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

Oh hell, it gets more complicated. Actually I can't calc victories per sortie as all I deal with are TOTALS. All I know is the total number of sorties and the total number of victories. This is getting very tacky. I could divide the victories by the sorties etc but I don't see what that would gain us.

I have no dog in the race, so don't put too much weight on my opinion, but, dude, that's pretty awesome! In one day, that guy shot down 1/23 of the EIIIs ever made! I think that's an occurrence rare enough to not have to worry about "ruling it up" I'm pretty sure that Fonck had two six kill sorties, which was the most I've heard of. You probably won't see too many of those, so I would just let it play out for a bit. I think that even Hellshade will tell you that sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you! Just my $.02


Edit: There's no I in team and apparently no e in Fonck...

Don't worry about the calculation yet, Jim - we must trust all users/flyers anyway;
and so everyone could down-calculate his victories by my proposed rule, and report the result.
Which would then get valuated as before.

But let us just wait and hear some more flyers - we have the time; no flying until June 17.

In WOFF, the Strutter is perhaps the best Entente aircraft in 1916. And the Eindecker is completely useless.

You can kill Halberstadts and Albs too quite easily with the Strutter. In real life, the Strutters were toast when attacked by Albs. The Strutter was a very good two-seater, but it wasn't a super aircraft that dominated the air war in 1916.

Yes, Fonck had two six kill sorties, but that was exceptionally rare. Unfortunately it's all too common in flight sims. Games are games, real life is something else. We just have to accept that and make the most of it.

Damn weather! I've been waiting to enlist my DiD pilot, but he hasn't been able to fly a single mission yet.

René Fonck had 6 victories on May 9, 1918 and another 6 victories on Sept 26 (in two patrols each time)

Leave everything as is but from now on if you get 5 kills in one sortie, fly home and celebrate. just an idea. Sooner or later if you stay in fights long enough you will die anyway.

I'm surprised he had enough ammunition to down so many enemy craft!

Guys, I'd like to hear something about my proposal - or new ones. Please?

While there is 500 rounds in the Vickers, I'm guessing some were pilot, some observer...I would love to see a video of that fight! Mudwasp, you need an Nvidia card with shadowplay or Fraps, son!

RR

I have mine set on Light Air Activity, and I think that's a reasonable mandate.

I'd be against altering kill totals. It adds an unnecessary step, and it's not going to be easy to remember with everything going on.

One could always argue that their nation is inflating allowed claims. From what I read the British were particularly atrocious about this: I believe I read that there were 700 claimed/confirmed kills on Fokker D.VIIs in September 1918, and only 800 or so built.

Further, if we make a change that drastic (1 kill per 3 counts), but leave the 11 kills/2 sorties performance alone, that gives an unfair advantage to people who have been lucky up to this point.

If the idea of this trending towards a 'normal' high kill game is disturbing, then my suggestion is to wipe out the incentive (or wipe out its 'damage' to the scoring system.) The current rules effectively makes one kill worth five flying hours - or 4-6 sorties. If the goal of this campaign is survival, then maybe points need to be based only (or at least primarily) on sorties and hours.

I would be in favor of *sharply* reducing the points per confirmed.

Any change has to be retroactive however. Fortunately the campaign is young enough that won't cause much harm, but 'penalizing' players going forward will just make this stand out much more clearly on the scoreboard.

I really don't have to worry about the current rule structure; if I get one victory..I pour my old Armagnac and toast myself.

However, it's seems unfair to handicap the victories. If someone is flying by the DID Campaign rules and WOFF presents the targets and they can shoot them down..that should be the end of it.

Perhaps if all the levels had to fly with "light activity" checked, then less AI would be presented and that may balance out a possible historically inaccurate kill score. Just my thought as Olham asked.

I agree to this, if you combine "light activity" and "less accurate" you should be closer to real conditions. I think we should count all victories. The ammo is largely enough, I remember downing an EIII with 3 hits !

Firstly, we HAVE to SHOW all victories in our scoring table. Otherwise we get out of sync with WOFF itself. Personally (as a pilot with the grand total of one victory) I think we should show victories but not add them into the points earned.

My log book says I downed an Albatros DII with one hit! Mind you, they shot down all of B flight...

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I have never liked using victories as a way of judging success in a WWI combat flight sim campaign as it generally proves very little and eventually leads to issues, just as it is here. Our RL counterparts were flying to gather information, range guns, and attack ground targets. Shooting at each other while flying simply evolved out of the primary roles. I've always felt there should be far more importance placed on completing missions and staying alive than on kills, and scoring should be set to reflect that. A kill should count as a single point in the grand scheme of things. Further, it should be split in the case of two-seater victories, 1/2 a point for the gunner and 1/2 a point for the pilot.

My advice would be to change the point values for kills as noted and increase the value for completed missions and flying hours. The 'aces' will still end up with an advantage anyway because of the medals and how they are awarded in the sim.

Just my opinion, based on many hours helping to organize and flying in online campaigns and facing this issue many times in the past.

Still, a great campaign, and I for one am looking forward to seeing how long folks can survive in it.

Cheers!

Lou

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Thank you guys for throwing in some ideas and opinions.

Seems most of you would favour to leave even totally unrealistic numbers of kills in;
and only cut off the victories from the points valuation?

Also we may set "air activity" to "light" in ZONES "Hotspot" and "Medium".
Not sure about the "Quiet" ZONE - they might never see any aircraft with "activity" set to "light".
There maybe "medium" would be better.

I hope some more flyers will add their thoughts about this.

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I don't know that I would mess with the air activity settings for the different zones Olham. More AI in the sky means more chances to die, eventually.

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Raf Louvert said: "I have never liked using victories as a way of judging success in a WWI combat flight sim campaign as it generally proves very little and eventually leads to issues, just as it is here. Our RL counterparts were flying to gather information, range guns, and attack ground targets. Shooting at each other while flying simply evolved out of the primary roles. I've always felt there should be far more importance placed on completing missions and staying alive than on kills, and scoring should be set to reflect that."

I see you agree with Lord Trenchard, the post-war saviour of the RAF. The French invented 'aces' and the Germans made much in their media of successful pilots. The RFC was against the hero worship of any pilot, thinking it detracted from the other guys who risked their lives doing reconaissance which was what the Army needed.

As was written in one recent book "War Story"? if a soldier really wanted to kill the enemy he should join the machine-gun corps.

Lou, I'd like mostly to know your opinion about my thoughts and proposal in this post:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3967786/Re:_The_"DiD_Campaign#Post3967786

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Olham, I read through your original proposal, along with the others in this thread, and it seems to me the simplest would just be to count 1 victory as 1 point. You already have flying hours weighted more heavily and have taken zone activity in to account with that. If you still feel the victories might skew the whole thing towards the unrealistic than why not increase the point values for hours flown and missions completed as this would effectively cut victory values down. I should think this would be the easier way in terms of the spread sheet calculations and coding.

Just a thought.

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Lou, my "tummy-ache" is caused by the totally unrealistic number of the victories themselves -
not their valuation problem.
It will be easy to valuate them differently, as you and others proposed.
That is definitely possible.

But how does it look in a "trying-to-be-realistic campaign", when flyers with 5 sorties pile
25 victories? That is the problem I have with the number.

But it seems, there is a majority that wants to leave the kill numbers untouched,
and I will follow the majority in the end.
I will wait 'till evening, if any more views and thoughts will assemble here.
Then I'll make a decision, and the chart.