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Over50
Guest
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Fortiesboy
Guest
No Siggi, it isn't down to Microsoft. More damage is programmable. I have modded it in both phase 2 and in Phase 3. I have wings coming off and fire and explosions etc.
I haven't posted these mods because it isn't for me to do so. On enquiry, the devs have given permission for one or two of my friends to use them, and I thank them for that.
I also am thankful that they have made the AI range and accuracy scaleable.
That should suit everyone. If something is scaleable, quite honestly I think it not reasonable for some of us to demand that something stay as it is because it suits us and our concept of realism. I am also concerned that this attitude is sometimes born of ego, .ie. "look how good i am- I can handle it "
This sim is the best there is. I play it every day. That was also my view of Phase 2. But this phase 3 is getting better and better since release.
Winder et al are listening, and working their socks off on patches etc. (look at the list in the Stickies)
It is remaining a hard sim, yet is being made scaleable to allow newbie access at whatever level they can initially achieve success at. Once in, their skill will grow and if they wish they will scale up.
But the important thing is that they get into the sim, at their mate's who introduced them to it, and so they then buy it for themselves.
I personally have shown the sim to too many mates who couldn't immediately handle it and who say WTTE - "Yea,very nice - looks good ...." etc and that's it. And my suspicion has been that they found it hard and didn't see the prospect of being able to handle it.
If hard work and constant support make for success , then this will be the No.1 sim in recent years.
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Siggi
Guest
Wings CAN be shot off?! Structural failure after damage? But only with a special mod? Hmm, that begs a question.
I absolutely agree with your points about scalability.
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Winder
Guest
Hello thanks for this.
Yes our aim at the moment now that the nasty bugs have been sorted is to listen and adjust as and when necessary and yes our main focus is to make it more accessible without compromising the 'reality' of what it was like (with the constraints of the PC etc)
Not arcade but easier for newbies to get into it - 1.26 will see a lot of work in this direction but please note those that like it as it is will still be playing it as it is - we are just allowing more flexible scalability.
Finally we would please just like all modders to hold back release of mods til 1.3 is out as this will help us support and sort our issues rather than 3rd party issues. We would like to maintain open correspondence with all modders but if you drop us a mail and our reply is short please understand we are heavily loaded with what we have on board at the moment but we will talk to everyone that contacts us wrt to modding and more so post 1.3
Cheers
WM
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Winder
Guest
Wings CAN be shot off?! Structural failure after damage? But only with a special mod? Hmm, that begs a question.
I absolutely agree with your points about scalability.
Yes and even now if you concentrate the fire in the correct place a wing can come off - but its not easy...
Yes it can be made easier - we may not make it so.
WM
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Siggi
Guest
Ah! Well, knowing it can happen is the next best thing to seeing it happen.
I would recommend making it easier for planes to fold up/fall apart though. I'm sure it must have happened a lot more in reality than it does in the sim, especially given the number of rounds I put into some planes and the amount of bits that come off.
I'm also happy about the upcoming scalability of AI range. I'm okay with accuracy scalability. I hope the suspicion about "ego" wasn't born of my input. I was careful to say how rusty/limited my skill set is, and how often I die as a result. What I was saying, and continue to urge, is for the developers not to reduce the difficulty of full realism settings. Scale it all they want. Add a gazillion options in workshop to make it basically a turkey shoot. That's fine with me. But I'd hate to see the full realism settings made easier just so people can feel as if they do exceedingly well even at full realism. That would seem to me to be the way "ego" could affect this sim.
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Over50
Guest
As Winder said "we are just allowing more flexible scalability" which, for me, will make the sim more enjoyable. Others who prefer "the way it was" difficulty will also have that level of enjoyment.
Having been burned enough times where I've run out a bought a game because of the hype only to find out it was too damn hard to play I adopted a wait-for-the-review stance. Doing so has saved me a lot of grief and money on game purchases that I can't finish (too hard, auto save points, etc.,) and either get shelved, thrown out or given away.
I violated my own rule and purchased OFF3 because of my desire for a good (read playable with great graphics) WW1 combat flight sim ... and as I posted early on, became pretty frustrated with it because of what I considered "unfair gunnery advantage" of the enemy AI in campaign mode - which is far harder than what I encounter in QC.
So all this said, I welcome - make that really appreciate - the upcoming enemy AI skill scalability. Until that time I'll continue to fly QC with only an occassional dabble in campaign mode when my masochistic mood sets in..
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CW3SF
Guest
I love it---- good clear thoughts and valid points all through out each reply. Not one case of attacks as seen at other sights.
