F
ftgc
Guest
Received my DVD a couple of days ago. I had previously wiped P2 including the registry entries and wiped CFS as to have a nice clean install. So here we go! Got out the CFS discs and started a new install. Get to 95% complete and get an error basically saying it couldn't write the last two terrain files to my hard drive, check to be sure there is enough room. Well I have over 120 gig available so it's not the drive being full. Must be a problem with the second CFS disc. Now what? Guess I need a new set of CFS discs. :faint:
Tried it several times same result. Humm lemme go reread the install tips on the board. It says here that the only thing P3 uses is a couple of files on the CFS disc and you can select to have P3 load the files from the disc vise the installed CFS. Additionally it says to use disc one, so I guessed the files it needs aren't on the second disc (the ones that wouldn't load) Oh Oh problem. The FAQ says it has to be version 3.1 so copying the files from the disc only works if the disc is already ver. 3.1 (mine aren't)
Seems I remembered that when the install of CFS gave me those errors it gave me the option to ignore the error and continue. Lets try that. Ok that worked, skipped the last two files and CFS installer says it's installed OK. Tried to run it and got nothing (kinda figured that would happen) When installing P2 it was important to start the game and fly one flight before installing OFF, wonder if that's necessary with P3? Well I'm into it this far might as well give it a try. Loaded the disc and clicked on the OFF executable and after what seemed like forever unpacking files OFF P3 was up and running :woot:
So that's the Ugly. I provide this info to show what worked for me getting around my old worn out CFS discs. I make no claims that this would work for anyone else or that skipping the files I did or not flying a flight in CFS won't cause problems later. Perhaps the devs can weigh in here.
Next the good. WOW talk about eye candy. I bumped up the sliders from the default 2s and set A/C detail to 5 and the rest to 4 except clouds to 2. Truely outstanding graphics, Truely horrible frame rates
. This puppy is gonna take more horsepower than I have (sorta figured that too) Anyway bumped the sliders down to get acceptable frame rates (high 30s to low 20s) killed some of the pretty scenery but I'm more of a good game play vise eye candy guy. I create a pilot flying for Escadrille 1 and move the date to get the Nieuport 17. The new interface is great really polished, the work shop is really nice especially having the CFS configuration file right there. Went to the briefing room and was given a patrol behind friendly lines mission. My flight was the only one this day. Click go to field and I'm sitting in my shinny new N.17, look around and there is my flight warming up their engines waiting for me to roll. This was one of my pet peeves in P2. Getting to my plane and the flight already rolling before I can even start my engine. This is much better thanks. So we take off and form up over the field and head NE to an airfield near the front south of the town of Albert. We reach our patrol area without incident and I lead the flight on a sweep of the area. Now here's one of the best parts. In P2 I knew where we were going to encounter E/A. If we were going to find the enemy it would be near the last two waypoint of the patrol (the spawn points) So after stooging around the area with no contact I decide that I'd take the flight a little closer to the front and a little farther north. I'd noted in reviewing previous flight that a lot of action had been taking place more north and east of where we were now. Sure enough about five minutes later there they are three, no four, five Fokker EIIIs co-alt 10 o'clock.
I turn towards to engage. I guess they see us too and are up for a fight because they turn and head straight for us. Out numbered five to four but were in N.17s this should be a turkey shoot. About a mile out I signal for my flight to engage. And engage they do.
Gone are the days of P2 were you were fighting the war alone and just had other planes in your flight to distract the other E/A while you were killing the one you had selected. In P3 the other members of your flight are actually engaging and shooting down the bad guys.
