What did you do to keep up the challenge before OFF?

[Rick Rawlings]

Back in the day, my buddies and I got to the point where we felt we had mastered the original Red Baron. We would take on Mick Mannock and his three buddies when challenged without batting an eye. We could shoot down Rene Fonck on the first pass. We even figured out that if you sort of inverted the Camel, you could kind of fly it. So we had to try something to challenge ourselves.

First I tried to shoot down as many planes as possible. The best I could muster after shooting down everything that moved was something like 273. That was starting in a Morane at the beginning and going right through till the armistice. Then we tried to live through the entire war (DiD, except we still warped *cough*). We would take bets on how far we would get before someone collided with us and killed us. I may, may, have made it all the way through once by starting with the yanks, but whenever we started at the beginning, we would always die from collision. And of course I would fly careers based on actual aces. Rick Rawlings flew SE5A's like Mick Mannock. Johnny Rockitt was my Eddie Rickenbacker. Not being very good at German names, Gunther Klaut was my stock Teuton. (Sorry Olham!)

Finally, we held two Red Baron Invitationals. Myself and one other buddy each made a set of six missions using the mission builder. Each of my half dozen friends that played RB would get two cracks at each mission and whoever got the most points for the whole "set" won. The prize for each was a bottle of French wine, which, to my knowledge, remains un-opened by either winner.

I didn't have many hobbies in college.

I finally feel that OFF is so good that I can just sit back and enjoy it without making excuses for its (lack of) shortcomings.

So what did you use to do to make the games more challenging, whether it was Dawn Patrol, or Flying Corps, or the other ones whose names I forget? I know Siggi has his DiD, what else do you do?

RR

p.s. If nobody else came up with any elaborate self-challenges and I typed all this for nothing I'll feel pretty stupid

 

[Mk2]

Although nothing as dramatic as flying upside down (geez!) we use to hold "shoot outs" against different aces and tried to record how fast we killed each one...I think Maclaren (released in the expansion)was tough to bring down right away...what an awesome game (still is).

I think I played dead is dead original RB with collisions on at max realism and my record fo kills in a career was 120 or so.

I loved the original Red Baron probably more than any other game before it and after.
I was actually playing it recently through dosbox 7.2 when I ran into OFF and decided to finally give it a whirl.

 

[Bullethead]

So what did you use to do to make the games more challenging, whether it was Dawn Patrol, or Flying Corps, or the other ones whose names I forget? I know Siggi has his DiD, what else do you do?

Well, I flew against hundreds of real live people who each had more combat hours and kills than Hartmann, and I did it in a Macchi C.202 while they were in 1945 stuff.

 

[Rooster89]

Cool story Rick, I wish my friends liked to play RB, but oooh noooo, they were way too busy playing Sonic the Hedgehog. lol. Im a little confused though. If I remember right, In RB1 you could only fly as a German pilot or a British pilot. How did you fly as a Yank?

273! thats impressive! The best I could manage in RB1 was something like 160. But in RB2 I shot down 37 planes in a week.( I was flying for USA so I got like 8 missions a day. lol) Oh and my personal challenge was flying a carreer through the war in RB2 only using the keyboard. My joystick died and I didnt have enough money for a new one. But I made it through!

-Rooster

 

[Rick Rawlings]

Cool story Rick, I wish my friends liked to play RB, but oooh noooo, they were way too busy playing Sonic the Hedgehog. lol. Im a little confused though. If I remember right, In RB1 you could only fly as a German pilot or a British pilot. How did you fly as a Yank?

273! thats impressive! The best I could manage in RB1 was something like 160. But in RB2 I shot down 37 planes in a week.( I was flying for USA so I got like 8 missions a day. lol) Oh and my personal challenge was flying a carreer through the war in RB2 only using the keyboard. My joystick died and I didnt have enough money for a new one. But I made it through!

-Rooster

Well ,the 273 was definitely not a DiD type career, I replayed any mission where I died. I just tried to shoot everything that was shootable, my hommage to V'Ger, I suppose I did have limited ammo on, however.

As for who you could fly for, I am pretty sure it was Germans, British, American and French, cause all my pilot names come from that game. Rick Rawlings was British (as was Rother Naught, my RNAS guy), Gunther Klaut was German, Johnny Rockitt was American and Patrole de Fronte was French. Maybe it was allies and Germans and you picked your nationality by squad? It's been a while.

MK2: I think the reason we had to fly the Camel almost upside down was because we used the keyboard for controls and rudder, way before any of us had a soundcard with a gameport, let alone a joystick or *gasp* rudder pedals to hook into it. If you tried to turn right in the Camel using the keyboard, you would bore a hole in the ground. If you tried to turn left, you would flip over. But if you rolled it almost over, it would turn with some control. You wanted to make sure your seat belt was fastened. We mostly stuck to the SE5A and Spad 13s.

RR

Oh 2 other things MK2,

I salute you for surviving the war with collisions on. I may have pulled it off by starting late in the war, but I can't remember for sure. But I do know that my roommate in college and I ran about a dozen careers trying to get through from the start of the war but we ALWAYS collided with someone, we began to wonder if the AI had a death wish!
As for timed ace kills, my roommate and I thought we were hot stuff at RB until another one of our high school buddies wandered into our dorm-room one day. He was the guy who shot down Rene Foncke on the first pass. Literally 8 seconds or so from the time the mission loaded!