Greetings to everyone!
I've been playing WOFF for a few weeks now - and I'm still impressed about this well crafted game

To topic:
I have already seen, how historically correct WOFF is, so I am puzzled about how unreliable the Spandau-LMG was...
Until some days before my Character was piloting a Fokker EIII (no Fokker-Scourge Add-on), and I was rarely able to shoot a Salvo of more than approx. 15 Rounds without a Gun-Jam.
Sure, the Maxim-Working-Mechanism looks odd from a nowaday's point of view (it has something of an automated Revolver LOL), but I think the Mechanism itself would have been quite failure-proof. Are these Problems caused by the Interruptor-Gear? The side-mounted MG14s on the Aviatics for Example are relatively reliable in comparison (MG14 is a technically slightly modified Variant of the Maxim-Principle, though).
The Interruptor seems to work with a flexible Steel Cable
No Wonder, Immelmann shot his own Propeller into pieces...

Flying in a 100mph wind, vibration, ice cold, plus you need to have perfectly prepared belts and so on. Yes it will often jam. Best to stick so smaller burst of 3 seconds. Gun Jams were frequent.
Don't hold the trigger down.

The guns were very prone to have all sorts of trouble in the air. Stoppages, jams, bent ammunition etc. Also the interrupter gear slowed down the rate of fire and since it was a mechanical device, it also caused problems often enough. The guns became better as the war went on (Constantinesco Gear etc.) but useless guns were always a big factor in WW1 aviation. Maybe troubles with guns should even occure more often in the game than it does at the moment.
If you hit the Shift+U you can try to unjam them in certain intervals by trying to use a small hammer to hit the gun or recock them to clear the stoppage. May work after several attempts, often enough it does not.

At least now in WOFF you can try to unjam, in OFF you just had to fly home ! A big progress.

And also included a small sort of Easteregg

Firstly: welcome over Flanders fields, Nietzsche!
With that name you should be prepared for quite some hardships, I guess?

Three rounds seems a bit low for a burst, or maybe Pol meant: 3 per gun - I usually have jams
after bursts of ca. 2 seconds and more; while I have very few jams with bursts of ca. 1 second.

If they jam, hit the unjam command every few seconds.
You may hear yourself cursing, and using a hammer.
The jams usually get unjammed after some time.
Good luck!

Hmm...
A rattling Garden Chair with Wings seems to be a tough Environment for any complex Mechanism - I haven't taken into Consideration, that a "Place" like this differs a lot from a well-tempered, Dust-free Room, in which such a Gun surely was invented and tested...
Even more astonishing, that probably a lot of these Pilots managed to get these Things working again while still in the air...
Guys like us could do little more than fetch the Navigation-System and type in the following Key-Words: "Fokker - Service - Flanders"

Thanks for the welcome
@Olham: Hard Times are over - I don't have to fly this crappy EIII no more LOL

I have been reading about the Gotha raids later in the war and often fighter pilots would intercept but be able to do nothing as they got multiple gun jams. A pilot named Bob Hall often found the Gothas but never managed to bring one down.

You can switch 'gun jams' off in the workshops but that is not allowed in all levels of the DID Campaign as it is not realistic.

I wonder, how much the belts might have to do with stoppages - after all
they were only made of fabric; getting moist and then cold up there?

I have relocated the "attempt unjam" to the Thumb-Button of my Joystick since Misson #2... need a new Thumb-Button, soon LOL
The Belt might indeed be the major Problem... when the Textile soaks up Moist & freezes, it will increase the Diameter - and will thus no longer fit through the feeding and get stuck. I guess, you can't do anything in that case, except hoping for warm weather,soon...

Here is an excellent, transparent Animation of the Working Mechanism of the original Maxim-Concept:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiFGKWPSaas

Quite right I meant 3 seconds Olham not 3 rounds. edited.

I believe it was found that most gun problems and stoppages were caused by the ammunition and not the gun mechanism itself.
In the haste to crank out millions of rounds for war use quality control was reportedly quite a problem for the ammunition makers.

True, but on the other hand, Ground Troops would have suffered the same amount of failures, then. Did they?
I don't know if the Programming of these Gun Jams is totally random or fully intentional, but the Halberstadt DII has approx. 1 (!) Gun Jam every 500 Rounds (been flying this for some time), whereas each of the Albatros DIII early's Guns jam every 50 Rounds (rough estimate - the Plane is still relatively new to me).
If this is intentional, this might have something to do with the different Concepts of Interrupting Mechanisms and their individual stage of Developement, like Creaghorn suggested.

Well, I dunno but there is that famous case of a machine-gun company firing Vickers over something like ten hours with a thousand barrels and a zillion cartridges. They had to put their tea and pee into the guns to stop them overheating. Maybe they had good guys behind them examining each cartridge?

I am sure that the ground guns suffered almost as many problems due to ammunition issues.
However I am also sure that these problems would be much easier to fix and clear with an entire gun crew on the ground and no pesky distractions like trying to fly an airplane!

I read in "Open Cockpit", that the flight leader of Arthur G. Lee fired his guns
when they had reached service ceiling, and then again before he would dive on any
enemy planes. Just a short burst, to see if they would work and maybe to warm them up.

After all, the guns had to operate at very cold temperatures up there.

I don't think we can compare ground crews to aircraft guns fairly. As stated earlier, it's colder when we're a few thousand feet in the air, the plane is shaking, and any drastic maneuver (such as a turning dogfight) would seem custom designed to wreck a belt's alignment.

Nietzche: Welcome! As others have mentioned, I'd suggest short bursts rather than longer sprays. For one thing, it's good gun discipline and saves on ammo. For one thing it definitely reduces those jams. When I first started playing I frequently came home with no ammo...and no kills to show for it either.

First of all trying to reach the gun in the first place, around the windshield etc., while flying the AC. (don't forget that many of the AC, especially the nimble rotary engine ones needed the stick to get hold all the time. Otherwise they would just fall to a side, making the AC flip etc.). Then trying to fumble around with thick gloves with no feeling at all. It's like using fork and knive with thick gloves on. Not impossible, but very strange and tough to do.
Same with Lewis guns, which also frequently had jams. Either leaving it and go home, or trying to clear it with standing up, holding the stick with the knees etc. Even the later device where you could pull the gun to your reach, it was tough enough.

From Wiki: "The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British Army's 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 new barrels, they fired a million rounds without a single failure. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one."

That means that each gun fired 100,000 rounds! And each barrel lasted for 10000 rounds. They don't mention stoppages and jams though.

A bit of maths shows that the rpm average was 138.88 Wiki again: "its cyclic rate of fire was between 450 and 600 rounds per minute. In practice, it was expected that 10,000 rounds would be fired per hour, and that the barrel would be changed every hour—a two-minute job for a trained team."

That means 100,000 rounds in ten hours which seems to be correct with ten barrels per gun.

On the ground is totally different from 20000ft, with a modified gun, with sync gear.

Nietzsche the Halb has 50% less jams, as it has 50% less guns

A new craft means not much experience with it so far, so could be luck, randomness works like that of course, but holding the button down a little too long with 2 guns they will jam at least twice more