Javito1986

He could have done it too though, that's the thing. It's just pure luck that he didn't. ALL the SE5s were hit as you say, the Brits were lucky none of them were hit severely. Had Voss so much as critically damaged a few of those SE5s with those hits he landed the others might have cut and run.

I've wondered the above myself.

Can't answer myself but I can contribute my own experience. I have curious FPS activity as well! Sometimes I'll be flying along perfectly fine and all of a sudden things will grind to a halt for no reason and stay that way. Then just when I think the game has frozen the FPS rises again and I'm flying normally (although last time I crashed in between... was annoying). I've also had it where I can run the 20v20 dogfight in the Scenarios section with smooth FPS and then go into campaign and try to take off in clear weather and have it be an utter CRAWL at 1 - 2 FPS. I've been trying since I got the game to identify a pattern, it's pretty elusive thus far though.

Background: My last pilot career came to an abrupt end on a balloon busting mission. These were pretty simple in Red Baron 3D but I find that if you approach the missions in OFF expecting more or less the same the 'Bosche' will have you for lunch. I attacked the balloon, was knocked off course by a near miss from flak, was riddled with MG fire promptly afterwards, tried quite desperately and valiantly to correct my course and line up on the balloon at which point the engine started on fire! It was not a pleasant way to go. Naturally this is more historical as IRL these assignments were dreaded by pilots. Now I have a new career that I started in mid March 1917 and it's going quite well. Even though it's 'Bloody April' and I fly an outclassed Nieuport 17 I'm doing quite well in the 'surviving' department. I find that the 'trick' to surviving April '17 is to flee in terror from every Albatross D.III you see. Unfortunately, as part of Command's effort to kill off every pilot in the RFC, they've assigned yet another balloon busting mission to support the start of the Arras offensive (in-game it's April 9). This is concerning because I'm only a few days away from the in-game month long anniversary of this pilot's survival and I'd like to get there! Fair and square, without skipping the mission! But I'm pretty sure this next mission is going to be the end of this pilot's career. Consequentially I'm thinking ahead and planning the attack very, very carefully and considering all the possible contingencies. However I thought I'd come over here and consult with the 'veterans' about the best way to approach balloon busting. What's everybody's favorite method? I fly with ground accuracy set to 'normal' by the way. This way I actually have to change heading/height every 20 - 30 seconds while flying over German lines to confuse the gunners. Find that to be more historically accurate. It also means I'm likely to get pulverized if I'm not fast enough getting at that balloon and have to attack it while it's low on the ground... *gulp*

Figured I owe you all an update on how the mission went :-) Good news and bad news! Good news: I got the balloon! Bad news: I was hospitalized for 13 days! Long story: I went around the front and circled around from the east. The balloon was high in the sky by the time I found it. Wingmen went down to the deck and started suppressing the German defenses, I bored straight in on that sausage. Took a hit from something (no idea what) that knocked the Nieuport around like a kite. I had a look and my left bottom wing tip looked as though Superman had grabbed it and bent it upwards. It wasn't sheared off, it was just bent upwards. Very bad for the controls, I was sideslipping all over the sky and flak/mg fire all around. HOWEVER I was still able to flame the balloon and because I was already aiming west I was able to kind of make my plane coast towards friendly lines. The landing didn't go so well, I landed among the British troops in no man's land. "Landed" is overstating it since the plane crashed and sent me to the infirmary for 2 weeks. ps. Seeing as how it's 'Bloody April', missing 2 weeks of it may not be a bad thing.

Nah! The Frenchies just shoot at ANY plane, no matter what side it's on! At least they did IRL... that should be modeled in OFF, the RFC used to complain about that quite a bit :-p

Really? Could have sworn I tried enlisting with Lafayette in the Spring of '16 and it said the Nieup 11 was unavailable. I'll check again when I get home later though.

I haven't seen the Nieuport 11 mentioned? I'd like to fly around with Escadrille Lafayette during the battle of Verdun and shoot up some Eindeckers.

Ah, that explains why I hardly ever seem to see them while on mission. I warp all the time... guess I should stop!

Ah okay, here's a point of interest for me. Still new to the game so how can I tell if the ace flight is on the same mission as I am? Or are the always on the same mission? Sometimes I'm tempted just to follow them around since, depending on what RFC squadron I'm in, I feel safer having Mannock, Bishop, or McCudden around :-) On a related note, I currently have region air activity set to heavy. I'm completely unsure as to whether or not this is the most historical setting? I wouldn't want to have it on a setting that makes my life harder for no reason at all... i.e. makes me 10x more likely to get intercepted by fighters en route. Wouldn't want it to be too 'gamey' if you follow me. I'm going for extreme accuracy in this pilot's career but some settings make things a bit harder than they were IRL... like if you switch the AI's gunnery skill to 'more accurate' or something.

So I was just flying a patrol in which my squadron encountered enemy far above us. We were at roughly 7,000, I'd venture that the Germans were almost double that. The flight leader put his plane up and climbed, AI squadmates climbed, I tried to follow and stalled and fell and stalled and fell and repeat... was eventually able to gain altitude very very slowly but by the time I hit 10,000 the AI squadmates were already among the enemy recon planes tearing them up and I pretty much missed the whole show. How do I prevent this from happening again? Any way I can keep up with them on the climb to altitude?

