Based on previous discussions here there is some concern over pilot survivability in WOFF with the driving thought being that you encounter the enemy way too often during your patrols.
I will add here, in the interest of transparency, that I have zero issues with the way WOFF implements time, missions numbers, and encounter rates for reasons posted elsewhere.

I wish I had all the RFC and GAS squadron war diaries at my disposal, and the time to go over them all, to establish some kind of number but I do not.
I have a lot of WW1 aero books at my disposal but only one that appears to give a day by day account of life in a RFC squadron and that is (the excellent) "No Parachute" by Arthur Lee and his time in 46 Squadron for roughly 6 months in 1917 - minus about 6 weeks in England on anti-Gotha duty. I have read the book multiple times and my observations will be strictly by memory. Some day if I break a leg I may have the chance to go through it page by page.

Again, by memory and strictly my opinion:

Active Front/No major ground offensive: Roughly 1 encounter out of every 3 patrols - maybe a little more. Approximately the first two months of his career.

Quiet Front/No major ground offensive: Roughly 1 encounter for every 4 patrols with some being indecisive, i.e., enemy two-seaters diving away when approached. This will be the time of mid-September to the end of October after the drubbing the squadron received during the opening phase of one of the Ypres battles (3rd?) flying Pups against JG1 among others.

Quiet front(?)/Post-Cambrai: December, cold, some flying. 1/3 maybe closer to 1/4 encounter rate.

Major ground activity/offensives:
Battle of Messines: Slow start (because of surprise I assume)then 1/3 to 1/2 encounter rate? Again by memory.
3rd(?)Ypres: Active from the start. Encounter on almost every patrol during the first days.
Cambrai: Little difficult because of the horrible weather at the start and the squadrons role being changed to ground attack: 1/2 maybe a little more when the weather turned better.

Does anyone else have a pilots daily diary and can shed some more light on the "encounter rate" issue?

Again I will add I have no issue with the way WOFF implements time, missions, or encounters. In my limited campaign experience my encounter rate seems to be about 50%.
"Encounter", as recorded by Lee, does not always mean someone was shot down so I think this is the nub:

Enemy encounters are more deadly in WOFF than in "real life" with the blood-crazed human pilot and the limitations, however well implemented in WOFF, of the AI pilots.

Please wait for the patch

no sleep again from now on...

Remember there was also the French in this war?

Here some of the Journaux de Marches et Opérations of some Escadrilles (Chasse & Reco) (sadly the one for SPA 3 doesn't work).

http://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense....&le_id=148=

I just look briefly to the SPA 15 JMO, on June 1917, they were based at Ferme Beaurepaire, in Oise, just North of Senlis-althought it was not a "major" offensive there were still fights around the Chemin des Dames. And they met enemy planes almost every patrol (something like 4/5), and most of them were two seaters that flee on sight or after attack.

Sigh,...

Don't know where the number comes from, but there was a member of the Aerodrome forum that states that 78% of german air losses were two-seaters.

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16797&page=2

If you're interested, there was a previous topic on this subject:
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3911051/Historical_engagement_rates

I know this is not supposed to be about statistics, but I would like to mention that after playing in the Marne region for a few missions (and with my visibility settings) I got one in 10 enemy encounters as opposed to one in 5 in Flanders area. Also, the log showed much more bombers.

The air war was all about two-seaters. They did the crucial jobs of reconnaissance, arty spotting and ground attacks. The fighters were there to help friendly two-seaters and harass the enemy ones.

Most of the aircraft were not fighters, so it only makes sense that the majority of losses were also suffered by non-fighter aircraft.

Flight sims are always more bloody than the real air war. This is caused by too aggressive behaviour of both human and AI pilots, but there's also the commercial side of things to consider. I imagine most people wouldn't like to play combat flight sims if they didn't offer lots of combat.

I've been recording the casualties that my German two-seater unit has suffered in the DID campaign. This is the current situation:

*****

Losses suffered by MFFA 2 (June 17, 1916 - October 19, 1916)

Aircraft damaged: 23
Aircraft destroyed: 42
Men wounded: 18
Men killed: 82

*****

So far I've flown 78 missions in the four months of this campaign. As you can see, the casualties are very high. In fact the unit has been completely wiped out several times. No real life squadron suffered such heavy casualties in such a short time in WW1. I've done my best to avoid casualties, but because there's combat in almost every mission I fly, it's not easy to do that.

I have a theory that reducing the spotting distance of AI pilots might result in fewer casualties.

Of course many people like to have as much combat as possible in every mission. I have no problem with that. Everybody should be able to play the sim just as they want. But I also hope that there would be an even more realistic simulator mode to those who like such things. I feel that it would raise the already excellent WOFF career mode into even greater heights of immersion and historical realism.

However, I also realize that the devs have limited the resources and not everything can be done. But it's still good to discuss such things, even if they may never happen.

Turning your visibility down increases the number of airborne bombers flying at mission start??

EDIT: Oops. Hasse posted same time as me. The above was meant for OldHat.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant to say that it seems WOFF puts bombers in the air depending on the region your fighting in as well as the time period.

Ah ok thank you sir.

Personally (until the patch of course) I am using the suggestions from Bletchey's Pilot Personality workup and I think an old DiD campaign:

Actually fly only 1/3 missions (I use a randomizer.) The other 2/3 are routine and nothing happens worth talking about.
Every day roll a d6. On a 6, roll again:
1-4: 1 day leave
5-6: 2 days leave if there's an offensive in your area, otherwise 10 days leave

So far using these rules I've had a MFFA 2 campaign go almost two months with ZERO NPC casualties after Day 1. (Then again, it's December 1916 and I think the Brits are trying to stay warm. Few actual encounters.) I also have an RFC 24 campaign that's a week old so far, with the only casualties being idiot wingmates colliding with each other.

