I seem to remember from my SDOE days that the groung artillery was unmerciful and Wayyyyy too accurate. In WW1 it is the same. It is not realistic at all. If real WW1 and WW2 ground fire was good as in this sim ,no planes would have completed a mission ever. How do I fix this unrealistic part of the game? It may be un-fixable and that might be why I finally uninstalled SDOE.

Also I have a very difficult time seeing the enemy and so far have not found the right combination. I just do not remember the proper settings..

Pawgy

There is not a way to tune it down in-game. It has been tuned down much compared to the original game, and the WWI ground units have their weapon effects lessoned. What missions are you having problems with surviving in FS-WWI?

Be sure the detail settings are turned up all of the way in the Options menu via the slider, you can press Alt-V for the ID tags, and T then F1 for head tracking/padlock. Also don't forget to zoom out, as to avoid tunnel vision.

Hi Argon,
It doesn't stop me from wanting to fly the mission,
but ground-fire from ANY mission is just too deadly.
I can't bomb them away or strafe them away.....they
ALWAYS shoot me down before I can get close....

And they can reach-out and 'touch' you at 8 thousand feet!
I can see the tracers coming at me when I am up high and can
dodge alot of it, but down low....forget it..

I can let one of my squad mates go in and draw their attention,
but I can only take one out with a bomb...(NOT easy!) I can't
do enough damage to them with machine-guns to stop them from shooting.
There are a few enemy bases that have some guns around them, but they
are not terribly bad......but towns that you have to bomb, have some
very mean guns that just won't allow you to get close. Especially if you
are trying to fight enemy planes over the target.
Do you have any tips or tricks to getting a bomb on-target from a higher
altitude? Like at least 3000 feet?!
Thanks,
AO

Thanks for the feedback!

Sounds like I need to edit many missions and make the ground fire less accurate. I did this with many of the placable ground units already, but it sounds like more have an issue.

Can you tell me which ground units are too accurate in the missions?

Thanks!

Hi Argon,
don't know specific ground squad names, but anything you do
near or above LeTouquet is deadly.....

Most air battles that start high, (Between 7 and 12 thousand feet)
the AI have a tendency to end up taking you down to the deck......
then when you are trying to outmanuever them and not become a lawn dart,
if you are over an enemy base or town or event that has ground guns,
they start wacking you real good when you are about to shoot down an enemy
plane.
I try to stay high, but if I end up behind one, he starts heading down.
If I have any other squadmates with me, they always head down with them
and just leave me up high.......so if I want to get anything, I have to go
down with them......most of my squadmates get taken out by groundfire.
Also, many AI enemy planes land after I have damaged them, but remain targets.
(They should just be counted as a kill! LOL!)

The Mephisto missions......armored vehicles......very interesting.....but I cant
get the guns to work. So I'm just driving around getting shot at......

Having an excellent blast flying the Pup Sea Operations.....taking off from the
HMS Furious....climbing to 10-12,000 feet took forever.....but the sight of that
Zepplin was glorious!
When I finally got high enough to take some shots at it, I started losing it in the clouds.
That was very cool! Pouring bullets into the body did nothing.....started filling the
Gondola with shells...and managed to stop a balancing engine that made the nose hang down..
but just as I turned away to come around again, a machine gun in the gondola blew me to
smitherines...... (Getting ready to fly it again!)
thanks,
AO


Edit: Okay....Just stand off a little on the Zepp.....fire away.....turn and come back again....
beautiful explosion and smoky bits falling....%^)
Also saw the .jpg diagram in the readme's on how to man the guns on the armored vehicles.
Managed to kill a couple guns....but my guy on another gun kept screaming from taking hits....
LOL! Kinda hard to drive that thing AND man all the guns at the same time....enemy guns were
too hard to spot from the gun-ports.....had to go external, rotate the view, locate a gun,
get back in, turn the vehicle, man the gun,,,,,fire......but I was usually dead by then.....
great fun!
Think I'll stick to flying thou.....auto-zoom view is very immersive....Truly wish we could
incorporate that view in EAW. (Forum next to this one.)

Glad you are having fun! And figured out how to control the gunners in the tanks. Indeed the tanks are more of a novelty than something practical to use, but the missions can be fun and it's neat to just drive around in them.

The AI sadly cannot easily be persuaded to fly these crates the way they are meant to. I think the reason being is the AI was programmed to fly WW2 aircraft instead of WW1 aircraft. There are a few tweaks I'm going to do in the next patch that I hope will help a little bit more.

If you damage an aircraft enough, I think you will get a partial kill credit. But I think you have to do more than just pepper it with bullets, I think you've got to shoot off a wing surface or damage the engine past 50%.

I'll have a look at that town's AA defenses as well for the next patch!

The Zeppelin damage model is something else isn't it? That's the second generation damage model for that aircraft. The first one had the Zeppelin gas bag sections break up and fall every single time. Now it can go down whole and crash, or go down some then break up in mid air. You can also shoot different sections and have the sequence of explosions behave differently. Lastly, after it crashes the skin will burn away leaving just the frame on the ground.

Thanks again for all of your feedback! We on the FS-WWI crew are glad you are getting enjoyment from this mod.

It looks like the air defenses around Le Touquet are placeable ground units in the mission itself. I can remove some or make them less deadly in the missions if I know which missions they are. Can you give me a run down on which missions you are flying or which campaigns this is a problem in?

Thanks!

Hi Argon,
The 'Campaign' would be 'A Week in 1917.'
Any mission that takes you over LeTouquet.

Also, the first 2 missions, (Somme map, A Week in 1917, 8-15-17.)
after you fly over that wide bomb cratered section and get to
the enemy planes, there is a ground gun nearby that gets alot of
wacks on you from a long distance, even thou the air battle is not
that close to it.

I just think their acuracy, esspecially from long distance, is unrealistic.
But knowing that they are, makes me try different tactics to achieve the mission.
But I can't really 'drag' the air battle away from the area....AI's have a tendency
to stay in that area.
But I have had many a 'knuckler' and managed to land a very crippled plane at that
base just south of LeTouquet.

Had to really turn down the rudder sensitivity because the nose dances all over the place
when firing guns. Also get some screen-freezes when firing guns, but it always comes back
and never ctd's.
The 'Engine Sound tied to RPM' button in setup seems to be opposite. My engine sound is the
same as my throttle setting when I leave that setting unchecked.
Also, all planes want to turn onto their sides when landing. If I touch down straight with
no throttle, she should stay straight, but I always have to rudder hard to keep her straight.
Just little stuff thou........am having a great time flying this!
AO

Thanks, I'll look at that campaign and the other two missions.

For the gun firing sound freezing thing, try running the game in Win98/WinME compatability mode. This has worked for many curing that issue. Just right click the shortcut to the game's App.exe file, click Properties and then the Compatability tab. Also turn off visual themes.

By default, the engine sound should be tied to the throttle position (Option unchecked). The RPM is not soley dependant on the throttle (Like in a dive or stall) so when the option is checked the RPM of the spinning prop/engine is what determines what the engine sound should sound like. To me as you describe it, that's how it's working for you?

A tip for landings: Bring it in almost to a stall with low throttle and lots of rudder. Some aircraft are a bit more twitchy than others. (Rotaries for one)

Looks like there were a lot of WW2 ground units being used. Probably because this was one of the first sets of missions to be made for FS-WWI. I've switched over things to use WW1 ground units now and things appear to be playing better.