Hello everyone....back in the late spring and summer of 2017 I was "lighting it up" here with various campaigns (Geoff Williams, George Lyons, and Antön Otersdorf).
Well, life took some tremendous turns starting in late 2017 and what a ride it has been! Over the last few months, things have finally stabilized to the point of me gaming solo again.
First I took a spin with the early 1990s favorite
Gary Grigsby's Pacific War and created a mod where the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 1941 (actually a bit more likely than previously thought, check out
Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor and
Concept of a Japanese Invasion of Hawaii at Wikipedia for more info). That led me to research the Nakajima G5N Shinzan as a possible mod in the PacWar game, and well, basically the only place to fly one of those is War Thunder.
It was fun flying WT, lots of options, and for a while it was a grand time. After trying out and basically deciding for a mostly bombing career (G5N, B-17, D4Y, and B-34 in particular), I started to miss a true dynamic solo campaign mode. It started to get tiresome getting rammed a fair amount of the time, or being the last flyer on a team because everyone else was flying to score, and usually lost. I started wistfully thinking back to my WOFF:UE days. BTW I do think WT is a fine game, and it can be totally free to play, but you can also buy things that can help speed things along.
So I decided to come back to WOFF! I see there is a platinum edition, which I bought straight away. I am not doing quite as much back story (right now) as I did in the past. I did find a "random British Town" generator and also a "random British First/Last Name" generator online that I am now using for my pilots.
I also started in January 1915. My first pilot only lasted a few missions (crashed and died trying to land a Parasol), but I had quite a bit of success with a chap Frederick Wright:
Worked his way up from Sergeant to Captain in fairly short order, especially after being given a FE2(b) in early June of 1915, ultimately shooting down eight enemy craft (all Aviatik BI
) . Flying against Ghistelles in late July 1915, a lucky archie hit to my fuel line caused me to land just on the wrong side of the lines and I was interned for the rest of the war
I'm happy to be back, and I'm working my way through the forums to see what I have missed over two-plus years. I'm glad to see the devs will be adding planes during this calendar year. Here's hoping to a bit of beefing up of the 1915 airwar, including more armed planes for the Germans (Albatros C.I) to make things a bit more even (the Pfalz A.I does offer a bit of balance in the early air war), and also would love to see the Morane N.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking of a real challenge: taking a German pilot up the ranks in the unarmed Aviatik B.I!
Cheers!
Jeff