Waldemar Kurtz

hey, that's pretty cool there. I like the screen-shots and the fact that you used visual navigation. I tried the "Free Flight" experiment by taking off at 4:30 in the morning so as to bomb La Gorgue aerodrome at the crack of dawn (with the sun at my back). the mission ended up lasting over an hour (I used compressed time to speed things up a bit). just to test the waters. it only counted the first 30 minutes of that sortie... so you're probably just as well off doing what you already did. the only thing that it DID do better is that it acknowledged that I hit some ground targets and factored that into my pilots vital statistics. I was wrong about the daylight though. on 11.28.1916 Leutnant Walther Ilges (with pilot Deck Offizier Paul Brandt) in broad daylight with clear skies took off in LVG C.IV No.272/16 flew into centraol London and dropped six 22 pound bombs between Brompton Road and Victoria Station. he took off from Markiakerke near Ostend and arrived at London about 11.50. unfortunately for these two daring aviators they suffered an engine failure and put down near Boulogne and were taken prisoner! end results: 10 people injured and 1,585L worth of damage. this was at least the second of one of Ilges daring lone-wolf daylight attacks into London. the first one was not a success--as it only cost 20L worth of damage! (source, "the Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918")

y'know, I was just thinking... the next time you want to bomb London you should go into Free Flight. just make sure you have the option of logging all flights instead of just the campaign missions. bombing during the day would be suicidal, so just see if you can change the time of day to the night and you'd probably be okay. it was fiendishly difficult to intercept two-seaters at night-- so the odds of you ever having met an enemy scout were pretty low until later in the war. maybe that would be a decent 'work-around' for you. sure, it'll dock some points from that career--but if you really want to do that--and you want it to count for something towards your flight hours, or if you actually HIT something--that's the best option I can think of.

nah, I completely believe that they didn't give you any sort of credit at all! I had a campaign where I finished my recon patrol ("mission objectives complete") and what did I see? I saw a flight of 6 FE2b lingering over German lines and I decided to see what my Roland C.II could do to them. I shot three of them down in flames in 10 minutes and I didn't even get a claims form. they all fell within 7 miles behind German lines. I was "off the beaten path" because of some CFS3 anomalies. I've even had the message posted "Mission objectives failed" in the middle of a sortie because all of my other wingmen got killed before we reached the front lines. my poor Sopwith Camel was forced to do battle with 7 Fokker D.VIIs and Pfalz D.IIIa. I got shot down in flames-- but the bizarre thing is, it booted me back to the campaign menu and congratulated me for another sortie-- I remember scratching my head and saying, "but I just got shot down in flames?!?!" if you 'fai' or 'succeed' in hour mission objective it doesn't matter what happens afterwards. you could fly for another two hours, fire over 1,000 rounds of ammo, and drop 8 bombs-- but the game isn't going to record that in the least bit. you'll get it in the mission debriefing, but that's about it. if you at least want to get credit for your flight hours you'll probably have to manually edit the pilot's log and change the minutes. otherwise, you're just out of luck. I tested this out on another mission-- where if the 'purple prose' shows up, I could fire 100 rounds and have 35% accuracy, but after that prose shows up, I could fire every last bullet into the air OR into enemy machines--but the logged bullets fired and the percentage of hits recorded will not change. it only documents the in-game flight time while it considers the mission 'active'. if you were supposed to fly to Ypres but fly all the way to England--well, it's definitely gonna say "you screwed up" and ignore you. this is why I almost never fly "Dead is Dead". (which I think requires you to turn off the in-flight information display) the alternative is manually altering the pilot's log and dossier afterwards to match the actual in-game flight time, ghost claims (that the campaign manager ignores, but I could have easily made in real life), or even whether I get killed or not. if I see that purple text saying if the mission objective is 'complete' or 'failed' it helps me figure out if I'm getting 'credit' for anything I do-- or if I'm just doing it all for the thrill of living dangerously. by chance, what was your 'recorded' flight time for this mission as opposed to your 'actual' flight time?

so, does anybody know any good tutorials for creating or modifying scenery for CFS3 (aka OFF)?

