Bullethead

Ignore the smell of my burnt hairs, And never mind the empty chairs; For none of us are paid to think, But by the Gods we've time to drink! So drink now deeply to our bards, Who never more need prove their nards; Reciting to this jaded lot Is worth a gong, or I'm a sot!

<BR><BR>No kidding! Sadly, all my family's WW1 relics burned up with the houses of both my sets of grandparents before I was born. From what my parents told me, it was some pretty cool loot... <IMG src="http://forum.combatace.com/public/style_emoticons/default/this.gif"> . <BR><BR>So I agree. Siggi, have some sympathy for us po' folks and upload your stash.

It depends on the date of the photo. I can no longer find the link to it, but I once found a page with 5 or 6 recon pics of Fort Douaumont taken at different times during the battle. Early on, as you say, the ditch was visible as an irregular but fairly large line across the crater field. But in the later stages of the battle, practically no trace of the fort was noticeable. The masonry ditch wall had been pulverised, the ditch had been filled with dirt from the collapsing walls and blown in by shell bursts, and all the upper works were totally smashed. If you looked closely at the later photos, you could see a few small, angular bits here and there amongst the craters, but that was it. If the caption hadn't said it was Fort Douaumont, I'd have thought it was just some other section of trench anywhere along the front. Today, of course, the fort's outline is noticeable again, due to the lawnmowers of the war memorial staff. But they have also dug down to expose parts of the previously underground citadel, which wasn't visible even when the fort was brand new.

It depends on what you consider to be the most fun. There are times and places that are pretty easy, others that are quite difficult, and some with little action at all. This is due to a variety of factors, such as the relative performance of the opposing planes, the numerical odds, the overall level of air activity, and how well your chosen plane flies. All of these combine to provide a variety of levels of challenge. And of course every time you change planes, you have to learn all its tricks and limits, which for a while increases the difficulty you face. In general, the number of planes you're likely to meet per mission increases significantly the later in time you are, as does the amount of AA fire. There are almost always more squadrons on both sides flying over the area of the current land battles than elsewhere along the front. Still, there are usually more Entente squadrons around than German, except when the German army is on the offensive, but even there the numberical odds are close to even. The advantage in fighter performance swings back and forth several times, but by the end of 1917 this is largely irrelevant because the later German planes aren't THAT much better than their opposition and the Entente by then often enjoys overwhelming numbers. I personally like to fly for the King in Bloody April and for the Kaiser in late 1918. Both are rather intense, especially the latter. Bravo!

I've never see them in the game, but I've never looked because I never thought I'd be able to spot them even if they are there. They never had much visible above ground to being with, mostly just a ditch and a couple of pillboxes, hard to see. Then, from contemporary recon photos, the monumental shelling seems to have pretty much erased those traces in short order. Now that's just the ones that were in the front line, like Douaumont and Vaux. Those on other sides of the town came through pretty much OK. You can still see them fairly well in Google Earth, but only traces remain of the main ones in the fighting. Here's my KMZ file of the Verdun forts, if you're interested.

AFAIK, you give orders to all your wingmen collectively. I'm unaware of a way to select 1 of them, give him a target, select the next one, give him a different target. So, to the best of my knowledge, when you give your wingmen the order to attack, they're initially focused on the same target. However, they make their own decisions during the fight based on the tactical circumstances and usually end up after different badguys (as long as there's a choice available). They also pick new targets for themselves after their original target is dead, which is fortunate because otherwise you'd have to keep 1 eye on them and give them new targets in the middle of your own fight. One thing I've noticed is that if I give the attack order only once, some of my wingmen will stay with me. Like if I have 3 wingmen, only 2 will attack. The other(s) stay(s) to watch my back unless I give the attack order repeatedly.

IIRC, the initial synchronization/interrupting experiments were done with Lewis guns and they actually had a system that worked for it. But it was such a bother they decided it wasn't worth the trouble and concentrated on the Vickers instead. At the same time, some crazy RNAS guys were shooting unmodified Lewis guns through the airscrew without even deflector plates. They apparently didn't get enough shots off to make this very dangerous, and supposedly just patched the odd hole in the prop with wooden plugs and glue. In OFF, the BE2 has a Lewis firing through the prop. I've always wondered if this could hit the prop or not.

I'm no expert, but I've always been under the impression that when the Entente finally figured out how to shoot through the airscrew, their initial attempts weren't as good as the Germans'. Hence, the ROF of the early 1-gun fighters like Pups, Tripes, and N17s was notoriously low. However, by the time they were making 2-gun fighers, their gizmos were as good or better than the Germans'. I also think the 1-gun N23 had the later gizmo, which is the reason its gun was off-center, as noted in the "Name the Nupe" thread the other day. But I could just be drunk.

I was chatting on ICQ with a guy in New Zealand hoping to get the scoop on the eagerly anticipated end of civilization. However, as I fully expected but still find sad to relate, civilization survived without even a little fuss . My favorite memory from back then: "Hey BH, aren't you stockpiling food for Y2K?" "No, I'm stockpiling ammo and making a list of folks who're stockpiling food." The good news is, enough folks are now worried about Y12 (with, sadly, even less justification) that I get to say the same thing again to a new crowd, and it still gets the same reaction from them . Thank YOU for putting up with my spew.

