Droops called my attention to kill claims in a previous thread. I did some research on my own. Got an idea.

What kind, if any, of kill confirmation will KOE have? Would you get the kill if you shoot him down on your side of the lines? Or will it be " Unconfirmed by army means unconfirmed."

Would you have a chance that no one saw it? How about if you are deep behind enemy lines?

That happened to me in IL2FB. I chased a pair of German bombers across the lines to their home base. Got them both, but got no credit.

Many pilots kept their own, private scores. Why not us?

I, for one, would like to see that. I would like to see the chance that you don't get a confirmed kill.

It would be interesting:

1. Planes shot down over own lines or near the front are confirmed (by wreckage in first case, by infantry in second).

2. Planes shot down over enemy lines are confirmed if you have one or more squadron mates with you and they make it back. Victories not witnessed are probables for the British, nothing for the Germans. Exception: if your last name is Bishop you not only get credit but you also get the VC ... (ducks and covers )

3. For the allies, planes that were damaged by multiple victors result in shared kills. For the Germans, one kill on credit to one pilot.

OOC's would be a cast iron b!tch. In RL OOCs could mean anything from the enemy pilot ran away to the enemy pilot was killed but the crash was not witnessed (IMHO more often the former than the latter). I'm not sure that this sort of fuzzy logic would be easy to implement in a computer game.

IMHO the real problem is the fact that most inaccuracies involved overclaiming and not underclaiming. I'm not sure that I would want overclaims in my record (in fact, I'm quite sure that I wouldn't).

Also, per my Billy Bishop snipe, yes, I am aware that MvR, Voss, and every other ace who's claims have ever been studied has questionable and sometimes outright wrong victories in their tallies. Tis' the nature of the beast. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a smart assed remark .

Why sould there be problems with kill confirmation in a sim?

If you're wanting historically based ambiguity, then I guess it could be programmed, but why overload the code?

Just asking.

Immersion and realism my dear sir

PatWilson

I think that the kill sharing was just a WW2 thing. It could be a WW1 thing too.

I remember that in the book Aces, and I have to go on memory, as I bought it, lost it, bought it again, and you guessed it, lost it again

Anyway, it tells how the French WW2 pilots were given full credit in the early days. If four of them engaged a target and killed it, they each got a kill. IIRC, it was a morale boosting thing.

My word, five posts and no trouble......


Awwww crap, I just jinxed it

I guess you guys are mostly talking about the single player campaigns - but I'm more concerned with multiplayer .

In terms of kill confirmation, if the opponent is aiming for a headshot and sees on their screen "Kill of X awarded to Y" or something like that, then obviously they won't follow the plane down as it spins out of control. But also the reverse - if the victim has no other option but to fake spinning in a downward spiral out of control, then it will be pretty obvious that they're faking it.

I think this has been mentioned here before - someone said that a previous game let you do this.

I've only played Red Baron, so I never got to do this. I don't mind if KOE will have it either way, but it sounds like a neat tactic for bad flyers like myself.. hehe!

-FranksValli

I used to pull that fake alot in TSR's Dawn Patrol. The board game that is.

The only problem is that once in a while you could go into an uncontrollable spin, until you went splat.

If Aspect doesn't allow the PK message, it could work here.

It's all about terra firma don't you think?

If a plane is forced-down or destroyed, it ends up back where gravity dictates. Call it rather simplistic, but in terms of PC programming, what goes up must come down, and for any adjudication system to assign victories equally irregardless of national affiliation, what ends up as a force-down or a destroyed AC on the ground should/could be counted as a kill.

Having a simple yet equal way of judging kills/victories for online play is essential in my mind.

I'm not against historical methods for keeping tally in the single player game, or the campaign game............it could be immersive (in a frustrating sort of way). However, for online action I would think that a system of equal and fair victory assessment would be important.

Don't ya think?

Given some of what we've been told of the Single Player campaigns, I think having confirmations fail to come would indeed add to the immersion, AND to the historical lesson of the sim.

I'm for it!

