Hasse Wind

At least the elite Marinefeldjagdstaffel I gets the D.VII already in June 1918, not much later than the first army Jastas. The aviation units of the Kaiserliche Marine are probably receiving a lot more attention from the war leaders than the useless Hochseeflotte rotting in their ports and studying the works of Messrs. Marx and Engels. OvS: Looks great!

Shaw's book is definitely recommended reading for any serious simmer. If I'd have to choose only one book to read about fighter tactics, that would be it. But speaking of losing pilots, I've come to learn 1918 is a terrible year to fly in when the major spring offensives begin. My current D.VII pilot has made a crash landing five times, but has yet somehow managed to stay alive. The action is really heavy on the northern part of the front, it's almost impossible to not meet some enemies when flying missions there. I just had a fight with my 4 D.VII's against 10 SE5a's - not exactly good for the health of my pilot...

Hey, that was a daring attack. I hope some day we'll get to bomb the Englishmen with real Gothas, and the Huns with Handley Pages, for example. The DFW is interesting because it seems to have an actual bomb sight. The view from the cockpit isn't the best possible, though... and bomb sight or no bomb sight, I doubt I'll ever hit anything I'm supposed to hit in my bomber careers, if not by accident.

Excellent work, as always. Looking forward to the add-on pack(s).

Well done! The next major step is 50 hours. I've never crossed that line yet myself, though I've been pretty close a couple of times. It gets harder and harder to make your pilot live long as the war progresses and there's more action everywhere. The summer and fall of 1918 are pure madness, particularly in the northern and central sectors of the front where the major offensives are taking place beginning with Operation Michael in March.

There's no question about the new flak being better than it used to be. It's now more deadly, but not too deadly, and most importantly, you can now actually spot enemy aircraft with the help of the shell bursts. That alone is reason enough for me to use the new flak settings - it makes the game feel more realistic as I can now do in the sim what the real pilots of WW1 did over the front.

I've spent a considerable number of hours trying to get RB3D work decently on my current PC. Then I found OFF, and completely forgot about RB3D. No matter how much RB3D was modded (and some of those mods were brilliant), it was becoming quite clear that that sim was a thing of the past. There are some limits to modding that even the most ingenious developers can't cross. I have very fond memories of all those years of playing RB3D, but I've now moved on to OFF - it's just so much better in so many ways that there's no point in going back.

Well, I suggest you organize your life so that you're ready to spend countless hours flying (and dying!) in OFF. There's no going back when the OFF bug bites you... While waiting for the sim to arrive, you could read through all the many hints and tips available from here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php/topic/44940-off-general-help-topics/

It seems to me there are no N.17 with the Lewis gun in French service - I've had quite a few French careers flying the N.17, and always I've had the Vickers version. Maybe it was used only by the British? The Brit N.17 squadrons all seem to have the Lewis version with the Aldis sight, or at least the two RNAS units had that I tried in campaign mode. And yes, the SPAD XIII was definitely faster than the SE5a. Maybe the data you have shows the planes' speeds at different altitudes, and the SE5a was faster than the SPAD on certain altitude?

Olham, the SE5a is slow compared to the SPAD XIII. As to the Nupes, have you ever tried the French N.17 with the Vickers gun? There's no Aldis sight on that crate dangling in front of you blocking the view. If you haven't, give her a try. A wonderful turnfighter for late 1916 and early 1917!

Thanks for the info, Olham - it seems that Marinekorps Flandern is such an expensive subject that all books written about it cost an awful amount of money. That website is really interesting, I had no idea the Imperial Naval Air Service was such a massive organisation at the end of the war. Strange that so little has been written about them. The more I read about WW1, the more I'm surprised how little many of its topics have been studied. It's very unfortunate the sacrifices and efforts of all those people are almost forgotten today.

The Nazis dumped a lot of stuff, including counterfeited pounds worth over 100 million, into the Austrian lake of Toplitzsee at the end of the war. It's rumoured there is plenty of plunder at the bottom of that same lake, possibly even the Imperial Russian Amber Room, which the Germans removed from the Soviet Union during Barbarossa. Who knows what could be found from such remote locations of Europe. But the Baron's cups are probably in some private collection, or in several collections. It's of course possible the robbers didn't know what they were taking and so the cups have never been sold together. They may not even exist any more.

