Bullethead

Bravo

Call me weird, but I never do hammerheads in combat no matter what plane I'm flying. I just have an instinctive aversion to getting that slow and hanging in place that long--I feel like it makes me too much of a target for any passing dweeb. The AI tends to try this a lot, and I get a lot of my kills plastering AI planes that are standing still at the top of hammerheads. What I do instead are all varieties of high yoyos, from half Cuban 8s to lag rolls to high-speed wingovers to just steeply oblique upward turns. I try very had to get nowhere close to stall speed pulling over the top. By trying hard to stay within my envelope, I almost completely avoid all the low-speed nastiness that various planes have to offer. If you're thinking of hammerheads, what you really want to do is reverse directions more or less in place with minimum net speed loss. Instead of doing the airshow hammerhead zooming to zero speed, try this. Pull the nose up sharply to between 45-70^ and the instant you achieve that angle, stomp the rudder in the direction you want to go. You still have most of your speed so the rudder has a lot of authority and your momentum carries you around veyr quickly. I call this a high-speed wingover. You have to know your plane, however, because they require different amounts of rudder, and too much will often throw you into a funky spin. I find that most rotary birds do this quite well, but if you come from a background of high-speed E-fighters, you have to adjust your timing on this. In a true E-fighter, you want to start your high yoyo the instant your target makes his break, to avoid overshooting. But when doing this high-speed wingover, overshooting a little is actually a good thing, because when you come out of this you'll be right behind the enemy in shooting position.

Thanks for the pronto support. If it helps any in the process, I should add that I only noticed this behavior when I started flying in 1918 extensively the last few weeks. In 1918, A Flight always seems to do its own thing. However, I went back last night and tried another 1917 campaign, and A Flight went to the target as expected. This is in 1.32f. It seems to me that 1918 is a bit screwy. When you're creating a pilot and trying to decide which squadron and time to do, scrolling the time back and forth, you'll see that the front line moves differently for different squadrons. For most squadrons, the 2nd major German bulge in 1918, for the 2nd Battle of the Marne, never happens at all, but it does for a few of them. Same thing with the Entente counteroffensive in the 2nd 1/2 of 1918--most squadrons never see that, but a few of the Germans squadrons do. Anyway, I've had a lot more problems with the game in 1918 in general than at any other time. Not just A Flight doing its own thing, but crashes and such. I've been attributing this to perhaps overloading my machine with all the planes in the air, but perhaps part of the problem lies with confusion between squadrons as to where the front is on a given day?

A very nice and realistic Frankenplane! Bravo

Very nice renderings. Thanks for the link. I found The Nieuport Pages the other day, which has actual Noop plans on it.

Here's one for Lou. Now the terrorflieger can look the part .

I had the same problem, never being able to get the good action pics, until I broke down and programmed 1 of my stick buttons to pause the game. I used the pinky button, which I usually use to look up, but now that I've got TIR it's been unused. Now I'm able to take pics during the most intense furballs. Anyway, as to the Halberstadt's flying, I've found it to be quite a nice plane and have wondered why so many folks thought it a pig. One of my favorite things about it is that the rudder actually turns it, instead of just yawing it. Otherwise, it just flies nicely and has no vices. And being used to Fees and Pups, I don't find it underpowered. My main dislike is the extremely low dive speed, even when nearly vertical and with full power. It dives so slowly that you can bail out and beat it to the ground . This makes my usual tactic of diving steeply at balloons rather ineffective--even the balloon beats the Halberstadt to the ground. Fortunately in 1916, there's not that much flak to worry about, so you can get lower safely than you can later on.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks . If you've got your BE2 skin finished, please upload it and also post some pics of it in the screenshots thread. We'd all love to see it. And to your granddaddy for having to fly that thing in combat. While it is a bummer that the Quirk in OFF lacks a rear gun, the observer IS somewhat useful. If you look closely, you can see that his head tracks the closest enemy plane, which is rather useful at times, especially if you don't have TIR.

