Dan Verssen

I can understand your frustrations with this thread. Now that most of my work has been completed for the Down In Flames expansion "East Front", I've had a chance to poke around on the Naval Battles design. I'll now need to run the ideas by the BFC gang to see if I'm poking in the right direction.

I remember one tester on a Mac saying there was some kind of Windows emulator that would allow DIF to run.

Thank you Stalin! That is perfect!

Does any one know of any sites that show Russian bomber squadron patches, insiginia, or nose art? Basically anything we can use in the game as graphics for the Russian bombers. I've been looking around the internet, but no luck.

Thanks for spotting the error, I'll update the file.

Here's the source... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavochkin_La-5

Yes, the Me-262 will be included in the expansion! This will be the first of the Jet aircraft to make an appearance in the game.

I can see it now, the deadly L/W of "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando".

I'm working on updating the DIF game manual for the East Front Expansion. If you have any suggestions for additions, edits, clarifications, or changes, please post them here.

Well I feel silly!

Hello, We need about a dozen pilot phrases recorded in WAV or MP3 format in Polish for the upcoming East Front expansion. Any one out there who speaks Polish?

Does anyone know of any good links to USA or Japanese medals?

Good feedback! For now, let's see how it goes until we get a better feel for the overall picture. I'm thinking the quick advancement of new wingmen is an advantage for players. Since the players have now gained an advantage, there needs to be a balancing disadvantage somewhere, or else we've just made the game easier to play. Our goal was to fix a problem, rather than make the game easier, so we'll have to see how it goes.

For the last few months, the DIF team has been preparing our first major expansion to the game, tentatively titled: "Down In Flames - East Front". Based on player feedback, we have decided to add two new countries, Russia and Poland. Russia because it played a major role in WWII, Poland because it has always been a personal favorite of mine. At present, the expansion is planned to add 29 new aircraft to the game's current roster of 44. Also based on player feedback, we will add roughly 15 new skills to those already available. These will include Leader-only skills, Wingman-only skills, and skills that can be purchased for both. We also plan on including roughly 12 new campaigns. Many thanks to all the players who have sent in feedback on what we have designed so far. Please keep it coming! Our goal is to have the expansion available by early summer.

We can't let the wingman's XP be spendable, or else... 1) Create a wingman for 1945, get a boat-load of free spendable XP. 2) Do not spend XP. 3) Intentionally get leader killed. 4) Wingman becomes leader 5) Spend boat-load of XP.

Hello Joe, I appreciate your comments. Whenever I see feedback from a player for one of the games I have helped with, I always take it as a compliment. Of course, words of praise are always nice, but critical words are also appreciated. This is because no matter what the words are, the person cared enough about the game to give it a try, and write down their thoughts. I think I can see where you're coming from with your comments. I would summarize them as being, "The card game was great the way it was, why did you guys mess with it?" A good point that deserves an explanation. Here's why, way back in the first days of the computer game, we did not have pilot skills, XPs, medals, or Fatigue. It was the card game transfered to computer. We played it a few times, other people played it a few times, and it was great. It played just like the card game. But, we quickly found that the ease of playing on the computer and finding opponents through the internet was actually a major drawback for the game. The game simply did not have enough depth to keep people interested for more than a week. During that week they could, and would, play 100 dogfights without a problem. They would also burn out on the game and never want to touch it again. To be honest, I don't think I've played 100 dogfights of the card game in 10 years, but I have played a 1,000 dogfights of the computer game in the past 2 years. Simply put, the elements (no pun intended) that make a good tabletop game are not the same as those that make a good computer game. What we have tried to do is take all the good points of the card game, and add to them the elements that are needed to make a good computer game. I hope this helps to shed some light on why we have made the decisions that we have along the way.

I've removed some skills from the German pilots to help re-balance the campaign. Any new campaigns created from now on will include these changes.

I'll try adjusting the pilot skills and we'll see how that effects things.

This is used as an emergency option. For example, when your leader has taken damage and is low on cards. If you can get him Neutral at the start of his play cards step, you can switch your leader and wingman.

I've been doing some research on Polish planes and it looks like in several cases the national symbol on the port wing is in the normal place by the wingtip, but the symbol on the starboard wing is about half way between the fuselage and wingtip. Any idea why they did this?

Hello Steve, I don't mind including both aircraft. I just want to make sure the reasearch I've done matches up with the research that others might have done.

I've been doing research, and it looks like the F4U and F6F are pretty much the same. Any ideas on what might separate them in terms of performance, firepower, etc.?

The new enhancement gives players more choices for how they want to start a pilot's career. A pilot that starts in 1939 will start with 0xp to unlock planes, but will earn a 10% bonus for all future XP earned. As a pilot's career starts later and later in the war, he gains more XP to immediately unlock the more powerful aircraft. However, all future XP earned by the pilot will be reduced according to his "XP Factor". All pilots start out with 0xp to spend. - - - The revised wingman deck puts back all the cards removed by the previous change, and adds in the additional noted cards.

Excellent feedback! I have made this a feature topic.

Hooray! I knew that if I ran around in circles waving my arms uselessly, the problem would get fixed.