Hasse Wind

Never had any regrets, even though OFF was quite expensive for me here in the European Soviet Union. Probably the best money I ever spent in any game. But hey, if people can get it much cheaper now, that's good for them. The more players the better...

I have no doubt that people who love WW1 sims are also interested in history. Heck, I almost became a history teacher until the medical profession emerged victorious from the battle of 'What will I do when I grow up?', so to speak... Now studying history is just one of my hobbies (the other hobby is dying in OFF! I think I've become very good at it...)

Some new screenshots would be VERY nice. :yes:

The Spartans always get all the glory for the battle of Thermopylae, but we mustn't forget the fact that there were also other Hellenic troops (Thespians, Thebans and a bunch of others whose names I've forgotten) there at least three, maybe four times the Spartan's number. Without them, the Spartans wouldn't have had enough men to hold their ground, no matter how elite they were. The effect of two world wars on population growth has been very limited. For example, after WW1 there was much talk about the lost generations, but in reality all that bloodshed did little to limit the growth of population in Europe and the rest of the world. Local effect could of course be severe, like some villages losing a terrible amount of young men, but if we look at the whole picture, the effect wasn't serious. Disease has always been a more deadly form of population control than war, the Black Death for example devastated the whole population of Europe like no war has ever done. And after WW2, there was a huge population boom all over the world (I suspect some OFFers here were born during that boom! :yes: )

Transfers have also been mentioned, but what I would like to see is getting offered a chance to join one of the elite squadrons when my pilot has achieved enough success in his career, so that I could start a campaign game in some less well-known squadron and finally, if the pilot stays alive and gets enough kills to become famous, he has the opportunity to transfer to the best units possible. I think this would be quite fun and rewarding and would add to the already considerable role-playing element we have in OFF. Now we must spend the whole war in the same squadron (not that any of my pilots are in danger of living through the war - maybe if I started a campaign in late October 1918!). Speaking of suffering some penalty after losing a pilot because of recklessness in DiD mode, I think nothing more is needed than the painful feeling you get when you know you just lost a promising pilot thanks to your own stupidity. Forcing players to watch films or preventing them from playing the campaign would be really unnecessary. Nobody has to play OFF unrealistically and too aggressively if they don't want to do it. It's up to the player to decide whether he or she really wants to attack everything that moves no matter how disadvantageous the situation is.

Great topic, Widowmaker. It is true that battles in the age of musket (and the sword before that) were very bloody affairs. Casualty figures of 20-30% per side were quite normal for centuries. For example, many battles of the Napoleonic era caused much more casualties in a single day than was common during WW1. But the difference before WW1 was that battles didn't last for weeks and months like they did in the Great War - the armies bled each other white for a day or two, and then retired to recover their losses for months even. And large scale fighting usually ended for the winter as troops retired to their quarters. WW1 made fighting and killing a 24/7 business and caused a terrible amount of casualties over a long period of time. And of course there were many bloody single days reminiscent of old times in WW1, like the first day at Somme, when units suffered heavy casualties in a few hours. Technological development really quickened during the 19th century. The weapons they used at Waterloo mostly wouldn't have been anything special a century earlier, but try to imagine going to war in 1914 with flintlock muskets - a 100 years made a huge difference.

That would give us all the opportunity to see why the Geschwader organisation came into being in the first place, ie. to group Jastas together and make it possible to achieve local air superiority against more evenly dispersed but numerically superior Entente squadrons. But I wonder what the limitations are for the total number of aircraft in the air? Because a fully equipped Jasta group flying together would mean dozens of planes going into action at once, and add to that also the enemy planes.

The latest is 0.73, released a few weeks ago. It has several stability and compatibility fixes and should also work better on Vista (but I wouldn't know, as I won't let that piece of sh... software anywhere near my computer!). Strike Commander works beautifully on Dosbox. I have the original on cd, so haven't had a need to search it from the net. It is possible it has been released as freeware though. Some people have joystick problems on Dosbox, but I've only had to tweak my Sidewinder's settings for a couple of games. I think they've improved joystick emulation code in Dosbox quite a lot in the couple of latest versions. Edit: Damn to hard to spell 'compatibility' correctly.

Welcome, Pappy. Say Farewell to Free Time, 'cause OFF is going to consume it. It is such a great simulator that you have to experience it personally to get a good understanding why we love it so much. Ah, Wings! I must've broken a couple of Amiga joysticks playing that classic back then... but even then it wasn't much of a simulator, but rather an action game with great graphics, sound, music, playability and storyline.

For playing REALLY OLD games, Dosbox is a great program to have. It has made it possible for me to try again many of the old classics I had on my first PC back in the Neolithic period. Many of them have been released as freeware and can be freely downloaded from several sites, if you don't have the original disks. I've even played Red Baron 1 for a few missions, and all the other Dynamix classic sims of the 90s can be made to run with Dosbox on modern PCs. Things have come a long way from the RB1 days, that's all I have to say on the subject.

I really appreciate your team's responsiveness to customer feedback. And I know I'm not the only one. It's really special in these days of huge corporations that don't give a damn about customer service.