The Nieuport 17 is much better at everything than the N.11. Eindeckers are no match for the N.17. But I'd still rather go to battle in the N.11 than the Eindecker - you just have to remember these early war planes are really underpowered and they simply can't do such manoeuvres as the late war fighters like the SPAD XIII or Fokker D.VII are easily capable of performing. You'll get used to it, and if you live long enough to get better planes, you learn to really appreciate the improvements they bring with them. :yes:

You guys are real artists. It's such a shame we can't have individual player skins in OFF, at least not yet. Those special skins would be even more special if no one else had them. That book, Wielding the Dagger, has a ridiculously high price! I wonder if there's anything available on the subject in German. Even the official German Imperial Air Service history doesn't say much about Marinekorps Flandern (probably because those were navy guys and the Air Service was army...)

I have no idea about that error message, but the combat in OFF can be very challenging, especially with those planes that have only one gun. But the easiest way to shoot down somebody is to hit either the engine or the pilot. After all the updates, the damage model in OFF is now excellent - the planes have many hit locations and not just one or two huge locations like was common in old simulations.

Now wouldn't it be great if the artillery spotting missions in P4 (or P14) were something completely different than what they are now in OFF... instead of flying passively over waypoints, I'd like to actually do something with my bomber/reconnaissance plane. :yes:

The devs are good at the secrecy business. I've been trying to get some answers out of them every now and then regarding the new planes, but they are very tight-lipped. I can only hope they're planning to release one add-on pack devoted only to two-seaters, because those are currently the most lacking group of planes in OFF - we shouldn't forget there were always more two-seaters than scouts in operation during the Great War. But yeah, 39 flyable planes in the vanilla version of the game is something you don't see often in flight sims. Out of those planes, I'm quite familiar with only a few types - the rest I haven't really tried yet in campaign mode. So it's not like I'm running out of things to do in OFF while waiting for the expansions...

After the huge success of the Lord of the Rings movies, Jackson probably has enough money to fund such a project all by himself. Too few good movies (or movies in general) are made about WW1, and we're really lacking a decent WW1 aviation film made with the help of modern technology. There's some stuff with special effects that just couldn't be done decades ago without computers.

That looks quite dangerous, Creaghorn! I don't live near seas, so we don't have to worry about such waves, but in winter we do often have extremely cold weather and blizzards which can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. For example, it's fatal to drink too much and then pass out in the snow, though I suppose it's an easy way to go because you won't feel anything.

The later the date you are flying is, the harder it is to keep your pilot alive dozens of hours. In 1915 and even most of 1916 there's so little air activity (and we're also lacking most of the planes in use during those early days of the first air war) that meeting large groups of dangerous enemies is rare compared to 1917 and especially 1918. The last few months of the war are simply awful for a pilot's chances of survival, particulary so for the Germans who must go up against increasingly superior Entente forces. Of course there are still some more peaceful sectors left in 1918 (Alsace), but they are few compared to earlier years.

Welcome back, Creaghorn! I hope the weather was nice on the Mediterranean coast - here up North the first signs of autumn are already clearly visible, leaves are turning yellow and all that. The superpatch did indeed improve OFF tremendously. The most useful and realistic improvement in my opinion is the new flak - now you can actually spot enemy flights by searching for flak explosions and then flying towards them. This was practically impossible in previous versions. It works really well and feels and looks exactly like I always imagined it really did in the Great War. Now there's even less need for using TAC or labels.

And don't forget to add the castor oil sprinkler to the fan to simulate those rotary engines. Better get some diapers too, when you're at it.

The more I read about the N.28, the more interesting the crate becomes. It seems that after the initial wing problems were fixed, it was a good scout, quite fast and definitely much more nimble than the SPAD, like any Nupe should be. With a more reliable engine it would have been much more successful, I think, but it never got the chance as the Americans had already decided to get the S.XIIIs - not a bad choice, either...

Excellent work, this already feels quite familiar.

Last night I was flying in my D.VII (Jasta 5, summer of 1918) on a patrol mission when I spotted flak bursts to the left of us. I turned to approach them and found a major dogfight between our D.VII's and French S.XIII's. (The new AA rocks!) I gave my wingmen the order to attack and myself gained some altitude in order to dive down upon some unsuspecting SPAD and to get a better overall view of the situation. Well, quickly noticed a couple of SPADs seemed to have the same idea - they were flying above the furball and then one of them dived at one of our Fokkers. I didn't follow him, but attacked the remaining SPAD that was still flying higher and managed to shoot him down (the SPAD is now much improved, but fortunately it isn't as nimble as the D.VII). It was furious battle but I survived. It felt really good to safely land down at homebase! It's great to see the AI acting so intelligently in such situations. Does wonders for the immersion...