Lately I've been rather annoyed with A Flight's behavior, leaving me in the lurch all the time. Is anybody else seeing this? It used to be that if you went to the briefing room and saw both flights listed, then A Flight had the same mission as you. If you flew without warping, you could formate on them the whole way. If you warped, A Flight would always appear above and ahead of you when you returned to normal time. And if you warped after a fight that had scattered everybody, A Flight would be back in its usual place when you stopped warping again. This is no longer the case. Despite both flights being listed in the briefing for the same mission, A Flight no longer does this mission. I can't recall seeing them stick to the plan for the past couple of weeks. Here's what's happening to me now. Again, this is when both flights are shown in the mission briefing. If I fly without warping, A Flight leaves the airfield right on the briefed path to the briefed objective and I can follow them. However, somewhere along the line, usually well before reaching the pre-objective waypoint, A Flight suddenly decides to do something else. They turn sharply off course and dive way low. If an enemy ground target happens to be where they come down, they attack it. Otherwise, they just patrol back and forth at very low altitude, well off to the side of the flightpath. Once A Flight goes off course, warping will NOT bring them back--they are obviously no longer on the same mission as me. Furthermore, if I warp from the field, A Flight is never to be seen when I stop warping, except perhaps many miles to the flank and very low. In the original Superpatch, A Flight had an identical problem if you tried the new "Start in the Air" option. When you spawned, A Flight would be within spitting distance above you, but they'd instantly turn sharply and dive way down below you, where they'd do their own thing, just as described above. This air start problem got fixed in one of the minipatches almost immediately (bravo ), but now it seems to me that this problem is now affecting ground-launch sorties. Anyway, as of right now, and for me at least, the ONLY way to be in company with A Flight, AND do the briefed mission, is if I use the "Start in the Air" option. Now, it could be that A Flight really had a different mission from me all along. But if that's the case, why are they still shown in the briefing room as being on my mission? Wouldn't it be better if they weren't in my briefing? Also, if A Flight really does have another mission, why is it so strange? Patrolling at very low altitude near the front is rather silly from a tactical perspective and not something you'd expect from all the experienced aces in A Flight. Anyway, that's what I'm seeing. Is this a general thing these days or do I just need to reinstall the game?

"Sucking at OFF" is a relative term, different for everybody. Most folks define "sucking" as "not fun", but the problem is that everybody has a different definition of "fun", which is why "sucking" is different for everybody. So the 1st thing you need to do to not suck is to first define what "fun" means to you. Do you enjoy really intense combat until you die? Do you enjoy skirting the edge of the meatgrinder and picking off the sick, lame, and lazy around the fringes? Are you of the "press on regardless" style? Or something else entirely? At the bottom line, it's not how many kills you get, or how long you live, it's how much fun you have. Personally, I don't care how often I die, or how far along towards 17 hours I am, as long as I had fun doing it.

Well, either way something's haywire. Either balloons are too flimsey, or the AA gunners need to have their ROEs tweaked. They shouldn't shoot down so many of their own balloons, which is like every one I've attacked lately.

