does it still happen or are you stuck with the quality you had to start with? However, most of this is really moot, because no pilot of mine ever lives long enough for this to see any changes happen

Hehehe, I've always suspected it must be the other way around. One of these days, I might try flying for the Kaiser to see just how easy you Huns have it :) I don't know what date you're flying, but 65 Squadron starts out as "poor" quality in October 1917. If that's when you're flying, don't expect many happy endings to your sorties. AI pilot quality IMHO is the single most important factor in dogfights, and a Brit squadron with "poor" quality is sheer suicide to fly for. Most Jastas are "good" and a few are "elite", so most of the time, even the non-ace enemy AI pilots are going to be way better than your wingmen. When a "poor" Brit squadron meets a Jasta, usually the issue is decided within the 1st minute. In that time, the AI Brit pilots will either have run away or been slaughtered by the much better German AI pilots. Either way, you'll very soon find yourself alone facing heavy odds, usually deep in Hunland. This is not conducive to you having a long career So my advice is, never ever fly for a "poor" Brit squadron unless you're feeling very masochistic or just don't care at all about your long-term survival. OTOH, as mentioned, flying for an "elite" squadron like No. 56 isn't much fun, either, because they wipe most Germans out as quickly as "poor" Brit squadrons die. This leaves "good" and "average" squadrons. "Good" squadrons are fun because your wingmen are as skilled as their opponents and are willing to hang around and fight. Thus, you end up with a lot of fairly long, drawn-out, relatively even fights where aircraft performance differences and the necessary tactics become very significant. You can live a long time and you won't have to kill everything yourself. "Average" squadrons are rather more challenging. Your AI buddies are going to lose most of the time, but survive or hang around somewhat longer than in "poor" squadrons. This puts a high premium on you playing superman, rapidly knocking down many Huns before they can wipe out your wingmen. If you can do that, you might live a long time, but you'll have a huge score you might think is unrealistic. If you can't do that, then you'll probably die after a couple of missions. Yeah, the AI seems rather immune to structural failure. Get used to being swooped by Albatri

You type as if you're rather drunk yourself already. Damn, I wish I knew there was such a party in Louisville! That's just what I need to to recuperate after Mardi Gras

Salud! :drinks_drunk: Hopefully you've made life safer for me and my FE2b compadres

I imagine it was pretty long, the pike being all torpodo-shaped and all. A largemouth bass or buffalo weighing 40-odd pounds is like 3' long and very fat, so if you pounded one of those through a doweling die the diameter of a pike, you'd probably end up with 5 or 6 feet of fish at least :). A gar of that weight would be somewhat shorter, due to thicker bones, mondo teeth, and armor-like, overlapping scales. BTW, here's a joke illustrating the difference between northern and Southern US fishing. It's at the expense of my own ethnicity, so please, nobody should call it offensive. I'm the only Cajun I know of here, and I find this joke funny as Hell Those 2 archetypical Cajuns, Boudreaux and Simoneaux, were in their seasonal blues because nothing much was biting in the Louisiana winter. Then Boudreaux mentioned to Simoneaux that he'd heard that 'dem maudites yankees cochins' were ice-fishing at that very moment, and that it was a big deal to them. Plenty of fish to be had. So they decided to go up north and give that a try. They go up to yankeeland to some lake they'd Googled as being good for ice-fishing, then cruised around to the local bait shop. Boudreaux, the only one who half-way spoke English, went in and told the proprietor, "Me an' my par'ner Simoneaux, we jus' simple Cajuns from down on the bayou. We don' know not'n 'bout dis yankee ice-fishing, hien? So you tell us what gear an' bait we need, hien?" So the guy at the bait shop sold Boudreaux the necessary tackle, bait, and a couple of icepicks. Boudreaux thanked him and went away, but came back in about 20 minutes. "We needs a couple mo' dem icepicks, hien?" So he got them and was gone again for another 20 minutes, when he came back asking for more of the same. At this point, the bait shop proprietor thought something was amiss. So he asked Boudreaux if things were going OK. And Boudreux said, "Sho'nuf! We jus' about got de boat in de water!"

Which is why most folks didn't wear goggles, or so they say in their memoirs. Besides, I fly pushers and inlines mostly so don't have that problem at all :). Here's a curious thing..... All my life I've regarded castor oil as a powerful laxative. When I was little, whenever I was sick, Mom always shoveled castor oil down my throat to get rid of the germs as quickly and violently as possible. That was how she was raised, too. So every time I read some WW1 rotary pilot's memoirs, I've looked for them reporting heavy casualties to their supply of skivvies, either from long patrols or from pulling high positive G in turns and loops. Strangely, nobody I've read so far has mentioned that....

