Bullethead

Welcome aboard. You have been ascimilated. And new guy buys the drinks . On delivery times for the OFF DVD, it depends. Avongate (the non-OBD-affiliated 3rd party shipper) seems somewhat irregular. Some get it quickly, some later. Avongate only promises like 14 business days, which means nearly 3 calendar weeks. To be fair, judging by what folks say and my own experience, Avongate usually beats its self-imposed deadline, but don't be surprised if they take nearly all of it, or even exceed it by a bit. Also, either Avongate or the actual carrier doesn't update the package tracking status very often. There are a number of threads here (most recently IIRC by Pink Panther) stating how their delivery was going to be late because according to the package tracker, it hadn't even left the warehouse yet. So things remainded for a while, and then one day the package arrived unexpectedly usually just shy of 14 business days. I think I got my own copy in 10 calendar days. But YMMV.

Pandorum isn't really a horror movie. Nothing like "Alien", for example. It's really an adventure story. Sure, certain aspects of the situation are horrorific, but that's necessary in any adventure. The movie is really a "hero's journey" type of story. I think this misrepresentation s what killed it at the box office. It was billed as horror, but it really wasn't, so those looking for a horror movie were disappointed and those who don't like horror didn't go see it. I assume you're talking about the recent version, not the original from the 1970s? I agree, the new one was pretty good, WAY better than the original.

I didn't see this one so I can't answer for it. However, if you like science fiction films and want a new one, then I highly recommend the recent "Pandorum" if you haven't already seen it. That movie didn't last long at the box office, but it was the best SF film, and one of the best of ANY type of film, that I've seen in years. It's a nice blend of a classic theme, intelligent modern variations on it, and a lot of action. That's probably why it seems to have bombed--while the action was up to par, the underlying theme was probably too high-brow for most folks. Without giving away anything important, "Pandorum" is Heinlein's classic "Universe" story (space colony ship gone horribly wrong) but updated to recent science and with some very twisted new flourishes. If that does't make you want to see it, nothing will.

He looks like that von Kronin guy from the "Hellboy" movie . Maybe he was a Schlasta pilot? I know those guys sometimes wore infantry stahlhelms instead of the usual aviator helmet.

D'oh! I'd forgotten about them. They were just adaptations of the voice pipes that had been used in ships and office buildings for some time already. It's my understanding that guys didn't wear these things on their heads continually, however. First, they were in the way even of the pilot, and second, using them required exposing sensitive flesh to the cold wind. So to get the other guy to put his on when you wanted to say something to him, you had to get his attention somehow. I believe in some planes they had sets of button-activated lights and/or buzzers in the cockpits to be the voice pipe's "ring tone", but I get the impression these didn't work very well. Thus, nudges and gestures seem to have been the norm. But this required the 2 cockpits to be adjacent, and it was one of the criticisms of the DH4 that they weren't. But I could be wrong.

Try running in a Fee. In that bird, there's absolutely no point so it's just a matter of forming square, fixing bayonets, and meeting the charge . Apart from that, running away is ALWAYS a valid tactic. Survival is what it's all about, and anything you can do to shift the odds in your favor helps. You might get close to friendly planes or ground fire. You might get on your side of the lines. You might even get away clean. But let's assume you're a true fighter pile-it and actually want to fight, but just don't like it that the enemy has way more energy than you do. Suppose you're in some slow rotary kite like a Dr.I and fear nothing in a turnfight, but the enemy has those peskey, fast E-fighters and a significant altitude advantage on you. Unless you can make them blow the E advantage, they'll just dance on your head all day. So what you do is dive away GENTLY. Not steeply, but at a shallow angle. You KNOW they'll catch you eventually, but you want them to because then you can kill them. The shallow angle prevents them from building up too much speed in their pursuit dive, so they're losing E by losing altitude without turning it into speed. Thus, by the time they catch you, they're essentially co-E with you. And as you know, in a co-E situation, the stallfighter almost always wins. Plus, maybe by this point they'll be too low to escape you by diving away themselves, so you can kill them at leisure. Said the spider the to the fly.