At the merge I pick out an Eindecker roll left kick rudder and start my lead turn. Don't know if he didn't see me but as I close he must have looked back and saw I was about to restitch some canvas. He pulls hard left but he doesn't have a chance, I've already turned inside him and it just helps me close the gap faster. He rolls over and heads for the deck. "Great give up your one advantage Hun, we get down on the deck and its all over for you" Sure enough we get low and the superior manuverability of the Nieuport is to much for him, but he's not going gentle into that good night. He rolls and climbs slips and slides. Every time I get him lined up he breaks hard and I over shoot and have to climb hard to avoid getting in front of his guns. I make several passes (on the deck I can dictate the terms of the fight) I dive on him and line him up, again he breaks hard left. "Not this time" I chop throttle kick rudder and slid inside his turn, closing fast I wait until the muzzle of my Lewis gun is right in his ear and let go a burst. Ahhhhhhhhhhgggggghhh I hear him scream as my bullets tear through his plane and into his body. I pull up just in time to miss ramming him and look back over my shoulder. He's dead or mortally wounded, his plan starts a lazy spiral toward the earth and soon his shadow and aircraft meet a thousand feet below me.
As I climb I look around to get my bearings and three more Fokkers have joined the fight. Odds are about even as the other members of my flight have dispatched a couple of EIIIs themselves. I get two more and my buddies down the rest, but not without loss. One of the flight is missing when we reform. Maybe he made a forced landing, we're near our side of the front, lets keep a good thought.
We climb as we head for our side of the front and back towards our patrol area. Once over the field and with no E/A in sight we head for home low on fuel and ammo. The flight is short and soon we are over our field a quick circle to lose alltitude and I'm rolling up to the hanger tents. I jump out as my mechanic throws the chocks under the wheels and we make a quick walk around the plane. In the port stabilizer are two small holes a present from the Kieser. I never did see who shot at me guess I was lucky this time. Enough for one day, I leave my mechanic to repair the holes and I'm off to the canteen to wash some of this caster oil out of my throat and get some rest, we'll be back over the front tomorrow and I'm sure the Hun will be too.
AI is much improved in P3, as good or better than the IL2 series. In the flights I've had so far I've not been in mortal peril as seen in Pol's preview movies but so far I've only come up against EIIIs while flying a Nieuport 17 with about equal odds. I look foward to flying against some D-IIIs and seeing how the AI fights when in a plane with equal speed and manuverability. Also could be that Pol's a great programer/designer but not worth a damn as a combat pilot
(Ok I used a smiley but just in case, that was a joke)
Ok so we've done the Good, the Ugly, now for the bad. I shouldn't really say bad, but things I think needs attention.
We all know about the flying as a wingman thing and that a fix should be on the way soon, so I'll leave that alone.
First on the list of things I think need tweeking is poor formation and forming up ability of your wingmen. When fighting the AI members of the flight have no problem turning tight, rolling, climbing etc. But when forming up and making turns in route they are very timid about turning with you. Even a 45 degree banked 90 degree turn leaves them out in left field. The will form back up but after going miles out and around. Additionally they are very hesitant to climb with you. Unless I climb at a very very slow rate the rest of the flight is happy to keep station two to three thousand feet below me. This is a problem when you only have a short flight to your patrol area. You either get there with only three or four thousand feet of altitude or your flight is way below you and completely out of the fight if you encounter E/A above you. I've had them way below and then for some reason climb up to my alltitude, but I've yet to figure out what triggers them to climb up to you on the odd occasion they do.
Second, Two seaters have no blind spot. They can and do shoot right through their own plane. The rear gunner in the FE (the one where the gunner is behind the pilot but ahead of the wing) can even shoot you right through his engine. Additionally two seaters seem to be the fastest best climbing planes in the game when flown by the AI. If I see a group of two seaters above me or going away from me I won't even bother to chase them as I've never been able to catch them. Yet Bullethead wrote a thead about one of them stating when he flew it, it wouldn't climb, turn or go fast.
Those are my only real hard spots with P3. Some other things I'd like to see changed and these are in no particular order. One the claims form. When I want to relax and have some fun I don't want to have to write down names on a scratch pad or keep a data base. The names are on a board behind the claim form when it comes up, just make the form moveable/sizable so we can see who was in the flight. Apperantly the devs have written the program to look for some tricky words/key phrases in the form that will increase the chances that the claim will be accepted. If so just let us know what information we need. For instance location ie near such and such an airfield, sw of the town of xyz. But we need a better map to be able to identify those towns and fields. Two, I'd like to see the replay feature (which I think is great btw) have a fast forward function. And finally I liked the P2 drop down menu for month and year when selecting the date of the squdron as opposed to clicking foward or back through all available dates. But these are minor things I can live with.
