Bullethead

I'd probably turn it way down . The problem I have with gore in games isn't the gore itself. As we know, if the game strives for realism and involves inflicting terrible wounds, then blood and worse is expected. Also, the whole idea of shielding kids from it seems to be a product of the last century or so, when the majority of people became, for the 1st time in human history, separated from seeing such things on a regular basis. I don't think being around a lot of blood hurt our ancestors so I don't see how it would hurt folks today. My problem with game gore is the implementation, which always looks fake to me, and that decreases my immersion and enjoyment of the game. I've seen countless horrific injuries over my life--I currently deal with them routinely as a fireman. As such, I've got a head full of memories, with which game scenes always clash. So in most games, I find it more enjoyable to turn the gore down to its minimum level, but not off completely. I find that cue of the small visible gore in the game triggers my mind to paint the scene with real gore taken from the memory of a similar injury.

I don't blame you, after how that happened . I bet the suicide rate spiked in Beantown after that. Men are never late. Only girlfriends are late, at the most inappropriate times The guy who posted that is an obvious poser. I had to take time to drink, watch the replay deliberation, drink, watch the celebration, drink, see who got to hoist the cup in which order, drink, see if there was a riot amongst the Philly fans, drink, play "Chelsea Dagger" a bunch of times with drinks between replays, before I believed it . Any true Blackhawks fan would have done the same. Geez, they haven't won in my lifetime, and I'm an old SOB. Duh duh doh duh duh doh Duh duh duh duh duh duh doh Duh duh doo duh duh doo Duh duh duh duh duh duh doo :drinks: :drinks:

Wing failures in OFF are rather strange. They do not occur when you think they should, and they do occur when you don't think they should. It's not purely exceeding a certain speed, nor is it exceeding a specific G level. Instead wings fail under pretty gentle circumstances where you don't expect it. I hope this is addressed in P4. For instance, take the Albatros D.III. You can start at 10,000 feet, split-S, and dive vertically at full power. When you reach about 150 knots, you have to start holding down elevator to maintain the vertical dive. The amount of forward stick increases as you continue to accelerate, until you reach about 190 knots. This is the fastest the D.III can go, because at this speed the nose comes up even with full down elevator. And the wings stay on. When you see this happening, yank the stick all the way back as fast as you can. You'll do an do a loop, without even a trace of blacking out (which means despite your high speed, you're not pulling more than about 3 Gs). And the wings stay on. Now to me, this is the most extreme loading you can put on the wings, and they don't care. You can do this multiple times with no problem, even though you'll see OVERSPEED and/or OVERSTRESS warnings, and hear ominous creaking and snapping effects. Now do a different experiment. Climb to about 13,000 feet, which is as high as a D.III can get in the game although this is considerably lower than it could really fly. Now start doing gentle Cuban 8s. Your speed will never get above about 90-100 knots, and you'll still never pull more than about 3 Gs. Keep doing Cuban 8s, letting yourself get lower and lower. After about 4 or 5 such moves, without any visual or audible warnings at all, one or both of your lower wings will come off. IMHO, this is wrong. If the plane can withstand the full-speed dive followed by the hardest possible pull-out, it should not fail doing much less-stressful aerobatics. But it does in OFF. I'm not happy.

It's the HUD toggle. I don't know if I've changed the key for that command or not, nor do I know if you have, so I won't get into which key it is. Just bring up the control edit menu and look for the command that turns the HUD on and off.

If they're going to do that, I'd also like the ability to moon the foe as I go down

I think that person was me . But of course, in those days I was just back from Desert Storm, was completely out of my head, and was always asking Kesmai to put refugee columns in Air Warrior so I could drop napalm on them. I think folks on Delphi knew my habits so were predisposed to slap me back to reality. I took no offense from it. Buit HiTech did get the key point I was making, or had reached it himself already. That is, if the game has pilot wounds that have a significant effect during flight, gamers need something to tell them "DAMN THAT HURT!" I mean, there's no other way to provide feedback for being shot. IMHO, that's why he put blood splattering in Aces High. And just for the record, my opinion about gore in games hasn't ever changed. If it provides important information to the player, or increases immersion, then it's good. If it's just for shock value, then it's just a waste of CPU and GPU. I've been surrounded by gore most of my life so I already know very well what it really looks like, It can't shock me and when taken over the top for shock's sake, then it ruins the game because it looks fake to me from seeing so much of the real thing.