Amazing model, Olham. Thanks for the link. Too bad I already burned all my models last week....

French squadrons had a number like RAF squadrons, but also had a prefix for the manufacturer of the airplane they had at any given time. The prefix might change but the number stayed the same. N65 and Spa65 were the same squadron, Escadrille No. 65. At one point in time, it was equipped with Nieuports, so it was called N65. Then it re-equipped with SPADs so became Spa65, but it was still the same squadron, and was still part of the same Groupe de Combat 13. The change apparently happened between June and July 1917 (according to French Aircraft of the First World War). V106 and V116 were bomber squadrons equipped with Voisin pushers of various types. This must have been very early in his career. There being no Voisins in the game (and few French 2-seaters of any sort), it's no wonder you can't find these squadrons in OFF. I don't have any details, but it appears to me that Nungesser eventually became something of a supernumerary and test pilot instead of a regular squadron pilot. This seems to be connected with the politics of the French aviation industry in the latter 1/2 of the war, when both Nieuport and Morane-Saulnier were trying to regain a slice of the fighter market then being monopolized by SPAD. Nungesser seems to have preferred their rotary planes to the the inline SPADs, and both companies built him special 1-off machines that he apparently at least tested, if didn't use in combat. But most of them ended up with his personal logo on the side. In any case, Nungesser seems to have had a lot more freedom of choice than the typical French pilot as to what he flew. I get the impression that he did a lot of lone-wolf stuff. He also spent quite a lot of time in the hospital, you know, which no doubt accounts for long gaps in his service record.

I suspect you're right. However, some engines were total junk mechanically, too, or required a lot more still to operate than others. The engine of the DH9 had both problems. Several key parts of it liked to break on a regular basis (connecting rods, oil pumps, etc.) and it would overheat easily if you weren't very careful with the radiator shutters. Luckily for the DH9 crews, most problems occurred during the long, high-power climb to high altitude, mostly done over friendly territory. Once they throttled back to cruise over enemy territory, far fewer engines failed, and most such failures happened still within gliding distance of the lines. But a 40% rate of early returns seems to have been their usual fare.

Thanks! As it happens, the only reason I and several other are here at all is because somebody posted about OFF in the Jutland forum when BHaH was released. Until then, I'd never heard of it at all, and had no idea you all had been working on it for years before I got to this forum. So yeah, one of the biggest problems us indies have is getting the word out. Thanks for letting me say a few words about my stuff. Still, I'll try hard not to overstep my bounds on it . I hope you enjoy it and no offense if you don't. We're fully aware that our stuff doesn't appeal to everybody. It seems to me that there are 2 main types of tactical wargamers, based on their personal tastes. I call these types commanders and killers. Commanders enjoy maneuvering many units around and mastering the skills to win fairly large battles that way (in terms of the number of units, whatever their scale is). Many of them seem to have grown up playing with miniatures and board games. Most of them are only interested in land warfare but some like naval games. On the computer, they prefer things like Combat Mission and fleet battle sims like mine or the Age of Sail games. Killers, OTOH, like to control just their own unit with maybe some influence over a small number of helpers, and want to win a series of individual contests. Such folks are drawn to flight sims and land shooters. If they get into naval games at all, it's usually something similarly focused on their own unit, such as a submarine sim like Silent Hunter. Killers seem to be the majority of the gamer population. Commanders and killers aren't exclusive groups; many folks do some of each. Like me, for instance. But it seems to me that there are more commanders dabbling at killing than there are killers dabbling at commanding. Well, Tirpitz had a most admirable beard, but most other German admirals were satisfied with a moustache or goatee, or nothing at all .

Merci beaucoup. Moi je parle un peu francaise d'Acadie.

