homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields The "DiD Campaign Revival" - Intro, Rules, Reports & Records Chart

It's always summer for me, and I don't care about soccer, so I'm in! Now to decide how I want to approach this.

Great - welcome, Jim!
I am still thinking myself, how to approach it. One idea was to follow the stations
in Ernst Udet's life - that would allow for a quiet start down in Alsace, and then
I'd work my way up over Jasta 15 to Jasta 37.
Don't like the Jasta 4 spiral-band paintjob though.
There are several Jastas which use the Albatros over a long time, which I'd also
like to join, like Jasta 12, 19 or 23b.
For flying only from one field most of the time, Jasta 30 (Phalempin) is good, or
the Marine-Feldjagdstaffeln. Oh, the rich choice! ...

Olham - Having looked at the rules can you please clear up a question?

Does the hours required on two-seaters before being allowed to transfer too scout units include time spent on two-seater trainers?

Haveing been involved in the OFF DiD campaign I felt that having to do time on front-line two-seaters put you in the mind set to fly more conservatively.

Yes, training time would count.
Those who feel unsure on 2-seaters, can fly all 5 hours as training, if you like.


QUESTION ABOUT START TIME

Since there will be summer holidays and the Football World Championship -
how many of you would like to see the "DiD Campaign" to start later - maybe in late July or August?

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I propose we start it on 3 August 2014, 100 years to the day of opening hostilities on the Western Front. Further, I propose we set the in-sim start date for 3 August 1915, 1 year to the day of those same opening hostilities. Apropos ... no?

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Thanks for your thoughts, Lou.
On one hand, I find it an intriguing idea, to fly the early air war.
OTOH there are no French 2-seater units available for that time, and I would like
to have the French in the campaign (hopefully some will fly French side).

Let's see what others think about the start date.

I'd like to join up.
I didn't fly Siggi's DID and have some basic questions about campaign frequency and bad weather. I'll keep an eye on the updated first post with the rules.

Thanks Olham & Siggi

Salut


havn't looked into the French side of things, but I'm flying a 2 seater (Hun) on the Marne June 1915 and there are 2 French squads in the area, all with morans. My last flight I saw 3 over our lines. August 1915 would be fine with me as a 2 seater start date but the chances of actuall combat are low and flight times very high. I'm flying this early to do some recce flying of the area as Lou suggested in another post, to get ready for the DID campaign.

August 1915 sounds great!
Yes, what about the bad weather days? Sometimes too many in one row

When your flights are cancelled due to bad weather, then they are, and there will be no campaign flying those days.
You could still fly WOFF with other pilots then, just for yourself.

I will check about the French Morane units in summer 1915.

Is it "ok" to set mission frequency to a lower setting?
Three flights a day can be a bit much if they are long flights

You can fly as often or as little as you want.
You can make just one flight, and then stop for that day.
Next time you want to fly you advance time to the actual real life date, and fly.

It won't be unfair to fly less or more than others, as the listed flight hours
of each pilot will put things into proportion.

Personally, I would avoid 1915 for the reasons stated by others ... not enough French squadrons in action. I am currently flying a German career in the fall of 1915 in Verdun and have flown 30 missions without seeing even one enemy plane. There are essentially no French fighters, and hardly any two-seaters prior to 1916 so you have the sky to yourself.

Do we necessarily need to have the WOFF dates and real-life dates match? Seems it might be easier to let people just fly at any time (like most people already do in WOFF), then there is no worries about missing days or weather cancellations. No big deal either way.

Is there a list of the scoring developed yet? So that you can decide if you want a busy sector, which I assume, would be offset by other scoring variables? Or a quiet sector, etc.

Scout, like in the original DiD Campaign, I would like to see that we generate
a feeling of flying together in our "offline campaign" - that feeling of togetherness
can only be created that way.

cptroyce, yes, flying hot/busy sectors will score higher.
Then there will be three levels for the use of aids (one without any aids), which will
also count differently. I still have to think of a most fair balance of points.
I know, it cannot be totally fair - too many variables - but as fair as I can get it.

One question: Will the pilots be required to land at their home base or will any airfield do? I agree with flying together in the campaign. It would impart a feeling of sharing a common experience. However, I would add that whatever the unit. Fly the missions assigned i.e., If the assigned unit flew 3 time a day, fly 3 times a day.

That would be great, Carrick, but we must not forget that many fliers have their jobs,
their families and godknowswhat else to do. I guess many cannot even fly 1 mission every day -
not to speak of 3 per day. I want to keep that open for everyone, otherwise it can cause
too much social stress.

This is going to be a great addition to an already life consuming experience. Although I would not mind beginning in '15 I agree that the frequency of encounters leaves something to be desired so I can agree with '16. ALso, like you explained Olham, one flight a day would be what most of us could fit in, three would be a bit much. Another question Olham. Will you provide a definition of "aids"? As an example, would use of auto-pilot at anytime in the flight lessen the possible overall flight rating? Or time acceleration?

One last thing for now...... and it really isn't related directly to this, but.... it sure would be nice to have blank aircraft templates to allow us to easily create our own schemes for this experience. I know you can work the aircraft provided but it's not as easy or as fast as having an available template that only has a few layers (color level, shading level and weathering level as examples). Just wishing out loud here!

nbryant, you won't even have to fly every day - you'd just advance time next time you can fly.

Yes, there will be three defined ways of using aids (or not).
This is all about collecting real flight hours rather than piling victories, and so auto-pilot or
time-acceleration will not be allowed in any of the three.
If you must answer the phone or whatever, you may press "Pause".

The WOFF skins don't have such layers. They are 1-layer DDS files, which you can convert into BMP files to work on.
You can work them out by copying and pasting parts, and then you can vary the colours and shades and weathering etc.
I'd recommend to use the default squadron skins and just add your own designs to them.
Search the web for IRFANVIEW (free program) for watching and converting the files into BMP;
and also for the free "DXTBmp" for reconverting them into DDS-1 files.

Thanks Olham.

As for the templates, I know. I use Photoshop but am very anal about recreating each aircraft with as much detail as I can. I try to find each one that has the least amount of individuality already (just as close to a base model as possible) and use it as my starting point. I then convert it to greyscale, darken it some, remove the white and create my overlay for the shadows and shading. Can be done, takes some time so I was hoping to cheat by having a base already done for each craft. Anyway, this is not the thread for this discussion.

Looking forward to getting this DiD campaign started!