Hasse Wind

Your pathetic Entente plots will fail miserably - the fertile fields of the German Empire can always produce more turnips than you can possible consume!

Nice to see I'm not the only one who has a special notebook for OFF, though my book is filled with quickly written lines that are probably impossible to decipher by anybody else than me. As I have several pilots, I have devoted different sections of the notebook to each of them. I've been making notes almost from the day I created my first pilot for OFF, so you can imagine I've gone through quite a few pages. But it's fun to take a look at what my pilots did when they were alive. Almost all of them have experienced some special circumstances that are worth writing down for future reference. Yeah, I'm probably crazy for writing all that stuff. If some archaeologist finds my notebooks in the distant future, they probably think I was some lunatic who imagined himself fighting in the Great War as a pilot. Edit: I forgot to mention that's a very nice looking notebook, Olham. To make it even more authentic, you should use the old handwriting.

Superb! That should be enough to get anybody's attention.

The Great General Staff had received intelligence that the Belgian air force was going to adopt similar colours as the RFC, so the Kaiser (wearing his favourite pink Pickelhaube) decided in his infinite wisdom to take action. Sadly thousands of peaceful Germans had to abandon their quilting and mobilized in order to save European culture from this disgrace of horrible camouflage colours.

Arcade?! Damn! If OFF is arcade, I'd sure like to see what the OBD guys can do when they get serious!

Well, I now have all the proper equipment to weather that storm. Besides, it's cold up here on the North Sea coast, and as the boys of MFJ I can now fly rather safely through the storm clouds, it's best to dress warmly. (It's almost Christmas 1916 in my current career.)

The loyal pilots of Der Kaiser are just doing a favour to all people who love beautifully painted aircraft by shooting down those ugly-coloured Entente abominations. Nothing ruins the view up in the sky like seeing an approaching flight of British aircraft in their dog's vomit colours. What can a man with an eye for esthetic values do but try shoot them down in that situation?

I've now flown through various cloud formations after installing this patch without falling victim to the super turbulence. It's a wonderful feeling - now there really are no limits in the OFF sky! No more avoiding combat in the clouds or having a really bad feeling all the time when going near them. Just brilliant.

I too find it strange that such a great product as OFF hasn't been mentioned much in any magazines or flight sim sites or anything. It must be that CFS3 is scaring people away, as many must think that nothing good can be ever made out of that failed sim. And yet the majority of players of any game play mostly in single player mode, not MP. The same can be said of strategy games - the overwhelming majority of players play only or mostly against the computer and not other people in PBEM or whatever, but often the human vs. human players are the most vocal group in any forum. So OFF would be the perfect product for most sim players, if they just knew about its existence or were willing to give it a chance in spite of its roots in CFS3. I know I had my doubts, but in the end I took the risk and am now VERY glad I did so!

What a wonderful way to start this morning! Excellent work and support guys!

You can have the E.V in service for about a month in July-August, there is historical evidence of that. But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much documentary evidence available about the E.V's combat use during that period. It is entirely possible they did fly combat missions with the E.V, but if there had been remarkable successes, there would probably be some evidence left behind somewhere. And flying the E.V is going to be a risk to a DiD pilot, because those early models had some serious problems with the wing construction. I suppose if the planes had seen heavy combat use during those four weeks we'd know about many more fatal accidents than the two which happened in mid August. On the other hand, the improved model with a much stronger wing, the D.VIII, never seems to have made it farther than the Army aircraft parks, which were situated behind the front under the command of army HQs and their Luftstreitkräfte officers. If you want to have the D.VIII make an appearance on the front for the last few days of the war, I don't think even the most fanatical historical purist here is going to lose his sleep because of it. Lot of WW1 era archives were destroyed in Germany during the next war, so who knows what really happened. :yes:

I just got the book Fokker Flugzeugwerke in Deutschland 1912 - 1921 by Peter M. Grosz and Volker Koos and instantly read the pages about the E.V/D.VIII. The book confirms the information Olham got from that site about the first deliveries of the E.V to the Jastas in July 1918. (Grosz and Koos have researched the original historical Fokker and military documents for their book, so the information should be very reliable.) The authors haven't found any evidence from any archival records about the D.VIII being used in combat. The planes that were delivered were in the Army aircraft parks on the Armistice day, just like all the E.V that were withdrawn from service in August after the fatal accidents on 16th and 19th August and were waiting for necessary repairs for their wings. In total 335 E.V/D.VIII were ordered and 289 were built. German aircraft industry had serious difficulties in those last few weeks of the war, so not all the planes received similar engines (two Oberursels were in use, one with 160 hp, the other 110). An official army situation report from October 31, 1918 mentions only 85 monoplanes available in the aircraft parks. So it seems the E.V was in very limited use only for a few weeks, and if anybody scored any victories with the type, there couldn't have been many before the planes were withdrawn. A lot of legends without any historical basis seem to surround this fighter. I can recommend this book to anybody with an interest in WW1 aircraft. Even if you don't speak German, there are plenty of rare Fokker photographs printed on the pages.

Well, I'm not much a businessman, but wouldn't the add-on packs be a reasonable method for making some more money to help the development of P4? Less work than a new complete phase and some new planes and stuff (it doesn't have to be hundreds of improvements per pack) for us players. Release one every now and then - I'm sure I'm not the only who's more than willing to purchase them.

