Bullethead

It might be that this isn't so much an AI issue as it is the result of you being stuck with 100% fuel. After all, you have zero time to burn any of that off in the QC furball missions you were flying here.

I, too, like some of the stuff I've seen with the new AI, such as: The AI not diving vertically from 15,000' feet to engage something much lower, regardless of its mission (such as escorting high-altitude bombers), the threat of groundfire, the presence of other enemies about at higher altitude, or the weak wings of its airplane. The AI staying high and dancing on your head. The AI seemingly having more of a survival instinct than before. However, there are things I don't like. Most of this is those times when even good AI pilots seem oblivious, or at least largely unconcerned, with your attacks. I assume this is the "broken" part you all are working on.

I don't fight outside the campaign. The real guys didn't get such practice, so I eschew it myself. Thus, my perspective is limited to what the AI is doing in the campaign. I have heard it said that the AI is now acting differently in QC and missions than it does in the campaign, although I can't vouch for this. I don't find it surprising, however, given that the campaign setting gives the AI so many more things to take into consideration. You'd think this would have a big effect on its decision-making processes.

It seems to me that the AI's priorities have been changed. Before, the AI didn't much care about its altitude or the consequences of running out of it. Thus, it maneuvered aggressively, you had to do the same to compete, and fights got low rather quickly. Problem was, the AI would stay aggressive down low, but because it no longer had altitude to burn, it would often get into the "porpoising" routine. Now it seems that the AI is very afraid of losing altitude, to the point that it no longer turns hard. This is how the AI can now stay up high when it's just fighting itself. When it does come down to fight you on the deck, it does so in a shallow dive (often requiring a fairly wide spiral) instead of its nearly vertical dives of before (which I suppose in an improvement for AI Albatri). And when it gets to low level, it appears just as unwilling to turn aggressively as it is at high level. The result is that I haven't yet seen it get into the "porpoise of death" thing. But I'm not thrilled by how this was achieved. I appreciate OBD's attempts to improve the AI in certain areas we've complained about in the past. But I think they somewhat overshot the mark on this go-round. While having the AI more altitude-conscious is good, right now the player can fly rings around it far too easily. But I'm sure they'll tweak it back some in the near future.

The only problem I've had with a US squadron is that when you go to pick a squadron to fly in, the list of squadrons includes the "49th Aero". However, when you select it, the squadron logo graphic says "29th Aero". Which is it really?