Oh nobody likes a teaser!

In this context, the one thing I hope and pray WOFF 2.0 does NOT bring is a reduction in the encounter (or more accurately, 'sighting') rate.

Realistic or not it is WAY too low now, for my liking (at historical activity levels and without using labels or TAC to id planes that are BVR, as it should be).

Let's have more solitary or paired 2-seaters operating over the Lines (simulating machines on trench photography and art obs, a fairly everyday routine by most accounts). Too much combat leading to excessive casualty rates? By all means, have them sometimes spot your flight and slip back to their side of the Lines, diving away if necessary (happened a lot). And/or do other things, like even scouts avoiding combat, to reduce actual combat while preferably increasing sightings, so as in turn, to reduce unit casualty rates, WITHOUT resorting to more 'milk runs', where you see...nothing. No enemies, anyway.

Even if a 'sighting rate' for a given sector at a given time was historically 10%, it's also 90% dull. If that's realisim...well then in a sim, it IS possible to over-do realism.

Even if the faster Huns avoid me, or the wily Englishmen do the same for reasons of their own, a bit of anxiously watching them while trying to gain a better position, or chasing after them to no avail, is far better than just another cross-country flight, however interesting the scenery, flight-mates and formation-flying/scanning can be, for a while.

Fair point, 33Lima...

+1
Single or paired two-seaters should be a constant feature all over the front line area doing artillery observation, photo and visual reconnaissance, contact patrols, etc.
this was the point of the fighter patrols: to keep your aircraft safe doing their jobs and deny the airspace to the enemy trying to do theirs.
The ability to surprise the enemy once in a awhile would be a bonus also.

Absolutely spot on. That's one of the main points I was trying to make. Line Patrols in particular (using the RFC term but applied to patrols from both sides) had the vital job of driving off or shooting down the enemy 2-seaters flying these equally-vital missions (and protecting their own); this activity was one of the most prominent features of WW1 air war, once it got under way by about 1916.

I agree. Anything the devs can do that will reduce my squad's casualty rate and number of claims works for me.

Another thing is I don't like spending 30 hours flying 25-30 missions and only progress about month in the game. I'd like to spend those 30 hours over 8-10 months of game time and get to see how things change like upgraded planes, better enemy planes, moving front line, etc...

Hehe.
Oddly perhaps but I find this to be one of WOFF's strong points and it feels, and suits, my sense of realism quite nicely.

But I do understand your desire for different parts of the war and a feel for progression which is probably why I have multiple careers (6 or 7) going to see different parts of the air war. For example for my German careers I have two going - one in April 1917 and the other in March 1918.

Hopefully OBD will be able to accommodate everyone's desires.
The system as is for people like me and a "Red Baron" mode for players like you. You check a box in the Workshop where 50 or 100 missions are spread out for the entire length of the war or whatever period you desire.

I was considering about commenting or not about the subject of this thread but since it touches the MOST important part for me of a combat flight simulation which is 'gameplay', I decided to give my 2 cents:

Probably incurring the risk of annoying people around here (I hope not), I believe that many PC combat flight simmers are forgetting that a "Combat Flight Simulation" is a game and definitely NOT the real life! And as such a good combat flight simulation will always be a compromise between the simulation of real life situations/events and gameplay features which makes the game/sim FUN (features like this, include being able to shoot down more aircraft than it was possible in real life).
For example if you weren't able to shoot down more aircraft than it was possible in real life (and here I'm not talking exclusively about WOFF) or like the OP suggests: if in most of the missions of a player's career there weren't any enemy encounters (yes like in real life, I grant that) than that sim/game would be BORING and therefore very few people would ever play it!

Being said this, I partially agree with the OP that having 3 sorties per day and encountering enemies in almost every sortie isn't realistic at all and also breaks gameplay or immersion. Again the solution for this problem lies IMO by compromising what is realistic with gameplay.
And IMO the proper solution for this "problem" isn't nothing new and it's actually used in most other flight sims which is having the player to fly less missions compared to the real life during a career. Imagine that since the missions where no enemies were encountered went uneventful therefore there's no point in flying them ourselves (IMO, if I want to fly without enemies, I'll play FSX instead). So the only missions that the player would fly during a career would represent the ones where the pilot would actually encounter the enemy.

Using the OP statistic of 1/3 of the missions equals enemy encounters, I would say that IMO the solution for this issue in WOFF's career would be that instead of flying 3 sorties per day during 7 days a week, the player would only fly 1 sortie per day during 7 days a week. Or IMO, even better: fly 1 sortie a day during 5 days a week in order to simulate pilot rests or leaves. This IMO would be advantageous since:
- Would represent a realistic number of enemy encounters during a career/war
- Wouldn't be boring for the player since the player would see his/hers career advancing faster without compromising realism. If I'm not mistaken Red Baron takes a similar approach? Not to mention many other combat flight sims.
This would be a plus for players like me that unfortunately don't have that much time to play games. Like it or not this is a game and every gamer likes to play a game where the player sees it evolving. If it takes to long to accomplish/evolve than that sense of evolution won't be present on the player and the player will start to feel that the game is boring and thus "abandoning it".
Fortunately for WOFF, what I mentioned above (having less sorties per day/week) is possible by manually advancing the sorties (Manual Time Advance), like it was already mentioned by CatKnight.