* NOTE: This is a result of a warp going BADLY wrong. Marienbourg Internment Camp 5 Jan 1917 Well, here I am. Looks like I'll live through the war, and better here than in a German POW camp. At present, I'm still too frozen and shaken by yesterday's events to consider escaping, and besides, I'm only just breaking the ice with the German aviators who are also interned here. I really want to hear about the view from their side of the hill before I leave. Anyway, as to how I got here. Well, it's a long, sad story. Yesterday morning we were tasked to escort some other Fees from 18 Squadron to bomb a rail yard just SSW of Douai. The day before, all ops had been cancelled and they should have been yesterday, too, what with the horrific snow storm the whole time. And therein lies the cause of the problem. My ground crew, instead of daring to ask me to provide them with booze, had apparently become so desperate as to drink the alcohol in my compass. To compound this, they had replaced it with water, which naturally froze solid. I didn't notice this until the glass shattered from the expanding ice, which alerted me that I was BADLY off course (IOW, while warping I finally glanced at TAC instead of the outside view and realized that my distance from home was over 200 miles and still increasing). I hadn't noticed before, due to the heavy snow flurries and trying to keep an eye on the horizon while wiping my goggles clear of ice every few seconds. Given these distractions, I thought I'd been doing a good job holding course. At this point, I saw a sizable town in the near distance, so I headed that way to read its name off the water towers. It was Dortmund, Germany . I'd have recognized it anyway from the famous breweries I'd visited before the war. Well, nothing for it but to follow the roads back in approximately the right direction, given that the compass was tits up. (IOW, I used SHF-W to set my airfield as the next waypoint and warped again). Unfortunately, I'd only loaded about 75% fuel. We crossed the SE corner of the Netherlands but it soon became apparent that we'd never regain the Lines. So, given the choice, I decided to head back to the neutral Netherlands intead of landing in occupied territory (IOW, the warp quit when I was down to 9.5% fuel and I was left to my own devices). I had to fly low due to the continued snow storm, but that helped in finding the border, which in this area is marked by a small river. By now, I was down to about 3% fuel. However, this part of the Netherlands is heavily forested. I circled lower and picked out a field that looked perfect--in fact, it looked like an airfield and there were even some tents there. However, just before I set down on it, my observer's emphatic gestures made me understand I'd circled back over the river and was about to land in German territory. So, I gunned the motor at the last moment and recrossed the border. Just as I was giving up hope, I spotted a large cleared area in the forest ahead. Even better, it had a snow-free road running across it, so I could reasonably expect somebody to come along fairly soon and take me someplace warm. However, as I got nearer, I saw that this wasn't a clear field at all, but that it was studded with tree trunks cut off half-way up. It was a trap obviously designed to lure airborne invaders to their doom! I had no idea the Dutch was so forward-thinking; from my seat in a Fee, there's absolutely no threat of such an occurrance at present and I can't imagine it happening in the future . Anyway, there was thus nothing for it but to land on the road, even if it squiggled around somewhat. I went in first to make sure it was safe while my flight circled overhead. It turned out I'd landed not far from my favorite place in all the Netherlands, Chimay, home of the BEST beer made in Europe. Those Trappist monks sure know their beer. And the best part is, this internment camp is close enough to get supplies from there. So like I said, I'm in no hurry to leave.

I dunno. Helgoland was rather heavily defended in WW1. It had impressive anti-shipping batteries including twin 30cm turrets, which are probably the only thing there that airplanes wouldn't have to fear. There were a dozen or so 28cm coast defense mortars which could easily have been pressed into service as flak, plus of course some dedicated 8.8cm Flak L/45 guns and numerous MGs. Besides all this, Helgoland was the main U-boat base in WW1 and there was always a flotilla or 2 of DDs and/or TBs there, too, each of which had some minor AA weaponry. And, of course, a base for those nasty seaplane fighters. So all in all, approaching Helgoland in an Entente airplane in WW1 would have been pretty risky. And assuming you survived the defenses, the town and gun batteries took up most of the surface so it would have been hard to find a place to land. Not much trace of this remains today. Helgoland was of course heavily armed in WW2, also, so naturally got carpet-bombed. If you look at it in Google Earth today, outside of town it's just 1 big field of huge, overlapping bomb craters where the batteries used to be.

But the stats showing rounds fired vs. hits takes that into account, or so I would think. True, ground fire periodically scores an "own goal" on the balloon, but this is quite noticeable. Either you're way far away and haven't even fired yet, or you see the ground tracer and/or flak bursts hitting it. But that's not what's happening now, as far as I can tell. 1 shot, 1 kill on balloons seems to be the rule, even in 1916 when there's next to no flak anyway.

It just occurred to me that Chimay is really in Belgium--it says so on the beer bottle label--even if my atlas shows it inside the Dutch border. I know there are some Belgian enclaves just inside the Dutch border a bit further NW of where I landed--is Chimay in another such place? In that case, I must surely have landed in free Belgium, not the neutral Netherlands, so instead of being an internee, I'm sure to be repatriated by an ally. Damn the bad luck. I was hoping to sit here drinking excellent beer for the duration