Now, where's my plate of cheese and my scotch? (When I was in Greece, they were VERY civilized... Evenings on the apartment balcony with Shepherd's Cheese and honey, cucumber slivers, maybe some pastries, and a bottomless bottle of Raki, or Tsecoudia... Ahhh...)

Fly

My fault, I meant kill confirming for single player campaign.

For MMP, I would like no kill message or scream that tells everyone I killed you or vice versa.

Wing

How about 100yr old scotch, and cheese to match.

Damn, it's still civil in here

IronHand: As far as I am aware all western allies had shared kills. The British also had shared OOCs (heard a tale on the aerodrome about an entire flight of 9 sharing a victory each for a single OOC).

FlyXWire: Modeling the variations in scoring would be interesting, but IMHO definitely not high on my list. What I really want to avoid is getting credit for a plane that I damage and then crashes 30 minutes later. RB and IL2 both do this. If I am not within visual range I should not get credit. Also agree that online scoring should be consistent for both sides.

Thanks Pat

I suspected it, but I figured you would know more than I.

The getting credit for an enemy that you lose sight of is historical though. Many pilots had a probable upgraded to a kill weeks, if not months later. Don't know about the Great War though

And online scoring should be the same for both.
What I would like is a dead is dead option like the online campaigns in AEP.

But none of the above is a deal breaker.

A lot kills were confirmed by infantry & balloons. In some cases, the pilots never knew exactly happened to their targets. maybe an overlapping comfirm radius from fix emplacements along the no-man's land. confirmed kills on friendly territoty. 1 or 2 friendly a/c within the area of impact(all friendly(bombers/recon, etc)these must reach friendly territory at the end of the operational day) Kills awarded within days

If a moving front is possible, kills awarded if impact zone changes to friendly within days or a few weeks. Add in a number of conflicting claims, some settled by a flip of a coin or outside observer.

I've shot down a number of a/c in FB and not get credit, cant say I was pleased after watching them nose in and then return to find I scored zero

Why not something simple like a mission result when one returns to the aerodrome. You just have to wait till you get back to find out if a plane that spun down was a victory.

Keeps you guessing unless you see it go down flaming or follow it down to see it auger in.

I wouldn't blow my alt. just to confirm it.

Having no instant "**** killed by ****" banner would be nice. I always disliked that with Dawn Of Aces and other sims.

Of course that means padlock cannot happen though unless it is restricted by distance from the target. Otherwise one can figure out pretty quickly if they got it or not.

Never liked padlock anyway but that is a different debate.

S!

Kail

Me either, but better than you winggie stealing it from you

Or shooting through you to get it.

Dantes

I like padlock. But if the enemy flies into a cloud or drops below your nose out of sight, it should break. RB doesn't do it, IL2FB does. But there is an exploit for it though

Of course the AI is all seeing

In Winged Victory Yeates mentions that if a flight attacked an enemy aircraft and it crashed the pilots shared the kill if they had actually fired at it. However, it wasn't recorded as six kills if six aircraft attacked, but instead each pilot was given one-sixth of a kill.

Some fractional accounting to add to the confusion

And on the other side of the coin, if 20 gunners in a bomber formation were all shooting at the same aircraft, they all claimed it after it went down.

I imagine the intel guys had big bottles of Excedrin handy for times like that

:D

Better a smart assed one than a dumb assed one any day of the week

This has been a good discussion!

Nice topic Ironhand.

To the best of my knowledge, fractionals were not used in WWI (this is a WWII practice). Everybody got a victory. Now the British were certainly smart enough not to register 6 enemy losses, but each individual pilot could receive 1 victory to their total. This is why determining how many planes were destroyed by an allied squadron cannot be determined by simply summing the scores of the pilots.

To add to the confusion, it should also be noted that different squadrons made more or less use of shared victories. In some squadrons it was discouraged, while in others it was used to the fullest. Therefore scoring practices were not even entirely consistent from squadron to squadron.

Thanks

I think we can all agree that:

1: Kill confirmation for offline play would a nice thing to have.

2: Online it should be the same for everybody.