I presume OFF is using some kind of points based system for determining promotions. (Of course I may be totally wrong!) If this is so, it should be a simple matter of slowing down the process. Starting a career as a non-commissioned officer (or even lower as is possible with the Germans) and then gaining the highest officer rank available in OFF in a few weeks isn't very historical. Anyway, this is not something that is extremely important for me in any flight sim, but I really appreciate the devs' willingness to listen to our feedback. In real life, promotions in the military during war time can be such a Byzantine process. There's always a lot of politics involved, and not everybody who deserves it gets promoted, and some who aren't really worthy climb up the ranks like monkeys. And some don't want to get promoted, even though they are given the chance. This isn't something that can be easily modelled in a flight sim, unless you want to add a mini-game to OFF where you can do everything to please (or displease) your CO and the other pen-pushers. Maybe send some chocolate and tobacco to the guys deciding the claims.

Great news! I hope to see this one become available also for the campaign. Your DM mod is an excellent addition to an already great sim.

I've also had similar experience with amazingly rapid promotions, and it has nothing to do with whose side I'm flying in. You don't have to do anything special, just keep completing missions and you'll be climbing up the ranks like crazy, if you stay alive. Sure, some exceptional individuals were promoted rapidly during the war, but nearly as rapidly as it happens in OFF. This system could use some improvements in the future. Speaking of improvements, I think it would be nice to see your rank insignia when you're pilot is promoted to the next rank. I remember some older flight sims had this kind of system, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Pacific Air War come to mind from the DOS era. As the medals are now being much improved, maybe something could be done to the promotions too? But it's certainly not very high in my list of priorities, just something that would be nice to have for the immersion value. :yes:

I've flown only a couple of missions without using warp at least part of the way. It's very time-consuming, especially if you're flying a slow crate or escorting them, and it can also be quite tedious if nothing happens for a long time. (This is a game after all, and playing it should be fun, not tedious.) But I've never used labels in OFF campaigns, not even when I started playing the sim. They are the biggest immersion killers in any flight sim, in my opinion.

31 km is not nearly high enough to be considered space, even though it's an amazing feat to go that high in a balloon (I saw an interesting documentary about those balloon experiments some time ago). At 100 km there is the so-called Kármán line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line), the almost universally accepted altitude in which the space outside our atmosphere begins. 30 km is still well within the limits of stratosphere. But that doesn't make his achievement any less impressive, it just isn't enough to beat Mr. Gagarin. :yes:

Teach those rebellious colonists some proper British manners, Widowmaker! I've never visited the United States but I plan to do so one day before I get too old to endure the long flights there and back again. There would be so much to see there for me as a history buff. I'd like to visit some of the most famous Civil War and Independence War battlefields, for starters.

I also use the TAC with 4 mile settings occasionally (not always) to see better, even though I have Trackir. But even with Trackir the visibility is nowhere near as good as in real aircraft, so I don't consider using the TAC like that as terrible cheating. But when the fighting starts, I always turn off my TAC. Makes the experience more exciting and fun in my opinion. And sometimes it's just great to use the TAC to find aircraft, both friendly and enemy, and take screenshots in the external view.

Well, Pol mentioned in the thread about what we would like to see in Phase 4 that they are aware of the issues with the Spad FM, so I think we can trust the devs to change things for the better in the future. :yes:

Well, the best way to stay alive in a Pfalz is to fly high, always above your enemies if at all possible. That gives you the chance to make some quick zoom 'n boom attacks, and making full use of the great stability of the Pfalz as a gun platform you can score some hits on unsuspecting enemy AC, maybe even shoot one of them down every now and then. It helps to aim at the engine-cockpit area. And with all the altitude you can gather a lot of speed to fly away if things get desparate, which they often do in the Pfalz. Turn fighting is really only possible against the clumsy Spads, but I wouldn't recommend it, because you end up losing power and altitude, and practically ALWAYS when that misfortune happens, a flight of Sopwith Camels joins the battle out of the blue and shoots you down. If you see Camels when flying the Pfalz, turn around and fly back to Berlin if necessary. I guess I must be some kind of a pervert, but I'm quite fond of the Pfalz despite all its shortcomings as a fighter. Edit: I'm hoping we'll get the Pfalz D.XII in some add-on pack. Would be a much better plane than the D.III...

Condor, it's the usual graphics configuration utility you use to change resolution and all that stuff. Just go to the workshop in the main menu and click the grey button.

I tested it in quick combat and started the dive at 15k feet. The speed never went above 200 mph as I was already losing parts after pulling the stick only a little. When I twisted it hard, that was the end of my Nupe. Oh, and I have the effects slider at maximum in order to see as much damage as possible. But what I can't understand is why we're seeing such huge difference between these results. The Nupe shouldn't be so tough with any settings, except maybe aircraft stress off. Strange.

A Pfalz pilot's worst nightmare. Olham, I've flown some missions with the SE.5, and I like it more than the Spad. So if I had to choose a Brit plane for long campaign, I'd have to choose between the Pup and the SE.5. The latter has two MGs, which is rare among the early 1917 Entente fighters. Of course my opinion may change when I give the Tripe a try... but unlike the Dr. I, the Tripe has only one Vickers gun. The 2 gun version didn't see much use historically, only a few were made.