I didn’t fly any Russian trash this weekend, but I did take up a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter on a new campaign in WOFF.
First mission: Do a photo recon over Loos. Well, okay. Unfortunately, seeing how it was October 2016, the weather was just absolute shit. Rain, socked in all the way, mission is not called off. Transit to target area is a miserable game of “keep the leader in sight”. Once there, lead decides he’s a TIE Fighter, and not a TIE Bomber, and harks after a couple of nearby E IIIs. Some twisty-turny results in one of the Eindeckers going down, and lead deciding it’s time to head home. Well, he continues to head home as Oswald Bolcke shows up (also fortunately in an EIII) leaving me to turn in to his attacks, hoping my rear gunner isn’t hung over.
I’m on my side of the lines, though, heading for a nearby balloon site (to be used as a flak trap). After a couple of circles with this Perfidious Albionite, he fucks off back to his own side of the lines, and I eventually make an uneventful transit to and landing at St. Ober, with only a few bullets (2 days worth of repairs) in my machine.
Wingman 2, with the lovely last name of Cock, gets the claim on the single EIII kill.
Mission accomplished, 78 minutes (roughly two B5 episodes running in the background)
WOFF loves putting you into the soup. I went out on a balloon attack mission in my Pup, flew into heavy cloud in a snow storm and was really self-impressed when I came out the other side still pretty close to my squadron mates.
I formed up on their right side and this was the point I noticed they were all Albatross III. I didn’t find my squadron until I made it back to base and they were all parked waiting.
…and a couple of reasons why I keep going back to WOFF/WOTF:
There are absolutely no other sims on the market, or possibly indeed ever, where this would happen. Russian mob terminator AI would spot you through the clouds in your case, and that Oswald would have followed me all the way to Piccadilly in my case.
It even felt like the AI and I had simultaneous “Ohh shit!” moments.
We all flew level for a few seconds before I worked out what they were and then a few seconds more as my brain went “those are bad guys we should leave” and then as I banked to run away a beat later they all broke to try to pursue.
It was like Wile E Coyote running off a cliff.
WOFF feels like one of the few sims where you can fly for 60 minutes, bring home all your ammo and still have a story to tell.
I wonder what the colloquial in German is for “check out the nuts on THAT guy”
Tim_N
3810
I only just saw this, has this been implemented in DCS yet?
Tim_N
3812
Awesome thanks. This update + a new Ryzen 3000 CPU in July will get me back into playing this game, very exciting!
Just finally bought Wings over the Reich because of this thread. Thanks y’all!
I apologize; “2 weeks” is DCS-speak for “???”
Tim_N
3815
Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
Editer
3816
As an aside, I finally read Flight of the Intruder (the paperback copy Spectrum Holobyte sent me with the game 28 years ago!) and enjoyed it. Decent plot and a great look at A-6 ops in Vietnam.
So I started looking around for a flyable Intruder in a combat game, and was disappointed that Razbam add-on for Strike Fighters 2 is no longer available.
Then tonight I watched the movie for the first time.
Oh. My. God. Such a terrible, terrible film, not even redeemed by A-6 and A-1 footage.
I’m over my A-6 jones now. And I have to point out that Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe were robbed by not being nominated for Razzy awards for their performances in the film. And kudos to the screenwriters for removing a full dimension from Callie and creating one of the most unbelievable and unengaging romances in military film history.
I have to sleep on it, but it may be the worst aviation film I’ve seen. At least the Iron Eagle movies were intentionally cheesy.
The DCS Viper appears to be up for preorder on Steam too, now, if for some reason you would prefer that to BMS, where there’s a living world around the plane as well as inside of it.
I’m pretty much on DCS embargo until there’s more to do in it beyond noodle around and play the odd custom-designed mission now and then. Except for the Ka-50 improvements they mentioned in the last newsletter, anyway.
Kolbex
3818
I installed BMS a few years back but found it a pain to both get installed and do anything with. Is it better these days, or is it one of those projects where if you haven’t been following it all along, good luck getting into it?
So I’ve only played a few early BoB missions in Wings over The Reich so far, but just like WOFF, the world they’ve built is so amazing and alive. Truly I think these are the best campaigns I’ve ever come across. I can’t wait until they model the rest of the war.
Installation and controls binding are the big humps to get past, if you’re into switch-happy flight sims. After that it’s relatively smooth. The terrain graphics and the menus are a bit old-school, but the dynamic campaign is simply the best one ever made.
It’s been a few years since I played last, but it’s still the source of my best memories in flight sims. I could tell a dozen war stories, easy, about the air battle over Korea. One time, in the last campaign I did, a lucky flak gunner hit me over Haeju, and I had to glide back south across the border. The next mission I flew was a revenge attack I set up specifically for the purpose of regaining my honor.
Waiting to take off behind ten other planes all with their own tasking, seeing the crowdedness of the sky on the radar and out the canopy, hearing radio calls on the guard frequency from halfway across the theater… It all more or less worked back with original Falcon 4, but BMS has polished it to something magnificent, and in terms of fun per unit of jank, I get way more out of it than I do out of DCS.
Alternate launcher fixes the controls part.
I’m flying the crap out WOFF at the moment. My current RAF pilot is flying a crappy Mauraine in the Spring of 2016 around the vicinity of Ypres. I tend to bail as soon as see dots, although one of my wing observers managed to catch an EIII unawares.
I’m hoping I get put in a Bebe soon.
So, yesterday’s daily session: the CO decided that I had enough experience with short front-line observations, and that I was up for a deep bombing raid. Gulp. A railway a couple dozen miles behind enemy lines. Oh boy.
(For those of you not in the know: WW1 pilots died in droves throughout the war. They routinely engaged in suicidal behavior – hell, some of the WW1 buckets (or acting as an observer in one) were death machines in and of themselves. And never mind the really nasty times, like for the RAF in early 1917. WOFF pulls no punches on this.)
So, about 25 minutes into the flight, I’m chugging along, my Moraine, observer, and 80lbs of bombs unhappily floating about a 6K feet 3 or 4 miles behind enemy lines, when… WHOOPS. Engine blows. Huh.
Jettison bombs to get rid of the weight. I’d jettison the observer, too, but he’s a posh officer and I’m a sergeant. I spent the next 10 minutes or so desperately riding the stall on my ancient POS crate and manage to land it barely within Allied lines. Whew.
My mate in the other plane continues on his suicidal quest, alone. He and his passenger wind up captured.
Me, I get back to base. With the added bonus of a claim I put in a couple game-days ago accepted. Topping, old bean, just absolutely topping!
I love this sim.
Man, I need to make more time for it.
