Hasse Wind

Well, maybe Pfalz wasn't very good at building those licensed Moranes, because I've read that German pilots considered the Fokker monoplanes better than their Pfalz counterparts. But the difference can't have been great, and nobody seemed to want to keep using either Pfalz or Fokker monoplanes when something even slightly better became available in 1916.

The last plane I lost to Archie was an Alb D.II, but that happened months ago. Since then, I've mostly been flying the DFW, the BE2 and RE8, with occasionaly flights in the SPADs and Albs. Hard to say which plane I've flown the most, though.

The Pfalz monoplanes were the same as the French Morane-Saulniers, and the Eindecker was indeed better than them.

I've very rarely lost a pilot to AA in OFF after the deadliness of its fire was lessened in one of the patches. But when I do, the explosion seems to always blow my plane to bits. Maybe it's just bad luck.

I have 32 bit Win XP SP3 installed on the PC I use for playing my flight sims. I also have a laptop with Win 7 on it, but I haven't tried OFF with it. OFF works so well on XP (just like my other sims, none of which seems to gain any benefit from newer Windows OS's) that I have really no need to upgrade it.

Based on my reading of WW1 aviation history and pilot memoirs, the best and most revolutionary thing about the E.III was its forward firing synchronized MG. As an aeroplane, it was mediocre at best, not really designed to fight against enemy planes like the late war aircraft, but to hunt down slower, clumsier and poorly defended enemy bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. I haven't yet tried the RoF Eindecker myself, but I've seen some people comment on how incredibly well it behaves and how superior it is as a fighter, even compared to newer Entente fighters, which historically drove the Eindeckers from the sky. The Eindecker can't have been the ultimate fighter plane, otherwise Germans wouldn't have desperately tried to replace it with something better in the summer of 1916. I think what we currently have in OFF quite accurately models the Eindecker. Unfortunately we lack the proper Fokker Fodder, ie. all those helpless early war Entente two-seaters. Maybe in P4...

There's also the fact that AA guns in WW1 were usually lighter than their WW2 counterparts. No major concentrations of 88's firing at enemy formations, for example. WW1 planes were slower and usually flew lower than WW2 aircraft, so there was less need for heavier guns. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some changes in P4.

If anybody is having any doubts about this mod, I can only recommend it wholeheartedly. The installation and uninstallation process with the help of Generic Mod Enabler programme is extremely easy - you don't have to worry about ruining your install with files that might go in the wrong place. I'm definitely no computer guru, and I didn't have any problems with setup. Couldn't be much easier than this. The new DMs really improve air combat in OFF, making it more fun and challenging. It's especially useful for people who wish for that little bit of extra realism. And if you like to fly two-seaters, you will now be somewhat harder to shoot down. The perfect excuse to start a BE2 career in Bloody April.

We'll just have to wait for P4 and hope for improvements. I'm no developer, but I believe they are not going to change anything in P3 anymore. If you want see some ugly terrain, take a look at RoF's winter graphics.

Sometimes you just get lucky and don't die. At least in my case, those happy occasions are far too rare.

For an excellent new introduction to WW1 in general, I can recommend Hew Strachan's The First World War. It's only a few years old and takes advantage of the latest historical research. Hew Strachan is one of the leading experts in WW1 history. He has written a lot about WW1, but this book contains all the most important events and backgrounds in a very compact form, just under 400 pages.

Okay, thanks for you efforts to improve our OFF experience.

Does this use the original OFF tracer.dds files and not the ones that came with the previous improved tracer pack? Or can I just leave your previous modified tracer files in place and just replace the effects file?

Not one of the powers that fought WW1 were as ruthless and brutal as the great totalitarian powers of WW2. Of course all major wars are bloody and see their fair share of bloodshed, causing suffering both to civilians and soldiers. But possibly the only really large-scale atrocities of WW1 that can be compared to the crimes of the Nazis and Stalin's Soviets were done by Ottoman troops against Armenians, in the so-called Armenian Genocide starting in 1915 and leading to the death of over one million Armenians. (Turkey still denies this crime today, unlike Germans and Russians, who know what their dictators did in the 1930's and 1940's.) The Great War that began in 1914 was inevitable, looking at the developments in Europe during the decades preceding it. There was just so much macho nationalism, imperial rivalry, and general idiocy all around, like the admiration of war and warfare that penetrated those societies that the explosion would have come some day, sooner or later. The real surprise for most people was the fact that the war lasted for so long and took such a heavy toll with countless people dead and injured and the destruction of whole empires. It wasn't over in a few months, just before the Christmas of 1914, with a few heroic and clean deaths you can see in the 19th century paintings, and plenty of glory and medals for everybody involved. WW2 might have been prevented if Germany had been treated reasonably after the Great War and the economic situation in the world wouldn't have collapsed in 1929. But all this is useless hindsight. What happened is now history, and all we can do is to live with the consequences and make sure that nothing similar will ever happen again.

