Bullethead

I see views like this all too often. They are always immediately followed by a sickening crunching sound, then a black or red screen for a second, and finally the dreaded "You died of your injuries" screen :).

A very good but unfortunately rather obscure WW1 airplane historical fiction work is The Two-Headed Eagle, by John Biggins. This the 4th (and sadly, the last) book of his "Otto Prohaska" series. In this book, Otto (a Czech per-war naval officer fighting for Austria-Hungary) is seconded to the army air corps on the Isonzo front in the 2nd 1/2 of 1916 as a 2-seater observer. Later, he gets back in the navy's flying boats in early 1917. The other books of the series are: A Sailor of Austria, about Otto's main wartime job of being a U-boat skipper (before and after his flying stint). The Emperor's Colored Coat, about Otto's 1912-1914 adventures in the Danube Flotilla, getting tangled up with the Serbian assassins, and ended up at the siege of Tsingtao. Tomorrow the World, about Otto's disastrous 1904-1905 naval cadet cruise around the world in a sailing ship. The books have been likened to the Flashman series, in that they are extremely well-researched, well-written, and fairly humorous. However, Otto's a decent guy and sympathetic character, not a complete jerk like Harry.

My copy of Biddle's book was called Fighting Airman, not "The Way of the Eagle". I don't know, maybe they're different books. But Fighting Airman definitely rocks. I came across a book by a Quirk pilot once. IIRC, it was called The Wind in the Wires or something like that. Rene Fonck also wrote his memoirs, but like Bishop's you really have to wonder how much is true.

Welcome aboard. Well, when you go to fly a mission, the waypoints will already be set up for you to follow. You'll need to use the map and/or the TAC display to see them, though, to know where to go. On the TAC, there's a blue line pointing to the next waypoint. Just turn until that line is vertical to the top and you're heading for that waypoint. When you get there, the line will change to point at the next waypoint. If you look at the map, you can see the flightplan with all the waypoints on it. If you want to cut corners, there's a command you can do in-flight that cycles through the waypoints so you can skip ones. Say you want to just go home. Cycle until you're on the last waypoint, which is near your home 'drome. There's no click-and-drag interface, if that's what you mean. To me, "dragging" aircraft around is 1/2 of the tactical move called "drag and bag". The idea is, you get the enemy chasing you (hopefully he's just outside of guns range on you), totally concentrating on killing you. Thus, he doesn't bother to check his own 6. This allows you to "drag" the enemy into a position where one of your squaddies can swoop in and "bag" him :). Just create a pilot first and make him active. In the process of this, you'll pick his name, rank, fighter/bomber job, squadron, and timeframe. Once done with that, hit the CAMPAIGN button, read the news, meet the other pilots in your squadron. Then go to the briefing, then go fly. Simple as that.

IMHO there isn't just a few "best book(s)". There are so many very good ones, and each overs a different topic. What do you want to read about? Individual pilot anecdotes (scout or 2-seater), tactical evolution, hardware evolution, discussions of various campaigns, details of who shot down whom? There are great books on all these subjects. There used to be a sticky book list with a large number of good recommendations.

Bravo! Love your support, OBD :)

I fly bombers from time to time, but not very often. I just don't find it that much fun, because almost all I ever get to fly are recon missions. This boils down to flying along doing nothing, waiting to get swooped by the enemy scouts. I learned quickly that using the tail gun myself was not a good idea, because then my plane flies along straight and level, making it even more of a target than it already is. You're not likely to win shoot-outs with scouts like that; the best you can hope for is mutual destruction. Fighting isn't much of an option, either, because while you can throw 2-seaters around fairly well, you can't see ahead in most of them, and your AI buddies never fight but run straight away, leaving you behind. However, I haven't yet tried flying for a Schusta. If the campaign has them doing a lot of close air support missions over the trenches, that could well be fun :).

I put "other", as in I'll take whatever OBD gives us. But I really hope it's more 2-seaters, like the Albatros C types, Rumplers, DH4s, and updated versions of the BE2 and FE2. You know, to flesh out the Flanders area. The French sectors need a lot more work in comparison, so I figure that's further down the road.

George Allen, 20 Sqd, FE2. 4 kills going into Bloody April, 4 more during it (all Abatri from low-numbered Jastas), KIA 26 April 1917. "Once I had a comrade...."

We nae will see their like ag'in Deserted now each heighland glen An' lonely cairns are o'er the men Who died for Royal Charlie To virtual friends not present! :drinks_drunk:

Nope, daily life ain't fair. In fact, for the large majority of the world's population, life completely sucks 24/7, whether there's a war on or not. Bad things happen to everybody routinely, so if you subscribe to the belief that most people are inherently good, then bad things happen way more often to good people than bad people.

Chester Puller once said "There's a fine line between a Navy Cross and a general court martial." And he should know ;).

If you can afford an airplane at all, you can afford a $20K motor :). I mean, otherwise, the sheer cost of Depends or whatever you need to use to account for the steady diet of castor oil combined with high positive G would bankrupt most folks

And well-earned! Thanks to you and all of OBD for your prompt and continuous support. Even though this particular problem didn't affect me because I don't use CTRL-A, I know you had to spend some time on it anyway :).

You know what's funny? If you look at the whole list of smileys available in this forum, one of them is shooting the bird loud and proud, and the code for it is uncensored between the colons. I wonder if you'd get punished by the mods for using it, considering the forum provides it :D. Still I won't be using it out of a sense of decorum.