COOL:kiss::kiss::ernae::woot:
COOL:kiss::kiss::ernae::woot:
british_eh
Charter Member
Yes , excellent Point KiloWolfhelm!
I had sent a note to the OFF SUPPORT TEAM, and described this exact issue, of being shot at from long range. It now appears the WINDER has addressed this issue SPECIFICALLY, which I believe, will be one of the best AI trait revisions! Having flown P1, and P2 for the last 4 years, the current AI are the BEST yet, period. If you are new to P3, you are getting mostly superb performance from your AI as compared to previous additions. This of course was a CFS3 ISSUE.
Thanks to the OFF TEAM,for your attention to this.
Sincerely,
british_eh
I had sent a note to the OFF SUPPORT TEAM, and described this exact issue, of being shot at from long range. It now appears the WINDER has addressed this issue SPECIFICALLY, which I believe, will be one of the best AI trait revisions! Having flown P1, and P2 for the last 4 years, the current AI are the BEST yet, period. If you are new to P3, you are getting mostly superb performance from your AI as compared to previous additions. This of course was a CFS3 ISSUE.
Thanks to the OFF TEAM,for your attention to this.
Sincerely,
british_eh
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Polovski
Guest
Turn up your gun damage to strongest then wings will come off easier.
I think FB's mod last time was roughly to reduce the damage thresholds to 10%.
So more kills, more damage more booms.. more kills.
Good fun for a quick blast, but not what we are aiming for. Also bigger damage per bullet means AI will struggle with very damaged craft after a few hits etc, but if it's possible to make super strong guns or super weak craft for fun maybe we can do it at some point.
I think FB's mod last time was roughly to reduce the damage thresholds to 10%.
So more kills, more damage more booms.. more kills.
Good fun for a quick blast, but not what we are aiming for. Also bigger damage per bullet means AI will struggle with very damaged craft after a few hits etc, but if it's possible to make super strong guns or super weak craft for fun maybe we can do it at some point.
british_eh
Charter Member
Yes POL
excellent point about the GUN settings. If you want more, STRONG is for you. Was I wrong about the distance issue?
Cheers,
british_eh
excellent point about the GUN settings. If you want more, STRONG is for you. Was I wrong about the distance issue?
Cheers,
british_eh
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Polovski
Guest
AI range, AI opening fire from distance.. British_eh.
It's a very complicated issue in practice when you come to test all the ins and outs.
It's a very complicated issue in practice when you come to test all the ins and outs.
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JFM
Guest
No question. Combat reports are rife with descriptions of planes coming apart. Damage them enough and if not destroyed outright, Gs and relative wind did the rest. Still, I do not know if this happened more than is reflected in the sim (I've never seen it but I haven't seen many kills at all), but planes certainly did come apart in gunfire.
Here are excerpts from MvRichthofen's (translated) combat reports that describe attack-related structural compromise (I'm using these because they happen to be right next to me; if I spent a couple more minutes I could produce many British examples, too):
(#21) ...I shot at the falling plane until the left part of the wings came off...
(#22) ...After the 400th shot plane lost a wing whilst making a curve...
(#24) ...The wings of the plane I attacked came off...
(#26) ...In a favourable moment I attacked the B.E. machine, and after 200 shots the body of the machine broke in half....
(#27) ...In my machine-gun fire the plane lost its open work fuselage...
(#28) ...After a short fight my opponent's plane lost both wings and fell...
(#39) ...After a very few shots the plane broke to pieces and fell near Vimy ...
(#47) ...I observed an artillery flyer, approached him unnoticed, and shot at him from closest range, until his left wing came off. The machine broke to pieces and fell down near Mericourt...
(#49) ...The plane I had singled out broke to pieces while curving and dashed, burning, into the swamp near Lecluse...
(#51) ...After a short fight my adversary's plane lost its wings...
(#56) ...We spotted an enemy artillery flyer whose wings broke off in my machine-gun fire...
(#67) ...both decks [wings] were severed from the English plane by my bullets...
(#73) ...I shot at the plane until it broke to pieces...
(#77) ...I shot at an enemy plane some 200 meters off. After I had discharged 100 shots the enemy plane broke to parts...
14 airplanes--18% of his credited victories--broke up during his gunfire. Others broke up during their "dash" to the ground, but I only included those that fell apart during the attack.
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TSmoke
Guest
I don't post much and have an opinion on this as it seems many do.
I play the game as it is a game at 90% i only use auto-mixture. Play campaigns only.