I haven't yet had an engine just quit on me, but about 1 out of every 4-5 hops, sometimes more, sometimes less, my engine loses a noticeable amount of power but keeps running with no damaged sounds. It just sounds like a lower throttle setting and the plane has much less macho. I bring up the HUD text and sure enough, I'm at 100% throttle. I work the throttle back and forth a few times, and still I can't get what I consider full power for that altitude and weight. It's never until just now occurred to me to check my tachometer to see if I'm losing revs (I NEVER look at my instruments), but I must be because of how the plane's flying. I've always thought this a cool, yet frustrating feature. If it's something wrong on my end and not a game feature, I don't care, because I'm continually reading about how many sorties (on the order of 25% at least, way more in some really unreliable cases like for DH9s) were aborted due to dud engines.

Thanks for the endorsment. I do enjoy playing them, it's just that I usually don't want to after having spent all day toiling on some part of one of them. But if I didn't think they were good, I wouldn't make them. I would like to clarify something, though. I wouldn't call our products "strategy games" because that usually implies managing the economy, building and upgrading units, etc. In our campaigns, you don't do any of that. You're Jellicoe or Scheer, Togo or any of the various Russian Admirals who opposed him. You take what your government gives you and do the best you can with it. I guess you could therefore call the big-picture stuff more operational than strategic in scope. The primary emphasis, however, is tactical, commanding your fleets in the battles that happen due to your decsioins at the operational level. In battles, you take on roles from overall admiral down to the captain of an individual toropedoboat, whatever you think is most appropriate at the moment. But I don't want to be rude. This ain't my forum and I only mentioned this because OVS asked. If anybody would like to discuss my stuff, please do so in our forums at http://forums.gamesquad.com/forumdisplay.php?245-Distant-Guns!-Jutland or http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=237, or PM me. In here, let's try to keep things centered on OFF

http://www.stormeaglestudios.com

It's been a while since I did my 1st D.VII skin... I remeber this same thing gave me fits for a while, too. IIRC, the spot you're looking for is on the side of the picture of the engine, as shown in the attached pic. If it's not there, it's the small square area between the halves of the lower wing under surface. But I'm pretty sure it's on the engine. I seem to recall looking at other OBD skins with various nose colors and noticing that they had the nose color on the side of the engine. Looks good. Show some more of it.

This sounds very interesting, but I wouldn't want to put you to the trouble unless you really wanted to do it. If you do scan them all, I recommend uploading them to the download area of this forum.

In the captions of other photos, I've seen them called holders for signal flare cartridges. Seeing the number of such loops on most planes, I'm often miffed that OFF only lets me carry 1-3 flares. I STILL am intent on burning down the squadron office with a flare, and I need a lot of them for practice shots

Hehehe, I hear ya, bro . When I tell people I make games for a living, they think all I do is play them. WRONG! That's what my testers do. I just build stuff and make sure it works OK, which takes all my time. Then I wade through tester reports to see how it plays in the real game context. By the time I'm done with that, I'm totally burnt out on the subject so the last thing I want to do is play my game for fun, no matter how attractive the subject matter. Thus, I play your game and work on mine.

That's why I called it a "hookah" . But seriously, that's an O2 pipe. The photo I can't find shows the guy all wrapped up. He looks like a mummy wearing the typical WW1 German observer's helmet and goggles, plus with a hookah tube stuck in between the layers of wrapping over his face. I figure that they didn't wrap their faces up until they got up high enough (or it was cold enough at low level) to be worth the bother. I think that's the same sort of hookah tube. AFAIK, that was the only type of O2 system used in WW1. AFAIK, the type of mask used in WW2 and ever since was invented to allow people to talk and suck O2 at the same time. It's hard to talk while "smoking a hookah", but in WW1 planes had neither vox radios nor intercomms, so that wasn't a real problem.