No, I haven't. But wind is part of life, even on measured test flights, especially if there's a war on and time is short. So the best you can hope for is relavtively calm conditions. But here's the deal. If wind makes that much difference even on calm, sunny days, than IMHO there's a serious problem with the wind.

Pubs rule almost as much as Pups. I say "almost" because I've never been in a fight in a pub where MGs were the weapon of choice, and in fact you'd lose street cred (and face very bloody retribution) if you used anything more than what Uncaring Bog gave you. But pints all around afterwards even if you're missing a few teeth . I sure enjoy touring the UK

I see in the "Known Issues" sticky that this has already been fixed in 1.47. Just waiting for the word to DL it.

You have the same speed stats I do, but here's the problem: the DH5 can't get anywhere near 10,000 feet to see how fast it goes there. It can't even get to 7000 feet. Now granted, in QC, you can start a flight at various altitudes, but if you start the DH5 on the ground, it won't climb to 10,000 feet, even on a calm, sunny day when there are no gusts knocking it down all the time. The books I have say things like this for real climb performance: 6000 feet in 6.55 minutes 10000 feet in 12.25 minutes 15000 feet in 27.30 minutes ceiling 16000 feet However, I find that the DH5's ceiling is about 6700 feet, reached in 10-15 minutes, depending on how gusty it is. So I'd say there's a big problem here. In the time it takes the OFF DH5 to reach 6700 feet, the real DH5 would be about twice as high with the ability to keep on going. I also have trouble believing the DH5 was SO slow below 10000 feet, which is where it was reportedly at its best. I haven't been able to get it above about 80 knots, and that with doing low yoyos. Trimmed for level flight (difficult to judge due to its extreme gust sensitivity), it seems to average about 70 knots, which is a bit slower than the Fee. And it can't turn anywhere near as well, nor for as long, as a Fee. I'm not expecting the DH5 to be a great plane. Everybody knows it sucked. But as I said above, I think its suckage has to be taken in the context of its times and the contemporary expectations of its pilots. And right now, or so it seems to me, the DH5 sucks rather worse than it should. Remember, I'm a Fee driver, and the Fee is by far a better plane in OFF right now than the DH5. But the paper stats I have say it should be otherwise.

Thanks for your efforts, but bad news indeed. The DH2 used to run and climb about like my books say, which is way better than what the DH5 does today. So if the DH2 is now slower than the DH5, it really took a hit in HitR. I can't see how it can get off the ground at all. In my experience, the DH5 only does about 70 knots on the level at low altitude, instead of nearly 100 like the books say. It has a sustained ROC of about 400fpm for the 1st couple thousand feet, but then it disappears quite rapidly. The other day I tried as hard as I could, but I couldn't get over 6700 feet at all, and it took me 15 minutes to just to get there. On a calm, sunny day, I might add. As opposed to what the books say, which is a ceiling of about 16000 feet reached in about 30 minutes.

And pheasants out the yin-yang. Just drive I-90 in March and you won't have to go to the grocery store the rest of the year

Hey, I recognize that 1st pic. That's where Steve Buscemi buried the money in "Fargo". I hear several folks have actualy frozen to death looking for it, in the belief that the story was true as it says at the start of the movie .

If you have a chance, could you please do some QC freeflight test hops in both planes using the HUD instruments? That way, you could really see which was faster and climbed better, and by how much. And also how much the DH2 has changed since HitR. Hehehe, I can see that happening. The DH5 is like a pusher with a tractor engine, as far as the views go.

Pretty Pup. RNAS I suppose? It looks like the one Cmdr. Dunning flew when landing 1 too many times aboard the forecastle deck of Furious. How much damage did you take in this scrap? I'm guessing none. Pups rule

Whachutalkinbout Willis? I fly the Fee in Bloody April because the light, 1-gun Entente scouts own the Albatros so aren't much of a challenge. Hell, even the Fee can smoke most Albatros drivers if you know how to fly it. The whole key to these planes is that you have to get VERY close so you can put all of your very few bullets right into the vitals. You can't stand back at 200-300m and saw off wings like the Germans can. That said, I find it MUCH more challenging to fly for the Kaiser in mid-late 1918. Sure, you've got the best plane of the war, but you're SO out-numbered and usually meet a mix of Entente planes with different characteristics, so you can't employ a single set of tactics very long even in the same fight.

