Whats the Western Front Patch and what does it do?

Why is it so good?

I have these patches within the Campaign Manager:

Beery20
Bsp2fx
Cmadd20
Final em for bsp2

Would the western front patch work with campaign manager? what other patches would you recommend? thanks.

[totoroman]

the Western Front Patch is available from the swwisa.net web-site.

what it does is it uses all of the available slots that are currently allocated to Red Baron II/3d aircraft to their maximum potential.

it also requires the Campaign Manager 11 as created by von Tom a while back to operate smoothly.

using the update files according to date parameter in the CM11, the WFP will 'swap' different aircraft in and out of the RB aircraft slots accordingly. so the 00 Hex-code slot might be a Fokker E.III earlier in the game (just as it is in the stock-game) and then it might later become the Fokker E.V later in the war (complete with a new flight model and corresponding damage modelling)

what WFP allows you to do is to change the overal number of aircraft encountered in a campaign from the original 33 or so up to a number as high as 70 or so.

for example, even though the LVG C.V was a common aircraft in WWI, you'll never see it modelled in the stock game... likewise with the Voisin L.III or Caudron G.IV earlier in the war-- where the FE2b is used as an ad-hoc filler aircraft for nearly EVERY Allied recon unit in RB3d... the WFP goes a long way towards rectifying that historical inaccuracy.

in addition it has a different flight and damage model to make the battles more difficult and harder for you to shoot down enemy planes.

I haven't flown the out-of-the-box game in years... the Beery patch was a lot of fun, but it simply pales in comparison to all of the magnificent work done on the Western Front Patch...

in addition there are online extensions of WFP in the form of the Great War series--and in my humble opinion, the penultimate online development of WFP is in the form of Flanders in Flames--where some of the swwisa.net staff themselves participate in the organized online war.

swwisa.net

http://www.swwisa.net/~wfp/

http://richthofen.jagdgeschwader1.com/Flanders.html

the aforementioned web-links will bring you face-to-face with what I believe are the finest Red Baron upgrades available to date.

the Promised Land all-seasons patch is reputed to be superb, but I have not had a chance to see it for myself.

your neighbor Totoro
aka Clawhammer
aka JG1_Kurtz_FFA

for those Red Baron pilots out there.