Warping on escort missions is only a problem prior IP (the Initial Point, the last waypoint prior to the target). This is becaus a) the 2-seaters spawn overhead instead of you meeting them en route as your map shows, b) the 2-seaters don't want for you but head towards the target from the get-go, and c) your waypoints (which is what warp uses) assume you'll circle, then meet the 2-seaters en route. After IP, which is after your waypoints show you meeting the 2-seates, there are no problems with warping at all. Of course, the above is only possible if you use TAC. If you don't use TAC (which IMHO is equivalent to pretending you're so myopic that you'd have failed your flight physical and never gotten closer to the front than Wing HQ, where your thick glasses would have suited you perfectly for stamping DENIED on all requests from the fighting units), then you'll never know when you're really at a given waypoint. Thus, you're stuck with doing the whole mission in realtime. But to each his own.

As to bloodsplatter on the windshield, I'm all for it IF it serves a useful game purpose. For instance, in the MMOFS Aces High, pilot wounds are nasty things. They cause you to black out periodically for short lengths of time, but the longer you try to keep flying, the more often you black out and the longer it lasts, until you bleed out and die. When you see your blood splattered on the canopy, therefore, you know you've been wounded and need to land RIGHT NOW. I find this a lot better than just having some text pop up saying "Pilot Wounded" or whatever, both iin terms of being more noticeable and more immersive. The only problem is, the blood splatters on out your exit holes, so if you get shot from the front, you might not notice for a while because it's all behind you. In OFF, however, pilot wounds don't seem to do anything. Thus, having blood splattered somewhere in the cockpit. would just be gratuitous gore.

In my experience, escort missions are divided into the following phases: 1. Playing Catch-Up The buffs don't wait for you. They spawn directly overhead while you're still on the ground, and away they go on their ingress path. This means you have to forego the usual circling of your field and chase off after them immediately, climbing for all you're worth. If you warp immediately, your flight will go around in circles while the buffs press on, and you'll never catch them. You CAN sometimes get around this by selecting Next Waypoint until you're on your ingress path before warping, but this doesn't always work. This is because warping keeps you at some silly low altitude until you get to that waypoint about 1/2way to the objective, when it suddenly bumps you up to nearly the full mission height. Thus, if you meet the enemy before this waypoint, odds are you'll still be way below the buffs and unable to protect them. OTOH, you do get a good view of their destruction . Also, if you get to operational altitude manually and warp before this 1st ingress waypoint, you'll find yourself low again if you get into a fight. So, my advice is, never warp on escort missions until you've passed this 1st ingress waypoint. After that, no real problems. Also note that your waypoints don't match up with what really happens. On your map, you'll see that you're supposed to meet the buffs somewhere away from your airfield instead of overhead. That rendezvous waypoint really is there and will stop your warping, but nothing happens there because the buffs were actually over your field. 2. Riding Herd Once you've caught up with your buffs, you need to stay in the correct relative position to them. Best thing is to be about 1000 feet above and a little behind them. This way, you can pounce on enemies attacking the buffs from the rear. This is about the only direction you have to worry about because enemy fighters seem to ignore chances for head-on and beam attacks. Depending on how aggressive their AI is, they may dive on the buffs from the rear, but usually they come in more or less level from behind. Mostly, they'll ignore you to go for the buffs, but sometimes, a few will go for your flight while the rest head for the buffs. If that happens, tell 1 element of your wingmen to deal with them and lead the rest after the main enemies at the buffs. The most important thing in escorting is not to get very far below or behind the buffs, because they're helpless until you regain your herding position. The 2nd most important thing is to evaluate threats. Enemy fighters below the buffs aren't a problem and probably never will be, so don't worry about them. Just keep an eye on them and see if they are climbing up. Usually the buffs will leave them behind, but if the egress and ingress paths are close together, you might have to worry about them on the way home. When defending against enemy fighters, try VERY hard not to get tangled up in a furball. All you're trying to do is make the enemy dive away below and behind the buffs. Once they're there, they're no longer a threat. You have to avoid getting in that position yourself because then you leave the buffs ungarded while you're back to playing catch-up. So what you want to do is swoop in from your position above and behind the buffs, make 1 pass which forces the enemy to turn and dive away, then pull back up to your guard station. It's a good idea not to give your wingmen attack orders because then they'll get tangled up and you'll have to leave them behind as you follow the buffs. Just use the Rejoin command to keep them with you as you make your swoop. Bottom line: your objective is not to kill the enemy, but to keep the enemy from killing the buffs. All you have to do is force the enemy into a position from which he can't attack the buffs and you're home free. So, unless you get in a fatal blindside hit on your 1 swooping pass, you're probably not going to get any kills while being an escort if you're doing your job correctly. 3. Free Hunt Despite the ingress rendezvous waypoint being meaningless, the split-up waypoint on egress does function as expected. When you get there, the buffs will suddenly turn sharply off your course and start a fairly steep dive back toward their base. If you're warping home, the warp will stop at this point. As far as the game is concerned, your mission is now complete. You can, if desired, ignore the buffs from here on out. This point can present you with a decision, however. Sometimes an enemy flight will be following the buffs, safely below them and not a threat, but gradually closing in. Under normal circumstances, you'd be keeping an eye on them and could expect to have to swoop them in 5 minutes or so, unless they give up and turn away first. But at the split-up point, suddenly the buffs dive away, which puts them quickly below the enemy, who will often dive after them. So, even though you've done your job, it would be a pity to abandon the buffs at this point. Now, however, you can afford to get tangled up and kill these bastids, especially since you're over friendly territory and the buffs are going away as fast as they can. Most times, however, once the buffs leave, you're on your own. If you've still got fuel and ammo, you can turn back towards the lines and try to get in a fight. I recommend doing this to work off the frustration of not being able to kill anybody up to this point. So, be sure to take enough fuel to have some fun during this phase.

