I forgot to post these over here.

Here's a few of the big fella.











Jason

Lovely - looking forward to crewing this!

This is going to catch a lot of the fighter jocks out. Missions at altitude, where mixture and radiator control is critical. This has been a low-level sim until now, both in career mode and online. At least there will be some room to recover from the spins! Better get practising chaps.
Great pics, thankyou.

Very good point: this will force the combat up to realistic heights!

BTW, is that a nucular bomb?

The ceiling of the O400 is only 8500ft, quite surprising.

2,5K or 8500 ft is still low level; esp. if you think about recons operating well over 5000 meters.
But the bomber is nonetheless a great addition and will be fun in ROF.

Some day we`ll see Luftschiffe and the real high alt fights will start.

Dietger

By 1918 recons were routinely above 20'000 I think.

You can see why the O400s flew mostly at night, flying at 8000ft would mean you were easy meat for fighters.

Jason, the bomber and the new rendering effects look incredible. I'm really looking forward to the next update. Great work 777 team!

I think thats why we saw the camo on the underside of the wing in Womenfly2 post here.

It will be no fun crewing the bomber in MP games IMO;
You simply never will finish your mission alive.

Dietger

If you fly as a lone wolf, I agree. OTOH, if you can get some team work going and have escorts, it could be interesting.

Nice pics!

Hi, Dietger,

Based on my experience with the TB-3 with IL2 online, with which I had much fun, I respectfully disagree. As mentioned earlier in this thread, very few were the enemy pilots who climbed to my altitude, and they were dealt with by the escort I often had. At first escorting seemed boring for guys but if spotted the big bombers do attract enemy fighters. Even without escort, stealth served me well. Successful bomber pilots must have patience; I wasn't so dumb as to fly from A to B but took circuitous routes and approached from oblique directions, often appearing over enemy airbases from the opposite direction of the lines. I can't verify this but I believe many guys on the other side were intent on battling low-altitude fighters and just never looked up to see me.

For me, flying a bomber with a group of dedicated gunners--or flying as a gunner to protect the bomber--was a blast. I enjoy it much more than dogfighting over the treetops and look forward to it doing it in RoF.

Oh my! This is awesome!

Hi JFM and arjisme !

I see your point. And I too like to have flyable bombers in flightsims.
Since I never did much MP play in IL2 (something I plan to change in SoW/BoB) I dont have any experience in this regard. I can imagine that a well flow approach and good, working fighter cover works for your benefit.

The laziness to climb in MP reflects the performance of certain planes.
The O/400 with a top alt at over 2000 meters needs a low approach.
Where would you hide?
Ok, Camel and SE5a work better here then at 5000 meters and it doesn't take that much skill to coordinate climb, heading and ingress to target; I expect airstarts for bombers to be the main thing once the news wear down a bit.
My guess is, in RL protecting bombers (all Bombers) is harder then shooting some down. If its is the other way around something isnt working right IMO.
Thats why all bombers fly either extremely high and or at night.

I hope Im wrong with my expectations.

Real takeoffs, of the bombers, a nice pickup point on route to meet the fighters would lead to longer missions, more realistic fuel loads etc. and more coordination; a better gameplay, not just gras hoppers buzzing around!
The O/400 realy looks impressive though; They add much to MP of course none theless! I just like to "survive" my missions, thats the main thing for me.


Regards
Dietger

Hi, Dietger,

You are right, it could be a slaughter flying the bombers! Half of me is counting on fighter jocks staying low and flying straight lines from their airfields toward the enemy and not notice that I've circled round behind their lines.

I hope there aren't air-starts only! I'd like to choose my tactics and not be positioned in the same place in the sky every time. Plus, I like takeoffs. Hopefully bases will be operational that aren't on top of the front lines so one can take off with less fear of vulching or rat catching.

Looking very nice, look at the size of those control surfaces! Losing one of those could take out and kill an enemy pilot if it hits him

I have to get started on a good multiplayer night bombing mission to test out the bomber in combination with the new light sources. Try finding the bomber in the night guys it won't be as easy

Don't worry: "The bomber will always get through!"

On Vintage Mission night players tend to fly together much more. Imagine not just one, but a couple of these Handley Pages with 12 fighters as escort. These numbers are not uncommon in online flights on Sunday night!

At least it will make for some great movies!

Sounds interesting, Vanderstok. I've not flown RoF online yet but will as soon as the bombers are for sale.

I can see the Gotha and O400 being quite hard to bring down using just 2 x 30cal, if the engines and other vitals have any armour plate then even moreso.

Those dual scarff mount Lewis guns protecting the pilot look nasty, at ROF speeds a head on attack against the pilot would probably provide the nose gunner with a nice target. From the rear there's the 2 dorsal Lewis guns which look to have a decent field of fire. Underneath there's the ventral Lewis gun poking out of the hatchway apparently, although we haven't seen it in action yet.

All this makes the O400 sound quite prickly, bearing in mind that the ROF scouts only have 2 mgs and you have to get close to start causing definite damage.