epower

Thanks, Pol.

Been playing with the newly discovered (for me anyway) waypoint alteration feature in the briefing screen. I feel much safer climbing out over Abbeville as opposed to the outskirts of Amiens. I have noticed that A Flight tends to go missing when I modify my flight path. Granted, the weather is lousy in April 1918 so maybe it's just clouds. Question: If A Flight are assigned to cover, will they also follow the new flight path or will they stick to the original waypoints?

Thanks Pol. Today I did get them to drop by auto piloting briefly on the final run in and then slid off to one side as they all lined up. That's a whole lot of aircraft in a tight space with an 8 ship B-Flight! It worked out. For immersive purposes I'm fine with the flight level bombing as long as I can dive bomb. TAC will be a last of last resorts for me but at least there's an option.

I notice the flight stays right with me when I go in on a dive bombing run during railyard or airfield attack missions. Very cool. They stayed up high in WOFF PE. Alas, now they do not drop their ordnance. Is there another way, without using TAC to get the rest of the formation to bomb? I know it can be done if I, as formation leader, stay level and use autopilot but this is a bit of an immersion killer.

Thanks Adger. I wasn't sure if this was the same phenomenon. I can always put it down to some sort of refractive aberration created by an oil droplet on the goggles.

KJakker - Thanks for posting those vids. I'd seen the balloon busting gun video he did but not those two on the Lewis. Interesting detail about the latching mechanism and the vane sight.

Gotta love it. I added some pics in case they would be helpful to someone struggling with the same issue. Cecil Lewis in his BBC great war interview said it was quite a job controlling the wallowing plane and getting another drum on.

Keep holding CTRL+G until the Lewis gun is in the fully lowered position. If you let off the keyboard too soon the gun won't go all the way down.

Is this a setting that only appears when one has multiple monitors connected? Try as I might I cannot find this in workshop.

Pol, thanks for the reply. I agree that moving the Lewis up and down the Foster mount should take some work and the Ctrl Shift G seems a good way to address that. My error was likely trying to use one hand for the 3-key reload combo and not realizing that holding down the G key would exhaust the reloads. I've remapped the reload to 'G' and now make sure I give it one quick tap. "one ping only, Vasily." While this works, I rather liked the way Ctrl Shift G made it impossible for me to do anything else with the aircraft, kinda like real life. I have a magnifying work lamp above my monitor so maybe I'll reach up, open and close the lid, then hit the G key.

For those of us stateside with TCM, the 1927 silent "Wings" is on tonight. It won the first Oscar for Best Picture. Dated, it's true, but a good cracking yarn and made only 9 years ofter the Great War. Worth a look if only for the vintage machines. Enjoy.

The first Warbirds Convention I attended was at Raliegh, NC in 1999. The two guest speakers of honor were, interestingly enough, none other than Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler. The experience was fascinating to say the least. Really an honor to meet those two men. I wish I'd asked more questions but I was a bit awestruck at the time and was cripplingly hungover from the previous night's ingestion of dreaded FlakPanzerOil. Fortunately my fellow convention goers brought up all the topics that interested me and more. The facts about the fateful encounter are pretty much out there, among them that Stigler already had two victories that day and had he shot Brown down it would have meant the Knight's Cross. What I remember vividly about the conversation with those two men was Stigler recounting that "there was blood everywhere" and that he just couldn't do it. To address some of JFM's points I saw an interview with Bob Doe DSO, DFC (14 kills) recounting how he allowed Rolf Pingel of 1/JG26 109 to escape him in a similar way during the Battle of Britain. Wish I had the Youtube link handy because it's a great interview, anyway... Doe had shot up Pingel's 109 and it was clear the latter was going down in the Channel. So Doe pulled alongside, watched Pingel fighting for control of his plane and let him go. He said, "I just couldn't do it. Turns out I should have because he came back and shot more of our chaps down but it just wasn't in me." epower

HPW, If the CFS3 game engine doesn't allow you to trigger a catastrophic failure from a fuel tank fire, then I'd say the small fire is preferable, especially if alternative is the return of the "flying Burner." I think what threw me initially was the large fire which then went out. Perhaps an even smaller fire is the way to go? As you say, 50% of the time the pilot is overcome and dies with the plane usually losing control. If the plane glides in a slow descent for the other 50% of these situations, I can certainly live with that. In either case, the enemy craft is out of the fight. Creaghorn mentioned bullet spread earlier and this may have much to do with results I've been seeing of late. I did re-enable HPW Front Guns Mod, with AI Gun Range set to Normal and my Main Guns set to less accurate... it's now much more difficult to set these planes alight. Being an old Luftwaffle from my WB days I always get in close (old habits die hard) but with these gun settings, shooting from inside 80 yards seems mandatory. In QC with the twin gun aircraft and even with the Pup, I'm seeing more wings shot off now. I can't comment about the frequency of fuel leaks since I've been flying the Sopwith Pup exclusively in my recent campaign but I'd hesitate to ask for a complete revision of 477 aircraft models just yet. I may give the auto-pilot Alb/ DIII vs 3 Sop/Cam scenario a go and see what comes up with different gun settings.

Barkeep! A round of beers for one and all.

Longtime Lurker, first-time poster, at least on this second incarnation of the forum... First off, a big salute and thank you to a remarkable community, and to all those who've spent countless hours producing mods and otherwise improving the OFF experience. Been flying British lately and I've noticed a related but different phenomenon with regard to Alb DII, DIII and the Halb DII which I had not understood until DukeIronHand posted his fuel tank observations. Concentrated hits to the cockpit and engine produce a fire which burns for some seconds then goes out. I'm assuming this is the fuel tank contents burning off. I've noticed this both in QC and campaign. It seems to me that once a fire of that magnitude gets started on a canvas and dope covered craft that the conflagration would be unstoppable, as it is with the stock damage model. Interestingly, I've noticed in HPW Ultimate DM 1.1 that while the fire always goes out (damn those boche onboard fire-contol systems) sometimes the pilot continues flying, sometimes the pilot dies shortly thereafter, as evidenced by the black aircraft icon on the TAC. I wonder if the pilot is too fire and bullet resistant in HPW DM 1.1. If I understand things correctly, fuel tanks are usually located between the pilot and the engine. It is possible that deflection shooting from behind could hit the engine and gas tanks but not fall far enough aft to strike the pilot. Not sure how the visible effects relate to damage but I would think that a fuel tank fire should spread and consume the aircraft and hapless pilot. I'm very happy to do additional testing. Current set up: (Installed via JGSME) HPW Ultimate DM 1.1 HPW_GermanFM_Pack_1.0 HPW_AlliedFMPack_1.0 (Installed directly) Elephants tracers Creaghorns tracer effects (no damage debris) Creaghorns Soundtweak II + Patch <S> epower