It has been mentioned before, but I think the Spad XIII flight model could use some improvements in the future. The plane's stall speed is too high, I can't remember it exactly now but something like 80 knots (almost 150 km/h). It shouldn't be that high. I've seen videos on Youtube where the Spad is clearly flying much slower than that and yet stays nicely in the air. Too bad I'm unable to find a source that accurately describes the Spad's all characteristics in numbers. Creaghorn, I too would like to see something like that in OFF. Great idea.

Taking a quick look at my pilot dossiers, I think "OFF: Crosses of Wood" would be more fitting.

I'm using all the normal AA settings, and I've found the results to be quite satisfactory in the latest version. Earlier the AA was ridiculously accurate, like the gunners had radars and proximity fuses.

Not much to add to what has been already posted here, all of these suggestions are good. Making the AI pilots have less bionic eyes and telepathic abilities in the chaos of air combat would be a really nice improvement. Also, it would be great if the Italian front were added to the game at some point. I'd love to fly as the Italians and the Austrians - that would be something that's never been seen in any WW1 sim! But maybe this is just a crazy dream of mine... Speaking of AA, the machine guns can be dangerous when flying low, but I haven't noticed the heavier guns shooting any of my pilots down since the last patch. But I've considered this as much more realistic behaviour than the previous deadly AA; you had to be really unlucky if an AA shell brought you down when flying at high altitude in WW1. Or that's how I've understood things were back then, according to history books. Edit: Forgot to mention that a digital distribution system would be nice to have so that you wouldn't have to wait for the snail mail to deliver the expansions and P4. Or better yet, have the option to buy a boxed disc and also download the files, just like Matrix Games sells their products.

So we're getting a Snipe in the add-on pack? Sounds great, it was always one of favourite fighters in RB3D. Actually I flew it already back in 1990 in Reb Baron 1. Hopefully Germans also get something new for the late war, like the Pfalz D.XII (kind of German Spad XIII). Mr Barker really earned his VC. And he was lucky to stay alive, my pilots almost never live after making a crash landing.

Herzlich willkommen, Matthias! I find it amazing you guys have a real WW1 era engine up and running! Wow! That must be very rare, if not completely unique among these rebuilt fighters. With the original engine you can get much closer to the plane's original performance than with modern engines. Please give Over Flanders Fields: Between Heaven and Hell a try. It's a great WW1 sim, and has plenty of Albatrosses to choose from. And they are all great fighters in the game, especially the D.III.

Maybe you could add it to the game anyway? You know, for Phase 4 and the Italian front? Womenfly2, thanks for these videos. I never knew there were so many WW1 aircraft operational in the world. I really admire the dedication of the people who build these things. They seem to be as close to the real historical planes as can be today after almost a century of time has passed.

This is a great idea! Especially if there were real Germany vs. Entente sessions online - that would be even better than Europe vs. America.

I've been using warp a lot, but I've never seen this problem some people seem to be having. I don't use auto trim or anything, and I don't always even lower my throttle when entering warp. I've experienced only one warp-related glitch when the AI decided to teleport my flight of Nieuports over the North Sea a couple of hundred kilometres from any friendly base. That was an unexpected turn of events and cost me my pilot. Funny also - a North Sea Bermuda triangle took my flight. I've made hundreds and hundreds of warps and have experienced only one problem, and that was a few patches ago. So I dare say warping is pretty safe. Of course the safest way to fly would be without warping, but sadly I rarely have time to fly around for such a long time per mission.

Nice to see you're making it easy for multiplayer newbies to start flying OFF with other people. Such work is always appreciated. I'd like to give OFF MP a try someday, but the time difference between the continents and the length of the sessions (3-4 hours) unfortunately makes it very unlikely for me to find enough time to participate.

OvS, I understand how you feel. People should be more open-minded and give OFF a chance. But most sim players have had so bad experience with CFS3 that I can also understand them for being suspicious about anything even remotely connected to that piece of... mostly unsuccessful software. It IS unfair to judge games based solely on eye candy, but unfortunately that seems to be the way of the world these days. I was somewhat suspicious myself when I first found out about OFF (thanks to CFS3), but I took the risk and it turned out to be one of the best choices I've ever made when buying something for my computer. I prefer single player sims over multiplayer, because I don't usually have time for long online sessions, and OFF is now the perfect choice for me. RoF may well alienate me completely with their choice of DRM, because that's what the always online requirement basically is.

I've always thought it's ridiculous when people start fighting on forums about which sim is the best ever released. Often it gets to the point where you can't even mention certain names on certain forums if you want to avoid being the target of so much flak that it makes the bomber raids over Germany in WW2 seem like walks (or rathers flights!) in the park. There are so few good sims available that I want to try them all and compare them with each other to see which one does what well and what could be improved. So far OFF has easily been the best WW1 sim I've ever tried, but that doesn't mean there could never be any other good sims. :yes:

Thanks for the info, guys. I suspected the RAF has kept the same squadrons in service like the army does with their units. But if I'm not mistaken, defense spending has been cut in Britain quite a lot after the end of the Cold War, so some squadrons have probably been deactivated during peace time. At least the army has lost units due to budget cuts. It must be a special feeling to get to serve in a squadron (or any other unit) that have such long histories and traditions. Should improve the fighting spirit at least...

Two weeks?! Man, you're going to get some serious withdrawal symptoms! Give me your address and I'll send you some medicine (maybe some Diazepam) to get you through the worst phase. Seriously speaking, have fun. It's beautiful at the coast this time of year - if it doesn't rain all the time.