3: Offline, if you use the name Bishop, your probables are upgraded to confirmed

An exerpt from Winged Victory

I'm going to have to scan the whole thing in one day just to make hunting references easier, especially as my copy is 1971 vintage, yellowed and disintegrating fast.

For those that don't know, V M Yeates was an RFC pilot who had 248 flying hours on Sopwith Camels on the Western Front, crashed four times and was shot down twice. He contracted tuberculosis and was invalided out of the RAF in the summer of 1918. The disease eventually killed him at the age of 37 in 1934. Winged Victory, which was published in 1934, is generally considered to be autobiographical, Tom Cundall being Yeates himself and the unnamed squadron he flys for Yeates' 46 squadron. Many of the other characters in the book are easily matched to real 46 squadron pilots. Although a work of fiction, and possibly "improved" in places by his friend and author Henry Williamson, WV is a revealing look at flying in the Great War, with many areas of minutae that are useful for historians.

I had two of those! I loved that game.....before sims

Here's my sim before sims:

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0SwDZAkMX!...372236854812271[/img]

Hand-made dyed map, using assembled and hand-painted 1/144th scale pewter aircraft.

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0SwA9A0QXO...372236878604799[/img]

Custom-made plexiglass moving stands.

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0SwDZAkUXe...372236916627985[/img]

With computer graphics player aids.

Actually this miniatures wargame set-up I created, utilized modified Blue Max rules, but we've adapted/modified many games over the years to use miniatures, including Fight For The Skies.....a classic!

We now return you to your regular program.

I had Fight in the Skies, then got Dawn Patrol.
I played them to death!!!

Here is a sight for DP: http://www.dawnpatrol.org/

Looks good Fly!!!

Very nice FlyXWire!


I had done something similar with Squad Leader.

I still have an unopened copy of Richthoffens war

Keep it that way. It's worth far more than you payed for it.

Very cool FlyXwire!

My personal favorite was Nova's Ace of Aces book game. Great dogfights!

I remember those. Lots of fun.

Buffalo Games may be re releasing deluxe versions of the Ace Of Aces series again. There were a whole slew of them and I hope to get them all.

If you're still a WW1 board game fan, you can play Dawn Patrol with friends online with the Vassalengine system.

http://www.vassalengine.org/

Look under Modules.

S!

According to the site I listed above, there is supposed to be a new edition of Dawn Patrol. But that was a while ago.

Hey guys, I remember the Ace of Aces series!

I had the Rotary and the Inline editions, but always got my clock cleaned by my brother-in-law.

Dantes, you say they're planning on bringing them back.......how many were there beside those two above?

The good ole days:

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0SQAJA8gWQ...466429626807155[/img]

And those yet to come:

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0TADtAiIYy...466430763657956[/img]

Even modelled a blimp.

Where'd you get the miniatures?


What was that dual book game where you had an Eindecker and a DH? You called out a move number and so did your opponent. Then you both turned to the page and there was an illustration showing how each of you ended up after. It was from a first person view. That was one of my fav's. I think they had a Camel or SE5 and D7 one too.

That's Nova's Ace of Aces series.

They're Skytrex, Momo, and Reviresco 1/144th pewter scale kits (built over 50 models w/avg. 8hrs. per aircraft to complete.....some more):

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0XQDfAoAd*...384738735993124[/img]

Yeah Uther, we're talking about the book-set game Ace of Aces.

FlyXwire, that is the nicest set of WWI Minatures and gametable I have ever seen. I started off with Milton Bradley's Dogfight over 30 years ago, went to Richtofen's War, and moved on to Red Baron minatures rules using turning templates instead of a hexgrid. I never could get the other people in my gaming group really interested in WWI, though, so we never got as fancy as you. How did you find enough fellow enthusiasts in St Charles? (Nice town, btw. I lived in St. Louis while growing up.) Here in Tokyo I played Ace of Aces on the train with a friend of mine who did the same commute, and used to play Over the Reich a lot.

Zatoh

Thanks zatoh.........as a member of the Greater St. Louis area wargaming community for over thirty years, I was part of an active group of enthusiasts, with three hobby stores devoted exclusively to our interest in this area. However, with the advent of good PC wargames and simulations in the 1990's, interest in miniatures wargaming slowly slipped away for me, as it has for others who now compete primarily online.

