Bullethead

That's one of Gawd's teardrops over the whole wastefulness of the war.

Wecome aboard, Bruce. New guy buys the drinks Don't expect to live very long, at least at high realism settings. There's a reason why just making it to 17 hours of flying time is quite an achievement ;). The main way to survive is to limit the chances you take, such as not flying off on your own, only fight when you have the advantage of energy and/or numbers, and don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. On the claim confirmation thing, there have been several threads on that subject already. On the hardest setting for confirmations, you pretty much have to have a witness from your squadron and also write something closely resembling the actual reports filed by WW1 pilots, with as much detail as you can remember. These threads usually have several examples.

That's what I meant when I said simmers would soon be the only real fighterpilots left. Sure, guys today get shot at, and the stuff that shoots at them is every bit as scary as the powers they command themselves. But even WW2 vets don't consider today's guys as actually doing "real" fighterpilot stuff, which has traditionally been defined as dogfighting. ACM is a dying art, becoming less and less important every day. All these off-boresight weapons and missiles that can do U-turns to clear your 6 have seen to that. As this video says, "maneuverability is irrelevant". Today's air combat seems more like a naval battle than what we traditionally recognize as a dogfight. And in the not-too-distant future, there won't even be pilots in the cockpits, so then there really won't be any fighterpilots, "real" or otherwise. It'll just be us. Hell, maybe we'll get drafted to fly UAVs, given our decades of experience with that already I'm still trying to come to grips with that. It's hard to accept that flintknapping and being able to do ACM, skills about as far apart on the technology spectrum as it's possible to get, will soon be of equal practical value.

That's what I'm thinking. I think that if the XIII really had to be landed at 90 knots, it would be common knowledge to anybody familiar with WW1 airplanes as some sort of freak of nature compared to its comptemporaries. I don't have force feedback so I don't know if you get stick-shaking when a plane is about to stall. However, almost all planes in OFF give clear warning of impending stall in the form of getting wobbly, the controls getting mushy, etc. Not so in the XIII. One second it's perfectly responsive and stable, the next it's in a spin at a surprisingly high speed. Get out of the spin and it's back to normal. If kept above that lethal stall speed, the XIII in OFF is very easy to fly, stable, responsive, and generally well-behaved. I haven't had a need to give it any trim in flight, and feel perfectly safe in leaving it climbing hands off while I go downstairs to get another beer. But if you cross that line, it just doesn't fly. That seems rather odd to me, but I'm not a Spad expert so have no idea how the thing really flew.

Well, that's more wall-worthy than my impressionist watercolor ;).

The Spad XIII has an interesting quirk. You can stand on the rudder and yaw up to about 45^ off your course without affecting your vector that much. This is quite useful at times, mostly for balloon strafing, but occasionally in dogfights. OTOH, I find that any use of aileron below about 75 knots results in an accelerated stall. This includes landing approaches, so come in low, hot, and straight, lined up well in advance to pass between the trees on the threshold. Try to be about 80knots and 2 feet off the ground, level, then chop throttle and let the pig settle in. You might bounce a bit, but no harm done. In dogfights, try to stay above 100 knots or you'll run into real problems. I find the Spad XIII's works best if kept between 150-200 knots when making passes and 100 coming over the top. Don't be afraid to get over 250 and push 300 if need be. Needless to say, to be effective in the Spad XIII, you have to be quite a good shot, because you're going so much faster than the enemy that usually your firing opportunities are going to be very fleeting.

Just my $0.02, but IMHO, from comparing label range numbers with tac range circles, and the ranges reported in mission replays, I'm pretty sure label ranges are in yards. Replay ranges are in feet, and they seem to correspond to the yard ranges I see on labels (as in 3x), and the mile ranges on the TAC circles. Well, you can read Keith Rennles' Independent Force, which gives a day-by-day breakdown of what the IAF was up to in the 2nd 1/2 of 1918. This often includes total ammo expenditure for all the observers on a squadron's mission. They always tried to have 12 planes in a squadron formation, but engine trouble usually limited this to an apparent average of 10 or so crossing the lines. The squadrons frequently encountered 2-4 Huns who stayed at 300-400m range and traded sniping with the observers for long periods of time. During missions like this, the observers usually fired about 2000 rounds between them, so say 200 each. The vast majority appear to have had single Lewis guns, so this appears to represent fairly prolonged periods of long-range fire by both sides. Note, however, that when the IAF encountered whole front-line Jastas instead of scattered Kests, the results were rather different. The Jasta pilots usually pressed the attack to close range and many bombers went down, usually only a few buffs surviving. In these cases, ammo expenditure figures are lacking due to not enough survivors to get a good figure.

With as many skins as you've made, haven't you wished for the same thing? To me, QC is primarily a skin viewer. Because I'm not interested at all in actually playing the game, but just want to see what my latest skin tweak looks like, and don't have that much time available for such trivial pursuits anyway, I begrudge every moment wasted in QC waiting for spawns to be disabled, reading about squaddies I don't even know I have, etc. But I guess, really, in the big picture, it's no biggie

Just to add my $0.02.... From what I've read, shooting at 300-400 yards was actually fairly common in WW1. Not, I hasten to add, in dogfights, but in other situations. Such as, sniping at a large, intimidating formation of 2-seaters that outnumbered the attacking scouts. Also, late in the war, when huge formations met, often nobdoy was unwilling to turn it into a brawl, so they circled around making obscene gestures and taking long-range potshots "into the brown". I shoot from 300-400 yards (I guess--no way to tell) but don't expect to hit. I'm shooting for psyche. Sometimes I shotgun a few bullets into somebody that way, and that appears to be what mostly happens to me. Since the last gunnery tweaks, I don't get really drilled from 300-400 yards unless I'm holding still too long.

Congrats, Fubar! That skin definitely ain't fubar :)

I still think we should get something for wounds and combat-related injuries

Whoever smelt it, dealt it. Nice Jenny, BTW. When can the rest of us get our hands on your marvelous creations?

Pretty models, but I was hoping for beer wagons. After all, the thread title says "pinted", which is what I am after a pub crawl :yes:

Thanks for the update :).

Oh schweet! Thanks for the tips. I'll have to get that a try. When I made my watercolor, I was just applying things at random because I didn't know what any of them did, which is why I was doing them all on 1 layer, too.

That's difficult to say. The Gothas usually lost 1 or 2 planes per daylight raid on England from flak, but that was probably the most heavily defended spot in the world at the time. In the 2nd half of 1918, the DH4s and DH9s of Independent Force were doing deep daylight raids. They would get archied at the lines and then over every town they used as a waypoint in and out, plus over the target area itself, but had gaps in between such defended areas. It's safe to say they were under fire for 1-2 hours at least on most occasions (missions usually lasted 4-5 hours in total). The flak was quite often (until the last month of the war) described as "heavy and accurate", even at their usual altitude of 15-16000 feet, and many or even all planes were hit by fragments every raid. Only occasionally, however, did this cause any important damage. From what I can tell, they never lost a plane to immediately fatal flak damage (direct hit, dead pilot, flaming engine, etc.). The planes downed by flak mostly lost power due to engine or fuel tank hits, or sometimes went down due to a pilot wound. They'd be seen to go down under control, and quite a few managed to glide back across the lines. When they didn't, the crews often survived as POWs. However, crews of a number of planes last seen under control ended up dead, usually from being finished off by a fighter once they left formation. It's hard to quantify without rereading the entire book and keeping score, but the vast majority of IAF's combat losses were from fighters. Serious fighter attacks weren't that common, however. Mostly, they'd meet a couple of Huns who were intimidated by the IAF's large formations, and who only sniped from long range. But every few weeks, they'd meet a large number of Huns who attacked with gusto and would knock down many bombers. Hardly ever do you come across a definite flak victim, even when the archie was "heavy and accurate" for an hour or more. However, quite frequently you read that planes were so badly shot up by flak as to be written off upon their safe return. Occasionally, a squadron would be out of action for a day while most of its planes were under repair from flak damage. Thus, even though the flak didn't get many kills, it was still doing frequent non-fatal damage.