apparently the Germans, during the battle of the Somme, "had gained unquestionable superiority, to which the success of his infantry at the beginning of the Somme battle was due." this is a paraphrase of "The War in the Air" volume 2 (H. A. Jones) page 468 "laid special stress upon the fact that ranging for the guns firing on targets lying beyond the possible ranges of observation from the ground and balloons was distinctly a duty for artillery airmen, as was also observation of barrage and destruction fire" "wireless was the means of communication between the ground and the aircraft. up to the battle of the Somme reception in aircraft had proved impossible, the firing battery communicating with the airmen by laying out sheets on the ground according to a code" "the experience gained on the Somme caused experiments with wireless-telegraphy reception in aeroplanes to be pursued with increasing activity. in October 1916 the Germans were ablt to state that the experiments to find a means of receiving, as well as transmitting, W/T signals from and to the ground, and also from and to other aeroplanes, had proved that the aircraft sets were perfectly suitable for service use. in the winter of 1916-17 the artillery aeroplanes were equipped with W/T sets for transmission and reception, whereby the efficiency of these units very considerably increased" so the Germans had realized that they needed to be thrifty with their artillery cooperation planes. the fact that they specifically point out to their troops that aircraft should only be used when ground or balloon observation is inadequate is significant. this means that they're exposing fewer aircraft to danger-- this was also the spring of 1916 where the French and British were introducing the Nieuport 11, 16, and 17 into front-line combat. and the Airco D.H.2 and F.E.2b were formidable adversaries in their own right. so it makes sense that any potentiall frivolous or unnecesary deployment of aircraft for range-finding was to be avoided. "The War in the Air" is a very solid reference book--but I haven't had any luck in finding out more about the German wireless for sending and receiving signals.

the 148th Aero Squadron pretty much gets thrown straight into the fire (the pan is for sissies, apparently). the longest I've been able to keep my 148th pilots alive was a month-- and that's because I got shot down, taken prisoner, and sent back! I had one guy start off really well by flaming 5 Germans on his first mission-- and then he got blown in half by anti-aircraft fire on the next sortie trying to destroy a balloon. his career was so short he didn't even get to eat lunch on his first day!

I believe that after a period of trail and error, before the extensive use of wireless, that the favored method was using a signal lantern-- basicaly a big light inside of a box, fitted with a shutter-door so that Morse Code could be used to communicate to the ground. the radios that were used later were pretty heavy-- it was not that uncommon for a flight crew to dispense with the (observer's) machine gun to keep the aircraft's weight manageable. another problem that often happened is that if you had too many machines range-finding in the same area the signals would get overlapped. with the overlapping Morse code it could become impossible to distinguish which plane was directing which battery. rules were put into place some time in 1917 to keep this from happening. balloons were always the preferred method of range-finding. when weather, enemy activity, or terrain made balloon usage impossible then fixed-wing aircraft were employed. aircraft were only allowed to work with one battery at a time-- and there were only so many aircraft allowed to operate in a certain sector at any given time-- to reduce the possibility of over-saturating the radio waves. artillery range-finding missions usually took awhile to do properly. to make matters worse, you couldn't fly much higher than 3,000 ft and have any expectation of accuracy with your observations. the radio couldn't be flown too far away from the target or the signal would be out of range. so arty-spot missions turned you into a bit of a sitting duck. (low and slow, flying in circles) on top of all this, there was a good chance that the enemy had listening stations for their own artillery flyers. if they were to hear the signal of an enemy wireless at work directing artillery-- they might radio/telegraph somebody on their side to send up fighters to intercept. so there was probably some incentive to get accurate fire ASAP-- because the longer it took you to range the target properly you put yourself at greater and greater risk of getting shot down!

I'm almost absolutely certain they were merely Tiger Moths "tarted up" with Turkish markings. by that point I think the Germans had wised up and weren't using Iron Crosses on their machines as that incurred the wrath of the locals. if they had taken the time (or had the inclination) to change the engine cowling it would have looked a bit more convincing. but it's still pretty obviously not a German machine of any sort. still a great scene from a wonderful movie.

05.18.1916, sortie no.3 of the day. scramble starting at 16:29 with Escadrille N.62 after flying around, without having caught sight of the enemy (I used warp) the game automatically dinged me back to the OFF campaign manager menu without any sort of warning. I've experienced similar effects while flying for No.20 Squadron at St. Omer. where, without warning, the in flight action will stop instantly and say that the mission is over. my only solution to this problem seems to be selecting manual time advance and just bypassing the mission. anybody else have this problem?