Yeah, that's what the experts say, but I say they both have barbels. In what I call a buffalo, with the mouth on the bottom rather than anywhere near the front, the whole opening is C-shaped with the curve towards the front. At the rear/outer corners of the mouth, those big, fleshy lips come together well below the plane of the fish's belly. At that corner, the lips usually taper off into barbel-looking things about 2-3" long cocked outboard and aft. Maybe an expert would say those are just extra lip tissue in the furled position, that makes the whole mouth wider to suck up more gunk from the bottom per inhale, and not true barbels. But they look the same to my ignorant eye ;). It's not that curious at all. The world is full of things that look just like human females, but whose behavior and outlooks on life show quite obviously that they came from an entirely different planet and are not at all related to us or true human females. There's no clearer example of convergent evolution that I know of. Unfortunately, this invasive, alien species has pretty much driven the real article to the brink of extinction :(

Quite so. And all the WW1 books you read talk about spotting the enemy (at least against a sky background) many, many miles away and maneuvering for position for many minutes prior to the engagement. I myself have 20/15 vision and have no trouble at all spotting airplanes against the sky and can identify most of them by general type (Cessena, Piper, Beech, etc.) at ranges of several miles. I can even identify most jetliners leaving contrails, at least dividing them into the 2, 3, or 4-engined types :). The typical WW1 scout was about 20-25' long, about the same length as a large car or SUV. How far away can you see those things? Maybe you don't live in a flat, open area, but if the LOS goes 10 miles, you should be able to see cars that far away. If you can't, I don't want you driving on the same roads as me .

Very few folks deliberately go after them because they're not good eatin' unless you do it right, and that's a bother. Besides, even though they're big and impressive, most times the fight is more of a long, straight tug-of-war than anything else, and then getting your hook out is a real pain because that huge mouth sucks it way back inside them. You often have to basically gut the fish to retrieve your hook. Thus, most folks consider catching one a complete waste of the limited time they have available for catching the bass and catfish they're really after. Fortunately, if you're bass-fishing, you hardly ever catch one because they're not much attracted to bass lures. But they go for the same stuff as catfish, so that's when you usually get them, and also on trot lines. Big buffalo travel in schools up 5 - 20 fish, so sometimes your whole trot line is covered with them. It's very confusing. The experts say there are several types of both carp and buffalo and most of them look very, very similar. So that might well be a type of buffalo ;). The fleshy mouth is very much like that. But to me, the distinguishing feature of the buffalo is that the mouth is on the bottom of the head, not the front like in your photo. Like it's upper lip would be about where the chin is in your photo. If the mouth is on the front, then I call it a carp. But that's just me--I'm sure an expert would say otherwise. However, it's the traditional right and privelege of fishermen to call their prey whatever they want, to create many confusing local name variations for the same fish across the country, so I don't feel bad about it Don't you all have fisheries that crank out millions of sport fish per year to stock all the lakes and creeks? That's a big thing over here, which is why we have so many fish.

@Rooster: I thought you yankees had pike and muskies that ran to 6-8 feet, too? There's a pic here of a 10' gar from 1910, but they just don't get that big anymore. Too many bowhunters in boats. Widowmaker--that's a HUGE carp! Around here, I've never seen them get more than about 1/2 that size, and ours are gray and ugly, too. We've got another type of fish, though, called a buffalo, which gets about the size of your Belgian carp. It looks very much like a carp, except its mouth is on the bottom of its head and somewhat back from the end of the nose. The mouth is very large but doesn't have much in the way of bone in it, just a huge mass of fleshy lips with a couple of feelers sticking out--it's a total bottomfeeder. It looks a lot like a cow's mouth, in fact, which I think is how they got their name. They're OK to eat if prepared correctly, but there are tricks to that which few can master. Hooking one is mostly like snagging a 4WD vehicle that's in low gear, but occasionally they jump a couple of feet out of the water and make a huge splash :)

Speaking of big fish, does anybody watch that show "River Monsters" on Animal Planet? In the States, it's on Sunday nights at 2100 central. Anyway, this guy is going after friggin' HUGE fish in fresh water, most of which can and occasionally do eat people. Most of these are in far, far away places. However, I believe this coming show is on the alligator gar, a common fish in these parts. I've caught quite a few of them up to about 3' long, all by accident because they ain't good eatin', and you have to kill them to get the hook out safely due to their horrific teeth. And I hate to do that, because they're an ancient species that AFAIK never bothers people. The only use I've ever heard for them is that their scales are naturally shaped like arrowheads, which the Indians here took advantage of due to there being no stone for at least 100 miles around Garfish around here top out about 6 feet long, and ones that big are pretty common. A few here get up to about 8 feet, but there are photos from about 100 years ago of specimens twice that long. I seriously doubt there are any left that big, though, because big gar spend a lot of time sunbathing on the surface where they're easy to see. As a result, most folks who purposely fish for gar do so with a bow and arrow. Where's the sport in that? I've swum with 6-8 foot gar many times and they've never bothered me or anybody else. They're like the vast majority of predatory fish, only interested in things considerably smaller than themselves. If you swim in bayous around here, you're way more worried about alligators, water moccasins, giant snapping turtles, amoebic dysentery, flesh-eating bacteria, leeches. and quicksand than you are poor old garfish :yes: