Bullethead

I'm surprised as well at the tone of some of the recent outbursts. HOWEVER, I recommend looking on the bright side. Such posts only come from people who are passionate about the game. Arousing that passion means you're doing something right . I myself make niche-market wargames, so I fully appreciate the size of the freebie that was 1.32. I don't see how you all put food on the table giving that much stuff away. I'm very thankful for it and think all the changes and new features are for the good. Anyway, keep up the good work and make me some new stuff I can pay you for.

You can use the rotary knobs but you have to program them carefully and use them differently than the trim wheels in real planes. Instead of moving them to a certain position and leaving them there, you have to move them over, then re-center them. This is because of how the CFS3 engine handles trim. Each time you hit one of the key combos Louvert posted, you bump the trim in that direction. If you hold that combo, you get a continues stream of trim inputs until you reach the max in that direction. And that's what happens if you put a trim command on a rotary and leave it off-center for any length of time. Hence the need to move the rotary slightly off-center, then back to center quickly. I have a Saitek HOTAS with rotaries. To get trim to work on them, I use the Saitek profile editor to define the rotaries as "banded" inputs. Then I divide its range of motion into 3 bands, making the center band occupy about 3/4 of the total travel. This I leave with no command attached, and put opposite trim commands out at the ends. This is the only way I've found to get any sort of precision on the trim inputs when you only need a little bit. The big center null area lets you get off the trim input quickly. Doing this, however, prevents you from counting how many "bumps" you've given the trim. Thus, you can't do the Louvert pre-flight trimming. Instead, you have to take off and trim out while circling your airfield. This amounts to the same thing I guess.

I noticed numerous changes in the Fee squadrons of Bloody April, or have I just killed too many brain cells lately?

I've seen late-WW2 pics of German Volksturm bicycles armed with Panzerfausts. I think you're just jealous because the Brits thought of it 1st in WW1 . But what I really want is a motorcycle with a sidecar, and the ability to take it out for a spin between campaign missions, while still in the campaign. Toss Nurse Gladys and a picnic basket of hard liquor in the sidecar, then tear off towards the front lines to watch the show. Watch the planes fly overhead and fight, watch the shelling and infantry assaults, all as a spectator. Then of course, once Nurse Gladys is all hot and bothered, off to the nearest hayloft.

You should read Independent Force, by Keith Rennles. It's about the daylight DH-4 and DH-9 squadrons of Trenchard's IAF, trying to do deep strategic bombing in single-engine machines of doubtful reliability (especially the DH-9s). They'd go many dozens of miles into Hunland in the 2nd half of 1918, so they'd be Archied most of the way in and out, for several hours total. They often described the flak as "heavy and accurate", but amazingly few planes died of it. Most of those were due to engine hits or wounded crewmen needing urgent medical attention--very few were destroyed outright. However, many times, every plane would be hit by shrapnel to a greater or lesser extent, quite a few making it home to be written off and many times squadrons being out of action for a couple days repairing damage. What really killed them was being intercepted in strength by front-line Jastas as opposed to scattered small Kest units. Each squadron got practically wiped out about once a month by fighters.

Since somebody else brought this subject up and not me, I feel free to plug my own products: Jutland and Distant Guns. If anybody here is interested in this sort of thing, please don't mention it here because this is the OFF board . Go look me up on my home forum http://forums.gamesquad.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245, where you'll recognize me right off. Apart from that, I really like Mount & Blade. This is another great game by a small indy, this time from Turkey. M&B is a "realistic" FRPG, in that there are netiher magic nor monsters, but it's set in a parallel universe similar to our own Middle Ages. You start out as a poor guy with a sword. Your objective is to claw your way into the upper nobility, which essentially means you have to raise a mercenary company, get hired by one kingdom or other, be successful in war, gain respectability by feats of arms and acquiring money, suck up to the existing nobility, etc. Along the way you'll sack villages, storm castles, ambush caravans, and fight pitched battles with several hundred guys on each side. Many of them work for you and "cost 50 pounds apiece" so it's a shame when they die. So it's like a combination of Oblivion (which I also really liked) plus M2TW, only the epic battles are 1st person . The production values aren't up to Oblivion, but the gameplay and concept completely rock. War must pay for war. The mercenary army you need to achieve your goals isn't cheap, so you pretty much have to perpetuate the war so you can bring in enough loot to feed them . Very realistic. Plus there are TONS of mods for it. I also really like Fallout 3, where I can be almost as twisted as I want to be. See attached pics . I just wish I could join the Raider faction, but I'm the next best thing: a wanted man. I've got the Regulator duster to prove it .

Ah, thanks Notice the narrator mentioned them doing the Lufbery Circle

For each nationality, I use the same surnames based on nationality, representing my various consanguinous clans of Bullethead, Flingetete, and Geschosskopf (all of whom breed like flies and ain't worth the rope to hang them, so they end up in wargames). I distinguish members of each clan by their 1st names. The 1st name of the 1st pilot in each clan starts with the letter "A" and so on through the alphabet, whereupon I start over. I've gone through the Brit alphabet 1.3 times so far but have hardly scratched the others. I distinguish Brit from US pilots of the same surname by giving the Brits 1st names that are either Celtic or otherwise British (Aleswiller, Bangers, Carradoc) while the US names are cowboys names (Arizona, Butch, Cisco). I my German pilots have names like Achdulieber, Bierstein, and (my current Pfalz driver) Einmehr. The French pilots are all Cajun volunteers so have names like Atchafalaya, Boudreaux, and Carboneau.

I knew they were building one and had the motor going already. The motor, BTW, is like 90% original parts, salvaged from a wreck in the Andes that happened about 1920. Anyway, I was already getting my Vaseline out to watch the video when I noticed YOU DIDN'T PUT A LINK IN YOUR POST

Sabash, Carrick-huzoor! We shall call you "Bloody Lance" now . Very good description. I could picture the action in my mind's eye. BTW, when you pop your cherry, you have to buy a round of drinks for everybody for each kill. Guess that means I'll have a double Lagavulin 16 :drinks_drunk:

Yay! I can resume using A Flight as bait, and apparently I'll have the chance to witness my demise and take pics for posterity (probably the thing I've wanted most in OFF). Bravo!

Yes indeed, the SPAD XIII can now do sustained hard turns while bleeding speed down to about 60 knots (used to be only about 90 knots) without an accelerated spin/stall, but it still happens at about 60. But when that happens, it's no longer nose-high and much easier to recover from. It's still not something you want to have happen, though, because really, you NEVER want to be that slow in a SPAD. I recommend following a turning target for no more than 1/4 of a circle, maybe 1/3 - 1/2 of a circle if you're a SPAD expert (I'm not). If you go further than that, you'll be too slow to do the high yoyo that is the SPAD's bread and butter. In addition, the SPAD can now REVERSE a hard turn without going tits over teakettle, provided you don't do it too abruptly. And the 1/4 circle rule still applies, so if you go 1/8 of a circle left, go no more than 1/8 of a circle right before breaking up into your next high yoyo. On top of all this, the wings-level stall speed is now down to about 55-60 knots (used to be about 80). STILL, however, I recommend landing low and fairly hot. Instead of the 90-knot touchdown you used to have to make, try for 65-75. The reason is that the slower you touch the ground, the higher the pig bounces, and with a fairly high stall speed that can easily be fatal. So come in hot and shallow, and force the thing back down when it bounces so you only go about 3 feet up instead of 30. DO NOT kill the motor until you're touching the ground below 60 knots, and DO NOT pull back on the stick to brake until you're at 50 knots or less. That's the tradeoff for the lower stall speed--you'll go back in the air and stall unless you're pretty slow. Yup, the high yoyo is the SPAD's bread and butter. Fly the SPAD like an FW-190D fighting Spit Mk IXs. Don't follow the enemy through very much of a turn, but level out, pull up, and come back up and over on him. The SPAD is not for sticking to the enemy's tail like glue, but for delivering a series of short, violent slashing attacks separated by vertical maneuvers. Speed is very much life in the SPAD. No speed = no vertical moves = dead SPAD. I think the Pfalz could stand an FM overhaul like the SPADs got. The Pfalz has all the same problems as the pre-1.32 SPAD, plus it loses all its lift if banked more than 45^ or so and just falls out of the sky sideways. I haven't found that particular problem in the SPAD. And, of course, the Pfalz can't zoom or dive as well as a SPAD, although it can turn better when flown by a human. Kudos to anybody who can keep a Pfalz in the air during ACM, let alone survive and get kills in it. IMHO, having flown Fees and SPADs, it's quite simply IMHO the hardest fighter to do well in, given its nasty habits and general lack of performance.

There I was at about 8000 feet in my Alb D.II tangling with a Pup. He tried to go vertical 1 too many times, when I had more E than he did. As he hung there on his prop, I came up from behind him and drilled him GOOD! Point blank range with debris, smoke, and sparks flying everywhere. I'm surprised a major part didn't come off. Having been shot down in Pups many times, I figured I'd done more than enough to kill him, especially as I'd winged him some before. So, as I zoomed on by him still vertical, he stalled and went into a wobbly, irregular spin, trailing a slight amount of black smoke. Looked like a dead man in an unflyable plane. I pulled over the top and spiraled down above him, because I wanted to watch him crash. Good thing I kept my on him, though, because at about 300 feet he suddenly pulled out and started flying away straight and level towards home. The old spin-out-of-a-bad-situation trick! COOL I've of course read of this many times in WW1 accounts, and I use it myself on occasion, but I'd never seen the AI do it until now. Of course, he was hurt, very slow and still smoking somewhat, but fully under control and not losing altitude noticeably. For a brief moment I considered letting him go out of respect, a novel change of pace, but decided I'd never be able to live with myself if I did. I'm Evil, after all. So I went after him and finished him off with another good burst to 1 wing. He flopped into the ground and stayed there this time .

I've done a lot of flying since 1.32 came out and haven't had a problem with AA fire. Flak bursts now seem a bit more numerous, IN CERTAIN PLACES, then before, but that's realistic. Some paces had dozens of guns. The bursts are usually slightly closer than before, but I've only been winged once and wasn't seriously damaged. Weaving might help, but so far I haven't felt the need. I'm not afraid of the bursting shells, at least not yet. AAMGs are a different story. Those are what get you most of the time, but the have a very short range, so are easy to avoid by staying above 1000 feet or so. This is actually a huge improvement over what went before. Several patches before 1.32, AAMGs reached up to 3-4000 feet or so and never missed. I saw entire formations of bombers shot down 1 after the other before I could get close enough to shoot one myself. That doens't happen anymore, definitely not in 1.32. The AAMGs will still get you if you give them the chance, but they now have much shorter range, shoot in shorter bursts, and don't hit as often. Thus, it's not suicide to fly within their range anymore, at least for short periods, although you'll probably be hit and might be shot down. That seems realistic to me. In WW1, attacking balloons and ground targets was highly dangerous, due to all the AAMGs down there. Thus, very few people went after balloons, and squadrons on ground attack duty suffered horrendous losses. I just read a book by a Camel driver who got shot down by AAMGs 3 times in 9 days, and he only flew on 4 or 5 of those days because of the time required to walk home. If you want to kill balloons, the best way is to fly high above them then dive down steeply. You need to catch them at high altitude, while they're still above AAMG range. If you don't kill the balloon on your 1st pass, you MIGHT be able to make another, if the balloon is still high enough. But never make a 3rd pass, and never attack at all if the balloon is at about 1500 feet or lower. Hanging around within AAMG range is just asking to be shot down. All that said, I have noticed that in 1.32, there's no longer a workshop option just for AA guns. The only setting that claims to affect AA fire is "AI Gun Range", which affects both air and ground weapons. But I'm not having any problem with AA fire, so I don't feel the need to mess with this, especially if it affects airplanes as well.

The RE8 flies extremely well, with none of the nasty habits it had in real life. It seems to be completely spin-proof, for example, although it will snaproll if you're going fast enough. It's my favorite barnstorming plane, even though it's hard to see where I'm going. Periodically, I do a QC free flight where I just to a bunch of low-alt aerobatics, try to fly through hangars and under bridges, etc. The RE8 does this sort of nonsense better than most planes. Yup, they work just fine. It's just not considered realistic to use them on most WW1 crates. A few did have some trim, but not many. HOWEVER, even the trimless planes were test-flown repeatedly and adjusted (tightening some wires, loosening others) until they flew as well as they was able, or at least until the pilots were happy with. Same sort of thing as pit crews tweaking the suspension of race cars in all the practice and qualifying runs prior to the actual race. So, I consider it perfectly OK to trim my plane out as soon as I take off. This represents the results of all the test flights I would have flown the day before in real life, but which you don't do in OFF. Once I like how it's set, I don't touch the trim again for the duration of the mission.

I won't tell anybody :). But seriously, if you want to do a 2-seater career, I recommend the Fee in a fighter squadron instead of the Fee or anything else in a bomber squadron. I quickly lose interest in bomber careers because I find the bulk of their missions dissatisfying. You just don't get bombing missions very often; it's almost all recon and arty spotting, where you just wait to get intercepted. If you want to keep the pilot alive any length of time, you have to avoid combat every chance you get, which isn't very fun. OTOH, standing and fighting leads to many campaign restarts. Bombing missions are the most likely to get you killed, because you're over enemy territory, in the flak a lot, and if you want accuracy, you have to get down in the AAMG zone. But they're the only missions where you're more than just bait, so I enjoy them the most. It would be nice if they had dedicated bomber squadrons that did nothing else, and dedicated observation squadrons that did nothing but recon and arty spotting. OTOH, if you're in a Fee fighter squadron, you go on offensive patrols and such things, looking for trouble. And you're sure to find it. Plus you can see ahead, you get to watch your gunner hose the Huns, and you've got Mata Hari smiling at you the whole time

I don't get it. Is this a reference to some show I've never seen?

I strongly urge everybody to use the "Less Accurate" tailgunner setting. I know, I know, this lowers your precious DiD realism score, but this is an area where I think "Less Accurate" is more realistic, so hear me out. As you know, I fly the Fee a lot. The Fee has ONLY a gunner--the pilot has no weapon of his own. Yet I always fly it with "Less Accurate" gunners, because I think that's more realistic. The Fee gunner is right in front of me, so I've had ample opportunity to watch him in action, and it was from these observations that I started using the "Less Accurate" setting. If you use the "Less Accurate" setting, you get the following things: The gunner will only shoot at ranges of 200m or less (as shown by labels), regardless of anything else. The gunner will only shoot when the plane is holding relatively still. It can be turning, but not too steeply, and definitely not when upside down. The gunner can't hit fast crossing targets, but only targets with up to medium bearing rates. He'll still shoot at a fast crossing target that's within 200m, but if he hits at all (which is rare) it will only be with 1 or 2 bullets. However, he can still drill targets with low bearing rates. The gunner doesn't shoot as often as you think he should, given otherwise good opportunities, fires in short bursts, and pauses a second or 2 between bursts. OTOH, if you use "Normal" gunner accuracy, you get laser-guided gunners firing long bursts from all attitudes and at ranges up to 400m.

Howdy- I've tried the new "Start in Air" feature of campaign missions a few times now and find it rather useful. Thanks :). However, I've noticed that whenever I check that box, it changes my whole mission, just as if I'd hit the "Optional Flight" button. The target is always changed, as is my escort if I'm flying a bomber, and sometimes I think the number of guys in my flight (but I could be wrong on this one). As a result, I've taken to not writing down any of the briefing info until after I check the "Start in Air" button. Is it supposed to do that? I don't mind this happening, but am just making sure this isn't a bug.

Bravo

That I can't tell you, but I can tell you how to find out. Every OFF plane seems to behave pretty much the same this way, so this will probably work for the Quirk... To find the answer, you need to "cheat", so do this in QC free flight with your test pilot. You'll need to disable the wind, use all the trim controls, and the HUD's VSI, ASI, and artificial horizon. Once you get your answer, you can put everything back realistic and manually fly the way you discovered on the test hop. Anyway, take off, level off just above the treetops, and trim all the controls so the plane flies hands-off. Then start feeding in up elevator trim to make the plane climb until you see the VSI start to go up quickly. As soon as you see this jump begin, stop adding elevator trim. The plane will zoom just a bit, then slow down to about 80% of its max level speed and settle into a gentle climb with a lower ROC than initially. This is in the ballpark, now you just need to tweak it. Keep 1 eye on the VSI and the other on the ASI. Try adding a couple of clicks of up elevator. The goal is to bump the ROC up a hair without causing too great a loss in speed. Generally, the best ROC is when the plane is between 75-80% of its max level speed (at that altitude). Note that if the airspeed keeps falling after your initial up input, you gave it too much and need to back off it. If you want, once you have this settled, just let the plane keep climbing, so you can see at which altitudes it begins to lose its macho. As you get higher, both ROC and airspeed slack off, but sometimes there's a big change above a certain height. For most OFF planes, the sustained max climb rate is achieved at a high fraction of their max level speed. If you pull the nose up more, they just lose airspeed but ROC will usually remain the same or only slightly less, until speed falls close to stall speed. Once you get high enough that your ROC goes down nearly to nothing, you can still coax some more altitude out of the beast by leveling off, building up max, speed, then zooming up steeply and leveling quickly before you stall. This works best in 2-seaters, no doubt due to their lower wing loadings, but each zoom will only gain you a hundred feet or less.

I had one of these last night, the 1st time I'd seen it happen. I got totally owned by some Nupe ace. Last I knew, I was in a vertical dive at about 6,000 feet with him on my tail hitting me with every round in his Lewis drum. All the controls were useless, major pieces were missing, there was the horrible noise of my plane shredding, and it looked like a fire was starting. Then the screen went black, but instead of saying I was dead, it said "Another flight logged". I wasn't even hurt--I had to fly the afternoon mission that same day . But that's the only time I've had that happen yet. Yesterday (my 1st day off in a long time), I spent doing all sorts of crazy things in OFF. I ended up killing 4 or 5 pilots. Most died in horrible crashes and collisions, and once when I didn't think my landing was THAT bad . So apart from this 1 strange instance, all seems normal to me.

Personally, no. And while I in theory support the right of other players to play the game however they want, I have to balance that against what I want. What I want is for OBD to sell me new products, so I get more stuff and they make money to stay in business and make me even more stuff in the future. Thus, I don't want to see development money sunk into a no-profit thing like another large mod for the existing product. Sure, fix the odd bug in 1.32, but don't waste any more time on it than that. Make me new stuff! I don't think folks appreciate just how big a freebie the 1.32 superpatch was. A LOT of work obviously went into that, and OBD didn't make a cent on it, because it was just a patch for an existing product. At most, it might turn a few would-be RoF heads, but seriously, OBD can't expect much of a return on this large investment of time, talent, and labor. I look at the superpatch as an unexpected and undeserved present from OBD to the customers. So all of us should just say "Thanks". Anyway, on the numbers thing, I think things are fine as they are. In fact, I use both high and low player flight densities. Sometimes I think the high setting gives me too many wingmen for the time and place, so I use the low setting. Sometimes the reverse. And this is whether or not 1st Flight is along with me or not. Once in a while, I get totally gangbanged, but guess what? C'est la guerre. War is Hell.

Will do. What is the name of the file and where do I find it?

Yes, I've seen that happen, too. But mostly, they patrol like I do, except in a different place at about 1/2 the altitude. I dunno, Pol. There are 3 situations here when you have a 2-flight mission, depending on how you deal with time. 1st Flight does fine with real time and warping, but goes nuts when you start in the air. 1. Fly Entire Mission in Real Time Both flights follow the same path, do the same things, and you're at the correct altidude because you climb there yourself. Everything works as per the briefing. 2. Take off in Real Time then Warp at 1st Opportunity 1st Flight follows the real waypoints at the correct altitude and does the briefed mission. Your flight comes out of warp at a much lower altitude than the briefing or where 1st Flight is. It appears that 1st Flight is off course slightly, but that's an illusion. They're on the "official" path, but because you skipped all the circling waypoints, you left the vicinity of your airfield from a different place than they did, so are heading towards the next waypoint at a different angle. The blue line on tac is always drawn from your position, instead of being a fixed line on the map, so it LOOKS like you're the one on course and 1st Flight is off, but it's the other way around. 3. Start in the Air Both flights spawn together, on course, at the correct altitude. Then 1st Flight goes off and does something completely different, at a much lower altitude than briefed.