Baldric

Very very good read from your lad, UKWm. I very much hope he keeps up the writing.

Absent friends

I'm all for the expac whenever its released-- I've had tons of enjoyment already. What I'd really like is a leather flying helmet and goggles WWI aviator stylee (something other than a baseball cap for my TrackIR clip). That and no one in my household calling the Boys In White to haul me off to Bedlam.

lmao, great story BH. Wonder how many zaps you get on a charge/battery? Stick one of those 'bath-in-a-bag' packages in your glove compartment in case those sh-t splatters get ya

Great story and lots of action Totally agree about this sim.

Brilliant stuff, Stiffy, m8. Thanks for sharing!

I just assumed the flights were given different targets/objectives most of the time... so I never bothered to follow the other flight as I was thinking I wouldn't get credit for my assigned mission. If both flights were headed in the same general direction I'd link up. I'll have to try that now, thanks for bringing that up, Olham.

I started flying for Jasta 1 c.September 1916, with the Halberstadt (good machine), and as my pilots die I just 'roll' their replacement, and bring them in a week or two after the demise of the previous pilot. Just lost my best DiDT chap today (and campaign date 26 April 1917) and so his replacement will likely arrive for beginning May. Best thing about the sim is basically you can start a campaign when you most desire. Have fun! Cheers, Balders

Well done, m8! Salut!

For some added spice I decided to try a DiD-T Schusta pilot/observer. I picked Schusta 2, April 1917, equipped with the lovely Roland CII (love this machine). Lost our escort approaching the front when they engaged enemy Nieuports, so we were given some breathing room. Flew on to the mission point (observation for 18 minutes over enemy lines) where we engaged a flight of Sop.Strutters- by this point I wanted to try the observers seat so punched in Shift F8 + and manned the parabellum. (would it be possible in P4 to apply TrackIR to the observer? please! ta). Dohh, as my AI pilot flew I started gunning, now I must say the AI pilot was awsome- I didn't lose my lunch on him/over the side, but trying to hit even a lumbering moose like the Strutter was a huge challenge (can't even imagine what it would be like with a less qualified pilot). About seven minutes over the lines we got jumped by a full squadron of RFC Nieuport 17s, my parabellum jams, we take hits and we're down faster than a pair of trousers owned by a bootsman on shoreleave in a French brothel. How did these guys do it for real? What drove them? Sense of duty, a brotherly love for each other? Anyway, another amazingly challenging, albeit fun, aspect of the campaign game. Going to re-roll and start again...if a fighter pilot's life expectancy was 17-ish hours, what was the recce crews LE? Salut

I'm not laughing because I've done the same thing this weekend. All I could think of when I was done was 'how did these guys do this in real life?' I had picked the lovely Roland CII (Walfisch) and promptly got hammered (maybe should have picked an earlier period to start with 'gently', which I've since done). I found flying the machine to be quite good, but becoming the observer was perhaps something best left to Feldwebel A.I. 'Deadeye' Dickzki, as using the stick to maneuver the parabellum around was completely counter-intuitive for me (Me muttering: "Darn, stop twisting it...gah..up..up..no down...agggh..stop bloody twisting...there in the sights...fire...1 thousand, 2 thous...stop...not in sight...stop twisting GAH (actual word not inserted) " ) I think RicketyCrate suggested a gamepad in another thread. Hat to look around without swinging the gun around into the pilots cranium (I'd love it if it went to TrackIR). So far, out of a halfdozen re-rolled crew, I've one crew who have now survived...if I see fighters (real or imaginary!) I'mma outta there-- I have seen my escorts get blown away, or totally miss seeing the incoming FuzzyWuzzys and then I get to watch the cut scene. Its such a cool challenge!!

