I do enjoy the syndicate missions, but have a issue with one thing. The high fuel settings. 60%, usually, and a couple of nights ago 90%.
I asked "Why so high?"
"Realism," was the reply.
Good enough reason, except for one thing. The fuel setting is realistic, but the situation we're flying in, isn't.
Back then, of course, you would want your tank full. You took off, and circled the field to form up. Then headed for the German lines. You wanted to be high, and it took about 30 minutes to get to 10,000 feet. By the time you encountered enemy airplanes, you had most likely used half of your fuel, maybe more.
We don't fly over such a huge landscape, and we don't seem to fly very high (although we should). Sometimes you meet the enemy ten minutes after taking off. Now you have an airplane that flys like a iron Zeppelin.
I love my little Nieuport 17, but I haven't been flying it much in that server because it seems to be more affected by the wieght than most other planes. Flys terribly. I've been using the Sopwith Triplane with those two guns. Great airplane, and while it is affected by all the fuel, of course, it's not as bad.
I find I need to fly for a while over my base, circling, to burn some off before heading east.
Wouldn't 50 or 40 be better. You could fly the entire map with that much gas.
Anybody else think it's a bit much? Or am I just a crybaby?
How about an option giving the pilot a 40 to 60 per cent choice. That's all you could move the slider. Between 40 and 60. Certainly, fuel was adjusted in real life for distance and loads.

Yup, anyway to take it up with the server admin?

Yes, it was adjusted to a full gas tank whenever possible, e.g. no bombload. Your N17 would have been fully fueled every time, and it's not difficult to imagine why.

My advice is to practice with 100% so that 60% seems light.

Its one of the reasons I stopped flying online.
It would be far more enjoyable if they'd adjust this to at least 50% (I like 40% personally).
Not all planes have the same % of fuel either. 100% of fuel for a Camel is 140% or so for a Dr1.
The arguments can be made that its "more realistic" to have full fuel, but really, as the OP stated, realism isnt being followed consistently from the start of the engine onward... (we dont warm our engines for 20 minutes either, and how much fuel did that burn?), from warming engines, to circling airfield, to gaining altitude, etc.

And how realistic is it that one of the most produced planes in the era is hardly flown at all now (the camel)?
I think it boils down to fun, though. Less fun settings mean less people flying.

Well that's a nice idea actually. The reason why we need a lower fuel limit is because some planes like the Camel perform like UFO's with 10% fuel. Believe it or not, we also often get requests to increase the fuel load so pilots can stay in the air longer.
Having two fuel variant of the same plane with say 50% or 75% fuel is not a bad idea.
I'm on holiday for the next couple of weeks, so remind me to try this when I get back!

That's great. Thanks for listening. And I do understand the reason for the limit, it's just that I thought it might have been a bit much. Looking forward to the change.

I see more people than ever flying in multiplayer. It's not uncommon to see 60+ people in Syndicate during the Euro prime time.

If it really boils down to fun, then no fuel locks and UFO Camels with 20% fuel were ruining the fun for the majority. That plane's relative performance is way out of line relative to the other aircraft we have, so I'm not sorry to see it be more challenging to fly. When I fly the Camel with the PWCG, I always take 100% fuel.

I'm not saying put the Camel fuel at 20%, as it's obvious the problems that this creates. However, upping the fuel levels creates other problems as stated. 50% to 70% fuel options would be a good compromise.

I saw a lot more people when RoF was released online than I do now.

Sorry if I misunderstood. If it were up to me every aircraft except the HP400 and Gotha would start with 100% fuel, all of the time.

I think that the 50 to 75 percent option will be a terrific answer. Glad he was understanding and open to the suggestion. Rof fan, no one ever suggested unlocking the fuel option. I don't even like that idea. Just lowering it a bit. I still stand beside my statement that with 100 percent fuel, you will find youself fighting with more gasoline in your tank than you would have in real life. This is a good compromise. And at least, if I do want it a bit lower, I only have to circle my field for five minutes or so, instead of twenty!
And thanks again to Vanderstok for hearing. He could have said, "Well, those are the settings. If you don't like it, fly another server." But he didn't.

I don't particularly care, I play with whatever fuel I'm set with and just hope I'm better than the other guy which is rarely the case.

However, I do think that instead of % across the board for all planes the fuel amount was set in liters. I don't know if it can be set per plane the amount of fuel on the server side, but that'd be another nice option. That way a scout could be set to so many liters and accomplish it's mission while a 2 seater could be set to so many liters and then the bigger bombers could be set to so many liters.

It might be too much work to change the interface and server side options to get that, but I think it'd be better than percentages.

Funny, I was going to write Vander to ask that he consider raising the fuel loadouts, for certain aircraft, to 100% or if we could have an option of adding more fuel, if we want. My 180 hp SPAD VII and my 200 hp SPAD XIII can really use more fuel, many times, frankly. I spend a good 30 minutes to forty minutes climbing out and positioning myself, on the Syndicate. S!MJ

I agree, on certain servers advertising 'realism' put all fighter aircraft on a level playing field with 100% fuel, or at the very least 75% to model engine warm ups, circling, longer distance to front.

The longer you can stay in the air as a player (and decrease your fuel) reaps the reward of a better handling airplane!

Will mention again, only for certain servers providing a more historic mission context to encourage people to climb to altitude...

It would be nice if the fuel amount would take into account the individual aircraft rather then be assigned an arbitrary fuel percentage. For example both the DFW and RE8 are two seater recon aircraft but 75% in the DFW will be a little short for it while 75% in the RE8 is just way too much fuel to haul around which will never be used.

What were you smoking at the time????
I've been online since RoF was released and I think the numbers have grown slowly, but steadily ever since. At least for the European time zone. There have been some ups and downs though...

About different fuel levels: this is only for weekday missions. On Sunday we we still have fuel locked at 100% for the Vintage Missions.

In the early days, it was hard to even get into the ToW server as every slot was filled.
Viks' server was packed as well....and this all at 3 hours behind PST.
Now there's a few on at that time, but often there's none.
On the weekends, yes, there's more pilots online now.

You could try the RAF74 Server - we have a minimum fuel setting of 45%, but you can select any amount you wish greater than that. It's policed by some server monitoring software I've been trying out rather than the game itself.

W.

How did you guys accomplish that? I thought the server fuel settings were such that you could only specify what the % of fuel for each aircraft would be, not just the minimum allowed fuel load.

We read the log files to see what percentage fuel a pilot spawned in with, then kick the player if they take off with less than the stipulated amount.

W.