Here's a few views from the hundreds of gaming presentations I have hosted in past years:

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0TADZAgcYE...466465804159775[/img]

If there's anything I took away from the experience of my wargaming hobby years, it is that quality of appearance sells! My presentations were always well attended at shops and conventions because they displayed a devotion to detail, conveyed quality, and foretold of a good experience to come.

I have brought this knowledge of mine to the discussions on KOE, because I know that attention to detail and appearance usually marks a product of excellence...........and portends to the devotion of its creator(s)!

This is why I have drummed the message Quality and Immersion from the beginning here.........and this message can never be overemphasized in my mind!

There were a few sets released. Here is a list of the ones that I know of:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=1570

Sometimes I miss those days of gathering the people around the table for a RPG or Wargame. It was more social than anything. Of course, online gaming allows more people who share common interests to ummm...interact?

S!

The good old days.

Wow! Impressive, FlyXwire. The last gaming shop I went to in st. Louis was near Page and the Innerbelt, IIR. They had a good collection of miniatures and seemed to have a dynamic group. I never played there, though, as it was after I moved.

Zatoh

That's them, and WOW, look at all those Aces books............thanks Dantes!!!

It certainly was easier to judge when an opponent was "going over the edge" when you faced him across the battle table in person, wasn't it! Instead of having to rely on stupid smilies or screen chatter to convey our emotions......good or bad!

I kinda miss the old days too Ironhand, but that's why I created a four-PC LAN down here.......my close buds still get together whenever time permits (and the wives too)! :rolleyes:

Damn Zatoh, we may have met!!! The shop you're speaking of was Games, Crafts, Hobbies & Things..........I put games on there all the time! Back when I was in college (back in the 70's) I worked at Epic Gallery in Militaria off of Woodson between St. Charles Rock Rd. and I-70. It was the first wargaming shop in the area............did you ever go there by chance?

FlyXwire, we have definitely met! I was a high school student in the 70's and went to the Epic Gallery many times. (That was the place near the airport, right?) It was the best game store in St. Louis. I recall it had a really good selection of miniatures. If you worked there you probably saw me a lot. I was probably pretty obnoxious, which I will blame on my age at the time.

This is pretty funny.

Zatoh

Too wild Zatoh!!!

I was the good lookin' tall guy with the brown hair, brown eyes, and glasses behind the long display counter with the cash register near the front door!

Remember the game room in the back, and the smell of hamburgers lingering there from the eats that everybody bought from Burger King up the street?

One of the regular young guys who hung around all of the time was named Marion I think (got to be pretty good chums with him).........wasn't you was it.........that would be just wild?

No, not me FlyXwire. My RL name is Alan. I remember talking to all of the store personnel, but not what any of them looked like. I'm not sure that you'd remember me, as I didn't play any games there, just looked and shopped. Still, this is pretty wild

I didn't game much outside of my own group in St. Louis, but one of my friends did. I remember he took me to a gaming club that had several massive sand tables in their gaming room. They had a rule that only completely painted miniatures could be used for their games. Maybe that was part of your group.

Zatoh

That's some real nice work FlyXwire!

I never knew that there were that many books. That game I liked alot.

Holy Cow Alan!!!

Well then you may be talking about Olie Wischmeyer's place in North County (I helped build that sand table), or B. Nardin's place in South County. We all got around to each other's gaming group, and often all met together on Sunday's at the University of Missouri campus for area-wide game days!

I'm sure I might even recognize you today.........small world Alan, quite amazing this digital globe!

Thanks Uther, and I didn't know there were that many books either..........and I use to sell them!

Dantes always keeps himself (and us) on top of this hobby of ours, both past and present very well.

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.asp?m=77071&go=last

For you Fly

Boy, I remember, too! I'd love to hear that they've come back!

It would be nice to have both confirmed and unconfirmed (computer tallied) kills.