I flew a recon patrol in the Roland C.II. I orbited over the target for 20 minutes as the mission directives required. afterwards I saw a trio of FE2b and gave chase. I was specifically told that "mission objectives complete" so I figured I'd be okay to launch an attack on something. so I follow them. 30 minutes later I've shot down all three of these enemy machines. two of which went down in grisly flames. the only thing that slowed down the fiery carnage is that one of the Fees shot me up badly enough to disable my machine gun. so then I switched over and used the observer's station to attack them. I easily expended 1300 rounds of ammo on these three machines--but when I got home the debriefing said I had only fired "2 bullets". which doesn't make any sense! granted, I did fire two bullets BEFORE my mission objective was completed. but I didn't think that the game would be so single-minded as to ignore the other 1200 or more bullets fired after the mission objectives were accomplished! I had no witnesses to these three victories--so even though they fell well behind German lines I can't really complain about not getting a claim form-- I wouldn't have gotten one either way. but I wanted to confirm whether or not completing your primary mission objectives will allow the game to ignore anything that happens afterwards. it means that risking your life after accomplishing the primary mission objective isn't worth the trouble. but catching enemy two-seaters completely off-guard is different. ;)

I guess this is old news, but I'd never encountered this situation before. so I decided to test out my theory. I shot down two aircraft on my next sortie. one FE2b was sent down in flames while the recon patrol was in effect. I then loited until the "mission objective complete" and then went hunting for another victory. I then found another Fee and sent it down in flames with about 200 rounds of ammo. the mission debrief and the pilot's stats only registered the 301 bullets fired BEFORE the mission objective was finished. within two missions I've shot down 5 enemy machines in flames, but since only one of them was within the time-frame of the primary mission objective, only one of them was granted a claim form. additionally, on the second sortie the logbook only registered 30 minutes of flight time. this is quite contrary to the mission debrief of 73 minutes!

nope, you're not doing anything wrong. the SPAD XIII and SPAD VII are the only aircraft in the current OFF campaign for American careers. the Nieuport 28 hasn't been modelled yet. the earliest you can start is around Feb-March 1918 flying the SPAD VII.

I noticed the same pattern in CFS3, so I think this is hard-coded. beyond a certain point your AI won't attack for lack of ammo. it's very likely that if the AI is not subject to gun jams that they expended all of their ammunition in that first attack. if they don't have bombs or rockets-- they might make one solid gunnery pass but after that nothing will happen until you've summoned your flight back into formation. I had the same annoying experience in CFS3. I'd command them to attack a target--and then they would refuse to attack "the target is too far away" or "already engaged". so the trick was to command them to rejoin--and then, before they've gotten back to where you are-- you can then command them to attack another ground target. I've never actually gotten to command a flight in OFF-- I usually die before that happens--but since the game is based on CFS3 I suspect that the 'work-around' on ground attack missions probably still applies. attack rejoin attack rejoin repeat that until they become utterly useless (which might not be long) run out of ammo or get killed .... have fun! ;)

I'll be honest. start off by using labels and the TAC. it's the ONLY way to learn how to accurately strafe ground targets. it kills your immersion, but eventually, you get good enough where you won't need it. I've single-handedly laid waste to an entire French infantry position using nothing more than a Roland C.II! the critical thing is before you even put yourself in harm's way. get a good look at the lay of the land. find ridges you can hide behind. look for trees that can get in the way. start around 3000 ft and build up a lot of speed, pick the machine gun nests off first. that's THE most important thing. usually they're the easiest to spot! just look at where all the tracers are coming from! then spray the hell out of it. ground attack missions are unhistorical for German fighter squadrons-- so I would bypass them altogether unless I'm flying Rolands (which were probably used for piece-meal ground attack missions at best). it's almost easier to use a single bore-sighted machine gun when tackling ground forces because they usually don't require a lot of bullets to disable. that sounds crazy, I know... but I figure I'm on to something if I could wipe out 20 ground targets with the Roland. (after I expended all of my ammo with the forward gun I tried using the observer's station but was only able to disable one lousy target)

my apologies. it wasn't without warning-- it was apparently in direct response to my attempts to call in the in-flight map! it happened every time too.

