Wayfarer

I realise that I am definitely holding my breath for WOFF ... which is weird because I am fairly sure that I won't have a PC that will run it for some while and I have only explored a mere fraction of the present OFF.

I think those Dev's screenshots and videos have spoilt me.

(Regarding 'Slartibartfast', it puts me in mind of a gentleman who was very good at fjords)

Typhoon, sorry to hear that. Best wishes for her speedy recovery.

Yes, it promises to be an interesting mission.

Really proper jousting?

It's always a great pity when this kind of thing happens.

Thanks for the links Olham. Having just fiinshed my BE2/RE8 campaign that's very interesting.

I must admit, I have thought about trying it again If I ever manage to get WOFF.

Duke, I found that the AI pilots generally lost too much height too quickly for my liking, when I switched to the observer seat. This would make me vulnerable to ground fire in situations where it really wasn't necessary, so tended to stay as the pilot most of the time.

HumanDrone, I really missed something there! My wife was doing her nurse training most of the time I was flying OFF, qualifying about 10 months ago. It would have been great training for her if I'd played out all the times my pilots got hospitalised.

My actual flying schedule was forced on me by heavy demands on computer time from my wife and two of my daughters still at school/college. I used to fly more frequently in school holiday times, and I did actually have a lot of hospitalised/captured incidents to advance time through - partly through my tragic inabilty to consistently land well. Consequently I 'saved' about a year real time.

Bullethead, your point about lone aircraft may well have something to do with it. I flew a lot of lone wolf missions, and seemed to lose my flight members on a number of other occasions - even though I was supposed to be leading the missions (never really figured out why)!

Although I would try to evade enemy fighters, or turn back to draw them over our own AA, I tended to plough on through AA.

3 of the 5 pilots 'lost' through AA were flying in formations, but there were several other instances when I was on my own and survived forced landings due to AA. Unfortunately my record keeping wasn't detailed enough for a completely accurate analysis.

Lothar, thanks for the advice regarding the Eindecker. I think I am definitely going to try that, possibly with a DH2 in parallel for bit of variety.

Bullthead, I know some of my problems with AA came when I was momentarily distracted from zig-zagging, like making a final line up on a bombing run. The first time I was ever brought down by it was the first time I ever encountered serious AA and, frankly, I was mesmerised like a cat in headlights. Just a few seconds of flying straight and I was going down in flames - it was the 'die roll on death' that saved me that time.

After that, I would constantly zig-zag once the AA opened up, and was usually ok except for the odd hole.

The last pilot I lost to AA, I was trying to figure out whether some closing aircraft were 'ours or theirs' and unconsciously straightened out for a second or two, and that was enough.

I wish you good luck with the scout carreers. Please report, what you choose to fly.

Olham, I am still thinking about trying an Eindecker, a feeling your recent post at SimHQ has reinforced. I'll let you know.

Wayfarer, I have just started the same ,but from the German side. It will be interesing if my stats match up to yours - Thanks for the info.

Beanie, good luck - It's a long haul, but rewarding to stick with I think.

Thanks for the report Wayfarer: looks like there could be a disproportionate number of losses there to high AA fire - were you using my AA mod or the standard OFF ground fire settings? If you were using my AA mod, do you therefore feel that it should be toned down a bit? Although for the early war it is less effective than the standard OFF settings, it does becomes slightly more effective than OFF settings towards the end of the war (on Normal), although this is offset somewhat by the reduced lethality of the AA rounds.

 

Bletchley

Bletchley, I have been using your historical mods, but not the specific AA mod (I have been battling some unexplained hanging for some months and didn't want to add any more mods for the time being).

I don't think that there is anything in my experience to suggest any problem with these.

Two of the pilots lost to AA were from quite early on, just before I started to use your mods. I must have been subject to some AA fire on nearly every mission since then, and I was hit by only a very small proportion of this fire. Hits that brought me down were almost always extremely close. (The type that make you jump in your chair!)