Online it could be part of the teamplay. Pilots on return would say where and when they made or saw kills made, entered into the log as chat. The log itself would have when and where planes went down but not have shown that on screen. A log compiler could then come up with matches and near matches and make confirmations depending on conditionals. If you were alone then it is up to your squad to maintain honor.

For all that matter, would it be possible to have a key sequence that would log witness of a kill to yourself or another at the time you saw it and that would be in the log soon before or after the plane went down, also logged by the sim? Then it would be easier for the AI's to make witness as well, so it would be an offline and online feature.


Neal

Wow! Ace of Aces is coming back? That's great. I loved that game. I have all the sets and two sets of inlines. Plus I took the advanced plane charts from the Rotary Deluxe box and made charts for the inlines and Flying Machines planes as well. Right down to the drawings of the plane profiles!

Once you played the Deluxe advanced rules, you couldn't go back to Basic.

Beautiful stuff Ironhand......thanks for posting that link!

The closest I ever got to the Seven Years War were my Hessians and Brunswickers for the American Revolution.

Neat ideas Neal!!!

I think it would be awesome if there was something along the lines of a virtual newspaper (like a period-looking Gazette, or War Department Dispatches) to accompany our online activity! I don't know if Aspect is going to sponsor it's own multiplayer server, but wouldn't it be cool if we could follow the highlights of the virtual world through a central "depository"........a place where squadron/individual kills would be tracked, events scheduled, and where war storys and exploits could be told (like some of the RB and DOA Squads do..........only controlled by one central "authority")?

We could have all that and Aspect wouldn't have to code it all, just provide the engine with tools.

The tools:

Pre-mission screens settable by scripts, best method may be the use of html or like with one link destination that leads to running the mission.

Mission setup by text file, may be made by outside generator.

Active log output during mission that may be intercepted by outside programs or best through a text file named task program (IE line in config file) spawned by KOE with a pipe between for lean and mean 2 way communication.

Bonus would be KOE would need to be able to take a few simple commands (although more would be better) via console or task program for host commands (kick player, load mission, shut down, whatever suits), player chat, and timing for player respawn (would dearly love to see dead players have to wait like 30 seconds or more and become instant base defenders!).
Extras would be to allow changes to the environment like destroy or repair objects or airfields, set up and/or trigger AI flights, possibly even set up planes for players in coops not to all start at the same time.
All in all, those are not a lot of functions to support. The complexity is in the task program which the KOE default would only have to be simple and direct since the community WILL (I'd bet as much money as I could scrape up, knowing I'd be part of this happening) step in to create more and better support over time than any devel group can do in a man-year or more. Trust that!

Log output signalling end of mission would cause the task program to generate the post mission screens, next mission and respond upon completion with the post mission data filename.

Then post mission screens display same way as pre mission screens and one link target to run the next mission and one to exit KOE.

Of course, this could work for ANY sim that supports it.


Neal

Since we are on the subject of online servers. What I would really like to see more than anything is for a mission builder to be able to limit the total number of each plane type on a dogfight server. Not just overall numbers, which he could specify such as 12 DR1's, 50 D7, 85 AlbDVa, etc, but at each specific airbase as well. He could thereby place all the DR1's at one airbase for example but there'd only be those 12 and when they were shot down, they'd be gone from the server.

Make it meaningful to get back home and land alive so the plane isn't lost from the server.

Online campaigns

I hope so

With a dead is dead option.

For those who are interested in the Ace Of Aces books, there is a brand new Card-based WW1 dogfight game being released called Wings Of War. I've been watching this one being developed by some Italian designers and it looks like it is now being sold at Italian distributors through Nexus Games.

The cards are layed out to show a flight path of opposing fighters. It looks quite ingenious:



Example shot of the card:



Find out more here:

Wings Of War

I want this game so much it hurts. The art work is just beautiful and the gameplay looks like allot of fun:

It's always nice to see a new WW1 game get released.

S!

P.S. There is a pdf download of the rulebook to find out more about it. It's very nice with lots of pictures to describe how the game is played.

That is sharp Dantes!!!

I remember you previewing the game on the WWW forum months ago as it neared release.

Very nice............maybe we can paper clip our moves together and play by mail.