I'm curious, because they seem to have a lot in common from one field to another. is it like Red Baron 3d where there are basically 6 or 7 different lay-outs and they get recycled over and over again? on a lark, I've tried comparing some of the in-game aerodromes to historical photographs and maps of the actual aerodromes and was surprised to see that some of them look quite different! but, I imagine there must be serious limitations to what's possible in the game world: Chocques, to pick one such nightmare, has two different roads intersecting the aerodrome--which seperate the hangars from each other and the actual take-off and landing field. Flez and Cachy are even worse--as they span over such large spaces you'd practically need two or three different fixtures to accomodate all of the fields. and we haven't even touched upon the massive French airfields south of Verdun which were probably bigger than a lot of the villages nearby.

it would be kinda cool to have the zeppelins and seaplanes come back. but are there even boats and submarines modelled for the game? otherwise it would seem like a whole lot of nothing going on. people get frustrated by the lack of action in artillery-spotting sorties! (not me, I just bomb and strafe things to help pass the time. failing that, I take snap-shots of the surroundings)

I'm going to disagree on this point. if you can remember the scripted historically-based missions of "Aces over the Pacific", "Aces over Europe" and to a lesser extent even Combat Flight Simulator 2-- the pre-scripted historical mission can range from interesting to being a guaranteed campaign-stopper. historical missions, ironically, seemed easier integrate into the highly scripted campaigns of CFS1 and 2. moreover, lots of people can work on historical missions--and if enough people like them they could get bundled into future patches.

I'll take that hint! I can't do much more than research right now--but I've already come up with info on a few aerodromes. I'll send you a private message with more details.

I've just finished a late war career where 80 percent of all of my assigned missions were scramble sorties. given that I was flying for a Schusta 24b near Cambrai-- I would have hoped I would get at least one ground forces attack mission! is there any way to swap the scramble mission out and replace it with something more plausible? I've already tried the "cut-and-paste" approach of pasting missions in from the corresponding fighter mission text file--but that just makes the game freeze up and become unplayable. given that the Roland can't carry bombs at all--it makes sense to bypass bombing missions when I'm doing a Roland career. likewise, it would make sense to give it balloon busting missions and escort duties since they actually performed these duties during the Battle of Verdun. just thinking here... obviously by the end of 1916 we don't want every German two-seater unit doing balloon busting attacks or escort work! then again, FA62 is a bomber unit equiped exclusively with Fokker monoplanes-- so it's not that strange, I guess.

I have the sliders set really, really low. I have an old HP m7650n = 2 CPU 1.86 AMD 1.59 GHz (with the built-in graphics card) if I don't have the terrain graphics set to the bare minimum some of the planes become almost unmanageable in combat. I havent learned how to tinker with the graphics really... I bought the computer mostly for music composition--so I've got a pretty nice sound card (X-Fi) that makes OFF sound really good.

yeah, I've ALWAYS had those because I've got a pretty 'low-rent' machine. the glitches I can live with--although the single-digit frame rates can get tiresome. especially when flying Nieuports and trying to HIT something. I just pretend that's a hillside of poppys back there! ;)

this is from a low-altitude bombing raid I did while "officially" conducting an artillery-spotting mission. about half the time on arty-spots I stooge around on the deck and start blowing things up--since I can't actually give any sort of instructions to the artillery. this time I cut things a bit too close! I was well within the frag-pattern of those last two bombs. and my engine begin to "snore"-- and to make matters worse, I had to fly over a series of entrenched German positions and got shot up so that I had a fuel leak as well as a badly running engine. so I dove down into a little clearing in the hills and hoped for the best with my "dead stick" landing. it looked like everything was going to go well UNTIL I hit that tree stump! but, apparently the campaign manager felt I did good enough and said I returned home safely.

after reading Creaghorn's post about expanding/improving the available names for AI pilots I decided to look at the other nationalities when I opened up the text files for "FrenchLastNames" and found a paltry 13 last names! so I scrabbled together 338 names to make French camaign names a bit more exciting. drag-and-drop this into the Campaign Data folder and it should work out just fine. FranceLastNames.txt

sent files for first and last names regarding French and USA pilots to the support-email addy. hope it helps out. Kurtz