This guy isn't dead. He's pretty much a paraplegic from repeated massive trauma, but he doesn't notice because he's in a straitjacket most of the time anyway. I retired him long ago because he was so messed up, so I can only post his logbook. Still, he put up a good fight and lasted longer than most of my Fee pilots, so I saved his stuff for my hall of shame. 15/4/1917, 0823. Flanders, Clairmarais. Airfield Attack. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Injured & Hospitalised. Claims Submitted! Flying time 29 mins. 28/4/1917, 1240. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Behind Friendly Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Injured & Hospitalised. Flying time 28 mins. 19/5/1917, 1636. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Behind Enemy Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Claims accepted: 1. Aircraft destroyed. Flying time 66 mins. 19/5/1917, 1636. Confirmation Received of Claim submitted on: 15/;4/;1917, 0823. Flanders, Clairmarais. Airfield Attack. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. On this day claims: 1 AlbDII. Flying aircraft S6338. Major Barry Dillingham wingman. While en route to attack airfield at Coolkerke, intercepted on our side of lines at about 6500 feet by 6 to 8 Albatros D.II that dove on us from high above. Fight swirled down to ground level. Got on tail of one Albatros D.II with yellow fuselage and green/violet upper wing. Observer hit E/A with 4 long bursts and it caught fire at about 500 feet and was seen to crash in flames about 5 miles this side of lines and 2 miles south of coast. E/A believed to be from Jasta 2. Witnessed by Lt. Harlowe Emerson, Capt. Trent Byington, T. Larry Theobald, and Maj. Barry Dillingham. Witnessed by: Barry Dillingham Status : Confirmed. 20/5/1917, 0822. Flanders, Clairmarais. Ground Forces Attack. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Injured & Hospitalised. Flying time 37 mins. 5/6/1917, 1231. Flanders, Clairmarais. Balloon Defense. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Claims Submitted! Flying time 26 mins. 5/6/1917 1620. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Enemy Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Injured & Hospitalised. Flying time 20 mins. 29/6/1917 0804. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Behind Enemy Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Claims accepted: 1. Injured & Hospitalised. Claims Submitted! Flying time 63 mins. 29/6/1917, 0804. Confirmation Received of Claim submitted on: 5/6/1917, 1231. Flanders, Clairmarais. Balloon Defense. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. On this day claims: 1 Alb DIII . Aircraft 6332. Led 2nd flight of myself, Maj. Billingham, Lt. Emerson, Cpt. Byington. Balloon defence at Armentiers. En route, 1st flight was jumped by 5-6 Albatros D.III while well ahead of and slightly higher than 2nd Flight. By the time we'd closed in, the fight was in the treetops so dove on enemy. Observed 1 E/A shot down by Archie SW of Abeele aerodrome. Engaged 1 E/A in turning fight at approximately 1000 feet SW of Abeele and stayed on his tail down to ground level. Observer hit him with 4-5 bursts and E/A was seen to go down out of control and crash about 2 miles SW of Abeele aerodrome. E/A had natural wood fuselage, white nose, camoufllaged upper surfaces, and horizontal tail with fore-and-aft black and yellow stripes. From the wreckage, it was learned that this E/A was from Jasta 6. Witnessed by: Barry Dillingham. Status: Confirmed. 22/7/1917, 1242. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Behind Friendly Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Flying time 41 mins. 22/7/1917, 1646. Flanders, Clairmarais. Close Air Support. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Flying time 51 mins. 23/7/1917, 0703. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Enemy Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. Claims accepted: 1. Aircraft destroyed. Claims Submitted! Flying time 41 mins. 23/7/1917, 0703. Confirmation Received of Claim submitted on: 29/6/1917, 0804. Flanders, Clairmarais. Patrol Behind Enemy Front Lines. Flying: RAF F.E.2.b. On this day claims: 1 Alb DIII . Aircraft 6332. Deep offensive patrol E of Douai, led 2nd flight of myself, Cpt. Byington, Lt. Emerson. Over Lines at approx. 8000 feet, attacked by approximately 3 Albatros D.III, so went into defensive circle and they gave up on us and left. By now down to 5000'. Spotted 5 DWF C.V at treetop level just our side of Lines E of Armentiers, and attacked. Observer got many hits on trailing E/A but we were driven off by fire of rear gunners with serious damage to left wingtips. Turned for home over German trenches but then spotted lone Albatros D.III just the other side of Lines heading north at 1000'. Followed north with my flight on our side, and we eventually converged where our advance has moved Lines E of old trenches. Engaged E/A in turning fight and observer hit him with many bursts. Rest of flight caught up and also enaged this E/A. After my observer's last burn, E/A seen to go down out of control and crash in old trenches behind our Lines just ENE of Armentieres. E/A had unpainted wood fuselage, camouflaged upper wings, white nose. Returned to base but crashed on landing due to damage. Witnessed by: Trent Byington. Status: Confirmed.

2-seaters in OFF have always just sat there and taken it. They have never taken any evasive action in my experience going back way before the Superpatch, let alone HitR. In several mods for RB2/3D, they had it so that the lead 2-seater would fly straight but the others in the formation would weave side-to-side a lot, thus always keeping at least some of their guns on you, plus being harder to hit due to their movement. From what I can tell, that was a pretty realistic depiction, plus was a highly effective tactic. But it only works for 2-seaters with conventional rear guns. In real life, Fees, which lacked conventional rear guns, would do Lufbery circles, so each could cover the other's tail. This was quite effective for them in real life, but in OFF they just fly straight on and, with their engine so easy to hit from behind, go down in flames in droves. Then there's the Quirk, which lacks any rear gun at all in OFF. Having this (and the Fee) just fly along straight-and-level is the same as the Huns offering an enlistment bounty to all pilots who join up between late-1916 and mid-1917. Just sign here and you're guaranteed 2 Iron Crosses before the month is out! As I understand things, most Quirks had a rear gun, although with a limited field of fire like the Fee due to the gunner being in the front seat. The only time they didn't have a rear gun was when they were carrying bombs instead of an observer. But even in these cases, they didn't press on, they ran for home at the 1st sight of the enemy.

