Hi all

In Roleplaying, there's the concept of "in-time" and "out-time" meaning "In character" behaviour, and "out of character" behaviour.

This thread is for the later. A place to discuss the game, the campaign, your holidays, or other things without the need to be a British or Luftwaffe Fighter pilot.

I'll start:

I have to say, I'm toroughly happy with how things are turning out here.

First, yesterday was pretty cool because it seems many of us flew the same intercept against a very similar raid for the RAF. As we, as single pilots, can not change the course of the battle much, I expect that the AI-controlled strategic campaigns will actually remain quite "coherent" with each other. So when we report on things in our game, they will often match things in other people's game, generating a "meta-campaign environment" that wraps us all in. I find this very immersive.

Second, today was the first time (and I had the game since before the 2.10 release) that I flew with a full squadron, without having been jumped first by 109s, into a bomber formation and saw an orderly focused attack develop. The sound of the Hurri engines as each Squadron member breaks out and into the attack line, the sight of seeing these guys hit into the Emils... was one of the most awesome flightsimming moments ever. I was chasing my Green Leader when he shot down an Emil in a turn, and the picture how that bird went down smoking in front of some very large clouds over the open sea - this game is like an aviation art painting sometimes.

I'd love to see a few more people sign up, but for now this is just great. I hope all here will make it trough the summer motivated and fly as regularly as possible.

Also, if you look at yesterday's After Action Reports, we have an awesome number of views, which to me means that other people are interested and following this historical reenacement of the Battle.

Concering holidays:

I'll be leaving the country on friday this week, and will be gone till the following thursday. Heinkill or Itkovian will certainly take over the daily thread generation and summary. I'll again be gone for four days around the 6th August, and for 10 days in late September (I might actually miss the Battle of Britain day... or maybe I can get Wifi in my Maltese hotel room).

I suggest if someone goes on holidays, to provide a backstory in the last AAR before leaving.

Aye, I am loving how things are working out.

As for when you are gone, I'll be happy to generate the threads, though the summaries might have to wait for your return (for one thing, I don't know how to lock the threads).

In any case, the summaries are more for posterity I think. I can quickly imagine us collating all the daily threads when this is all over, and preserving them (and the summaries) for future visitors to read long after the campaign is over.

Great work everyone.

Itkovian

I ditto the above; I'm sure Itkovian loves my character!

I leave for my hols on the 31st of July or thereabouts

I'm actually not locking the threads, I'm just editing the initial post (and thus the thread title) to read "summarized & closed" once the day has passed. I actually did that too early yesterday, but I knew I'd not have web access today so I summarized them early.

Since only the creator of a thread can edit the initial post, it would be your's or Heinkills work to edit. But I can write the summaries if you don't find the time, you'd just have to paste them in.

I absolutely plan to keep the daily summaries in a campaign log, maybe even mirror them against real life daily summaries to see if the flow of our campaign here manages to stay somewhat historical. In my day job, I'm often bored (I'm an IT Admin in a kind of "Fire Department wait for emergency" role) so usually I should have time at around 10:00 Central European Time to work trough the threads.

I've also been talking with Doug about regularly appearing News Bulletins like yesterday, which will be like weekly newspaper articles on the Battle.

If anyone here is interested to help me write those, I'm happy to have some help.

For the VEF IL-2 online war, back in the day, we even had a virtual "Der Adler" publication on our Squadron website, with a newspaper style layout and pictures. But I'd run out of time for that if I tried.

For me, the experience of this campaign so far has been overwhelmingly more immersive than any "just for myself" SPC campaign in the past. I think that's why it's good to have as much "meta summaries" and "meta background" spanning all involved squadrons.

I do, they're fun to read. Just don't shoot the CO's dog, alright?

Itkovian

We'll see

Regarding the early closing of yesterdays summary, I actually had a late encounter with the luftwaffe off selsey bill at 19.55 hrs! I bagged a Me110, but just as touched down at westhampnett
a small hand reached up and grabbed the joystick and I nosed in, writing off my hurricane. The small hand belonged to my 15 month old daughter, an issue that I'm sure didn't occur in the real BoB!
I decided not to write up an combat report for the mission as it seemed unfair to have the crash logged against me, but to try and claim the Me110 wouldn't be cricket either.
We need a standing order - 'No children in the cockpit' (after bed time!)

If I was you, I'd have claimed the Me-110 and ignored the crash. I already ignored two crashes due to the insane wind and gusts (see gameproblem thread). I know I can land and takeoff, so when the game (or real life) throws stuff at me that isn't normal, I ignore it.

I am planning on writing all my characters reports in letters; and if it gets tedious then they will be snippets of reports to the IO. If I have time in this weather, I may aim to build the squadron up with fictional pilots and a few other not-so fictional ones.
At this time, I may also run my 19 squadron parallel. Maybe Moggy and Silk are destined to meet in the future?

Also, testerday I scored four victories in the best combat I have played in BoB2. It really was enthrawling playing a mission without time-skipping or anything. Seeing the raid get bigger is a magical feeling (and quite scary in some ways).
But the victories against the stukas were a bit too easy. I literally only pressed the gun button for less than a second, and each one caught fire or blew up. It goes to show what hitting them in the right spot can do.