RC those are great pics! Love the bomb view, and really like that skin. I'll try what you suggest- go as observer- I'm assuming the sim will give credit where its due (not that I'll hit anything much to start with, but maybe I can scare off enemies) with regards to mission completion, although I'll count survival as victory. Thanks for the encouragement!! <runs off to enlist under another alias, one of thousands...>

I've yet to complete a mission and have gone through three crews...the last one was the closest, and almost landed except for getting bounced right over the airfield- I was so used to seeing Ack Ack over No-Mans Land that I completely missed the telltale flak bursts over our own field...Nieuport 17 swooping in and all I heard was Takka-Takka-Takka-Takka...cut scene. Hehe. <digs in>

Condolences on your pilots untimely demise (is it ever timely?), Ryan. I salute his gallantry and prestigious career Salut

Lovely work, Olham -- nice medal indeed, and very pleased it was awarded to him at least like that, rather than posthumously

Wicked. Thanks for sharing that OVS. Love RUSH and Tim Burtons stuff, great combo!

I found plenty of action with Jasta 1 at Proville in January 1917, and lost a good pilot as well as several not-so good/lucky pilots. I found a lot of enemy at higher altitude- 10-12k feet or higher- and mostly recce- so I decided to quit using warp altogether as it kept putting me 3000-4000 feet lower than the enemy when I did see them (so in the end Im unsure how much 'sim time' I had actually saved using the warp feature because by the time I spotted the enemy, climbed a bit higher than them, and manuevered my flight into a decent attack position I'm pretty sure some of that gaming time could have been saved had I ascended to ~11500 ft. after taking off) I ended up using Tac (which is why my DiD pilots are all designated DiDT) because it was frustratingly realistic losing the beggars in the gargantuan winter cloud/storms and I was having a bout of Stachelitis and spending more time looking for cloud openings. Tons of fun in retrospect (and I look forward to doing that all over again!).

Sorry to see your good pilot captured and forced inside of a prison cage. At least he's alive and will eventually return home. I think I better go start another couple of pilots now rather than wait the inevitable (knowing my luck hehe). Absent friends,

Next to being well and totally shredded in the air by some unshakeable AI Pup/N17/SPAD VII pilot (whom I swear has extra ammo belts), my pilots mostly meet the pine box on those gentle landings, after being shot to heck, where a feather touch of the grass equals the cut scene words You have died... (actually I usually bounce hard, nose over, ground loop or whatever at about 40-50 mph and so, yeah, I expect the cutscene). Only died to flak twice- one direct hit on the cockpit of the Halberstadt- and ground fire over a balloons remains once. Lots of dead DiD pilots...quickest demise was within a minute of take-off courtesy of being ganked by SPAD VIIs on take off in a 'Scramble' mission. I'm so pants lol.

I will try hard to get some good fighting pics-- still fudging around figuring out camera controls and the like-- and I'll have to remember to hit 'pause'...I'm usually so immersed in trying to live that I forget and hear myself say "Woa, that would have been an awsome screenie". Hopefully this Thanksgiving weekend (bank holiday in Canuck Land).

SPAM is okay, but for a really good chew, nothing beats a tin of bully beef, washed down with tinned peaches

Here is a mini-montage featuring Olhams' skin he made for Johanns Albatross DIII, of which Jasta 1 was just re-equipped with (mid-April 1917). Thanks Olham!

Great pics, Ras and the story board as well

I salute his memory as he hands the torch to someone willing to carry it

Very much agreed- the AI present in OFF really makes this sim interesting to fly- you never really know what you are up against challengewise, and those enemy pilots who were a bunch of recent training school graduates yesterday will tear you a new one today, and be a challenging roadblock tomorrow. Currently one Escadrille, No.48, which seems to be Jasta 1's main antagonist in early April 1917, is just now showing signs of cracking. We landed a lucky hammer blow on them when they attacked a local 'Armybase' and, up to that point in time, we fought some wickedly hard fights- to the point Jasta 1 was down to 3 active pilots. Since that day I've been seeing what must be a lot of replacement pilots flying for Esc-48, which fall to our guns now fairly quickly, although our AI pilots also drop rather quick. Brilliant. Back in my IL2 days, the group I was flying with ended up doing a lot of co-op missions where we split between Russian and German machines because the AI was pretty awful back in 2002-2003ish, so we had a nice co-op PvP going (plus the bonus of having a really good mission builder chap which made a huge difference in our enjoyment.