All the planes I want to fly exist, with the possible exception of the FE2b which would be fun to play with. However, there are a few we don't have that I'd like to be able to shoot at . Even with the FE2b I'm much more interested in it as a non-flyable than a flyable.

I guess that's an issue with the business model - making planes that will be appreciated as non-flyables doesn't make them any money. Perhaps you could sell them as non-flyables on the basis that they *will* be present as non-flyables regardless of whether you've bought them in multiplayer, but won't show up at all in single player? Though I'd guess that would add significant complexity to the Career code; at present it only has to work out what planes the player is allowed to use, not what planes the rest of the AI world can have. Not sure I have a solution to how to make it economically attractive to make planes that people don't want to fly but do want to shoot at.

The solution to this seems pretty obvious. For aircraft that are expected to be slow sellers in the traditional sense (i.e. not many will buy the cockpits), maybe charge a nominal fee (field mod cost perhaps) for the AI plane to show up in game. This will get 777 the revenue to continue making these important filler planes but give people the option to opt out of the cockpit while still helping to advance the game. I'm sure some people will complain about nickel & diming here but unfortunately these economics are a reality for flight simmers these days .

Just a thought,

Fafnir_6

Id love to get a zeppelin!

you could be a gunner, a captain , bomb aimer etc, I wish they had the Roland in the game , one of my short list of cool WW1 planes

isnt the hansa brandenburg seaplane fighter coming out too?

I wanted this one , not the biplane

I'm a bit confused - unless I'm missing something I'd already suggested precisely that in the post to which you were responding, and then pointed out the issue with it - currently the game has no concept of planes that the AI cannot fly; if the plane exists then you can fight against it.

Changing that model to one in which there are planes that exist but which you are not authorised even to encounter has knock on effects for the code of the whole game, particularly the career mode. Currently the career mode only has to worry about which planes the player is authorised to fly, this change would make it have to worry about which planes the player is authorised to encounter. That could be an ugly problem to solve - what do you do if someone quite legitimately starts a career at a time/place where they would regularly encounter a type they have not paid to be allowed to encounter? Replace it with some other unhistorical type? Just leave it out - and let the player be bored as the skies are empty in mission after mission? In contrast the current model of making all planes available to encounter regardless of what you have paid for is simple and elegant.

Then you have to figure out a way for different ai aircraft to show up for every single person depending on what planes
they've purchased. If you think about it, you'll realize that's a far from plausible solution.

On topic, the Halberstadt D.II, Fokker D.II, Roland D.II and D.VI, Snipe, DH5, mid war Nieuports (24 and 27), ... there are many that would be nice. However, there are enough right now to play a continuous career from mid 1916 to the end of the war for each and every nationality. That's pretty good. In fact, there are almost as many scouts in RoF as there were initially in RB3D.

Bring on the two seaters .

I've been gently looking for a list of WWI types by production number - it would be interesting to see it with the RoF types highlighted and see if there are any obvious holes. Though I imagine that would be skewed towards late war types where production was at a higher level across the board.

Is this what you're after?

There's a really unreadable capcha to do before the link works, but I found the pdf very interesting.

Link

That looks awesome - thanks very much!