Bullethead

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks . We've been getting a lot of new recruits lately so quarters are somewhat cramped. In fact, until somebody gets killed and frees up a bunk, you'll have to share a hangar with Blue.

Glad the naval D.VII worked so well for you. The PSP file for that skin has 42 layers and I was afraid all that extra weight would negatively impact its performance . Speaking of naval stuff, I went back and re-did my naval DFW to what I now consider much more realistic paintjob. I'm afraid it's no longer pretty blue but looks a lot like the D.VII. However, it's the 1917 version of the scheme so has the larger, symmetrical, hand-painted hexes and the rudder is the same color as the fuselage side. I decided to leave the original blue verison up though, for them as want it.

Beer's on me tonight, OvS . They look loverly.

He was an instructor at the Top Gun school. This book is The Bible for real life fighter pilots around the world, and also all serious simmers. I kinda know the guy. He used to fly with the crowd I hung with in DOS Air Warrior back in the 90s, so we winged a number of times. I've met him face to face several times at MMOFS conventions, where he's a frequent guest speaker, autographs everybody's copy of his book, and used to drink with us be he's on the wagon these days. He also apologizes for the rather dry, technical way he wrote the book--it started as his doctoral thesis. IOW, he's got a PhD in ACM. Fighter Combat is a book you have to read a number of times to greally grok it. Sleeping with it under your pillow helps . The book was written for real life, modern jet jockeys, so has a lot of stuff in it about lining up for missle shots. However, that's the last part of the book. He starts out with guns-only fights turning, then energy, then multi-bogey fights, wingman tactics, etc. That makes up the bulk of the book. Yup. I really miss my "Werger" and the 4x 20mm of Hate . With that sort of firepower, you don't need very long on target to turn it into confetti...

Yeah, that's often pretty good. You should really read Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering, by Robert Shaw. He goes into guns-only energy tactics in great detail. As you say, however, few WW1 planes can really do this. E-fighting relies heavily setting the target up for the kill over 2 or 3 passes, and on getting yourself out of effective range of the enemy before he can turn around and shoot you. In WW1, most planes don't keep E well enough to go this long, and many planes turn so fast that they can get a shot off at you before you're out of range. SPADs and Brisfits are the best at it IMHO. The D.VII is also good but has less speed and more zoom, so has to be handled somewhat differently, all the while fighting the impulse to turn hard and blow E, which you CAN do pretty well, but it's hard to get that speed back in the middle of a big fight.

That's what E-fighting is. Many folks think B&Z is "energy fighting", but they're wrong. There are 3 ways to fight: 1. Turn/stall/dweeb-fighting: Done mostly in the horizontal and nose-low turns at or below corner velocity. Totally sells out on speed and altitude in pursuit of angles. This is the most intuitive type of dogfighting and is best done in planes too wimpy to do anything else: Pups, Nupes, Zekes, early Spits, Hurricanes, etc. 2. Boom & Zoom: The complete opposite of the above. Never sacrifice any energy and keep your speed as high as possible. Come screaming in and take a shot at whatever angle if you have one, but if you don't have a shot right in front of you don't turn more then 20-30^ to get one. Extend into the next county before daring to reverse. This is done by people who don't have a clue. They hardly ever die, but they only kill those who are AFK for another beer while climbing on autopilot deep in their own territory. 3. Energy-fighting: Done almost entirely in the vertical. Using the vertical to get angles while sacrificing the minimum amount of energy. Best done in high-speed, low-drag planes that mostly don't turn worth a damn. The hardest style to master because it's the least intuitive and requies the most finesse. Anybody can yank and bank, but not everybody can do a high yoyo with minimum E loss and still have it come out in a good place for a killing shot.

File Name: Naval Fokker D.VII by Bullethead File Submitter: Bullethead File Submitted: 03 Sep 2009 File Updated: 23 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins A Fokker D.VII in what I believe is accurate pre-printed naval hex colors. For use with the Marineflieger squadrons. Now includes text file with OBD credit for original skin. Click here to download this file

I believe the correct quote is: Please, Father Christmas, if you love me at all Bring me a nice red India rubber ball --AA Milne I'm a bit surprised that such a 1-of-a-kind machine actually has a price in only the low 7-figures. Or that the present owner would sell it at all. Or that anybody in his right mind would still fly the thing. True, dying in a Camel crash is not unprecedented by any means, but that won't get you into Valhalla. These days, it'll get you damned as a literal iconoclast.

Yes, you are. But remember that "the wise man and the dog goeth in the end unto the same door", and that "if ignorance is bliss, then t'is folly to be wise". I actually envy you. It's truly better to be crazy than insanse

Hehehe..... Well, it was beaten into me 15 years ago or so, when I started flying DOS Air Warrior, that the Force is with the turn-fighters but the Dark Side is with the E-fighters. The whole "Dark Side" thing about E-fighting had already become well-entrenched by 1994 (DOS AW had been going since 1987).

Hehehe, you'd better hope you get killed in WW1, or you'll be up against a wall once Der Dicke comes to power

Welcom back, Blue. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you were gone so long that we thought you weren't coming back and, what with all the new recruits showing up lately..... Well, not to beat around the bush, but we had to give one of them your bed and divide your hut up into 6 or 8 small rooms for a dozen or so other newbies. So until some of them get killed, I'm afraid you'll have to sleep in a hangar. We also had to kit out the new guys, so we pried open your foot locker and handed out all your flying clothes and other necessities to them. I'm afraid most of it has long since gone down in flames somewhere over the trenches. I guess all you've got left are the clothes you're standing in. Your favorite airplane sat around unused for a week or so, but what with our losses we needed it, and unfortunately a newbie ran it into a tree on a test flight. We were able to salvage a few pieces and made a new roof for the latrine out of the largest piece of wing fabric--it's just behind the mess now, if you want to pay your respects. And speaking of the mess, that's where your private booze stash all went, and most welcome it was, but we drank it all up months ago. But that's all to the good. See, with you still officially on strength, we were charging all our drinks to your account, which I'm afraid we ran up to quite a large sum. But now that you're back, we can put your booze down as donations to the mess to offset this debt. Let me see.... Yes, that just about covers it, although you still owe about 50 quid. Anyway, nice to have you back.

That's what I'm thinking. The 3D plants are rows of dotted lines, effectively, and they each cast a shadow. As your angle of view changes, you see a moire' sort of pattern that ripples.

Ah, good. You will learn much of Hate and Rage flying that beast .

With much help and discusson with Olham over colors and general appearance, the naval Fokker D.VII in pre-printed hex fabric is finally complate. It's over in the download section awaiting approval if anybody's interested. Now I need to go back and revise the paint on my DFW, although I'll probably leave the current version up because some folks like it.

5.8 hours ain't bad. It's when you lose them in 0.25 hours that you really hate it... The Dark Side has no national boundaries--it transcends mere arbitrary lines drawon on the map by humans. It trascends the solar system, even the Local Group galaxy cluster. The Dark Side is the manifestation of the Hate that all living things naturally feel for all other living things, and the Rage that necessarily accompanies the Hate, due to not being the only living thing in the universe. Feel the Hate flow and become One with it. Using the Power of the Dark Side, you will master the art of Energy Fighting. Only those whose Hate is pure, and who can condense their Rage down to an icy ball to hold in their hand like a weapon, can wield an E-fighter effectively, preying on the pathetic turn-fighters. The country of origin of your E-fighter is immaterial; all that matters is the Hate that makes the machine an extension of your terrible will. But remember, it is written that "the Path of the Wicked must be the hardest, so that the Wicked may become the Hardest." Do not expect to gain power in the Dark Side without much pain and suffering. The Dark Side is fueled by Hate and Rage, and only by experiencing much bitter failure can the neophyte generate the necessary Hate and Rage to become a master E-fighter. Sanguis bibimus Corpus edibus Here endeth the lesson. All Power and Glory to the Dark Side.

Thanks for the tip!