I'd say so.... AFAIK, the official swine flu bodycount in the US, as of this morning, is exactly 2 (two) people, 1 of whom wasn't even a citizen. As I understand things, swine flu is no more likely to kill you than regular flu. It's just that, because it's out of season, can't be vaccinated against, and apparently most folks are more vulnerable to this strain than others, more people are probably going to get swine flu than the regular kind, eventually. So even if lethality is the same for both, more cases means more deaths in the long run. It's amazing to me to see the panic over this. You might have heard that Texas stopped all school sporting events and such, which to me is a sure sign of the apochalypse. Those of you who don't live there might not understand, but in Texas, high school sports are an obsession bordering on mania. They've even made TV shows ("Friday Night Lights") about that obsession. Sure, it's not football season right now, but it's still Texas school sports! Ordinarily, I doubt they'd cancel a game for the 2nd Coming. But the panic is subsiding I guess. The CDC today reversed itself and told schools to stay open, whereas before they were closing them indefinitely. Kind of a bummer. I was hoping the panic would, at long last, drive us to impose truly effective border security. All the attention so far has been on the few kids who brought it back from recent trips to Mexico, but how many illegal aliens are bringing it with them and not reporting it for fear of deportation? Thus, we'll no doubt end up with uncontrolled reservoirs of the disease wherever they congregate. Unfortunately, it's not PC to complain about that sort of thing......

That looks a lot better than my impressionist water color screenshot. Sabash!

To actually end a mission, you have to hit ESC to bring up the menu, then click on END FLIGHT, which is the top option. Obviously, this assumes you didn't crash or get shot down along the way.... If you don't do this, but just go back to the main menu, then it's like that mission never happened, and you have to repeat it. Don't feel bad--I did the same myself early on. You can do this proceedure any time you want. However, unless you're on the ground, this might result in you crashing, becoming a POW, etc. So for best results, only do this when you've landed on an active friendly airfield. But this is really a small risk, and if you do it any time you're well your side of the lines, you should be OK. But be advised that if you do this anywhere from over enemy territory to just barely your side of the lines, you'll likely become a POW.

Only 1 day? Geez, that sort of coup should net you a 96-hour pass in Paris, PLUS the hangover

Thanks for the work, Pol. I'll have to try that F7 thing. I wonder what planes it works for. The Fee is my favorite plane in the game, and used correctly it can put up a good fight. It's main advantage over the others is that because the front gun is a pivot, you don't have to wrestle the beast directly onto a target. This helps you maintain E in the fight. However, you have no gun of your own, so have to rely on whatever effectiveness gunners have in your game. Otherwise, I'd take a Strutter over an RE8. In a Strutter, you can at least defend yourself. In the RE8, while you perhaps can get on a Hun's tail, it's practically impossible to shoot him because you can see neither him nor your tracer at the moment of truth. That's my wish, too. We've got plenty of scouts, but we're short on 2-seaters. None for the French at all.

Hadn't thought of hiding the cockpit. In fact, I think I even disabled that option in the workshops :) WW1 level bombers did have bombsights, however, at least in the latter part of the war. I'd rather bomb from 10-15k to avoid the groundfire, so I wish we had such sights in OFF :).