Great story. What was wrong with your engine, and what does that have to do with warping? Was it a case of having the wrong mixture for too long at the wrong altitude, or just one of those random engine failures? I use automixture and my engine just dies occasionally. My worst experience with warping was that once I had a glitch where my flight didn't turn back at the end of its path but just kept going on the ingress heading. By the time I looked up from the beer I'd started to open after I hit warp, we were over the NW corner of Germany . We only had enough fuel remaining to just barely make it over the river into pasture in the SE part of the neutral Netherlands, where my entire flight was interned for the duration. Worst navigation error ever . But that was long ago and I've never had such a problem since.

That's an insult to the Itees, whose bad rap is mostly the product of wartime efforts to hide the existence of codebreaking. As I said above, my advice was for non-DH5 fighter jocks. If you're in a 2-seater, you know you'll be doing a fair amount of ground attack as part of the job, but you took the job anyway, so deal with it . The main thing I've found in ground attack missions is that unless you surprise the target, things are unlikely to end well. You're usually leading the charge, often by several thousand yards, so if the gunners are alert, every one of them will concentrate on you at the beginning. If you hear the air raid siren start before you're directly over the target, you can be pretty sure of getting the chop. And if it starts when you're overhead, you're still in for a rough time until your wingmen come into range. The earlier in the war you are, the easier it is to surprise targets. As time goes on, however, there are more planes in the sky, so the odds are greater of some friendly flight en route elsewhere accidentally alerting your target before you even get there. Also, the later in the war, the more intense is the ground fire, making the consequences of not achieve surprise even grimmer. So from no later than the start of 1918, I don't recommend doing any strafing at all, unless you're in a Camel squadron which did a lot of that by then. If you can't carry ordnance, don't do the mission. And if you've got bombs, don't drop them below 2000 feet.

Amen to that As Ben Franklin said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy". And as I say, "I spent 90% of my money on whiskey and women, and the rest I just wasted."

1918 for sure, but no necessarily late. In general, Flanders is the place to be on either side. Avoid the French- and US-only parts of the line because of the lack of late-war French 2-seaters--all you see are acres and acres of SPAD XIIIs. Read up on when and where the German "Kaiserschlacht" offensives happened, and fly in those areas on either side. That covers the spring and early summer. Then read up on where the major Entente attacks were in the latter 1/2 of the year and fly there. In these places at these times, it really doesn't matter which side you're on or which squadron you're in. Things are quite hectic either way. However, things are a bit more hectic for the Germans because even when they're on the offensive on the ground, they're at best equal in numbers. In the 2nd 1/2 of the year, they're way outnumbered and even the D.VII doesn't seem good enough .