A significant part of the disparity in numbers was due, I think, to the large proportion of missions in which we didn't encounter any enemy aircraft - or certainly not fighters - at all.

From my records, we were only engaged by fighters on around 13% of the missions from later June 1916 to the Armistice.

For me, an attraction of the OFF dynamic campaign was to experience the development of the ‘war’ as it unfolded from beginning to end.

With this in mind, I ran my pilots in chronological order, from February 1915, enlisting each new one from around the time the previous one fell. In the interests of reaching the Armistice before 2020 I flew missions at an OFF time interval of about a week, roughly my real life rate.

I flew two-seaters in Flanders. BE2s with 2 RFC, until the FK8 would have come in, then transferred to 5 RFC at a nearby airfield, with RE8s.

So after 2 years and 4 months real time, during which I played OFF exclusively (excepting a few weeks around last Christmas), I finally reached the Armistice. I think there aren’t so many long term two-seater fliers around, so I thought a few stats might be of interest.

Of my 12 pilots that were ‘lost’, 9 were killed and 3 were imprisoned for the duration.

I was only brought down totally out of control twice. Once resulting from AA, once after colliding with a flight member. I fly ‘dice roll on death’ and was only ‘hospitalised’ on both these occasions - a little too unrealistically lucky perhaps.

Every other time I was brought down I retained some degree of control, and survival depended on the success of a forced landing.

Enemy scouts proved to be a lesser problem than ground units, as the following figures show.

Losses to;

A.A. 5

Enemy aircraft 4

Ground fire 2

Landing accident 1

In fact, considerable amounts of time could go by without us seeing any enemy scouts, although the number of two-seaters noticeably increased.

From June 1915 to spring 1916 we were engaged frequently by Fokker EIIIs. I was then briefly troubled by Roland CIIs – I found their ability to fire at me from all angles more worrying than the Eindeckers.

Throughout the whole Battle of the Somme period, and right into December 1916, when I was attacked once by Halberstadts, we were not engaged by a single enemy aircraft, and saw little other evidence of them.

Between then and October 1917 we were engaged around 6 times. Variously by Albatros D.IIs, IIIs and Vs as time went on.

Although we dodged some Pfalz DIIIs, we were not engaged again by enemy aircraft until May 1918 when Fokker DVIIs began to periodically swarm all over us. The last time we were engaged by them was 7^th October 1918.

I didn’t ever see any sign of a Fokker Dr.1.

I always concentrated on achieving the allotted mission, and didn’t go chasing things to shoot at (as I have been prone to do in other sims), mostly only firing at enemy aircraft in defence of my other flight members (not counting my rear gunner in RE8s). Consequently I haven’t ever been credited with shooting down an enemy – although I have hit some!

I don’t know if anyone else has run OFF this way. I realise it doesn’t exactly reflect the experience of the real air crews, and it tested my patience at times, but it has been interesting to see the virtual war develop over time.

Now I think I’ll get me a single-seater and see if can’t down something!

 

... so much better than pigeon poo.

 

Bletchley

So that's what it was! We thought it was some really cheap French perfume; we didn't like to say anything.

In the meantime, Lt. Fairley has actually made it to the Armistice. So if 'Beatrice' survived her mission ... well you never know.

Now, where can a chap get fresh violets in November?

Seriously now: is there a mission, where you two-seat guys transport a spy? Or was that a user-built mission?

Olham, she is from Bletchley's mods. Apparently you need to be flying two seaters in a quiet sector in 1918. I don't know if that's for the whole of 1918 or just part of it, because he didn't say. He revealed it just a few days ago in a reply to one of my posts querying whether a certain sector of the front should be classed as 'quiet'. I jokingly said I would count all sectors as quiet in that case ... and a few missions later, there she was!

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Classic, Wayfarer. You've just made my afternoon.

 

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Glad to hear it.

Well, now you've ruined it! And I was looking forward to meeting a virtual Mata Hari! It's like in the Charlie Brown halloween show, when Sally cries 'You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, and all I get was a stupid beagle!"