I consider the Brisfit more of a 2-seat fighter so I won't discuss that one :). In any buff campaign, you'll just have to accept several facts of life: 1) your plane is pretty much going to be a pig compared to the scouts you'll be running into; 2) your wingmen aren't likely to give you much help in a fight; and 3) you're going to eat a lot of groundfire. So just accept that as part of the job, and you'll have fun. You might even get a bomb hit once in a while . The 1st thing you notice about all 2-seaters is that the visibility is very bad in at least 1 direction, usually in several. This not only handicaps carrying out your bombing missions, but also your ability to defend yourself and even land. This IMHO is the worst part of being a buffer. And if you don't have TIR4, you're just going to have a completely miserable time in most of them, because you can't see anything you need to. Here's my thoughts on 2-seater pilot visibility: FE2: Excellent in front hemishere, bad to the sides, but not bad to the rear IF you can turn your head around and look over the engine. There's no fuselage to block your view. Plus the cockpit has a racy pin-up girl and a pack of smokes that can be used as a slip indicator. No problems seeing to land. Strutter: As good as a rotary scout to the front and front-down. Bad to the sides, limited to the rear due to the gunner's body, but not as bad as some 2-seaters. But you sit under the wing so can't see up very well at all, although the wing is high enough, and you sit far enough forward, that you can see up and forwards quite well, which is what you need to follow a turning target. No problems landing. BE2: View ahead is blocked by your useless observer and a forest of struts. Upwards, downwards, sideways, and to the rear, however, it's like a scout because you're behind the wing and no gunner behind you. You have to lean over sideways to see to land, or sideslip a lot. RE8: Lower part of front view blocked by air scoop which completely hides your target and your tracers. Up and forward isn't good, either, due to the upper wing, but you can see up very well. Can't see backwards due to the observer, and view downwards is blocked by lower wing. You have to lean sideways while landing, or sideslip a lot. 2nd worst visibility of all 2-seaters. Roland: Picture yourself buried in the ground with only your head exposed, unable to turn around. You can see very well from your eye level upwards in all directions except to the rear (due to the gunner), but nothing at all downwards (due to the wings). This makes it practically impossible to see the ground at all during flight, let alone spot your target, so this machine is essentially useless as a bomber. It also makes landing the beast extremely difficult. When you slow down, of course the nose rises, and it and the leading edge of the upper wing completely block your view ahead and of the horizon. You can only see the ground at all through a tiny gap in the upper wing, and this isn't really enough to be helpful. Not to mention the difficulty of staying level when you can't see the horizon, or dodging those trees right at the threshold. Plus, if you're more than a few hundred feet up, you can't see the horizon even in level flight, and I find this makes me a bit queasy when using TIR. So despite the excellent upward views, I consider this plane to have the worst visibility in the game. DFW: Forward view almost completely blocked by large engine, and you can't see much up or down due to sitting between the wings. The gunner blocks most of the rear view. However, you can at least see down and forward, so can spot targets and land by sideslipping. Hannover: Due to the low upper wing, the views ahead, upwards, sideways, and down, are pretty much like in a Spad. The gunner also isn't as much of a barrier as in most other 2-seaters. I'd rate this the best of the bombers for visibility. So now, having picked your ride, you'll have to get ready to meet scouts. Most 2-seaters actually turn quite well, due to their large wing area. They can often turn tighter than most scouts when in vertical banks. The problem is, it takes a while for them to get started, because they have such low roll rates. This not only means they're slow to react to threats, but makes it difficult to get the front gun on a scout (assuming you can see one to try for). I find, however, that it's best to let your observer cover the tail while you flop around as best you can. You're going to get shot up nearly every fight, so your only hope is to limit the number of bullets you take, and the only reliable way to do that is to dodge as best you can, constantly. If you jump to the gunner's seat, at best your plane will go straight and therefore take more hits. As for bombing, your guess is as good as mine. I've never had any success, although I've come close a few times. If there's a bombsight view, I have yet to discover how to use it, so all my attacks are glide-bombing passes. And because you can't see ahead very well in most 2-seaters, it's rather difficult to line up on the target and drop the bomb at the right moment. In fact, it's nearly impossible even to strafe effectively in some 2-seaters.

"In hatred of the despoiler/evil-doer, all is presumed." It's one of those old legal maxims that, sadly, lawyers rarely say anymore, even though they still operate under them. At 1st glance might seem to mean something like "guilty until proven innocent", which is how I was using it. However, it actually has to do with the destruction (spoliation) of evidence. For example, if there was some piece of paper that Party A wanted to use as evidence to prove his case, but Party B destroyed it, then the court presumes as a matter of law that the paper was absolutely damning to Party B.

Hehehe, I guess you didn't see Johnny Depp in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when he was playing Hunter S. Thompson, and was doing stuff WAY more potent than absinthe . The thing that gave absinthe its bad reputation was wormwood, but wormwood itself has never been illegal. For instance, if you drink a martini, you get about the same amount as if you drank a reasonable amount of absinthe. Marinis are full of vermouth, and "vermouth" is Old German for "wormwood". You could even buy vermouth and this pseudo-absinthe stuff that was all the other herbs and spices except wormwood, mix them together, and make your own absinthe. And there's a common linament for sore muscles that's got ALL of absinthe's herbs and spices, including wormwood (and is green, and turns milky if you add water, just like absinthe), that's also always been legal. Now, granted, once folks realized back in the day that wormwood was what gave absinthe it's special characteristics, they started jacking up the amount of that to dangerous levels, and so you had guys cutting off their ears. But the newly legalized absinthes are back at the original levels and no more evil than vermouth, although they taste like licorice instead of stale sweat :yes: . In odium spoliatoris omnis praesumuntur.