Well this is a post and a half. Over all I think the developers have done an outstanding job with P3 and I look foward to many hours of enjoyment from it. Salute :ernae:
Thanks,
Scott
Tried it several times same result. Humm lemme go reread the install tips on the board. It says here that the only thing P3 uses is a couple of files on the CFS disc and you can select to have P3 load the files from the disc vise the installed CFS. Additionally it says to use disc one, so I guessed the files it needs aren't on the second disc (the ones that wouldn't load) Oh Oh problem. The FAQ says it has to be version 3.1 so copying the files from the disc only works if the disc is already ver. 3.1 (mine aren't)
Seems I remembered that when the install of CFS gave me those errors it gave me the option to ignore the error and continue. Lets try that. Ok that worked, skipped the last two files and CFS installer says it's installed OK. Tried to run it and got nothing (kinda figured that would happen) When installing P2 it was important to start the game and fly one flight before installing OFF, wonder if that's necessary with P3? Well I'm into it this far might as well give it a try. Loaded the disc and clicked on the OFF executable and after what seemed like forever unpacking files OFF P3 was up and running :woot:
So that's the Ugly. I provide this info to show what worked for me getting around my old worn out CFS discs. I make no claims that this would work for anyone else or that skipping the files I did or not flying a flight in CFS won't cause problems later. Perhaps the devs can weigh in here.
Next the good. WOW talk about eye candy. I bumped up the sliders from the default 2s and set A/C detail to 5 and the rest to 4 except clouds to 2. Truely outstanding graphics, Truely horrible frame rates
. This puppy is gonna take more horsepower than I have (sorta figured that too) Anyway bumped the sliders down to get acceptable frame rates (high 30s to low 20s) killed some of the pretty scenery but I'm more of a good game play vise eye candy guy. I create a pilot flying for Escadrille 1 and move the date to get the Nieuport 17. The new interface is great really polished, the work shop is really nice especially having the CFS configuration file right there. Went to the briefing room and was given a patrol behind friendly lines mission. My flight was the only one this day. Click go to field and I'm sitting in my shinny new N.17, look around and there is my flight warming up their engines waiting for me to roll. This was one of my pet peeves in P2. Getting to my plane and the flight already rolling before I can even start my engine. This is much better thanks. So we take off and form up over the field and head NE to an airfield near the front south of the town of Albert. We reach our patrol area without incident and I lead the flight on a sweep of the area. Now here's one of the best parts. In P2 I knew where we were going to encounter E/A. If we were going to find the enemy it would be near the last two waypoint of the patrol (the spawn points) So after stooging around the area with no contact I decide that I'd take the flight a little closer to the front and a little farther north. I'd noted in reviewing previous flight that a lot of action had been taking place more north and east of where we were now. Sure enough about five minutes later there they are three, no four, five Fokker EIIIs co-alt 10 o'clock.I turn towards to engage. I guess they see us too and are up for a fight because they turn and head straight for us. Out numbered five to four but were in N.17s this should be a turkey shoot. About a mile out I signal for my flight to engage. And engage they do.
Gone are the days of P2 were you were fighting the war alone and just had other planes in your flight to distract the other E/A while you were killing the one you had selected. In P3 the other members of your flight are actually engaging and shooting down the bad guys.
At the merge I pick out an Eindecker roll left kick rudder and start my lead turn. Don't know if he didn't see me but as I close he must have looked back and saw I was about to restitch some canvas. He pulls hard left but he doesn't have a chance, I've already turned inside him and it just helps me close the gap faster. He rolls over and heads for the deck. "Great give up your one advantage Hun, we get down on the deck and its all over for you" Sure enough we get low and the superior manuverability of the Nieuport is to much for him, but he's not going gentle into that good night. He rolls and climbs slips and slides. Every time I get him lined up he breaks hard and I over shoot and have to climb hard to avoid getting in front of his guns. I make several passes (on the deck I can dictate the terms of the fight) I dive on him and line him up, again he breaks hard left. "Not this time" I chop throttle kick rudder and slid inside his turn, closing fast I wait until the muzzle of my Lewis gun is right in his ear and let go a burst. Ahhhhhhhhhhgggggghhh I hear him scream as my bullets tear through his plane and into his body. I pull up just in time to miss ramming him and look back over my shoulder. He's dead or mortally wounded, his plan starts a lazy spiral toward the earth and soon his shadow and aircraft meet a thousand feet below me.