1st time it's ever happned to me and I've warped nearly every sortie since whenver P3 went live. The only times I don't warp are 1) when I'm in a SPAD or Pfalz, because of the way warping robs you of the altitude essential to those types, 2) in 1918 during the Kaiserschlacht, when you can't warp even if you want to because there are always "enemies nearby", and 3) on lone wolf missions where you have no waypoints at all. Oh yeah, and back in my one and only bomber career, I never warped when I had bombs aboard because either I wanted to stay low to avoid trouble (or see the ground on crappy days), or I was gaffing off the boring recon mission and its waypoints to bomb the trenches instead. As a general rule, if the next waypoint is more than 10 miles away, I'm warping. And I'll warp if it's closer than that if my glass has gone empty during the sortie so far

OTOH, if your wingman had SA, he'd have know that 1) you'd called dibs on this target, 2) you were between him and the target, and 3) you'd told him to cover your 6 while you took your shot. In combat, you have to trust your troops to do their jobs, because you don't have enough SA to do both your job and theirs. So you give the orders and concentrate on getting your sights on, trusting your wingman to do his job. But then sometimes he either shoots you in the back or flies into your tail anyway. I find this to be more of a problem in "elite" squadrons than otherwise. Those "elite" bastids all have "sore throats" and think their prestige will get them through whatever insubordinations they commit.

I agree. Before the Superpatch, you had to put a good number of rounds into a balloon. It would start to "smoke" from escaping gas before it would burn. But now, 1 single hit is enough to blow it right up. Last balloon strafe I went on, it was 20 rounds, 1 hit, and 1 dead balloon.

Escorting B29s over Japan I think was even more tiresome and had rather less chance of a happy ending to a forced landing for the entire extent of the flight there and back.

Maybe just being a meth addict would do it.....

Things get a little complicated when attacking ground targets. The only way I've found to do it is to pause the game and use the Target-Player external view to be sure I've selected what I want them to attack. And this takes a LONG time when you're in the Building and Vehicle TAC modes, because there are so many of them you have to cycle through to get to what you want. Plus, due to the camera not being able to go below ground level, and the fact that the Target-Player's line of sight is fixed, sometimes you can't tell what you've selected because it's out of sight below the bottom of your view. On top of this, while you can select a target with the game paused, the wingman orders don't work unless the game is running. So you have to remember to give the attack order after you unpause the game . To make matters worse, things in OFF aren't always on the TAC page you expect them to be. Most of the "vehicles" shown on TAC are actually immobile flak guns, but some guns also show up in the Building TAC mode. Same with entrenched troops. Marching troops, however, all seem to be "vehicles". AFAIK, there are zero "ships" in OFF at all, so that TAC mode is completely useless. With that said, the most common ground targets you're ordered to attack are balloons, airfields, and rail yards. Here are some tips on these: Balloons (aka "Spotters") Normally, you don't tell your wingmen to attack balloons because you want the kill yourself. However, sometimes you'd rather they eat the flak while you deal with the defending fighters, if any. Problem is, the actual observation balloons up in the air (what you want the wingmen to shoot at) don't show up in TAC at all, nor can they be selected as such. Instead, you have to look for the thing on the ground under the balloon, which is usually a "vehicle". In the external view, it usually looks just like any other flak position in the area, EXCEPT you can see the rope to the balloon rising vertically out of it. And sometimes that rope is ALL you can see due to the angle you're at compared to the spotter. Airfields Airfields are unique in that in Airfield TAC mode, they show up as single objects. When viewed in Vehicle or Building modes, OTOH, they are huge clusters of hangars, flak guns, trucks, etc. AFAIK, there's no way to tell each wingman to attack a different building, which gives you something of a Hobson's choice here... The "airfield" designation is tied to a specific group of buildings somewhere near the airfield (varies with airfield layout). These buildings are NOT the same thing as all the hangars and such around them, which you normally think of as the airfield. In fact, they usually seem to be located on the other side of the runway from the hangars. Think of this "airfield" object as the control tower, HQ, personnel quarters, the mess, etc. Anyway, this is what your wingmen will attack if you give them the order from the Airfield TAC mode. They will, however, each attack a separate component of this group of buildings, or so it seems. Also, there seems usually to be less flak around these buildings than around the hangars. To get wingmen to attack hangars, you have to be in Building TAC mode and pick one. The problem here is that you can only pick the one and all your wingmen go for it, which can waste a lot of bombs in overkill. The best way to resolve this is to make your pass down the row of hangars and select one in the middle, so that hopefully wingman bombs that fall long or short will hit one of the others. You, of course, need to aim for one at the end of the row and not the one you've sent the wingmen after. However, it's sometimes hard to tell which hangar you've got selected, even in the Target-Player view. Rail Yards The "rail yard" designation is tied to a group of buildings, parked rail cars, stacks of crates, etc., and shows up in the Building TAC mode. It's easy to recognize--nothing else looks like a rail yard. The problem, however, is that it's surrounded by many other "buildings", so it takes time to get it selected. These other nearby "buildings" are flak guns, bridges, etc., and as mentioned above, depending on how far away you are when you start looking, you might have DOZENS of other buildings on TAC that you have to cycle through to get to the cluster of triangles which is the rail yard area. On the plus side, however, once you select the right "building", your wingmen appear to bomb different specific objects within the "rail yard" cluster.