One trick to doing this VERY easily is to use a white background color. Apply your paint layers above this at full saturation levels, then gradually move the opacity sliders for the paint layers down, watching the effect as you do so. This "fades" the bright paint layer, decreasing its apparent saturation. Doing things this way also opens up many other possibilities. You can now have other layers under the partially transparent paint that will show through the paint. This is good for doing 3D effects like the small valleys between wing ribs, or making fake raised lumps on what is really a flat surface on the model, etc. So, make a completely 255/255/255 background layer, then put the original skin you're using as a pattern on top of this. Then make a 3rd layer that's also 255/255/255 over the original skin and cut out holes in it over stuff on the original skin you want to keep, such as maybe the cockpit interior or whatever. Otherwise, you have a blank sheet of paper. Hide this 3rd layer to trace out the parts and mark things like panel lines, then put it back to see what your paint and other work looks like.

Don't disrespect the Mighty Fee! The Mighty Fee NEVER runs! It always stands and FIGHTS! Of course, it has to, because it's too slow to escape. And you'll only get much above 7000 feet if you warp..... Seriously, I enjoy flying the Mighty Fee more than anything else. It's easy to fly, turns pretty well, comes with a pack of smokes, and all Fee pilots get a racy photo of Mata Hari . However, combat is rather challenging because it's like heavy infantry vs. horse archers. You have to learn how to make your wingmen approximate a Lufbery Circle to avoid getting cut to pieces by the initial rush of the Albatri. And you have to keep this up until the Albatri either get bored and go away or get greedy and blow their energy. If they do the latter, then it's game on, because they're fighting on your terms and you can beat them that way. It's hard to wait for the right moment to break ranks, and sometimes the ranks don't form correctly so you're screwed from the get-go, but if you do it right you'll live in the Fee as long as in anything else and get a bunch of kills. And the kills are sweeter because you had to work harder for them. This is why I didn't recommend the Fee as a starter plane, even though it's what I started with. It's not the sort of ride that appeals to many folks.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks Now, as to your question..... There's really no point in worrying about such things because they don't matter. You're still going to die, and probably long before you reach 17 hours . It's a dangerous world out there and no matter how good you are, you're still very vulnerable, and all it takes is 1 bullet in the wrong place and you'll never get home. So, forget any notions you might have of 1 pilot lasting long enough to see that new airplane arrive in the squadron in a few months, let alone surviving the war from start to finish. Your pilots are cannonfodder--don't get too attached to them . That might sound a little grim, but then there's your previous flightsim experience and level of ACM skill. The OFF AI is very, very good, about the best I've ever seen, and it WILL get you eventually, but it's still an AI so has its limits. A human who knows what he's doing is still going to beat it most of time, meaning you'll probably get a fair number of kills before your number is up. And the better your plane is compared to the AI's, the more kills you'll get, and the more often you have multi-kill sorties. So, instead of going for the superior planes to start with, you might want to consider starting with inferior planes. Of course, relative numbers also have a big effect on outcomes. If you've got the better plane but the AI has many more planes that aren't much worse, you're still in for a hard time. The Fokker D.VII is an incredible ride, but when you're facing immense swarms of SE5s and SPAD XIIIs, you won't think it's good enough . Anyway, instead of going for a great plane to start with, I'd recommend starting in something that's just easy to fly. Whether it's better or worse than the opposition doesn't matter that much. What you want to do is get a feel for the flow of the dogfights--the closing speeds, the gun ranges, the amount of lead you need to pull in various situations, how long a plane's energy lasts, etc. IMHO it's easiest to learn these things when you don't have to devote much of your attention merely to keeping your plane in the air or worry about breaking it. So fly something like a Pup, SE5, or Albatros. Once you get the feel of things, try something that's harder to fly. The hardest things are Eindeckers and Pfalzes, so avoid them to start with.

Yeah, I was thinking from my POV, already having your efforts as a starting point. Doing it completely from scratch like you do is WAY more involved . I look forward to seeing it.

Wunderbar! Thanks muchos,

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks