Waldemar Kurtz

wahahahahahah! WOW, that's funny! that doesn't look as though it would have been historically possible. I might try that in Quick Combat for fun--but to have that level of damage dished out in a campaign would kinda spoil the sense of immersion for me.

actually, now that I think of it, the French also used the 37 mm gun on some Voison's and Farman's for ground attack missions. hint, hint! ;)

I've seen the "Blue Screen" of death on my HP and have found a satisfactory work-around. I put the machine into sleep mode and then activate the HP Media player (which I use to watch television). this usually opens up a blue screen/black screen as well. I press Ctrl+Alt+Dlt and then switch to the Media Player manually. then I can then press Alt-F4 and close out that window. afterwhich time, I can press Ctrl+Alt+Dlt (if need be) and then select Combat Flight Simulator 3 through the Task Manager pane. so far it's worked every time. it's safer and easier than trying to restart the computer--and there's little risk of losing my data or corrupting files. I'm sure somebody has already posted this before--but I thought I'd share my "Blue Screen" work-around.

oops! I should have mentioned I click on the "Live TV" button with the remote that came with my computer. my bad.

y'know, this is probably the most petty request I can think of--but I was wondering if we could have ALL of the aircraft carry flares in addition to whatever load-outs they already carry. sure, the flares don't really DO anything, but I always like to carry them on anything I'm flying when I do an arty-spot. helps me pretend to drop flares on enemy locations to help give my buddies a fix on where to shoot those big guns. and given that some machines were festooned with a half dozen flares or more, could it be possible to have more of them? and I was reading how German night fighters used "white star shells" to signal to friendly anti-aircraft guns to cease fire so they could safely approach enemy formations. would it be possible to get "white" flares too? that, and it'd be nice if you're a flight leader instead of just giving a regular keyboard command, you could blast off the appropriate colored flare as well. (I mean I do that already when it's possible but...)

that's kinda funny, because I PLAN around my wingies "pinching" my kills I've always sorta feared that they won't attack anything unless I'm attacking it. so the second they start attacking my target I go and look for something else. I've had a few AI wingies score multiple kills in a mission this way. granted, that sucks if I'm trying to be an ace--but right now I'm just trying to figure out how to stay alive. but this wingman problem is definitely a hard-coded CFS3 thing. I would give an attack (in CFS3) and blow something up and 30 minutes later they'd lollygag on over and blow something up. the other factor seems to be that you HAVE to arrive at the designated attack waypoint. I always attack BEFORE I'm supposed to "locate and destroy". unless you're given that command by the game interface, it's quite likely that the AI wingies won't even acknowledge the presence of something to destroy. and, of course, using the TAC display is just about the only proven way of getting your AI wingies to attack ANYTHING.

I looked over some of those claims and I didn't think the game would accomodate a claim report that large! I kept things ridiculously short because I figured the game wouldn't like the more complicated combat reports I used to do for Red Baron 3d. (which was just for fun). heck, in those games I'd actually look at historical maps and include river and forest names just for the fun of it. perhaps I should be going "all out" in my attempts to describe the event? of course, knowing that if I make a claim for something that was scored by ground fire (even if I shot at it) helps in a big way. I didn't think that if even one of my claims was off that it would disregard all of them.

heh, ironically I was thinking of doing precisely that to try and recreate the actual photo-recon mission experience anyways. I was reading through a book on Allied aerial recon and photographic procedures and was even thinking of trying to use maps on the scale that would have been in use historically. the only variation on your idea that I was going to try and implement would be to treat EVERY recon sortie in campaign as precisely this sort of assignment. although I fully expect to get killed a lot while doing this!

yeah, I don't get the claims thing at all. I shot down 5 Fokker E.III within 3 miles of my own aerodrome (Hesidigneul) in plain sight of both wingmen who were alive the whole time. I included the time I shot them down (within a minute in every instance) and direction (N/NW of Hesdigneul). I didn't include ranges because that doesn't seem to make any difference. initially I mentioned both wingmen by name, not including ranks--but then I figured maybe listing one wingmen was a deal-breaker. so I kept it down to one wingie. I put in the claims and they said that they would be rejected as erroneous--so I altered the records to be sure. thing is, I also kept track of the Z-readings and even put down the almost exact longitude and lattitude of where my victims fell and it didn't like THAT either. then I tried adding the aircraft type and squadron in the report "attacked Jasta 11 Fokker E.III" and so on... I've tried out 5 or 6 different variations and they're always rejected categorically. they won't even show up in my pilot log book unless I go back and tweak the general settings to "bypass claims"--after which it will tell me that my claims were erroneous. what's bizarre is that I saw "Fokker E.III destroyed" or "you destroyed a Fokker E.III" at least two or three times in that sortie during game play. so, um, is there some special method towards writing claims out properly? ironically, I've been flying a German Fokker career and I've got an AI wingie who's scored three victories in three missions (one of which was confirmed in less than a day). I can't complain because he's saved my skin twice over in less than a week... but I'm not used to shooting down 5 enemy planes within walking distance of my aerodrome and having all my claims categorically rejected based on word usage.

F8 switches over the the gunner position F6 will cycle through Pilot view, Iron Sight view, Compass view, etc in the pilot's seat F9 is bomb/ordnance view before I switch over to the gunner position I always enter the command CTRL + SHIFT + A to get some sort of autopilot working. since the game doesn't like it when my plane's on auto-pilot I usually acquire the target with the Tactical Display and take a few shots at personally and THEN switch back to the pilot's seat. usually, if all goes well, the AI will control the gunner's position while I try to manuever for a good 'killing position'. some planes fly quite decently on auto-pilot, but others are simply incorrigible and nose-up or down and make it impossible to aim! historically, most bomber pilots would first determine the direction of the wind and then fly directly with or against the wind to remove any wind-drift to one side or another. since OFF actually models wind this would make bombing pretty difficult at high altitude. I'll admit that I usually only try bombing at exceptionally low altitudes. for a Schlasta pilot, however, this would be pretty normal. wouldn't recommend doing that with the BE2c with all of those 25 pound Coopers bombs! generally speaking, in the Great War, people had to get below 5,000 feet to have any certainty of getting close to the target. and for people who REALLY wanted to hit the target-- 1,000 feet seems to have be the upper limit. one American observed that the French and the British needed 60 bombers or more over a target to have any chance of actually scoring a hit! that's right, a SINGLE HIT, from altitude. so far as dive-bombing is concerned, most planes simply couldn't do it. I've heard rumors that Sopwith Camel pilots experimented with it, and that some of the Schlasta pilots might have done it as well... but for a lot of these planes, diving was a method of last resort. I try to alternate between fighters and bombers. I just now got BHAH this last weekend--so it's a learning experience.

would it be possible to use the mission builder to create a mission similar to what you're commonly going to see in the game? and if you took screen captures of that and composited a larger map could THAT be a way of creating a better subtitute for in flight maps? I was astonished at the level of detail I could find and manipulate while using the CFS3 Mission Builder

the Voison and it's variants (all of which look very similar) they were in mass production from 1915 until the end of the war (mostly for night bombing operations in 1918) but it served valiantly as a day bomber until the middle of 1917. the Salmson 2a2 would be great for late war French stuff AND it would work for American careers too. but I really love the early war period so I prefer the Voison (or Farman)