The center section of my upper wing has a Jack Daniel's logo on it Topic save....... This pic shows the parts of a German WW1 "face mask", but it's not all in position. Instead of WW2-style oxygen mask, they had a thing like hookah. Then they wrapped their heavy scarves around that, with the hookah stem going in between 2 wraps. IOW, 1 wrap around the neck, then 2nd wrap up to the mouth, then the 3rd wrap from there up to the eyes, covering the nose and overlapping the 2nd wrap a bit. This guy, however, has his excess scarf tied behind his head, no doubt because he's on the ground demonstrating the oxygen hookah, not demonstrating how to tie his scarf. I've seen another pic of a guy with the scarf in place as described above, but I can't find it now.

Looks nice! I've been stewing over struts on my MS AI. My my Bristol, I just extruded them from the fuselage and that was OK because they didn't connnect the fuselage to any other parts. But on biplanes and the MS AI, the struts connect wing and fuselage. So what's the best approach? See, the wing and fuselage have to be separate objects and named as such. Thus, if the strut is part of fuselage and you actually connect it to the wing, the whole plane becomes 1 object. So it seems the struts have to be separate objects. But how do you manage the joints? I've heard that overlapping polys is a bad thing, but I also don't want to leave any gaps between parts. On top of that, what about damage? At least some of the struts have to go away when parts of the wings are shot off. Do you just arbitrarily make some struts part of 1 wing, some part of anyother, and some part of the fuselage? Or will the parts hierarchy take care of them as separate objects with non-CFS3 names? By that I mean, is the following OK or not? L_Wing + L_Interplanestrut_Inner_Forward + L_Interplanestrut_Inner_Aft + L_Wingtip ++ L_Interplanestrut_Outer_Forward ++ L_Interplanestrut_Outer_Aft ++ L_Aileron As to bracing wires, that's also something I'm quite curious about. Do you make a 3-sided cylinder or should you use a 2-sided poly with partially transparent textures. Also, is it OK to stick the ends of the wires into the wings and struts, or do you need to stop them just an RCH short. And, of course, how to they fit into the parts hierarchy?

Very nice

Don't forget HMS Argus: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/uk/uksh-a/argus11.htm When the war ended, the Brits were actually in the final stages of preparing a "Pearl Harbor" type attack on the German Fleet in Wilhemshaven. Argus would have played a key role, using the new Sopwith T.1 Cuckoo torpedoplanes. They were also going to use Shorts from the seaplane carriers, plus fighter escorts, IIRC. By 1918, nearly every Brit battleship and battlecruiser carried aircraft atop 2 of their turrets. Each ship carried 1 Strutter for recon and 1 Camel for air defense (as in shooting down Zeppelins). Quite a few light cruisers also got aircraft platforms over the forward gun in 1918, too, mostly Pups. A Pup launched by HMS Yarmouth shot down Zeppelin L.23 on 17 Aug 18. On 11 Aug 18, a Camel flown off a barge towed by the destroyer Redoubt shot down Zeppelin L.53. Depending on where they launched, these planes would either fly to land or ditch. IIRC, most of these planes were modified with flotation bags inside the fuselage, so they could be hoisted back aboard, dried out, and reused. To make ditching easier, they could jettison their landing gear. I have to disagree with you on this one. All navies in WW1 had seaplane carriers and the RN especially made extensive use of them. The 1st carrier air raid in history was actually done in 1914 by the Japanese during the siege of Tsingtao. The British weren't far behind with a number of raids on German Zeppelin sheds, including one on Christmas Day 1914. Plus, they used seaplanes a lot to spot for shore bombardments, such as at Zeebrugge and Gallipoli. Also, during the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916, the British seaplane tender Engadine successfully launched and recovered a seaplane, which spotted some of the German fleet before having to abort due to mechanical problems. This was the 1st aerial recon mission during a naval battle. The pilot who did it, a certain Rutland, called himself "Rutland of Jutland" ever after.

Bravo! Needless to say, I saved them all. Thanks muchos.

And I thought that was just a fashion of Gen-X women