So too, I expect, did that tea you all brew up there. I've got to find a local supplier of that stuff. It does wonders for my gimpy joints when they're predicting cold and/or rain, so I figure life in Ostfriesland would be impossible without it

BH's Tips for Surviving Ground Attack Missions, listed in order of increasing amounts of sense of duty and decreasing amounts of sanity. NOTE: This is ONLY if you're in a non-DH5 fighter squadron. If you're in a DH-5 squadron, or a 2-seater squadron, you volunteered for such missions so quit complaining. Besides, the DH5 is a flying tank so survival really isn't a problem. But if you're in a regular fighter squadron, then ground attack is pretty much a VIP backstage pass to the Create New Pilot screen . Anyway, here's the list: 1. Call in Sick Somehow, you always seem to have a massive hangover whenever ground attack missions come up in the morning, or are passed out drunk from the morning's close call when they come up in the afternoon. Manually advance time and see what the Mission Gods give you next. 2. Gaff it Off Take off, form up, and leave the airfield on the specified heading. But as soon as you're out of sight, head off in a different direction, get into a fight, and return to base for want of ammo or too much damage. 3. Choose an Impossible Mission Tell the briefing officer that this target is too easy and you want something for a truly zealous pilot. Keep hitting the Alternate Target button until you get one about 500 miles away, preferrably way north or south of your location so most of the flight is on your side of the lines. Then actually attempt to do it, content in the knowledge that the odds of you ever getting there are minute. You'll almost certainly get into a fight long before you get 1/2way there, after which you can return home with full honors. If you reach the front without a fight, patrol up and down it until you get into a fight or need to RTB for fuel. If you neither reach the target nor get in a fight, claim that the target was hidden under a cloud. 4. Let A Flight Have the Glory Hit the Alternate Target button until you get a target not too far away nor very far across the lines. Before takeoff, tell the ace leading A Flight that you'll be top cover for him. Take the minimum amount of fuel for the trip and no ordnance, then stay safely above the flak while A Flight eats the flak. 5. Stay High Similar to #4 but you make diving passes at the target, starting from about 5000 feet and pulling out as soon as you see tracers coming up, or at 2000 feet, whichever comes first. Divebomb if you have any, shoot if you feel like it, but don't do more than 3 or 4 passes, then run like Hell. 6. Actually Do the Mission See advice given above by others. Or fly a DH5.

Last chance; no more political comments, or this political commisar will close the thread! the shredder

Cool! Never knew that. What I did know was that the Brits had for centuries prior done this very thing to ensure they had enough oak trees to keep the Royal Navy afloat. This, however, had come to an end in the mid-1800s when they switched to iron hulls. So I suspect they just pulled the old documents out of the file and changed the types of tree they were interested in.

