It's quiet here: What're you folks playing?

[Lufbery]

Hi all,

Things are a bit quiet here, so I thought I'd ask what everyone is playing right now?

As for me, I'm playing the following games and flight simulators:

• GDW's Blue Max board game (thanks to all who posted here on board games. What a great hobby!)
• Lambourne Game's Wings Over France solitare board game.
• MS Combat Flight Simulator 2 -- I like the Pacific war planes, but I also often fly with the Sim Tech Fokker Dr.1 vs. the Sim Tech Spad 13 (and visa-versa). I may have to pick up a copy of the Combat Aces add-on just to get more WWI planes to fly against using the CFS2 engine.
• Red Baron 2/3D -- I just fired up a German campaign. This is rare for me as I usually fly as either French or American.

I've also been flying IL2 a bit, but not as much as CFS2. I love IL2 when I'm in the air, but I simply don't think it should be that dang difficult to get a plane off the ground. I actually managed to take off, fly a circut and land a P-39 recently, but what a pain! My 800MHz PIII is apparently a bit anemic for the game, so I have to keep the graphics at 640x480. It looks pretty good, actually, but I lose sight of ground objects (like the runway) pretty quickly. Grrrrr

I occasionally fly Mig Alley -- which is a great game -- and I have the most fun flying the Mig 15. I also have Jane's F/A-18 which is pretty good, but complex. Recently, I even fired up Jane's Fighters Anthology, loaded up a B-52, and bombed the crap out of an airfield. No real skill involved, but it felt good all the same.

It may sound as though I spend all my time playing flight sims/games, but I probably only get 2-3 hours a week to play them. That's probably why I'm drawn to quick battles instead of campaign play (Red Baron 2/3D excepted).

So, what about you guys and gals?

Regards,

Canvas Falcons. I am involved in a very tough fight against an SE-5A and a Nieuport-17 escorting an RE-8. My force consists of 2 Pfalz D-IIIAs. The Nieuport isn't much of a factor, but the SE-5A is being a real pain. They managed to shove me out of the way a bit, but I'm boring back in.
Another rough PBEM has me facing a pair of SE-5As in a pair of Fokker D VIIs. The D VIIs are definately a match for the SEs, and at 10,000 feet we're not setting the world on fire with our speed and agility. But it really is a fur ball. We're both using the verticle quite well and it's going to go to the first flier to screw up.
A pair of very exciting PBEMs.
My face-to-face is a tough naval battle between the Roma and Vitorio Veneto escorted by the 3 Zaras, facing the Richieliu and Jean Bart escorted by the Suffren, Colbert, and Dupleix. The Suffren is a floating scrap metal yard right now and the Colbert is very badly hurt and burning. The Vitorio Veneto has had its fire director for the rear turret knocked out and the Richieliu has a fire. Seas are fairly calm (Beaufort-2) and visibility is clear (around 20,000 yards).

Joe

[Lufbery]

Ha ha! Joe, I know what you're playing.

I decided not to get involved in the Canvas Falcons play testing because of everyting else that I've got going on, but I'm still very interested in the game's progress.

How soon until there's a release? For that matter, is there an informational web site where those of us who are interested can see photos of the game and learn a bit mroe about it?

What game are you playing the naval battle in?

Regards,

The Naval battle is easy. We're using Seekrieg by Rich Sartore. Their website is:

http://www.seekrieg.com/

Canvas Falcons has no website yet, though we do have our forum. Requests for membership are monitored by 2 people now so no more infinity-holds.
I really don't know for sure when it's going to hit the stores, but it is damned close. We run into few bugs now, and those we run into are things requiring little clarifications. The PBEMs play smoothly (at least the one's I'm in do). The velocity based drag/thrust for climbing and diving, and the variable drag for multiple nose arc changes works very well. The battles are proving more 3-dimensional than other WW-I games that I've played. Especially the High Altitude one with the Fokkers and SEs. In that one your always trading altitude for power, then using zoom-climbs for position, so we're always yo-yo-ing between 9,000 and 10,500 feet. The SEs fast acceleration and high power is proving very important, but he is having trouble hanging tightly with me. I'm a bit more maneuverable. Very different aircraft, and competative match-up.

Joe

[MilesC]

I'm off RB3 until the Glide patch is solid. I got PO'd with WinXP randomly shutting down my game.

I tried IL2 for a while in both online and offline mode. It is a truely good game, and has a great mission generation engine. You can even generate a whole front-line situation for a campaign. AND, new aircraft are coming out, I hear they just got Hurricanes *:P. However, my problems with IL2 were an fairly difficult flight model and a weapons model that made hitting ANYTHING in the air very difficult. I personally don't think it was that hard to land shots on another aircraft. As well, there was no real coordination of on-line battles. HyperLobby is good, but the coordination and a schedule of events needs to be there for effective team play.

Lately, I have rejoined my old WarBirds squaddies who are now flying online in Aces High . We have been reincarnated as 880 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm. I must say it is a vastly improved game from even a year ago. I can actually be successful in piloting F4Us, and F4Fs against Japanese aircraft due to improvements in the flight models. Our squadron is tight, and aggressive making for a pretty successful bunch of desk pilots. 8)

Pity there isn't a decent WWI online sim anymore. I know RB3 can be flown online, but I haven't bothered, it is too painful trying to get on and get paints organised, join a squad, etc. etc.

[Lufbery]

I'll also add that I'm playing Biplane Ace on my Palm Pilot (actually, it's a Sony). I'm not sure that I like it, actually.

Regards,

[Scimitar]

Not really a Flight sim, but... I'm playing Flight Leader II. Solo and PBEM. It's a nice game.

[Lufbery]

Not really a Flight sim, but... I'm playing Flight Leader II. Solo and PBEM. It's a nice game.

What's that? Could you give more information?

Regards,

[Scimitar]

What's that? Could you give more information?

Regards,

Sure. Flight Leader II is an Avalon Hill software. The concept is similar to that of boardgames like Airforce/Dauntless, or Yaquinto's Wings (WWI) but based on jets (from 1950 to modern period). You don't "fly" a jet from the cockpit, but you "give orders" (climb, dive, fire missiles, bombs, rockets, jettison armament, crew ejection and so on) to a certain number of aircrafts (depending of the scenario played/builded): from one to many-many... The movement is simultaneous: you plot your "orders" than your partner (either human or IA) do the same, and the movement phase is computer leaded. If you have played games like Combat Leader, air War or Air Superiority, you know that modern aerial boardgames are difficult to master because of the amount of rules. With Flight Commander II it's more simpler because the computer handles all that stuff. Missions are varied, including dogfight, bombing of different objectives (aerodrome, HQ, tank colomns, etc.)
I don't know if the game is still available... It was released in 1994 (not conceived as a dos- but as a Windows game; runs without problems under all Windows versions). There was also an add-on; a "mission builder". Undemodable game.

[Lufbery]

Thanks. It sounds interesting.

UPDATE: I found Flight Commander 2 available as a free download here:

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=414

If it's the same game as the one you describe, it looks pretty neat.

Regards,