Just edit the dead pilot's files.

Welcome aboar Kingkat! New guy buys the drinks . In general, there are 3 phases in OFF, although they overlap somewhat. The Germans tend to get better stuff a few months sooner, but then keep it until the Entente surprasses it, so the advantage swaps back and forth in terms of plane quality. Anyway, the general phases are as follows: 1. pre-1917 All planes are anemic. Some are total crap and very dangerous to fly. Fights are rather rare (less than 1 per sortie on average) and are between relatively small numbers of planes, and there isn't much flak. Towards the end of 1916, however, the Germans get the Alb D.II, which stomps all contemporaries. 2. 1917 While there are still a few old clunkers in service, most planes have decent performance and are pretty safe to fly. Fights are rather more common than before (average of slightly more than 1 per sortie) and involve somewhat more planes than before. Flak is noticeably more common than before. Early in 1917, the Germans get the Alb D.III which stomps all contemporaries, except the 1st few SE5s and Brisfits which enter service in April. And of course SPAD VIIs are troublesome, too. As the year goes on, the Entente gets more SE5s, more Brisfits, and also Camels and SPAD XIIIs, so by the end of the year the Entente has better planes on average. And Alb D.V and especially Pfalz D.III really aren't improvements for the Germans, but the Fokker Dr.I is wunderbar, although there aren't many of them around. 3. 1918 All the old clunkers are gone and as the year goes on, the best planes in the game come into service or totally replace the old. Combat is practically constant from the time you leave the ground until the time you return to it in whatever manner. These fights are MUCH bigger than all that's gone before and the flak is intense and ubiquitous. The Germans face the classic late-war line-up of almost nothing but SE5s and SPAD XIIIs with a few Camels still in service here and there. They have to soldier on with the Alb D.V, the rather clumsy Pfalz, and the aging Dr.I until summer when the Fokker D.VII shows up and the plane quality advantage begins to swing back to them. However, by then they're rather outnumbered. NOTE: The above assessments of fight frequency and intensity assumes you're in the hot sectors where major ground offensives are happening. If you fly elsewhere, things are slower. But IMHO, better a Hun on your 6 than no Huns at all . Also, I only use heavy air activity. So...... To answer your question, IMHO 1917 is the best place to start. Most planes aren't out to kill you by themselves (without the enemy lifting a finger), there are enough fights to keep you occupied, and you can get the feel of WW1 ACM in a relatively benign environment. Once you feel comfortable there, you can go earlier or later in time.

Well, you can do what I do and pretend she's an LVG. I mean, what's the difference, really? I'd have thought the same thing if I hadn't seen the Gotha fragments in the IMW. Gotha night colors are known the best of all German lozenge schemes due to the IMW's collection of trophies. These aren't just little scraps like we had with the naval hex, but stuff like entire rudders in pristine condition, enough to show the whole pattern, and carefully preserved since they night they were shot down. Note, however, that I think only Gothas really had these colors. Other night bombers used different colors AFAIK, so technically speaking, these aren't the right colors for an LVG/DFW/whatever else. But who cares? I think it looks cool .

File Name: DFW with Night Camo by Bullethead File Submitter: Bullethead File Submitted: 14 Sep 2009 File Updated: 23 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins A DFW with the Gotha night camo, kinda. For those who really like blue DFWs. Now has text file with OBD credit for original skin. Click here to download this file