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"Birds Of Prey" - The future of WW1 air combat simulation!

This is a computer game, right?

Joe

[Kirk]

Yep. Not much activity around here recently on the board game front. How is Canvas Falcons coming along?

Several PBEMs are going on at once. I am in 2, in one a pair of Pfalz D-IIIAs are tangling with an RE-8 escorted by an SE-5A and Nieuport-17. The mixed bag allied escort is compensated for by the higher quality pilots in the aircraft, but the Pfalzes (which I fly) are doing the lion's share of the shooting.
In the other, a random patrol during Black September 1918, I am flying a pair of Fokker D VIIs against a pair of SE-5As. This battle is around 10,000 feet, and the aircraft are being quite sluggish. So far we're trying to strike the balance between maneuvering and stalling out, and it is hard. But it's an exciting match.
There's several training scenarios going on as well.
There's a Canvas Falcons PBEM group on Yahoogroups where all the information is passing back and forth.
The rules are working smoothly, and the only bump in the road we ran into was how to deal with the loss of lift when an aircraft is flying along in a 90 Degree bank attitude. The core of the question being "How long can you do that before the lack of lift becomes noticeable?" This was to deal with high rate-of-roll aircraft which could flip through the angle vs aircraft that stay in that bank attitude to do things like 7-G turns (do one of those in one of these crates and things get exciting. You'd better be flying a SPAD). Steve solved it pretty well.
The shooting tables, which were revamped some time ago, are proving to be very good, and the Grey Out/Black Out system is working well. We're finding that new players are getting the hang of it quickly enough, though the learning curve is kind of steep at the outset. It is a long way from Squad Leader in complexity, but there's enough unique characteristics to keep you on your toes for the first game. Experiance with Websters Fighting Wings helps a great deal.
Personally, I'm having a ball.

Joe

"How is Canvas Falcons coming along?"

Well, very good. I tried out EVERY patch for RB3D from the beginning til today. CF is the best for me, WFP (WesternFrontPatch) is also good but it is much more complicated than CF and has some nasty bugs. I have a GeForce card so I use the best terrain patch for DirectDraw: PromiseLand's DD terrain.