Rick Rawlings

And I thought my eyesight was shot, there's hope for me yet.

 

We'll start in the Lower Right Corner . . .Moving up

 

Wind Effect . .2 choices

 

Main & Rear Guns . . 3 each

 

Outcomes . . . 3 ( Pilots life)

 

Ground Fire Difficulty . .BINGO . .YAHTZEE

I seriously do not have that tab. Above Outcomes I have AI Gunfire (Range)

Above that is realism for promotions and claims.

Is the AI Gunfire range the one that does it?

RR

In Workshop, right side, DIFFICULTY GROUND FIRE if it had teeth, you'd be bleeding

 

Easy= just MG plus occasional cannon fire

 

Normal

 

Realistic = everybody has but one goal in life - ending yours

Dude, are you kidding me? It would be chewing my head off! I still don't see it. Under difficulty, there is only AI gun range for an AI selectable. Is there some way my display settings could cause it to be rendered off screen? There's no scroll bar or anything...

Thanks for the help!

RR

Where is the control to adjust ground fire. With the setting that I currently have, these guys shred better than Satriani. I don't see anywhere on the workshop to adjust this, but I seem to remember someone mentioning it before.

RR

Hey Olham!

The other ace was some guy named Buckler:

RR

Hah, Nice! It was late last night and I posted in the wrong sub-folder. Could someone please move this to the General Discussion forum?

Thank you!

RR

So, flying in an N17 with 4 other pilots, we run into a flight of seven DII's and DIII's. During the first head on pass, I break right only to see a DII turning to my left. Pulling hard, I manage to slide right in behind him at about 100 feet. As all of us are still very close together, I hurry to line up and plaster him with about 50 rounds in the cockpit area. He very quickly pulls down and to the right and then starts the long spin for the deck. Now I am dodging and twirling around to avoid a) getting shot and, more importantly, b) getting rammed when the fight starts to break up. Keeping my altitude, I look around and see most of the planes below me. I then notice one Albatross across from me in my turning circle at about the same altitude and so I make off for him. As we engage, I notice he has some stuff written on the side of his plane. I think it said "Mora" or something similar. Following him down, I am constantly looking around for the trap. My enemy pulls some great manuevers on the way to the deck, but eventually he is out of altitude and can dive no more. Checking once more, I see the buddy he is waiting for, but he is too far away. Several turns later and a bunch of good bursts and down the ace goes.

Taking a good look around I notice a few more DII's in the area. As I am alone as far as I can tell, this looks like a good time to head home. Grabbing what altitude I can, I head north, constantly checking my six. Eventually, I notice one plane following me. What's worse, he is slowly gaining despite my good lead. After about five minutes, it is clear I will be shot down if I don't take the fight to him. Turning around, I start my attack. Unfortunately for him, he is all alone against a determined N17 pilot. The battle is brief and bloody and over. Another ace, by the name of Gros, goes down.

If anybody is still sitting on the fence over phase 3, I would say that the 1.26 patch has really nailed it. If you do what you are supposed to, you stand a pretty good chance. Forget to check your six and it is all over. If you catch a plane at a vulnerable spot, like the top of a climb, a good accurate burst will take it out. In the swirling melee, several good bursts are still needed to take them down. If you love a good immersive sim, don't pass this one up!

RR

I'm in the Be2c this go around. If you want to understand your enemy take a turn in his crate I say. I fly them all eventually for every side.

If you are flying a plane as homely as the Be2c, you deserve to be shot down. I've considered dropping a few of the ones I've escorted just to put them out of their useless misery!

RR

To help out with kill claims:

Mention aircraft type: i.e. "Nieuport 11" or "Sopwith Camel"

I also seem to get better results using the following words:

ammunition

machine gun

crashed

engaged

expended

front

seen

witnessed

altitude (list the altitude as well, example: "1000 feet of the deck"

flight

squad

tree-top

flames

out of control

direction, example: "North of the front lines"

followed

jumped

fought

Usually two sentences with many of the above words and my wingman properly listed puts me in the 68-80 value for my pending score.

Example: "Was jumped by a flight of Nieuports west of the front. Fought them from 5000 feet altitude down to the tree tops. After expending 200 rounds ammo into the enemy a/c, one was seen to crash out of control on our side of the lines." Something like this gets me about three quartes of my kills confirmed.

Hope that helps.

I also avoid Eindecker squads like the plague. But then you go to the DII Albatross and it's almost criminally easy, as Olham will attest :)

RR

It's also interesting to note that of the people you mentioned, only Rickenbacker survived the war. (Unless you were referring to Lothar von Richtofen!) Maybe Eddie's race car experience put him in the right frame of mind to be a survivor or maybe his ear infection took him out long enough to where his luck didn't have time to run out. Even in the cases where you had individuals of great skill, such as Ball or Voss or Boelcke, the odds eventually caught up to them. Richtofen, who, even by his own admission, was not a spectacular pilot, seemed to survive as long as he did mostly due to his iron-fisted determintaion to follow the hard lessons learned in the early days of Jasta 2. When he did fail to follow them, target fixing on a hapless Camel to become #81, what happened? Shot down.

Even for the aces that survived the war, many didn't live to see the next one. It seems that their experiences changed them and they had a hard time adapting to life after the war, most likely due to what is now know as post traumatic stress.

Wow, thanks for bumming me out guys.

RR

On a mission last night, I dropped 3 DII's with my N17. Each time I caught them at the top of a zoom climb when they had no energy and were basically stationary relative to me. I gave each a good long burst into the cockpit area from no more than 150 feet away and... each went down! That has NEVER happened before. Usually, I would have to rinse and repeat twice. So that, if nothing else, is a good thing :) We may now be being rewarded for the good gunnery skills we have developed over the last month and a half. I did notice that in a QC using a Camel against some DV's that they went down with a couple of not-too-spectacular looking deflection bursts, but when I looked at the accuracy stats, they were still in the 30's. Things seem pretty good right about now. We'll keep playing and reporting. I have also been pummeled to the ground by ground forces on my last two ground attack missions, though, so it seems to cut both ways. There will probably be a new learning curve for the next ten missions or so. The spinning deaths are very nice and I actually saw a wing fall off a DII in the above flight in the N17. That's a first for me!

Nice Winder!

RR

Arrrgh!!!!!!!! Ze Germans are here! Hey Olham, good to have you back at the table! Guess I need to start checking my six again :)

RR

Going to try it. The bird is a beast in a turning dogfight but a handful everywhere else.

Well, as usual with a "I know a guy who knows a guy" type story, YMMV but a friend of mine went to an airshow where they were fying a Dr.I rebuild and he talked to the pilot and the guy said that you had to constantly fly it, it wasn't really a plane that you could ever just take your hands off the stick with.

RR

Hey Siggi, looks good! You may want to edit your Origins text, though. Red Baron 2 came out in 1997, which is hardly the "early nineties"

RR

Winder, why are you reading the boards? You are supposed to be taking a much needed BREAK!!!!!

RR

Flew a mission today and during a huge dogfight, I had given one of the E/A a good solid burst in the cockpit/engine area. I pulled off and as I was coming back around for another pass, he exploded in mid air. I had seen other planes explode but there was always archie around so I assumed they had caught one, but on this occasion there was no archie firing. I was really cool to see.

 

 

Scott

Wow! I barely believed they really caught on fire until I started flying some Albatross missions! I have only seen one plane explode... sitting on the aerodrome strip right before takeoff, very weird! What were you flying/he flying? I am gonna guess and say that it was a twin gun plane, right?

RR

Is the Eindekker different? Yes, it is. That is the fairly rare Albatros E1 Eindekker!!!

Cheers,

shredward

Ouch! Serves me right for not Clicking On To View Larger Image!

RR

Once more, just for fun and improved for the new boards!

Rabu, is that a phase 2 shot? Usually when the guys bail the pilot model is still in the cockpit and "another" one spawns "the prestige" style above it and takes the fall. Or did you paint him out? Or is the Eindecker different? Cool picture though!

RR

Over the front:

Let me know when you guys are goin on a snipe hunt. I like a good snipe now and again.

C'mon, you know the snipe isn't in yet. But if you do go hunting it, you may want to make sure Barker isn't at the controls!

RR

Well, from the inside view of the N17, using the snap views, the front left snap view does not show the rockets on the wing strut. This actually caused me some consternation for a few minutes, wondering why I was short 4 rockets compared to my wingmen. Maybe they just knew how good a shot I was . Then I noticed that they render properly using the scroll view and from the outside. Weird!

RR