I've noticed that the new Nupes in HitR spawn, their control surfaces are badly out of agreement with the position of your joystick. That is, these planes always spawn with full down elevator and full left aileron (and the 3D joystick in the virtual cockpit is wedged in the forward left corner of the cockpit), even if your real-world joystick is in the center. The rudder doesn't have this problem. Fortunately, this condition is easy to fix. As soon as you wiggle your real-world joystick even a little, the plane's control surfaces instantly snap into agreement with it. So before taking off, add a little immersion to your day by checking the movement of all your controls prior to starting your takeoff roll. Failure to wiggle your joystick prior to takeoff WILL kill you. Instead of the tail coming up level as you accelerate, you do a forward somersault that by the time you notice it happening, it's too late to stop it. This ended my 1st attempt to fly the N28. So, taking off from the ground is easily dealt with. However, should you choose to start in the air, you can't avoid the effects of the full-down/full-left controls when you spawn. You'll find yourself doing an outside barrel roll on the verge of redding out as soon as the screen clears and you find yourself in the cockpit. Again, moving the joystick at all quickly solves the problem, and so far I haven't completely redded out or broken the plane spawning in the air. Also, I now expect this so I react to it quicker. Anyway, you have been warned. Wiggle your controls before taking off and you'll be fine.

I spent about 1/2 hour taxiing all over a field and stopping at every hangar for several minutes each, hitting all keys I could think of, and nada. Never got any more bullets. So those of you have had had this happen, where specifically were you, and all the other details, please? Also, what commands are you doing with CTRL-C and CTRL-J? I changed all my key assignments so don't know what you're doing.

Not in the least. It's rock solid and stable. It goes exactly where you tell it, when you tell it to, with no tendency to go elsewhere. It turns with equal ease to either side and can loop and turn so tightly that you have to be careful not to chew your own rudder up with your prop . IMHO, the Pup is the easiest plane to fly in the game, and the most fun. I can see why many real pilots thought the same back in the day, so I guess OFF has done it correctly.

That's good news :). I've been looking into this some and I definitely misremembered a lot of details.... There is only 1 "refill" command, and it's for ordnance. If you started with more than 1 type, you select each one and refill it individually. There are no commands to refuel or reload gun ammo. Therefore, these must happen automatically. Being too pressed for time to do a lot of experiementing, I checked around on the web to see how folks did things in CFS3. Here's what I found out: 1. As originally released, CFS3 airfields didn't rearm your plane like in CFS2. Instead, you set yourself for unlimited ammo. But to avoid being stuck with the weight of bombs all the time, they introduced the "refill selected ordnance" command as described above, so you could get bombs again if you wanted them. 2. Any rearming that happens in OFF therefore has to be the result of something OBD did. Given that there are apparently no commands to reload your guns, it now appears that this happens automatically if your plane is in the correct place at the airfield. It would be nice if somebody who knows the details would spill the beans

Bravo, Olham! Outstanding work

The other day I got a new X52 joystick and was writing a profile for it. So I got in QC, hit ESC, opened the controls menu, and started writing down all the keys for the various controls. While scrolling down the command list, I noticed for the 1st time that the game has a number of commands to "refill" weapons. These cover MGs, cannons, bombs, etc., and probably fuel, too. Check them out. I never played CFS3 itself so I can't be sure, but certainly these commands appear to exist specifically to re-arm your plane during a continuing mission. I expect they were intended primarily for MP games, but I can see them being useful in Battle of Britain-type historical missions. Anyway, the game engine appears to support hot re-arms, and I would assume this would work by stopping at an airfield and hitting the "refill" commands. Given this, I'd say what happened here was that, while you were on the ground hitting keys at random, you serendipitously hit the "refill MGs" command, and thus got more ammo.

