Lothar of the Hill People

Gotta give SimHQ credit, they just gave me one more character at least, expanding 'ofthe' to 'of_the'.

Thank goodness I can have a long username with spaces again!

Version 0.7.0 of OFFbase has been posted here on Combat Ace, which will serve as the official home for my mods and tools. The next version will restore support for Combat Ace user verification which will allow multiplayer campaigns in future versions. Download it now!

Let us know how it works for you, gaw. If anyone wants to post stories/screen shots of memorable moments playing OFF with OFFbase, that'd be pretty cool.

Thanks HPW. Since P4 actually tracks your fellow pilots activity in the air, OFFbase should add even more immersion. It'd be cool if the new interface was hookable with mods. At least it'd be nice if a beta tester could me know if ODB's changing anything in the pilot data files... I wonder if any of the devs have played OFFbase?

Hi Burning Beard. Ironically, 32-bit dlls go in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ folder. If that works, give OFFbase a try. It's a role-playing social simulator of your squadron between flights that adds features to OFF campaigns like transfers and more.

Version 0.6.8 has been posted. Fixes a couple bugs, but more importantly I enabled multiple personality traits for pilots. Just a couple of quick tweaks to the interface really, but will ultimately allow more customized character development and generate deeper investment in both player and non-player characters... making losses in the air all the more painful and small victories much sweeter. The idea is to start with a trait representing your pilot's background and earning more traits as achievements from gameplay as you earn higher ranks and prestige over the course of a career. As a result there are hundreds of millions of potential combinations of traits--unique pilot personalities and histories. The upgrade process isn't in place yet so while NPC pilots have such diversity (especially at higher ranks) for now player pilots simply get a background trait and at a certain rank a primary trait, still 442 different combinations. Plus there's a quick-and-dirty but fun new squadron memorial, which taps into AI memory to show how the legacy of your great aces fades (or holds up) over time. First time I've recommended starting a new game (deleting your pilots and squadrons folders), but this'll help bring in more of the new traits and encounters. Give it a try, the reviews speak for themselves.

Hello Adger, sorry I missed you earlier. I've just uploaded a new version here which you should definitely check out. If the reviews at the bottom of the page aren't convincing, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Hello all. Sorry for the long absence--graduate school. Anyway, I've posted a new version of OFFbase (0.6.7). Give it a try while you wait for OFF2/Phase4.

Hey guys. Sorry I've been crazy busy and haven't been able to work on OFFbase lately. They problem you guys are having seems to be OFFbase not being able to properly find your OFF installation or CFS3 settings or something. Any corruption problems with the game? Try running CFS3 config and saving your settings again. If that doesn't work, send me the files in the OFFice\temp\ folder and I'll try to figure it out.

Two steps forward, one step back sometimes. 0.6.5 has a bug where some people get stuck on leave. Rewriting the leave-handling code from scratch, should have a new version up tomorrow sometime hopefully. Well you do get more with your flight-mates if you fly multiple missions per day. If I end up adding more encounters it won't be the random ones but maybe more targeted at dramatic story-telling to sharpen the focus on relationships between other pilots and how you affect them. Kind of the direction I started by getting encounters with people returning from being missing or injured in 0.6.5, for all its faults, but opening it up to 3rd party relationships. Like: "you notice your acquaintance so-and-so is especially down since his best friend what's-his-name was killed."

Yep! And now with 0.6.5 which I just posted, mission events also effect the mood of others depending on their relationships. So pilots are saddened/angered when their friends are injured/captured/missing/killed, but moods will brighten when the same happens to a bully that everybody hated. No feedback in the UI about it yet, but the Adjutant does report changes to your squadmates status and kills/claims. Big update. Here's the full change-log: As soon as the admins approve, go get it!

Oops, introduced another end-mission crash bug while fixing others in 0.6.3. So go get 0.6.4 instead. If the bug-fix doesn't convince you, I've also started making mission results affect pilot moods.

Thanks for the reviews, Creaghorn and HPW! Just posted version 0.6.3, the focus of which is refinement and bug-fixing of post-mission results. Should be up on the download page as soon as admins approve it.

Just posted version 0.6.3, the focus of which is refinement and bug-fixing of post-mission results. Here's the change-log: Should be available from the download page shortly once admins approve.

Thanks, HPW. All your mods together make a huge difference in the OFF experience. Thought about packaging all your DM, news, weather, and skies mods into one easily-installable JSGME package? "HPW's Immersion Mod" or something?

Doh! Well HPW you can make it up to me by leaving a review at the bottom of the download page to encourage others to try it. I just voted 5 stars for your new DM! Thanks Creaghorn, especially for all your help testing earlier versions. If you want to leave a review at the bottom of the download page to encourage others to try OFFbase, I'd appreciate it. And vote it 5 stars!

Congrats on the improved mod, HPW. You've already got more downloads for 1.25 than I have for OFFbase in three weeks.

Just posted version 0.6.2 which features the new mood mechanic I was mentioning. More important is the debut of the new Duty Room, where your pilot can reflect on the complex social relations in OFFbase. Here's a screen shot: Hopefully this will make the social game more straightforward, helping you form goals and track progress on them. And less paperwork for Creaghorn! It may take a little bit for the admins to approve the new version, but as soon as they do, go get it!

Just posted version 0.6.2, here's the change-log: Again, it may take a bit for the admins to approve, but then go get it!

That's a good idea. Maybe a higher priority would be backing your squadmates on their claims. Since P3 doesn't track your fellows' progress in your actual flights, this would be a way to make it count if you observe them shooting down enemies and make it part of their actual record in your squad. Will do. Or maybe he'll get transfered to your squad sometime in the future and you can meet up again? Or if you transfer back some of them might still be there with additional progress in their careers. Too many ideas to do!

Thanks, HPW. Just taking a quick look your changes seem to make sense, alpha males being more aggressive to fops for example. This thing needs tons of balancing, so I'm sure they'll be lots of little adjustments like this as people play and give me feedback. And it's very possible I made errors transcribing the tables into my program.

Hey Olham, don't worry he's just a test pilot for developing OFFbase. Did manage to shoot down a British ace with him though.

To give those of you who are curious but haven't tried it an idea of what OFFbase is like, here are a few screenshots:

That reminds me, OFFbase is compatible with any and all other mods for OFF. Thanks for all your hard work on the DM, HPW. I'm using those tables but slightly differently, and I've changed some numbers a bit. The way it works is positive numbers in 3a and 3b make pilots more cooperative, negative numbers more aggressive. I've swapped BL and CW relations so bullies are -2 to cowards, more aggressive to them, while cowards are +2 and more submissive to bullies. With the bi-directional relation system, bullies might come to like cowards because they like picking on them, while the cowards hate the bullies for always stealing their prestige. But the coward will get a little daily prestige from the bully's "friendship" e.g. protection--the bully wants to keep the coward around to keep picking on him so they can ultimately take that prestige in encounters. Nothing a bully would like more than a gang of cowardly hangers-on who suck up to him and build up his prestige even though they're terrified of him. Yep, the new duty room will do something like that. I'm also working on a mood mechanic, where encounters can spill over onto third parties. This will bring more impact to encounters. Bully someone and they make take out their frustration on someone else. Or play a chatterbox who's good at bringing up the morale of the entire squadron by encouraging others to be nice to each other. Thought I fixed that! How are you exploiting it? Way I thought it works is you get only one squadron and wingman encounter per day, one flight encounter per mission, but if you skip time or time is advanced due to weather or something all the encounters are set for the new day. So if you go into OFF and out but it's the same day and you haven't flown a mission you shouldn't get more encounters. But maybe there's a bug somewhere?