Yes, great stuff. Thanks for posting. I hope we'll some day have all those 2-seaters in OFF. Agree about the emblems, Olham. Some of them are also quite ambitious artistically. Refreshingly different from the quite boring and unimaginative emblems of many other air forces.

Only HPW knows. He'll let us know when it's time.

Yep, 1915 is no WW2 and shooting things down with cannon from 300 metres, this mod takes care of that. Combined with HPW's improved DM, two-seaters are a real pain to kill now, if you don't hit the pilot or engine quickly.

Olham, the Strutter is a joy to fly. Even the 2-seater version is very quick and agile, you almost forget you're not flying a fighter but the Strutter. Comes in to service in the spring of 1916 with RNAS squadrons about the same time as the Roland for Germans. Roland is OK, but the Strutter is a lot of fun. And it kills Eindeckers like harmless flies. (Poor Einie, no match for anybody in OFF!)

The DM mod works in campaign without any problems, it's the FM mod that's causing trouble.

Having already had the privilege to test this mod, I can heartily recommend it to everybody who likes to make his OFF experience even more challenging and realistic. Perhaps the most noticeable change is the toughness of two-seaters in general - you'll have to be really good and lucky if you plan to shoot down half a dozen bombers per mission with HPW's DM! One DFW I attacked with my SPAD XIII took a tremendous pounding before succumbing to the inevitable and falling down. So you won't see results comparable to a Me-262 attacking bombers with heavy cannons in this mod, ie. no terrible carnage after a couple of hits. Hits to the engine and cockpit are now even more important than before, if you want to quickly shoot down somebody. Another important change is the increased tendency of certain aircraft to catch fire, so expect to see some more "Spinning Incinerators" (DH.2) actually go down in flames! Combined with Creaghorn's tracer mod, HPW's mods will make OFF even more challenging, but also more enjoyable.

Thanks, Waldemar. Sounds like an interesting book.

Very rarely. I try to avoid them. But if nothing helps and there's nowhere to run, I'll fight back. I've done it against Albs in 1917 while piloting the BE2 (though not with very good results!), so it's easier against Einies. It would be something to shoot one down, but mostly I hope to disrupt their attacks so that I can retreat safely. If my pilot lives long enough to see the day when No 12 gets their Fees in the spring of 1916, I expect to kill all Einies dead. Good times.

Painting your Einie before achieving ace status? What would Herr Boelcke und Herr Immelmann think, Olham? The BE2 is a very enjoyable plane to fly and go sightseeing. It has no bad habits at all and behaves very gently. Unfortunately it was kept in service for far too long, and became nothing but a flying coffin by 1917. But that doesn't prevent me from enjoying my current early war career in No 12 Squadron, September 1915. My pilot is Second Lieutenant Charles Fuller. Below you can see him flying on a recon mission near St. Omer, France with his observer Lieutenant Robert Carter. No Einies to be seen.

This is a fine example of how difficult it sometimes is to find some reliable historical information. One would think that such a simple thing as the development and general acceptance of tracer and incendiary ammunition would be well-documented, but that certainly doesn't seem to be the case in reality. It would be nice to be able say that "this type of round became common in June 1916" or that "Jasta 6 received their first boxes of tracer bullets in January 1917" but unfortunately that seems to be impossible. Things are so much easier in WW2 sims, because by then tracer and other bullets had been in common use for years.

Unfortunately no accurate date is mentioned. It's probably impossible to say it for sure. But in 1914-1915 they seem to have experimented with all kinds of weird stuff, like elephant gun calibre bullets (over 10 mm) with incendiary and explosive properties, and in 1916 with the introduction of normal rifle-calibre tracers and incendiaries they quickly become common issue, at least among Entente air forces, because they were so extremely useful in air combat and not much more difficult to manufacture than regular bullets. Germans followed later, so the 1917 date you have in your tracer mod currently is best suited for them.