You ain't whistlin' Dixie there. Entente flak in HitR is snow white but evil, kinda like this:

I do. Honest, I fix a bayonet on my Vickers just like everybody else. I just left it stuck in the balloon. Otherwise, you'd have seen it in this pic. .

While the DH5's lower wing WILL rip open a gasbag, I can't recommend this method of balloon destruction. You have to land at about 100 knots if you want to keep the thing level.....

However, it was better-placed than the gravity tank on the FE.2d. The famous pic of such a Fee on the ground, with the observer demonstrating his position firing the rear gun, has been posted in here many times. But did anybody ever notice that he was aiming at his own gravity tank with nothing stopping him from shooting it? I'm sure that. although these Fee observers certain knew of this potential disaster before their 1st sortie, a few "own goals" in this regard must necessarily have happened.

As I understand things, Nieuport at this time was tryng to squeeze blood from a stone. They are the classic examle of trying to doing things quickly and cheaply. Nieuport had been riding their prewar designs, in slightly modified form but with great success, into late-1916. Up until then, they'd had no serious competition for scout contracts, the rest of the Aviation Militaire being mostly pushers of various sorts, or Parasols. Thus, the ante bellum N.10 had been shrunk into tine N.11. Shortly thereafter, slapping a bigger engine on the N.11 airframe produced the N.16. However, that engine was too heavy for N.11 wings to carry with the same agility as before, so they'd slightly stretched the N.11 airframe in all dimensions (while keeping the N.16 engine) to make the N.17. In this paragraph, you must forgive my VERY bad French, because I'm only half-way literate in the Cajun dialetct, which is a VERY BAD approximation of true French. Besides, I'm several fingers of whiskey over the line right now. Suffice to say, about this time, the acronym SPAD re-emerged in French aviation with a differetn meaning. Originally, it had meant Societe' pour l'Avions Deperdussin, but M. Deperdussin had just been jailed for fraud. His company pressed on regardless, however, and now called itself Societe' pour l'Aviation et ces Deriviete's. They produced the SPAD VII, which had much greater speed and no worse firepower than contemporary Nupes, and much more room for further improvements. For the 1st time facing legit competition at short notice, Nieuport tried to prolong the service life of its essentially pre-war design by what amounted to minor aerodynamic refinements and yet further power increases. They redesigned the N.17 with a slightly bigger moter and tried to streamline it. This redesign entailed rounding off all sharp corners on the N.17 airframe, at wings, tail, and fuselage. The total package was the N.24, but the refinements of each component were introduces 1 at a time. As things turned out, the fuselage came first, then the wings, and finally the tail. But the whole thing was designed at once, which resulted in some strange nomenclature. The N.24 fuselage was available 1st, so planes with this and the N.17 wings and tail were N.17bis. The French didn't think this worth the trouble but the RNAS got some and retained the upper wing Lewis. This was trading maneuverability for firepower. The next plane was supposed to have had all the other new parts and be the N.24. However, the new tail was still a problem. Thus, as a stopgap, they built the N.24bis, which had the N.24 fuselage and wings but the N.17 tail. A few months later, the N.24 tail was ready to go and so the complete N.24 finally entered production and squadron service, but the N.24bis came first. Confusing, eh?

Yeah, spells of bad weather must be a time of very conflicted emotions for you. OT1H, you're glad not to be spammed with so many pilot reports, so can more easily find the emails you're actually interested in. Plus, you have less bookkeeping to do. But OTOH, due to your hatred of said bookkeeping, the high point of your day is reading a report that one of us has died, and now those are fewer and further between . BTW, in case nobody's mentioned it lately, THANKS MUCHOS for setting this up and running it. I'm enjoying it immensely.

Gravity-fed fuel tank. Try not to get shot there.

