Lothar of the Hill People

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?

Very neat, Creaghorn! I'd like to build some of this into OFFbase's Duty Room. You'd be able to see other pilots' class, reputation as HPW just suggested, and some of this relationship info.

While we're all waiting for P4, I've written a program that will revolutionize your Over Flanders Fields campaign experience. If you've yet to try OFFbase, or even if you have, I've posted a massively-expanded new version. - OFFbase features squadron-based play. Take turns flying multiple pilots in a squadron while sharing the same roster and more. Separate wingmen are assigned and flights split as much as possible. See your other squadron pilots in the duty roster with you! Fly as a rookie pilot in your favorite squadron while taking your long-time veteran out on the occasion you work up the nerve. If your pilot dies, you can start a new pilot to take over for him with the same squadmates and everything, and continue your squadron's story throughout the war. - OFFbase puts you right in the Squadron HQ, where you can visit the Adjutant to manage your career, kick back in Lodgings that you may share with a roommate, go down to the Mess for food or drink and see how your squadmates are doing, or head out to the Airfield to fly campaign missions. - OFFbase implements Bletchley's Pilot Personality Profiles (3P) to give each pilot in the squad individual character that informs how they behave and relate to each other. This enhances the squadron-based gameplay by structuring social interactions between pilots as well as your squadron's infrastructure, all of which affect the development of your pilots' reputations and careers. Engage in many different types of social encounters, and watch your squadron's airfield and lodgings improve over time. - OFFbase builds on 3P with academic game theory to make social encounters richer, more intuitive, and more rewarding for different play styles. Will you try to out-do other pilots, enhancing your reputation at their expense, or try to build both your reputations through friendship and social support? Your success at playing different strategies depends on the rank, personality, and social skills of your pilot character. The effectiveness of different strategies depends on the strategy of the opposing player... - OFFbase gives pilots in your squadron artificial intelligence. They remember how you and other pilots have treated them in the past and form social strategies to pursue their own goals based on their own rank, personality, social skills, and history. Some may try to boost their careers by bullying subordinates to make themselves look better, others may focus on building peer networks, while some may do a bit of both depending on who they like and who they don't. This makes encounters a true strategic game where your strategy depends on not just what you hope to achieve but also what you think the other pilot is after. - OFFbase features a full dynamic squadron simulation: Non-player pilots have daily encounters with each other, developing their own prestige and goodwill to develop their reputations and earn their own promotions, while periodically going on and returning from leave. All this goes on even as you advance or skip time due to weather, injury, whatever. Watch non-player pilots in your squadron share a drink, talk politics, make friends, get in fights--building relationships that affect how their careers develop, and yours. - OFFbase makes completing missions more rewarding, with additional benefits and costs to your career from shooting down enemy aces, friendly fire, pulling a hat trick by shooting down three or more enemy planes, and taking out ground targets and balloons. If a fellow pilot steals your kill, you can chew him out once you're back at HQ and try to take back some of the prestige he earned instead of you; or apologize and give back prestige if you steal someone else's kill. - OFFbase brings additional features to the game such as transfers between squadrons, player input on promotions, care packages for POWs, and funerals for dead pilots. The deeper investment in building each pilot's career not only further customizes and enriches the campaign experience, but makes death in the air all the more terrifying, and thus OFF even more fun. Who'll carry your casket to its final resting place? Play OFFbase and find out!

One last fix, just made it into the new version Bletchley. So I've just posted 0.6.0, the most significant update so far. Here's the change-log: As soon as the admins approve, go get it! If you guys could test it out and make sure there are no show-stopping bugs, I'll post an advert to the main forum.