It's from a parody by The Corries. This is the only part I found funny. Even with my proximity, it's hard to get an accurate picture of what's going on because the media is utterly ignorant of the technical issues, is in the business of promoting disaster, . Still, I think I've got a reasonably accurate idea of the situation. Things don't seem to be nearly as bad as has been reported or as some fear, but OTOH they're not particularly good, either. This isn't like when a tanker hits the rocks just off the coast, where you instantly get beaches buried in thick goo. This is way out in the ocean so it's taken the better part of a month for anything to come ashore at all. Given the time and distance involved, natural and human forces have inflicted significant attrition on oil. Plus, not as much has been coming out as originally thought, and I believe that for the last couple of weeks, a fair amount has been being captured at the source by various means. Thus, what's now coming ashore is pretty much dribs and drabs which is being dealt with pretty much as it happens. OTOH, there's a month's worth of dribs and drabs out there already and more to follow until they finally stop the leak, so this effort will have to continue for a long time to come. And then there's the possibility that a hurricane could come along any day now and push everything ashore all at once, plus at least temporarily stop whatever on-site work is being done to stop the leak. From what I can tell, the current coastal impact is about like it was in WW2 when the U-boats were routinely sinking tankers in the Gulf. That doesn't seem to have done any long-term damage and there doesn't seem to have been any effort to clean that mess up, so at present I'm not too worried about the actual damages this leak is doing. What I am worried about is the political fallout, which can do nothing but hurt domestic oil production at a time when we most need it. And, of course, there's the possibility that this could go on and on for months to come. Despite going on for so long already, the spill is still literally just a drop in the ocean, but it IS adding up and hurricane season is upon us. On the plus side, however, while some previous attempts to capture the oil at the well have failed and the rest have been only partially successful, the effort has at least produced a better understanding of what's actually going on down there. This has shown that 1) the amount of oil coming out is about 1/2 what was originally thought, the rest being gas. And 2) the stuff is coming up inside the well pipe instead of around the outside of it, meaning that it SHOULD be possible to kill the thing from the top. In fact, BP is going to attempt that in the next day or 2. Keep your fingers crossed. Of course, they'll still have to kill it below ground with relief wells and that won't happen for a month or 2 yet, but a successful top kill will be a huge improvement over what's happening now. BTW, I hope you all are impressed with the technology on display here. All the ROVs and such doing complex tasks a mile underwater, the ability to drill 1 well into another from several miles away, etc. Not to mention even finding oil in water that deep. All this stuff is hugely expensive even when things are going correctly. Keep that in mind when you complain about the price of gas :).

Well, what are you complaining about? Doesn't your national anthem wish for that? Land o' the kilt an' sporrrran Underrrr them be nothin' worrrr--nnn Ach, I weesh tha wind was wahrrrm in Scotelan' tha Brrrahve! Ah a'mit it can get grrruesome Strrrollin' wi' a frrrozen twosome They'rre all we got, we da'enae lose 'em Scotelan' tha Brrrave! Over here, lately it's been mostly in the low 90^F range with humidity to match and just enough wind to make it feel like you're being panted on from head to toe, at close range, by all 3 heads of Cerberus. That's why we call this type of weather "dog's breath days": hot, damp, and redolent of whatever rotten carcass the dog's been gorging on. The mildew under the air conditioner condensation drains is in full bloom and if you wear glasses, they fog up instantly when you step outside. All in all, quite typical for this time of year in Lousy Anna's armpit.

An enhancement beyond my expectations (which are high, given what OBD has already done ). Bravo! I eagerly look forward to seeing more inconclusive fights

I drink to their shades.

The thing is, OFF combat is apparently rather more lethal than the real thing was. In real life, there was a lot of running away after failing to come to conclusive grips, or bugging out after taking a few hits. In OFF OTOH, most dogfights only end with the annihilation of 1 side or the other, several times a day, every day for as long as you live. It IS possible to tweak your pilot files to reflect the friendly losses you see happen during a fight. Just go into the OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\campaigns\CampaignData\Pilots folder and find the "PilotXDossier.txt" file for the pilot in question (X being the number of the pilot). Near the bottom of this file is a list of all your non-ace AI squad members, 1 guy per line. The last item in each pilot's line is his status. If you think somebody shouldn't be around anymore, you can change this from "In Service" to "Missing" or even "KIA". If you do "Missing", there's a SMALL chance he'll turn up alive in a few days, but mostly he'll end up being "KIA". I've experimented with this several times. Just be warned, however, that the applied loss rate GREATLY exceeds the replacement rate, so your squadron quickly dwindles to 3-4 guys, 2 of whom are always on leave. This isn't a lot of fun when it's just you and 1 wingman facing entire enemy squadrons. So, I think it's best to just take the results the game gives you, which are more realistic to the actual loss rates for your time and place, even if they don't match what you see happen.

Good to see you again, Lou. I'm in somewhat the same situation and I believe this is my 1st post in a long while, too.

I wasn't working on any plane. The Mudpond site where you download Air Wrench has this caveat splattered all over it concerning the demo. Until you buy the full version, the ONLY thing that it will save is contact points. So, I took the site at its word and haven't tried to do save anything. Once I get to the point of flighttesting, I'll buy the full version and see how it works. In the meantime, I find the demo quite useful for determing the best L/D gliding speeds for OFF planes :).

I used to date her