Long time flight sim player, mostly RB3D and Rowan's Battle of Britain. OFF arrived this afternoon and I'm loving every bit of it. Here's the trouble though. Mission 2 of my career I was following my squadron through a dense cloud formation. Weather was nasty, very stormy. Think we were going after a British scout or something. Anyway I maintained visibility with them through the mist more or less well, was being very careful as I'm aware of the dangers clouds can pose. Didn't expect things to happen the way they did though... Hard to explain after the fact. I think the plane seemed to shoot upward and I THINK I was spinning... hard to tell when you're in the middle of a cloud. Eventually I caught glimpses of the ground in between round abouts and it was pretty obvious I was getting tossed about every which way. "Danger excessive speed" "Stall imminent" messages left and right. Realized I was pretty much screwed at this point. In the end I really didn't even feel myself crash, the spinning just seemed to stop and the screen went red. I felt like Albert Ball. So... yea. What in the heck could have happened to me?!?!?!?! Another question I have about it is that in the Workshop I'm set to 'Dead Is Dead'. In RB3D I became accustomed to permanently losing pilots, so I thought I'd carry on the tradition here. Trouble is the game didn't register me as having died. Or having crashed at all. Debrief was relatively routine and I was able to carry onto the next mission. A bit confusing to be honest. In Mission 1 I took it upon myself to attack a group of DH2s (if my RB3D memory serves me), got riddled, and made a rather spotty landing on the German side of no man's land. Hit a tree. Got a "pilot damaged" message and the sim ended. There was no mention of the crash then either but I figured that was because I was just lucky and survived (was not going fast when I hit the tree). It's happened twice now and I'm a bit confused by it all however. While I'm here, I'm having a bloody tough time managing rudder, trim, ailerons, elevator with the keyboard and I'm not really sure when to use what. I also notice that it's hard for me to gain altitude or keep up with the squadron. Any where I can read up on how to 'get the most' out of my plane using the engine and flight controls? Thanks in advance chaps!

Ah ha! I have HITR updated I just didn't recognize that that's what that option meant! Danke :-)

Ah I do have another question for you chaps. On a recent mission I pushed my plane too hard and its wing fell off. I started going down and the simulation ended immediately, before I could even crash. Since I didn't have a chance to crash and die and it happened over friendly lines the campaign went on as though nothing had happened. Bit of an immersion killer! Odd request I know, but can I set it to not auto-end the moment I suffer such catastrophic structural failure? I'd like to actually see my stricken craft going down and crashing. On a related but slightly different note, I like the effect of dying in this game. It's very... sudden. When you do crash there's no lingering over your crash scene, the simulation just ends. I've died in a midair collision twice now and in both cases my pilot died instantly in the crash and it produced quite a nice "blink and you're dead" effect.

Hmm... is there a way to compensate in the options for the AI having these advantages? Should I make it less aggressive or something? Also, I'm sure this is obvious to most but this is still only my second day with OFF... where could I find a guide on how to properly use mixture? Currently I have it set to auto but something tells me I'll be able to fly better if I do it manually. I switched over to manual rudder after configuring the rudder pedals and my flying has improved immeasurably since!

Righto chaps I've taken to leading flights myself. Works out a lot better this way! Thanks for the tips!

I notice other squadmates go on leave. Does the player ever go on leave? I'm in April '18 flying three missions a day under the historical setting (figured I'd leave it historical) and I saw an option called "Pilot Fatigue" somewhere... can your pilot get tired out from all this frequent flying and near death experiences every day? Also, does historical mission frequency vary depending on the situation at the front? I.E. if your region goes into a pitched battle (like mine in April '18 is) are you more likely to go up three times a day? And visa versa only once a day or every other day during a lull?

Yea, true. But coming off of the other older flight sims I've been playing til now it's new to me :-)

This is the first sim I've seen with killer clouds! Thanks for the warm welcome :-). I went out this morning and was browsing joysticks for this game, flying is much easier now. I -did- have one in the RB3D/BoB days but that was quite busted. Anyway, I have Phase 3 and Hat in the Ring. Was experiencing some anomalies (failure to load missions and such) but after I reinstalled everything I made sure to patch up BHH to v.132 BEFORE installing Hat in the Ring (yesterday I just installed HitR right after installing BHH). No more anomalies. PS. My second pilot career just ended I'm afraid. The flight log states "Died in the line of duty. Total flying time: 1 minute". Yes, 1 minute. I quite literally took off from the airfield in an SE5, was riddled by bullets from a diving Albatross, crashed and died. It was simultaneously pathetic and awesome :-p PPS. I do have one question! I read somewhere in the FAQ that I can change the options so that I don't have to fly 2 - 3 missions in one in-game day? I'm in December 20, 1917 right now and I'd like to have at least a minuscule chance of surviving to see 1918, but if that's 11 days away I quite doubt I'll survive the 20 - 30 sorties necessary to get there :)