I try to fly that way, too, but usually the enemy swoops us, not the other way around. When this happens, I try to dodge their 1st pass while maintaining altitude. If I'm lucky, then everybody on both sides quickly ends up below me and I can play guardian sniper. However, most often some bastid has it in for me so I have to deal with him first. Assuming I live through that, usually a fair amount of time has passed. It's then often hard to see where my lads have got to, assuming they're still alive, and I might be too damaged to do them any good. As a result, it's fairly likely that whenever my flight sorties, somebody won't be coming back. I'm in the habit of pausing the game on the runway and looking around at everybody with labels on, trying to guess whose chair will be empty at the mess tonight. I pretend I'm making a bet with my mechanic, who's lying beside me on the wing root as I turn into the wind....

To me, the "fun factor" of a game depends on the game itself. IOW, I get a high "fun factor" out of different things in different games. I greatly enjoy both killing lots of enemies and surviving for a long time, but I find that some games are more appropriate venues than others for each type of "fun factor". If I want to kill lots of enemies and don't care much about personal survival (as long as I kill more than I die), then I fly an MMO like Aces High. To be honest, I don't feel that much triumph when I shoot down an AI plane, no matter how good the AI is. Sure, it's enjoyable, but to me the real fun of shooting down a plane comes from scarring the psyche of my opponent. I want to CRUSH the ego of my opponent. I want to shoot him down over and over until he logs off in disgust, hopefully throwing his joystick against the wall, and then curses me out on the game's forum afterwards. If he was alive today, Ghengis Khan would say, "that is best in life". And this can only be accomplished by playing against other humans. However, MP games lack immersion. It's just a mindless deathmatch. That's a lot of fun in its way, but I have varied tastes when it comes to fun. I want immersion, too. And that's only possible with an RPG. I consider OFF to be an RPG, but instead of playing some godlike superhuman whose job is to lay waste to an entire continent of nasties, I'm playing as an everyman. The lot of an everyman in war is to get up every morning and go face the bullets yet again, despite his sense of dread. That's plenty heroic by itself, but it goes unnoticed because that's just his basic job description. His goal is merely to survive and go home eventually. So that's the way I always approach OFF. I play OFF with the goal of not only living for a respectable amount of time, but keeping as many of my AI squaddies alive as possible. If I knock down a few enemy planes along the way, that's a plus. But really, I don't have to fire a single shot to obtain a very high "fun factor" in OFF. For me, it's fun just to do my little bit in the Great War. It's hard enough to survive very long as it is, so I don't go looking for extra trouble. It really pains me when one of my long-time AI compadres buys it. After a while, if I live long enough, I don't even bother writing down the names of the FNG replacements when they join the squadron, because I don't want to get to know them and then have them die on me. Now THAT'S immersion :)

Glad you're feeling better. Just be advised that passing the things isn't a lot of fun, either. To me, it felt like there was broken glass mixed in with the liquid. But even this is SO MUCH better than when the things are higher up in the system that it's actually a real relief, especially because you know the whole ordeal is nearly over. Next step is figuring out why you got the damn stones, so you can avoid ever doing that again. In my case, it was drinking Saudi bottled water from their desalinization plants on the shore of the Persian Gulf. The labels on those bottles listed high levels of about 20 different minerals, and it stoned just about everybody in my outfit within +/- 2 weeks of us going home. Fortunately, that's an experience I'm not likely to repeat :). I've made it habit every since, however, to drink at least a gallon of low-mineral water a day. I'm never letting my kidneys silt up again :).

The only way you're going get joystick buttons off their defaults is to use the SST software. Go download the latest version from Saitek and knock yourself out. During installation, be sure to allow it to install the "magic mouse" thingy or none of your prifiles will work during play. I don't have your particular stick but one of the cool things about Saitek is that their software works the same way for all their gear. I have several other Saitek sticks and wheels and they all program the same way. When you fire up the software, you'll probably see your POV hat grayed out. This is because it's on "fallback", which is Saitek's way of saying "it uses the default". If you like what your hat's doing now, then just leave that alone and program the other buttons. Just remember, you'll have to load the resulting profile into your stick before you fly, same as starting TrackIR. If you've got any specific questions on how to use the Saitek software, feel free to ask. I've been using it for many years so know a bit about it ;).

Dude, I feel your pain, really. I've been shot, shelled, clubbed, stabbed, blown up, burned, generally had my butt kicked numerous times, been in several severe car wrecks, been stomped by horses and bulls, thrown from fast vehicles, and had teeth pulled, drilled, and capped without anesthetic. :black eye: But none of that compares in the slightest to having kidney stones. In my experience, there is nothing even close on the pain scale. Women who've been through natural childbirth tell me that kidney stones are worse even than that. So IMHO you have nothing left to prove in this world. You survived kidney stones without killing yourself, so you can take anything

My goals are: Living long enough to go on leave to Blighty at least once. Living long enough after that get posted to a home-based ASW flyingboat squadron near a major city with many lonely women. Making sure as many of my squaddies as possible live to achieve the same goals. Making enough money in the black market to live on for a few years after the war, while I get my brain reset enough to pass as fairly normal in civilization.

During the 1st chlorine attack during 2nd Ypres, I buzzed my great-uncle's trench and noticed that his Foreign Legion uniform didn't have the correct number of buttons on the tunic.

Bravo to OBD yet again on 1.26. I'll be dusting off my FE2b campaign again now :)