bartbert
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Posts posted by bartbert
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That is correct. There is a screen where you can fill in the four available slots with any aircraft you want. Then each player who joins the game can choose which slot they want to fill with their pilot.
This means that players could create missions which are WAY imbalanced. We're not going to stop players from doing that, but the more imbalanced the mission, the fewer the rewards. All custom missions start at 50% of the normal XP and Kills and will be further reduced (down to 25% or even 0%) when the mission is imbalanced.
The main reason for providing custom missions is to give players a way to experiment with different aircraft and match-ups, and to just have fun playing in teams, etc. It also gives us a way to setup some interesting tournaments.
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Ok. System administrator has been notified. Thanks.
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Everything Stalin said is correct except that there is a lower limit as well. If the point value of the person who created the game is 1000, then anyone joining the game would need to choose a pilot/aircraft combination that was worth at least 50% or 500 points.
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You can play both "regular" missions and campaign games against the AI.
To play a regular mission against the AI, log in and go to "Online/Single Mission/Create Online Game" menu item (or just hit Ctrl+C). This will bring up the same dialog you see when you start up a local game. Choose your pilot, aircraft and starting altitude the same way you normally would and then click the "Ok" button. After a few seconds, the game will start up and a small dialog will display showing your pilot. If you were playing against other humans, you would wait for others to join your game, but if you just want to play against the AI then you click the "Start" button and away you go.
Campaigns are a little more complicated to get started because you have to create the campaign and do your planning on the web site. Then you play out the missions for each campaign turn using the game.
Start by logging onto the web site and go to the menu item "Campaign/Create and Play a Campaign". You'll see a drop down list where you can pick which campaign you want to play (Battle of Britain, etc.). Then you pick which side you want to play (Axis or Allied) and whether you want to play against the AI or a human. Then click the "Create Campaign" button. This will add your campaign to the grid on that web page.
Now click on the "Select" link in the grid for the campaign you just created. This will take you to the detail page for that campaign. You'll see a map of region being fought over and a list of pilots that you can assign to patrol the various regions on the map. Assign pilots by picking a region from the drop down list on his row of the grid. Click the "Preview" button to display on the map where you have assigned pilots. When you are satisfied with your assignments, click the "Execute" button to lock it in.
The map will then show where you and the AI have assigned pilots. In each region where both of you assigned pilots, there will be a mission to fight out within the game. You can then start up the game, log in and go to the "Online/Campaign/Play a Campaign Mission" menu item. This will bring up a screen showing all of your ongoing missions. Click on the row you want to play and then click the "Ok" button to launch the next mission.
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Right. Just to clarify, the numbers represent how many "hits" your aircraft has taken. So in the example above, if you have taken 0, 1 or 2 hits, your aircraft is "Ok". When you take the 3rd hit, your aircraft "flips" to the "Damaged" side. The aircraft can then take a 4th and 5th hit, but on the 6th hit it will be destroyed.
The game originally was a card game, so you can imagine an aircraft card that represent your pilot's aircraft with a undamaged and damaged side to the card. When the number of hits exceeds the number on the undamaged side, the card is flipped over to its damaged side.
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You can play against the AI with online games as well. The games are exactly the same as playing local, but you have the added advantage that all your missions are tracked on the leader board. Plus, if when you decide your're ready to play against human opponents, you'll have pilots built up and won't have to start from scratch (local pilots don't tranfer to online pilots).
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Horsepower determines the maximum number of cards your leader can draw at the end of his turn. Notice that I said "maximum", because you could draw fewer depending on circumstances.
The number of cards that your leader can draw depends on performance, horsepower, and the number of cards your leader currently holds.
Suppose you have an aircraft with a performance of 7, a horsepower of 2 and you currently hold 6 cards in your hand. Even though your horsepower is 2, you can only draw 1 card because your performance limits your hand size to 7 cards. During the discard phase, you typically want to discard as many cards as you can such that your horsepower brings you back up to your maximum hand size. So in the example above, it would have been smart to discard 1 card during the discard phase to get your hand size down to 5. Then in the draw phase you get to draw 2 cards instead of 1.
Horsepower is affected by altitude. At Low and Very Low, all aircraft get a +1 Horsepower. At High, most aircraft get a -1 Horsepower and at Very High most get another -1 Horsepower. However, aircraft with a Turbocharger reduce the penalty by 1 (i.e., no change at High and -1 Horsepower at Very High).
So, aircraft are not individually rated to perform differently at different altitudes. However, the different combinations of Performance, Horsepower and Turbochargers does result in noticeable differences in the way they behave at different altitudes.
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Paul,
Please send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com with the user name and serial number that you are having problems with and I'll try to help you get it resolved as quickly as possible.