Here we see Schloss Geschosskopf as of about 0700 local time this morning, after last night's snow. Has anybody else this far south gotten snow yet this year, prior to this storm? This is the 3rd year in a row it's snowed here, which has to be a post-Little Ice Age record. When I was young, it only snowed about once every 10-15 years, and when my parents were young in the 1930s, they used to grow oranges commercially in these parts, but all my life it's been too cold for them for too much of the year. Orange-growers have long since moved to Florida, which sticks down much further south. The summers here have also been getting cooler over the years, rarely reaching 100^F anymore when that used to be common. Make of this what you will.

Yeah, but that's not MODELING! There's a lot more to flying than just being able to wiggle the joystick the right way, and you don't learn that unless you build the plane yourself. Plus, where's the adventure (as in risk) with an unbreakable plane? Where's the pride in being able to do an inverted limbo under a rope 3 feet over pavement if all you have to do is put a new prop on it if you get too low? IMHO, the really cool part about flying models is that you get to recreate, on a small scale, the whole birth of aviation. You build something you don't really understand at first, you tweak it, you learn to fly it, you modify it to fly better, you repair it when it breaks, etc. You miss so much of that going with RTF planes. And SCREW ELECTRIC MOTORS! I want the NOISE, I want the castor oil exhaust! How can you recreate the feel of early aviation without castor oil all over everything? And I want to adjust needle valves and idle stops to get max performance, not just put on a bigger, badder battery pack. Call me old school, but IMHO if you go RTF and electric, you might as well not bother and just play video games.

Happy birthday! Old Speckled Hen? That's present enough in itself .

Try coming out of a mountain tunnel in an 18-wheeler into a strong crosswind that wasn't on the other side of the mountain. You're told in driving school to beware of this, but unless you happen to go to a school in such a location, you don't think it can be THAT bad . But when I think of wind problems, I always remember trying to walk across my unit's position at night in Desert Storm. There was always like a 20-30 knot crosswind blowing so you had to walk leaned way over to the side. It was as dark as inside a cave due to the sky being obscured by smoke and no lights showing, so you never saw when you were walking into the lee of a a vehicle just a few feet away. Suddenly the wind would stop and you'd fall over sideways, unable to catch yourself because you're holding your compass to tell which way you're going. BOOM. So you pick yourself up, take a few more steps, get out of the vehicle's lee, and the wind blows you over again. Recover, walk a few more steps, and fall down in another lee. Over and over until you reached your destination, then the same again for the return trip. And tomorrow night it'll be the same thing, but in a different place with all the vehicles in different positions, so you can't memorize anything. That made for a long war.....

Also, you want a trainer that is fairly small, like designed for a .25 engine but you put a .30 in it for better performance. The smaller the plane, the stronger the airframe and the less momentum it has, so the less damage it takes when you crash it. And trust me, you'll be crashing your trainer a lot, especially when getting the hang of the backwards controls during landing approaches. Naturally, you want a durable plane with a simple, wooden structure that you can repair easily. Foam and plastic planes are much harder to repair, often impossible. Besides this, you want the wing attached with rubber bands instead of screws. With rubber bands, when you land on a wingtip (rather common in learning to land), the wing is free to rotate back on the fuselage or even come off completely. This results in no or very minor wing damage. If it's screwed on, OTOH, either the wingtip crumples badly or the screws rip out of the wing. Either way, it's a big repair job. Be sure your trainer is a kit you have to build, too, not one of those ready-to-fly things. With the kit, you get full size drawings of all the important parts like wing ribs. You'll need these to make replacement parts from time to time. You don't get that with the RTF planes, which is a real bother when (not if) you break it. Anyway, with a small, simple, kit-built trainer with rubber-band wings, you won't often have to make major repairs. Minor repairs will be needed frequently, however, but you can do them in the field in a few minutes and continue flying. Just have some balsa of various sizes, tools to cut it, some super glue, some 5-minute epoxy, some low-temperature covering material and a portable hair dryer, and a collection of spare push-rod clevises, control horns, and related hardware, and you'll be all set for expedient repairs