So I've been playing some Over Flanders Fields...

Toonces · February 24, 2012, 01:50:27 PM

...and man, is that game hard!

I finally found a sweet spot as far as a good compromise of action and decent planes- April 1917. Bloody April.

I've started the campaign at this period 3 times now, all on the German side flying the Albatross DII (I think). The furthest I've gotten is 3 missions. Twice I've been killed on my second mission (one shot down and KIA, one shot down and captured behind enemy lines). Last campaign I had a kill (should have had two more, but my wingmen stole them!) and crash landed at my own base, out of ammo, with a French or Brit triplane BnZ'ing me while I tried to land. I ended up landing in a crosswind and planted a wing on final...KIA. Crap!

It's a fun game, but what I really hate is how long the missions are, and how often the weather is bad. I like to take off, get my flight formed up, then hit accelerate time until bad guys show up. But too often I get bad guys that pass by out of sight and I end up in "real time" for 20 minutes waiting for them to move out of range so that I can accelerate again. The "flying" part from point A to B isn't interesting enough to want to buzz around sightseeing between waypoints.

Anyway, I'm not a flight sim noob, and this sim is kicking my ass. It is hard as hell to land a kill shot on another plane, but man have I been completely lit up by the AI a few times! Good fun.

Jarhead0331 · February 24, 2012, 02:09:11 PM

How do you think it compares to ROF?

Gusington · February 24, 2012, 02:31:45 PM

There was a metaphor that was thrown around at WGer that IIRC went something like:

If you want to fly a plane in WWI, play ROF.

If you want to take part in WWI by flying a plane, play OFF.

ROF is set to take the mantle because of its great graphics and plane modeling. But the OFF campaign is excellent as well. Makes you feel like "you are there."

Jack Nastyface · February 24, 2012, 05:56:16 PM

Brant must be AFK, so I'll chime in: That's an adage, not a metaphor...

@Toonces...
What makes the game so hard? Flight model (hard to fly), damage model (easy to die, hard to kill), ballistics model (hard to hit), visual environment (can't see the enemy), or something else?

I've got MS CFS III (which I think is required) which I didn't really like because of the ballistic\damage model and problems with visuals (always losing sight). Is OFF better or worse than the base game?

Regards,

JNF

LongBlade · February 24, 2012, 06:05:19 PM

Quote from: Jack Nastyface on February 24, 2012, 05:56:16 PM
Brant must be AFK, so I'll chime in: That's an adage, not a metaphor...

Thank you.

jomni · February 24, 2012, 06:47:00 PM

If you want a non-technical WWI sim which has fun and dynamic campaigns, try Thirdwire's First Eagles 2.
Graphics not as detailed but dynamic campaigns are always better.
For ultimate immersion maybe you want to dabble into the Microsoft Combat Flightsim 3 mod called Over Flanders Fields.

I never got into ROF. It's quite hard to fly and shoot down anything due to ultra realism and the world is quite bland.

Gusington · February 24, 2012, 07:25:33 PM

OFF is far far better than the original CFS 3.

My bad...adage.

Toonces · February 25, 2012, 03:08:40 PM

I haven't had a chance to try out RoF yet. Once my new computer gets here, I do intend to give it a go. It seems to be more MP oriented, which isn't a bad thing, but I spend 99.9% of my gaming in my own little world. Undoubtably OFF is better in that regard.

I flew two missions last night with my latest character, Toonces von Cat III. I clicked FRAPS on for the third mission once I got to the target and a furball started to develop. Sorry about the framerates, my laptop started to struggle once I clicked on FRAPS. Clearly, my issue in this mission, besides stalling my plane and basically hanging in the air motionless for the killshot, and not checking my six enough once I got target fixated on the guy I was chasing, is that I can't ID friendlies and enemies well enough. As much as I hate using labels, I think I might map the toggle to my HOTAS and use it for SA from time to time. Reviewing the tape, I missed one French plane very clearly before the second one essentially flew into my gunsight, dragging me for his buddy.

I managed to crash land on the friendly side of the front. Mission 4 was almost exactly the same as this mission, ending with an emergency landing at a friendly strip just across the front.

Here's the tape, about 3:30 long with the killshot on my around 2:30 or so.

http://vimeo.com/37437521

Toonces · February 25, 2012, 03:28:23 PM

The more I think about it, part of the problem is probably my warping into combat. I don't like the long commute, but by warping into combat I'm not taking the time to set my flight up for the intercept. I mean, I don't warp into combat in Falcon, and even though these planes are a lot less complex that doesn't mean that the principles of air combat are any different.

I might try a few flights without warping, or at least disengaging warp farther from the FLOT, and see if I have better luck like that.