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I'm finishing up work on the installers this weekend. From that point, Battlefront has a set of tasks to get things setup so it's available for purchase, such as producing the CD's, getting it setup for download, etc. Martin has a better idea of how long that stuff takes, but I'd guess that it should be ready to go within the next 2 or 3 weeks.
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There is a PDF manual for the game that should be accessible from the Windows start menu: "All Programs/Battlefront/Down in Flames".
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I would read through the "Tips for newbies" topic if you haven't done so already. There is a lot of good information there that applies to both dogfights and campaigns.
Campaigns are about resource management and your resources are your pilots. Don't try to cover every area every turn as your pilots will burn out quickly. Bring maximum force to a couple of high value areas, leave the low value areas alone and maybe contest one or two other areas to prevent your opponent from getting free points. A lot will be driven by what targets show up each turn.
There are a lot of other guys here who have more flight time than I do. I'm sure they'll chime in soon. Don't give up!
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Yes, that should be possible soon. I was waiting for Matt to update the server with the new code and for Ray to finish loading the campaign data. I think we will be updating the code tonight and it sounds like I can move the data over after that.
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Hmmm. With UpnP enabled, it should automatically open up ports as needed for communication, so something strange is definitely going on.
You may want to see if you can rule you router in or out as being the source of the problem. You could try turning the Windows Firewall software on (so that you'll have some degree of firewall protection) and then disable the firewall features on your router. Or if you can physically remove the router and plug your computer directly to your internet connection that would be even better because it would eliminate the possibility that there is some weird routing or NAT (network address translation) problem going on.
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I think those settings are Ok.
Can you find out the exact model of your router? When I look at the "G" routers available from Linksys, I see about a dozen models such as "WRT54G", "WRT54GC", "WRT54GL", etc.
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We have had a very small number of users report problems with being able to connect to the server, and I think in every case the cause was firewall related.
Perhaps you have a hardware firewall? If you are using a DSL or cable connection to the internet, then the router/modem that sits between your computer and the internet almost certainly has a firewall built into it. If so, you would need to look through the documentation for that device to see how to configure it to allow outbound connections.
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We updated quite a few of the aircraft statistics recently, including bombers. However, there is also a code change that goes along with it that hasn't been applied to the server yet. Hopefully, that will occur soon.
The changes were meant to provide a better mixture of bombers so that fighters of a certain type don't always escort the same bomber each mission.
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The system tries to make each mission a fairly even match-up based on point value of the pilots and aircraft of the person who created the game.
If your pilots and aircraft are worth 500 points, then anyone who tries to join the game will have to come up with a pilot/aircraft combination that is in the range of 250 to 500 points.
Sometimes this means that a player may not have a pilot that is capable of joining. For example, if all his pilots are worth 1000 points (without any aircraft) then there is no aircraft that he could choose that would get him below the 500 point limit.
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Yup. Those were received as well. Thanks.
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Send it to difadmin@battlefront.com and we'll take a look.
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We kind of figured the campaign games was where players could go if they wanted strict adherence to historical match-ups.
We made non-campaign games more open-ended to provide more variety and give players the opportunity to explore the "what if" scenarios.
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Send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com which describes the problem you are having getting registered as well as your serial number, and we'll try to figure out what's going on.
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1. You should be able to create up to 4 elements per country. Four elements is usually enough so that if you're careful to rotate through your elements, you're pilots should never have to fly while fatigued. However, if you have a really bad string of missions, you may find that all of your pilots are at least a little fatigued. That is just part of the game. If we allowed more elements, then players would never have to fly with fatigued pilots.
2. I'm not sure I completely understand the question. It sounds like you're saying that you have 20 XP available to purchase skills, but when you bring up the screen for buying skills, none of the items are enabled to buy. Or are you saying that there are no items in the list at all? If you aren't seeing any items in the list, then it may mean that you haven't registered the game properly.
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1. I'm not sure if that was a question or just an observation, but you are correct that there hasn't been a whole lot of activity with the squadrons. There will be a new feature in the upcoming expansion (but available to everyone) that will make it easier for squadron team-mates to fly together, so maybe that will help get people interested in squadrons.
2. Offline (or local) pilots cannot be transferred to online status. If you have an internet connection, there isn't much reason not to play online. The game works pretty much the same way either online or offline, but online pilots get the benefit of being ranked on the status boards, joining squadrons and play with (or against) other players.
3. Even though I programmed the game, there are a lot of guys on this board who are far better players than I, so I will leave it to them to give advice on skills.
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Yes, I think that is a typo. We'll get that corrected when the expansion is released.
Request!
in Down In Flames
Posted
Ok. We'll see what we can do. Thanks for the input.