Bullethead

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 .

OK, thanks. What about this, though? I'm consistently finding that when my squadron has both flights doing the same thing, the 1st flight goes off and does its own thing immediately after the mission starts in the air. Here's what I'm seeing. Usually, I have some sort of patrol mission to go back and forth between 2 nearby waypoints for a while at high altitude. When the mission starts, both flights are right together at the proper altitude, heading the same direction, and directly on the 1st patrol point aimed at the 2nd (a much better situation than usually found when warping there from takeoff). But as soon as time starts, the 1st flight immediately peels off at an angle and dives to about 1/2 its starting altitude (say from 15k to 7k feet). Once there, it patrols back and forth apparently over 2 completely different waypoints than what I've got, often miles away. Why do that do this?

Stranger in the mess! Oh wait, it's just Mack. Well, you've been gone so long you still owe us drinks, which I KNOW you brought back with you from the home front :drinks_drunk:

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.

I've seen numerous photos of B-17s that came home minus entire engines, and I'd wager they were more solidly attached to the airframes than in any WW1 kite . In a WW1 plane, no matter what the engine mounts are made of, eventually something's attached to a piece of wood. In all the hundreds of OFF planes I've seen shot down, I've only noticed them lose their engines a couple of times, so it's not that big a deal.

They must have appalling accidents at that dangerous 6-way intersection :yes:

How did you get the game to keep running that long after you were dead? I've always wanted to take pics like these, but as soon as I die or my plane becomes unflyable, the mission ends.

Bravo to all!

OK, I'll take your word for it.

From your map, that looks more like the Thames Estuary than the Channel. I guess the tide really came in that day, and of course they hadn't built the barrier thingies yet

You need to release the parking brake.

I agree, the whole point is to have fun. The problem with DiD is that it just takes too much time for those whose real-life commitments limit flying time. So, I usually have a stable of pilots. I have DiD pilots whom I only fly on my REAL days off, when neither work nor family intrude. In fact, I only touch them when I have 2 such days in a row, because only on the 2nd day do I wake up early enough to fly them while still sober. Flying DiD practically REQUIRES not warping, not because that's a "no-no" for that standard, but because warping guarantees you'll be at an altitude disadvantage, which negatively impacts your chances of survival. Thus, it's only possible to make any progress on DiD pilots when I have many hours available to climb to high altitude and fly uneventfully for hundreds of miles in real time. The rest of the time, which is most of the time, I use the "Gimpy Uncle Al Guy" standard. I set everything to DiD standard except my odds of dying. Sometimes I do like him and do PND, but most often I do DoDR. Then I'm free to warp and get as much action as possible into the short time I have available, especially if I combine that time with drinking. If they should die as a result, I kill them myself. However, sometimes I let them keep going just because I had so much fun before they, in the real world, would have bought the farm. The problem with warping is that it really limits what you can do, however. If you warp, you can only fly stallfighters, because only they have an chance when bounced from above, which is the inevitable result of warping. Thus, no SPADs, no Pfalzes, no SE5s, no Albatri, etc. You're pretty much stuck with Nupes, Sops, Dr.Is, and Fees, plus maybe D.VIIs if you're feeling macho.

SPAD go fast. SPAD like dive, but SPAD not like slow climb up to dive from. SPAD like zoom after dive, cuz then SPAD can dive again soon. SPAD not like turn at all (p-tu!). SPAD is same-same mighty avalanche, go straight down very fast, crush all in SPAD's path. SPAD's roar shakes Earth and SPAD's farts same-same thunder in hills. SPAD fills world with crying, friend and foe same-same. Fear SPAD!

Once again, thanks for the quick service.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks! :drinks_drunk:

Anytime anybody's buying, I'm drinking! Congrats BuB! Killing aces is definitely something to be proud of, and don't listen to them as say it ain't. MvR and his lads have killed me more times than I can remember and I've never downed any of them but Kurt Wolf, although I've maimed most of them a time or 2. Salute!

Like I said, it's the standard skin for that squadron. I just flew what they gave me.

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks :drinks_drunk:

I beg to differ. Fee crews had a much worse blindspot to the rear than regular 2-seaters, because neighboring planes in their formation couldn't cover under the tails of the others. Fee crews knew this, so started doing the Lufbery Circle very early on, so that each Fee covered the blindspot of the one ahead. They'd do this until the enemy either gave up and went away, or until the enemy completely blew his energy. After that, they flew like fighters, because then it was an even fight. The problem the Fee AI has is that it just flies along in a V formation like a tractor 2-seater, allowing enemies to come up from behind and hose them with complete impunity. That isn't realistic. But neither is having them go all aggressive from the get-go. So IMHO, neither AI mentality suits the Fee, but the "bomber mentality" is worse than "fighter mentality". Ideally, you'd have them circle until the enemy was co-E, then fight. But failing that, having them be aggressive from the beginning would be better than what they do now. 48 Squadron's disastrous debut lasted all of about 1 week. The guy who imposed those tactics on them was lost on the 1st hop they did, and they only followed his example for a few more days. It was patently obvious to all that sitting there and taking it was suicide, so they changed, and all subsequent Brisfit squadrons did that from the beginning. The Fees had come to the same conclusion the previous year earlier in the Fokker Scourge, and they all became Brisfit squadrons. So really, don't you think they KNEW they needed to do something other than just fly along as sitting ducks?

Forgive me for being drunk and/or just dense, but I can't figure out how to select the mission to begin with. I put the SE5 low-level night mission in the folder specified in the readme, but I don't see it on the list to select in either QC or QS. Just the stock missions. And WHO is "Giovani" and where is the option for him to prep my plane?

Schwing! Where's W2F? She needs to know about this.

The squadron's standard. You must be one of those brown-nosers in 1.Kette who get to fly black Albatri with white polkadots . My surviving subordinate Pfalz-drivers are named Zeuch, von Rolshoven, and Hilker. Of them, Zeuch is hospitalized from wounds at present. So things are a bit lonely already and my leadership is being questioned .

25 Feb 1918 Dear Dairy- Three sorties today. Each time, as we were leaving the mess (which we use as a briefing room), the meteorological officer rolled halfway out from the table under which he'd been passed out drunk until then, and told us, "Shi'y wea'er tuhday, guysh. Low cloush an' shish. Prolly nobody flyin' in thish shish." As we all knew from having looked up on the way into the mess, he was full of "shish". It was scattered cumulus at 2500m. The weather was so nice, one of my wingmen snapped the photo of my flight that I've glued on the facing page during our 3rd hop. Otherwise, it was a bad day. On the first 2 hops, 3 of my comrades bought it. So when the met. officer repeated his performance for the 3rd time, I shot him between the eyes with my Luger. Nobody complained. The skipper wrote it up as a suicide. Hopefully, our next met. officer will be more competent. ====================== First time I've ever seen a met. officer be so badly wrong, so consistently. Most times they're spot on.

If the AI flew Fees in fighter squadrons with its "fighter mentality" (as in like it flies Brisfits) instead of with its "bomber mentality", you'd have a lot more respect for them. The old Fee, when flown aggressively, can hold its own against a swarm of AI Albatri, and might even give you a good fight. But no, the AI Fees (unless properly led by a human) just sit there and take it. It's a real shame.

That's how I was landing SPADs before 1.32. If you tried it any other way, you'd likely stall and crash from about 30 feet up, or bounce 30 feet up and then stall and crash. Still haven't flown the SPADs since the patch, though, so maybe things have changed. I really need to try the SPAD now that OBD has worked on the stalls. Prior to 1.32, the SPAD XIII turned quite well, but only at speeds above 100 knots. If you got down to 80-90 knots, turning meant an instant stall and spin. That's one reason why landings were so dangerous. Hopefully that's changed now. Ah, but the SPADs have beautiful varnished wood interiors with leather and brass accents, plus a built-in absinthe strainer . I don't find it much of a joy. In fact, it makes me question the FM in the same way that the tail-first spins do in other aircraft. Yes, but it's time-consuming. I've already learned that, just like the SPAD, you should NEVER warp on ingress in the Pfalz, due to how that guarantees you'll be way too low when you meet the enemy. I'll have to see if that new "start in the air" feature improves on this.