It's not a lot of fun, I agree, except for the morbid fascination of being able to escape unscathed from nasty crashes that would certainly kill you in any other plane. But I'm thinking the OFF DH5 is far worse than it really was. Sure, we all know the DH5 was a disappointment in real life, but I think that has to be taken in the context of the times. It wasn't a big enough improvement on what it was intended to replace, especially when compared to the other new fighters of its day. The thing is, though, the DH5 SHOULD be better than the DH2. Not much, but some. They had the same power, same weight, and same wing area, but the DH5 had far less drag. Thus, the DH5 should be a bit faster on the level and climb a bit better than the DH2. And this is exactly what my books say. As for their relative maneuverability, I find nothing in books so I have to make inferrences. I would expect their sustained turn rates and turn radii to be nearly identical, given they have the same wingloading, but the DH5 should be able to sustain hard turns longer without as much altitude or speed loss, due to its lower drag. The DH5 would probably have a higher roll rate, due to bigger ailerons, but the DH2 would probably have faster pitch and yaw rates due to its lower moment of inertia in those axes. So at the bottom line, the DH5 in real life seems to have been a minor improvement on the DH2. But that just wasn't good enough to cut it in mid-1917. Plus, it looked strange and got a reputation (rightly or wrongly) for killer spins, but the DH2 had that itself. Thus, nobody liked it. I haven't flown the DH2 since HitR came out, so I can't say whether it's taken a huge performance hit from the excessive fuel load, nor how gusts affect it. It used to be a pretty nice little plane, though (except for the unrecoverable spins), so if it's now worse than the DH5, HitR must have REALLY pounded it. But there's precious little room between the DH5's performance and not getting off the ground at all, so I can't see that happening. Has anybody flown the DH2 since HitR came out? How does it compare to the DH5 these days? OFF isn't working for me right now so I can't go look myself.

The DH5 is the most weather-dependent plane I've encountered yet. On the plus side, however, this does show how OBD made the new HitR wind gusts vary with the general weather conditions . On sunny, calm days, the DH5 is fairly well-behaved and almost enjoyable to fly around sight-seeing. It holds still enough that aiming the guns is no more difficult than in the "non-twitchy" planes. But the machine is so pathetically slow and lacking in maneuverability that you're not likely to get many firing opportunities. When the sky is cloudy, however, turbulence increases and the DH5's bad habits come out. The worse the weather, the stronger and more frequent are the gusts, as you'd expect. Moderately crappy days (as in overcast with big but widely spaced low clouds and no precipitation) appear to have very frequent light-medium gusts with periodic strong ones. When the weather is worse than this, you get very frequent strong gusts. All very nice from the POV of meteorological realism. Problem is, the DH5 doesn't like gusts at all. It gets tossed around bigtime, like a leaf in a storm. In the frequent light-medium gusts, the DH5 wobbles all over the sky, pitching and rolling about 10-30^ in all directions pretty much nonstop. This makes it practically impossible to aim at anything and you'll often get knocked into a spin while turning. However, you can still manage to head in the general direction you want to go, perhaps even climb a little, and (if you're lucky to catch a lull in the gusts during final approach) even land safely. Strong gusts knock the DH5 about 45^ off-line, often in more than 1 direction at once. While this can happen in any direction (or combination of directions), the most common outcome is a hard left roll combined with sharp nose-down pitch. The sudden drop of the nose is enough to make the engine sputter from lack of fuel, thereby delaying recovery and resulting in the loss of several dozen feet of altitude. If such gusts only happen periodically, as on moderately crappy days, then you can deal with it, although it pretty much cancels out your ability to climb. But on very crappy days, such gusts happen every few seconds and, more often than not, cause the nose-down and loss of power. On such days, the DH5 is literally unflyable in level flight, let alone trying to fight. The nose-down gusts are so frequent that the next one hits before you've regained all the altitude from last time, so your net progress is always downwards. If you're trying to fight, you reach the ground very, very quickly. So on such days, you should just abort the mission and land immediately, if you can . I'm really at a loss to explain the DH5's pathetic flight performance in OFF. I mean, compare it to the DH2. Their gross weights were practically identical and they had the same motor. Their wings were the same size and shape, the only differences being the back-stagger and the bigger ailerons on the DH5. So all that's a wash and the DH5 was MUCH more streamlined. So you'd think the DH5 would have somewhat better performance than the DH2. But instead it's slower than a Fee. I'm beginning to think the DH5 has some SEVERE excess drag in its flight model that it really shouldn't have. In OFF, it can't come close to reaching the speeds and altitudes my books say it could and it stops SO quickly when you put it on the ground. It's like it's dragging an open parachute along behind it. And such and invisible "drogue chute" would certainly explain why the DH5 is so badly affected by gusts.

Or the front gunner in this case. Anyway, the bottom line is that the Fee, lacking a gun for the pilot, is incapable of strafing or balloon-busting unless you get in the front seat yourself. Targetting ground objects won't make the gunner fire at them, and balloons seem to be a type of ground object. I don't recommend shooting yourself, however, because handing over to the AI pilot at low altitude often ends tragically (in the case of strafing) or makes you fly away from the balloon back to where you're supposed to be (if the balloon is a target of opportunity). So basically, the only way to attack ground targets with the Fee is to bomb them. But you shouldn't be bombing things because the Fee is a fighter

You've caught onto the game already. Good for you. He who dies with the biggest bar tab wins

Welcome aboard, Luther. New guy buys the drinks

The main damage change I'd like to see is in regards to bulletholes. I'm talking just the little round holes, not crumpled wingtips and such. It seems like only about 1/2 of the planes if OFF get bulletholes at all, and only about 1/2 of them get them all over. The rest just show holes in a few areas, like the tail, but not the wings, etc.