SirMike1983

I agree about the flamers surviving being annoying. I'm looking forward to the fix. As a consolation though, due to the CFS3 engine, you can score cheap kills by putting in a few bullets to finish off an enemy or shoot a stalling enemy that then crashes. I guess it balances out somewhat-- you lose the flamers but pick up the vulch kills. I do think the flamers should go down though. Glad to be doing some flying in the Nieuports again and looking forward to the next DM.

My great uncle flew a P51 during the War as bomber escort and dual role. He downed a 109 after a dogfight over the Romanian oil fields while escorting the bombers. He also was part of the strafing fighter attacks later in the war in europe. He told very little of his experiences and only spoke of some things toward the end of his life. My great grandfather was in the first war originally as a doughboy and, when they found out he spoke fluent German and some French in addition to English, they put him in the MPs in some kind of intelligence gathering role. At some point he managed to acquire an Iron Cross First Class from a German (dead or alive, don't know). It's in my parents' house in a display case along with a WW1 victory medal.

There's The Trenches for HL2 as well. I played BF1918 as well. It was a good game.

I recently tried to start playing OFF again after a few months away from the game. However, I am no longer able to load the game up, even after reinstalling. I keep getting uisel.xml errors in workshop and when trying to load the game. When I try to reset the CFS3 files in workshop I get another error about the files being missing or corrupted. I tried a full reinstall of CFS3 and OFF and the problem is still happening. This game used to work fine, now when I come back to it, it no longer works at all. I'm running an administrator level account on Vista 64. I've tried compatability mode and all but still no luck. Any ideas on what this business is? It seems as if it's trying to access xmls in a folder that won't allow access almost?

C: Users has invis: all users, default, default user Non-invis (normal folders): guest, Mike, public I think something with the permission was screwed up. I manually took ownership of the various folders needed for OFF and it appears (knock wood) it's back up and going. I downed a Fokker tonight in a campaign mission without techinical faults. (keeping fingers crossed). That manual fix is not the best way to fix things. I had turned off UAC long ago and my account is listed as an "administrator level" account in the control panel. THe C:\users are as above described.

I'm actually the sole user of this computer really. I turned off the UAC. The game used to work. I wonder why the permissions got messed up. In theory my account should have admin.

I think the permissions did get screwed up somehow. I'm using the take ownership menu command and it seems to allow me access to the folders now. I'm working on reinstalling it tonight.

How did you get it into program files X86? The OFF installer did not give me an option for location of install.

You mean "documents" or "my documents"? I can get into documents, but "my documents" I get a big red X error and "access denied" when I try to access that.

Love the N.17-- have you got a color photo of it?

One of the giveaways, as I remember, is that the Tabloid has the small tail and usually the "sparrow's beak" nose. The baby has the horseshoe cowl and the big two-tier tail.

This one is a classic as youtube videos go. You can see the effects of the rotary engine as the plane "dances" about in level flight in a circular fashion. Both are impressive planes, but I prefer the Camel between the two.

I have the mod and know some of the guys who developed it. It had an initial player surge (as they all do on release) and then died off over the course of a few months. Hopefully their latest update revives things a bit. I played it for awhile and stopped because the shooting physics were way too random. Mausers and SMLEs are accurate weapons, but in the game you'd shoot and shoot and never hit anything, except randomly.

I'm currently flying a Nieuport 24 campaign with a French Escadrille home to some of the worst pilots in the French forces. It's a struggle to get one other plane home with me, especially considering this is an early and mid-1917 campaign when the German Albatross scouts are strongest. The mission was a balloon defense. I often see the balloon in flames at some point during these missions, as this particular squadron has such poor quality. This particular mission though had the potential to go way south, fast. The enemy appeared in the form of no fewer than 3 German aces, along with another 4 or 5 Albatross D.III fighters. The numbers were evenly matched, as I had with me 6 or 7 "no name" pilots (well OFF gives them random names, but you get the idea). The flight was mostly N.24s though at some point an N.17 jumped in with us. The mission turned out surprisingly well though. I managed to bag all three German aces (including Hermann Goering), along with two other Albs, and the AI "no names" shot down a couple of their own. The balloon survived the mission as did my wingman. The ending was particularly interesting. I had no ammo left, but the AI wingman did. I basically stayed behind the last German and this caused the enemy plane to fly defensively and flutter about low to the ground. The AI wingman was able to make hit and run attacks while I diverted the enemy (apparently the enemy AI doesn't know when you're out of ammo). Eventually this was a complete success, the Albatross hitting a tree after a stall. I returned to the airdrome with wingman in tow, him with at least 1 kill and me with 5, including 3 aces. (Vive la republique) I don't normally post about missions to this length, but this was one of the best I've ever flown in OFF. I guess the moral of the story is that even if the situation looks bad at the start, it may turn out surprisingly well. Below is a shot of the outcome: N.24 with intact friendly balloon.

A reload mechanism like the RB patch would be fantastic. If you wanted to really simulate it, you'd run the patch and do level auto pilot (simulating the need for a steady plane to reload). When the reload period is done, you'd take the auto level off and fly again. Perhaps a little warning saying "reloading" and "loaded!" would help simulate the pilot's knowledge of when he's reloading and when he's done. A single drum would be appropriate-- some pilots, I'm sure, didn't want to risk reloading that top wing gun. Some did and had some real adventures doing it.

What was your source for the Nieuport and Lewis Gun loadouts? It looks to me like a single drum load suggested, which would be ok. But I'm also left wondering what the number of pilots flying on a single drum was, versus those who had systems for attempting to reload the guns. These would all be pre-Foster mount, so 1 drum would work for some pilots. But I've also read accounts of different people who tried to reload the guns. Would there be some way of simulating that as well?

You would think a squadron with a diving golden Eagle (or a Hawk?) on the side of the plane would have good pilots. If the "Storks" have aces, "Eagles" should have even more, right? Apparently that's not the case, as these guys are routinely beaten up. I do notice that general pilot quality does make a different in the AI-- my Esc. 3 and 65 careers had far fewer friendly planes go down. I think that's a good element.

For WW1, I found no game able to top the Red Baron series. I had RB1 on my old 386khz machine, and then upgraded as time went on to newer machines with RB2 and 3d. I actually flew RB3d (HASP and FCJ mods) up until sometime during the Phase 1 era of OFF.

I did find the named ace pilots did not fly significantly better than other "no name" AI I've faced. They flew well, but not head and shoulders above. Then again AI is one of the single hardest parts of the game to build because you're trying to replicate the human mind. We've come along way since the early sims, but still have a ways to go.

Nieuport 24: Spring 1917 This was a particularly good mission as I managed to bag 5 Alb DIIIs in a patrol. Here is the N.24 taking off at the start of the mission.

Is that the Guillow's N.11 kit? I love that kit-- I have one completed from years ago, and a second still not done in the box.

Frustrating, but the situation in OFF still artificially favors the player nonetheless. As good as the AI has become in the game (and it's much better than the P1 and P2 AI), it still is very weak compared to a human opponent. Those of you who have flown online in head-to-head fighting against human pilots (in OFF or back in the RB2/3d days) know what I'm talking about. Human enemies are dynamic and unpredictable, and also often every bit as clever as you. AI, even good AI, is often predictable after you fly against it long enough. It often "locks on" too-- it will follow a single enemy even if tactically it would be wiser to quick swap to a new target. Humans do this quickly and efficiently often, while AI gets "locked" onto a target and can become a sitting duck. I'm not saying OFF is "easy", but what I am saying is that we're not to the point in AI development, at least off the shelf commercially, where the AI is as good as a human pilot familiar with the game. So even if some of these claims are lost, it's still an advantageous trade for the player compared to flying against real people and having more claims available.

With these downloads, do they replace existing skins, or augment them? I almost wonder if you could simulate a Belgian squad by taking a northern French Esc that handles Nieuports (I can think of a couple) and then just do the "custom select menu" and designate the squad to fly the Belgian add-on skin. The result would basically be to fly as a Belgian in OFF-- you have the location, you have the skin and the planes. The rest of the game really is the same between airforces-- you'd be doing the same confirmation process as everyone else and flying many of the same missions. The northern theater also would expose you more to water and northern Flanders, which is where the Belgians were. Sounds like a nice little change of pace and a different skin to use. The only downer would be that there isn't a P-3 level Hanriot HD-1 to add a unique element for Belgians.

I'd love to see a couple Belgian squads added-- they could offer tours of duty with Nieuports 11, 16, 17 and then the Hanriots and Spads.

Has anyone else noticed that if you try to bring up your in-flight area map (M) in a scramble mission the whole game just crashes to desktop? I'll not be doing it again-- this is the second time in 2 tries it has happened. I've lost 4 kill claims to it.