Winston DoRight

At the end of July I will award two prizes to the top participants in "Winston's Early Birds" Sunday multiplayer sessions. There will be two different categories of judging, coop and team dogfight. 1. On coop missions, points are given for following the orders of your Section Leader, the ability to fly in formation, and attention to the mission goals. Points are deducted for breaking formation and chasing non mission specific targets (unless ordered by your Section Leader). Staying alive in your first aircraft can earn you points as well. 2. Team dogfight high score. This will be tallied for the last Sunday in June session and all Sunday sessions in July. Due to the method I'm using to tally points it would be hard for someone to attend just one or two sessions and win a prize. Your best chance would be to do well in as many sessions as possible. So come one and come all to the early sessions on Sunday. By "Early" I mean setting an early time for USA flyers to accommodate the European time zone, not necessarily flying in "early" war years although Vasco may be able to provide some early war campaign missions converted for us to fly if there's enough interested in this. Info for Early Birds will be found on the MP calendar ONLY. I will not be posting the info as a topic any longer. The calendar is here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?act=calendar Just go to the bottom where it says "Calendar Jump" and change the "Community Calendar" to the multiplayer calendar. For practice, drop by teamspeak whenever you can, we try to get something going as much as possible, especially Saturdays. If you've never flown multiplayer contact me, Vasco or sitting duck and we'll set you up with a short training tutorial that will get you going. First you'll need to read the multiplayer tutorial instructions by sitting duck here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=38466 And the essential multiplayer files auto installer by Madmatt here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=42089 It's a painless process and you'll be up and online flying quickly. Here are the prizes that will be awarded: 1st prize is a 24" X 18" framed P-51D Mustang "Big Beautiful Doll" flying over the Dover cliffs, with full combat cockpit photo. 2nd prize is the Osprey 1994 photo book of "Classic Aircraft of World War I" by Melvyn Hiscock. I think it may be out of print as I can no longer find it anywhere on the net.

I'll be there, naturally. I'm also posting a topic later today about the "Early Birds" prizes that will be awarded at the end of July. The more Sunday sessions you fly, the greater your chances are to win one of two prizes. Only 300 rounds? Can I talk you into using "Strongest" gun setting?

Drop in on teamspeak. We're there almost every night.

Count me in!

I have two in mind, a framed P-51 over the Dover cliffs with a full cockpit photo, and a WWI color aircraft photo book. I'll take pics later when I get my camera back and post them.

I use these everyday. Combined with my old Thrustmaster TQS throttle and F-16 FLCS joystick, I have never wanted for anything better. I use the joyport on a Creative Audigy 2 ZS and calibrate within Win XP so I can't comment on how they would work in any USB connection. The only problem with these is when the heavy coil spring breaks. You'll have to find an aftermarket replacement spring as they are just not available from Thrustmaster (Gullimot) anymore. I found a guy years ago that formed his own out of high grade spring steel. I'm using one of his for years now and it hasn't broken whereas the ones I had gotten from Thrustmaster would only last a year or so.

My confirmation success of late is 100%. Here's an excerpt directly from my pilot claims.txt file: 26/;8/;1918 ;11h;34 ;Flanders ;Boffles ;Patrol Behind Friendly Front Lines ; Flying: SE5a Wolseley Viper. On this day claims: ;3 ;Fokker DVII OAW . ;On our patrol behind friendly front lines to Soncamp Ferme, we engaged 2 flights of Fokker DVII OAW's from Jasta 12. The first flight of enemy planes was already engaged with out Flight 1 so I signaled my wingmen to attack and give whatever assistance they could. I picked out one for myself and began the chase. At about 75 ft distance and at 6,000 ft altitude I shot several bursts into him until I saw a flash of fire. I must have hit his fuel tank or engine because he lost control and crashed into the ground below northwest of Avesnes-le-Comte airfield at 11:49 zulu time. Next I spotted the aces. Hermann Becker was shooting at one of ours so I rapidly got on his tail and fired. He broke off and tried to evade me but I fired again and he began to spin out of control and he also crashed. Next I began to chase Alfred Greven and when I got to about 75 ft distance from him I began firing. I watched as pieces of fabric and wood began to come off and soon he went into a spiral dive and crashed at 11:56 zulu time. His wreckage will be found southwest of Avesnes-le-Comte airfield. Witnessed by: Todd Simmons - Lieutenant Status : Pending ;96 Seems a bit wordy? I think it's justified if it helps the "pending" score, so spending an extra 5 minutes after each mission is OK for me. I know the devs don't like to talk about this but it is my experience that the higher the "pending" number, the more likely you are to be confirmed, hence my 100% confirmation rate of late. I believe anything in the mid 80's will get the results you are looking for. I enjoy writing a "mini-novel" each time I get a kill. It's fun to go back and read old logbooks from time to time.

Where can I see the screeshots for the expansion pack?

I still have a Win 98 CD plus the Second Edition updates on CD. Both are Microsoft originals. If you're still looking, PM me.

Yes, I posted my next Sundays session and it showed up straight away. As long as my entries to the calendar are showing, I'll not waste space here posting the events as a topic. All the info needed for my sessions are on the calendar.

There's still some problems with the calendar, so I'm posting this here. Date: Saturday June 20 Time: 10am USA-California-SanDiego; 1pm USA eastern; 6pm London; 7pm Berlin World clock converter website: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html Teamspeak: 217.155.102.217:8767 Password: camel My host IP: 72.197.204.158 If there are any changes to my host IP it will be posted in the text area of teamspeak, check there when you login. Beginners who have flown at least one MP session before or had a training tutorial session with sitting duck are most welcomed. We will be flying coop missions and possibly team dogfights if enough people show up. Come anyway even if you are late because Saturdays are a busy MP day. Someone may be hosting a game after mine. Hope to see some European players today and anyone who wants to get started early.

I'll try hosting another session next Sunday, 28 June. If the MP calendar is working by then I'll post it there as well as announcing the info here as usual.

Can we get a moderator to check and approve entries on the multiplayer calendar on a daily basis? That would save us the time, trouble, and clutter of making a new topic here to request approval each time we add something new there.

Game is down. Burning Beard and I were the only players. Any suggestions to attract the European players? A better time or day perhaps? The game will be back up around 4pm pdt today at IP 72.197.197.119

There is definately an IP change for this game. Check the text area on teamspeak after you login for tomorrows updated IP.

I'll stop by for a round or two. I may be a bit late.

Glad to have you. By hosting this early here I'm hoping for a fair turnout from the euro community. Here's a chance to hone your skills for the international mp competition in the future. Yes, formations. Instead of the helter-skelter flying, I'd like to try some dicipline in formations when flying the waypoints to a target. I've been playing some of the missions in single player and success/survival can depend on this.

I think the problem lies in the fact that entries on the MP calendar have to be approved at all. Making posts or starting new topics here aren't subject to approval, why should it be needed for adding something to the calendar? Unfortunately this maybe a rusty cog in the board software, and so here now you have the problem of using the calendar as is. If you post there you take the chance that the moderators are not going to see it in a timely manner. Perhaps posting sessions the old way is better after all unless the permission/approval thing is worked out. I'll give it a few more hours and if no result I'll post my early Saturday session here in the old way.

That would be great if they would appoint you to do this job. My post was intended to get the attention of an existing moderator as per Erik's comment below. But whatever works, I'm just concerned that additions to the MP calendar need to be looked at in a timely manner.

I'm only using hardcore because that's the specification for multiplay. I had been using Herr Prop-Wasche's intermediate DM 1.6 and find it to be nearly perfect. No more enemy planes going down with 1 or 2 hits as in normal DM, and no more pouring hundreds of rounds into them with the hardcore DM. I wish more people would try the intermediate DM. I'm sure you'd like it and it's a simple install. Plus you can go back to the normal or hardcore simply by running them again. I'm wondering how the intermediate DM would be in multiplay? I've always wondered why this isn't added to the official updates. It would be great to have a middle DM approved by the dev team. It's like having hot or cold water... but no warm! Herr Prop-Wasche's thread and download of the intermediate FM 1.6 is here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...hl=intermediate

I'll PM you with my phone number. Call me when you get here, I'm home 90% of the time. I'm about 25 min away from downtown San Diego but we can meet up there. The Aerospace museum in Balboa park is a cool place. We can meet there if you can do a Yahoo map or something. It used to be $12 to get in (not sure now) and it takes a few hours to see everything. Also Balboa park is a great place to take the whole family, there's so much to see there, something for everybody. If there's any other OFF pilots in So-Cal that want to hook up with us next week, let me know.

I'd be glad to host early games that the Europeans could join. My time is U.S.A - California - San Diego - pacific daylight time. If I hosted a game around 10am, 11am or noon, that would be 6, 7 or 8 pm London time. Here's a great time zone converter: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html I could host a 10am or 11am or noon game on most Saturdays and Sundays or, since I'm retired and pretty much home all day, a weekday holiday if someone could let me know when any Euro holidays are coming up. I also prefer to host cooperative missions, but I'll do some team dogfights if we get enough players.

Erik, that seems a great way to do it. I've added a session for Monday night 6/22 so when it's approved we'll see what it looks like.

You can count me in on all but the "tac" and "targeting helpers disabled" sessions. Not having TrackIr yet, my only other way of looking about is padlock. I'd like to host some team missions too, I've been flying the other trains mission all day today and it's tough. The AI isn't helping much and there's ace quality DR1's to contend with in addition to 3 trains and marching troops. The first train has no flak on it and I was surprised when the other two had a lot of it. By the time I got shot down there were no other allied planes left to spawn into. This is a tough mission, even tougher than the fuel train! Yes an editable calendar would be great, or if that's not easily doable perhaps someone could collect the offers of hosting games and keep a calendar type schedule here current so we could all view it anytime.

Ah, I missed it! I spent the day watching TV and didn't think to check in here. I'll have to start hanging out on Teamspeak on Sundays too. BTW, are those MP missions available in SP mode as well? I'd like to check some out so I'll know what they're all about before hosting next time.