 

(good on ya, mate!) except the poetry was, shall we say, a bit plebeian?

One of my all time favourite Charlie Brown episodes!

And yes ... I fear Lt. Fairley's talents lie elsewhere.

Olham, Bletchley knows more about her than I do. Our acquaintance was only brief. His post in my recent Amiens1918 thread may give you some clues. I fear to say any more in case the lady's cover is compromised.

Suffice to say, it's not just the single seater boys that have all the fun!

Only days after discovering her existence I, or rather 2nd Lt. James Fairley - 5 Squadron RAF, was given a mission to transport the elusive Beatrice - and her pigeons!

21st October 1918, take off 10:01 from Bapaume airfield - I'm afraid we can't reveal her destination, for security reasons.

She was a game gal, and her disguise was incredible - she looked just like one of our observers. Despite this, Lt. Fairley was rather taken with her, and composed this piece of doggerel in her honour;

Oh Beatrice, oh Beatrice,

La belle aviatrix,

Bold and mysterious spy.

If we get through this war,

Together we'll soar,

And your pigeons will make a nice pie!

Not my cup of tea particularly, but Lt. Fairley seems rather chuffed with it.

OlPaint, you will have to fly bomber-type missions in a Quiet sector in 1918 if you want to meet Beatrice. The pigeons are the tools of her trade - need I say more? Very hush-hush...You will be instructed to fly across the lines on a lone wolf mission, with 0 ammunition load (the pigeon-crates take up all the space otherwise occupied by guns and ammunition), and to land her in a field near a designated factory.

 

Has anyone met her yet?

 

Bletchley :)

That's it then ... historical accuracy be damned ... I'm going quiet on all sectors!

Both Bletchley's and Buddy1998 Missions Mods have both Active and Quiet Sector missions sets. My understanding is that these Mission Mods tell the game what types or kinds of missions are flown - not how many opponents you meet in a sortie. OFF launches enemy sorties that you may meet based on the historical activity on each front. OlPaint

Thanks Olpaint, I realise I had implicitly assumed they did both. The mission types under 'Active Sector' definitely seem more appropriate for this area at this particular period.

One consolation of flying in a Quiet Sector in 1918 - you may get to meet Beatrice and her pigeons, but only if you fly two-seaters :)

 

Bletchley

I do fly two-seaters and shall be keeping a sharp eye out for them!

If you're seeing a lot of machines, commensurate with expectation, then might it not be just that the text of the daily update is in error and everything else about the mod okay?

Dej, I'm presuming it is something like that. I'm definitely going to fly with an 'active sector' mindset.

Not that it really makes much difference to the way I fly - I always try to avoid enemy aircraft anyway!

RAF_Louvert, thanks - I thought as much, and I definitely am seeing a lot of aircraft. I am going to switch to 'Active sector'.

I have just passed 8th August 1918. The British army is making their advance and I am stationed at Bovelles, just east of Amiens, flying RE8s with 5 squadron RAF. The daily updates are telling me that our sector is still 'quiet'. I had rather expected the situation to be fairly active in this area.

Perhaps this is just a misconception on my part. I am using Bletchley's mods and am wondering whether it would be more appropriate to switch to 'Active Sector' anyway.

I know there are people that must be better infromed about this period than me - what are your opinions about which would be more accurate?

Olham, just out of interest, which would be your favourite photograph out of all these very fine fliers?

Oh my ...I just watched it!

Literally the first instant is astonishing with the new smoke effects.

The sequence where the falling, burning aircraft falls apart was breath stoppingly like actual gun camera footage I have seen from WW2.

There is something about the tones of the new Fee skins that makes that first formation shot look like some quality aviation art.

And ... I realised that within the 15 seconds it took to go to You Tube to watch it full screen I was already whistling Matt Milne's theme.

http://simhq.com/for...tml#Post3594333

Damn, I'm at work. Stupid 'Access Denied' policy!