As I climb I look around to get my bearings and three more Fokkers have joined the fight. Odds are about even as the other members of my flight have dispatched a couple of EIIIs themselves. I get two more and my buddies down the rest, but not without loss. One of the flight is missing when we reform. Maybe he made a forced landing, we're near our side of the front, lets keep a good thought.
We climb as we head for our side of the front and back towards our patrol area. Once over the field and with no E/A in sight we head for home low on fuel and ammo. The flight is short and soon we are over our field a quick circle to lose alltitude and I'm rolling up to the hanger tents. I jump out as my mechanic throws the chocks under the wheels and we make a quick walk around the plane. In the port stabilizer are two small holes a present from the Kieser. I never did see who shot at me guess I was lucky this time. Enough for one day, I leave my mechanic to repair the holes and I'm off to the canteen to wash some of this caster oil out of my throat and get some rest, we'll be back over the front tomorrow and I'm sure the Hun will be too.
AI is much improved in P3, as good or better than the IL2 series. In the flights I've had so far I've not been in mortal peril as seen in Pol's preview movies but so far I've only come up against EIIIs while flying a Nieuport 17 with about equal odds. I look foward to flying against some D-IIIs and seeing how the AI fights when in a plane with equal speed and manuverability. Also could be that Pol's a great programer/designer but not worth a damn as a combat pilot
(Ok I used a smiley but just in case, that was a joke)Ok so we've done the Good, the Ugly, now for the bad. I shouldn't really say bad, but things I think needs attention.
We all know about the flying as a wingman thing and that a fix should be on the way soon, so I'll leave that alone.
First on the list of things I think need tweeking is poor formation and forming up ability of your wingmen. When fighting the AI members of the flight have no problem turning tight, rolling, climbing etc. But when forming up and making turns in route they are very timid about turning with you. Even a 45 degree banked 90 degree turn leaves them out in left field. The will form back up but after going miles out and around. Additionally they are very hesitant to climb with you. Unless I climb at a very very slow rate the rest of the flight is happy to keep station two to three thousand feet below me. This is a problem when you only have a short flight to your patrol area. You either get there with only three or four thousand feet of altitude or your flight is way below you and completely out of the fight if you encounter E/A above you. I've had them way below and then for some reason climb up to my alltitude, but I've yet to figure out what triggers them to climb up to you on the odd occasion they do.
Second, Two seaters have no blind spot. They can and do shoot right through their own plane. The rear gunner in the FE (the one where the gunner is behind the pilot but ahead of the wing) can even shoot you right through his engine. Additionally two seaters seem to be the fastest best climbing planes in the game when flown by the AI. If I see a group of two seaters above me or going away from me I won't even bother to chase them as I've never been able to catch them. Yet Bullethead wrote a thead about one of them stating when he flew it, it wouldn't climb, turn or go fast.
Those are my only real hard spots with P3. Some other things I'd like to see changed and these are in no particular order. One the claims form. When I want to relax and have some fun I don't want to have to write down names on a scratch pad or keep a data base. The names are on a board behind the claim form when it comes up, just make the form moveable/sizable so we can see who was in the flight. Apperantly the devs have written the program to look for some tricky words/key phrases in the form that will increase the chances that the claim will be accepted. If so just let us know what information we need. For instance location ie near such and such an airfield, sw of the town of xyz. But we need a better map to be able to identify those towns and fields. Two, I'd like to see the replay feature (which I think is great btw) have a fast forward function. And finally I liked the P2 drop down menu for month and year when selecting the date of the squdron as opposed to clicking foward or back through all available dates. But these are minor things I can live with.
Well this is a post and a half. Over all I think the developers have done an outstanding job with P3 and I look foward to many hours of enjoyment from it. Salute :ernae:
Thanks,
Scott