Yes it is harder than P1 and P2 but not by a large margin, the AI is better and also worse in P3...better because they maneuver better quicker and dont shoot you from a 1000 feet away....still open up to far away.....WOrse AI because even starting a fight a 10k feet in less than 1 min all the bloody AI are mowing the freaking grass ... there is no such thing as an dog fight at altitude that I have seen. It's always 1000 feet or lower.
As for the AI shooting the krap out of you, of the 20 odd pilots I have created only once did I die as a result of AI pilots gunfire.....it was 6 D3's VS my single Pup. So it was over fairly quick. The AI pilots rarely hit my aircraft be it 1v1 or 2v1or 3v1 campaign mode only. I hate QC.
AS for having planes fall apart from gunfire I tend to agree that it was a fairly common event, as JFM points out on MVR combat reports,except for maybe #77 at 660 feet I doubt that..... read some of Billy Bishops, William Barkers, Andrew McKeevers reports and many of the enemy planes fell as pieces, so it seems to have been more common than in game. Yes they are all Canadian pilots !!!!
As for scaling the range the AI open fire I end to agree they open fire to far away, thus the above point of not being hit much by the AI.
Just my 2 cents worth.
I play the game as it is a game at 90% i only use auto-mixture. Play campaigns only.
Yes it is harder than P1 and P2 but not by a large margin, the AI is better and also worse in P3...better because they maneuver better quicker and dont shoot you from a 1000 feet away....still open up to far away.....WOrse AI because even starting a fight a 10k feet in less than 1 min all the bloody AI are mowing the freaking grass ... there is no such thing as an dog fight at altitude that I have seen. It's always 1000 feet or lower.
As for the AI shooting the krap out of you, of the 20 odd pilots I have created only once did I die as a result of AI pilots gunfire.....it was 6 D3's VS my single Pup. So it was over fairly quick. The AI pilots rarely hit my aircraft be it 1v1 or 2v1or 3v1 campaign mode only. I hate QC.
AS for having planes fall apart from gunfire I tend to agree that it was a fairly common event, as JFM points out on MVR combat reports,except for maybe #77 at 660 feet I doubt that..... read some of Billy Bishops, William Barkers, Andrew McKeevers reports and many of the enemy planes fell as pieces, so it seems to have been more common than in game. Yes they are all Canadian pilots !!!!
As for scaling the range the AI open fire I end to agree they open fire to far away, thus the above point of not being hit much by the AI.
Just my 2 cents worth.
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Fortiesboy
Guest
Hi Pol. Yes, that's about roughly what I've done. But i'd like to point out that there is a difference this time which you might find interesting or even approve.
I have only done these changes to the QC craft,(which I have assumed are the AI craft used in ...QC
) Which leaves the campaign AI untouched ?
So you could argue that newbies and old crocks like me can hone their skills on QC before venturing to campaign- Options, all about options
Also, I have chosen haphazardly the different damage boxes in which to change the thresholds, so some have the wings done, some the fuel tank, some the stabilisers, even the gunner on a two seater. etc
And as the probability factors have not been increased, then it isn't made a terrible lot easier-lol
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Gousgounis
Guest
Actually this existed in P2 as well. The AI tend to dive to 1000 feet when in a dogfight which starts from high up. . I dont think this happened in reality. Actually, I wanted to post this "issue" but always forgot about it. Yesterday for instance, my Se5 flight engaged 5 Alb DIII. They were flying to the north and were at 12000 feet and we were at 11000. We were chasing them from behind, and finally, when we got really close, they broke the formation and each one of us picked up an EA and chased it. I picked one Alb, and sticked on his six (at least tried to! he was making exceptional evasive manouevers) for quite some time. The Albatros kept diving and diving....it stopped diving at 1000 feet where it leveled off and we started a turning dogfight. The thing is, that when u start a dogfight from high altitude, the AI is always diving towards very low altitudes. Is ths fixable? Well I dont expect to look this through for 1.3... but after that maybe?TSmoke said:
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cpirrmann
Guest
I've noticed this too from my earliest memories with OFF, that the AI dives for dirt right away and then the combat stays around 1000 feet or less. I know that extended combats will descend with time, but the AI dumping altitude right away might be something to look at later. Or is that part of the AI low altitude issue being looked at for 1.3?
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Siggi
Guest
It does seem to be an issue. When me and my flight went after the six tripes we saw at approx 8000ft (we were at approx 6000ft) they spotted us and dived straight at us. MvR went straight past me and dived directly to the deck.