lordhoff: Often, bombers crash when landing. Does anyone know if this is intentional (for historic flavor)? Was there some high percentage of bombers that simply flew into the trees when landing? It doesn't seem to affect anything - once I escorted a flight of six Cauldrons and four crashed on landing but the debrief said that they all made it back safely.

Does anyone know how close to a target one has to be to get credit for it? I had a CAP mission, flew over the bridge for a good ten minutes, but the debrief said I failed to get to the target in the allotted time.

How does one get one's flight mates to fire their rockets? On an infantry support mission, a few minutes before time to leave, I led my flight to attack the enemy infantry. They followed me (and this is only one example of many) but didn't attack. The same often happens on aerodrome attacks - they dive (maybe) and flyover (at least they draw some of the ground fire) but don't fire rockets, drop bombs, or fire machine guns.

I have to wonder about the scoring sometimes too. Just this evening, I was on a fun mission; a real circus. Eight Nieu-11s on an attack aerodrome mission. My pilot was second in command. We jumped a flight of Rolands (one of my flight mates shot down Goering - wonder if that meant the head of the Luftwaffe in WW II was the Red Baron's nephew? He was in command of some of the larger air operations - Svestopol and Stalingrad - and was an ace late in WW-I (well by allied standards)). Anyway, we shot down nine planes as more German planes kept showing up - mainly Halb D-IIs - I hit a few hangers (nobody else fired), but we lost four scouts. Our planes were all over the place but six showed up near the aerodrome - two following me and two following the flight leader. The mission was a failure, I got some 23,000 points (a failure?), and a nice medal to boot. Seems contradictory somehow :).

Phc7006: For wingmen, pressing "A' or "M" should order your wingmen to proceed with the attack. that's about all since there was no radio in these planes

Wailwulf: The bombers do seem to crash alot in RB3D, but it doesn't seem to effect the game that much. I would say it is because the AI was programmed for fighters, not bombers.

As to rockets, I have only seen AI use them against balloons, never ground targets. I once saw a line of 5 Nieuports go after a balloon and all fire at nearly the same time. With them in line meant three of them went down to friendly fire, but they did get the balloon.

But you are saying they do not even fire which is interesting. Is this stock or mod? If I remember right you fly Hells Angels mod. Try a campaign mission on stock RB3d taking place with the same squad at the same timeframe and see if your AI mates fire at the enemy. If they do, then it must be the mod that is causing the problem. Best place to go is SWWISA.net
http://www.swwisa.net/

lordhoff: It would be cool to see a RB3d2 - lots of quirks like flight mates crashing/landing behind enemy lines then showing up at the debrief. Ain't gonna happen, though. Modern graphics, more realistic flight models, etc

crazy_dave: I think the Redux project is working on doing exactly that ... I met a guy on the Freespace forums asking for people with experience in OpenGL programming to update RB3D's graphics engine so that they would completely negate the need for Voodoo wrappers. It would be a lot like the Freespace SCP (which doesn't need a supercomputer to run the improved version) for Red Baron 3D - with an eventual eye to improving the source code in many of the categories. Wailwulf can probably comment with more detail since I think he is a member of that team. :)

lordhoff: Well now, that's great to hear! The Redux project sounds familiar but its just a name to me; maybe something about it dying on the vine then some people returned and revitalized it? Eh, I'm probably way off - my memory is about as clear as diesel smoke.

Guess I should pick a best answer now - hard when there are several equal. Any suggestions?

Wailwulf: "Dying on the vine," not really. Redux was very noticeable while putting the flight model together. Once that was finished, Redux has gone quieter. I joined after the FM was mostly finished to help with the terrain. There has been alot of internal working after the public testing of the FM.

Right now, the three biggest things Redux is working on getting fixed is, one porting the game to OpenGL, getting rid of the Flamer bug in MP, and allowing two seaters with AI gunners in MP.

We have done some things that have pushed RB3D farther then it has ever been, but if we can get it to use OpenGL over glide and direct draw, we are not sure how far it can be pushed.

lordhoff: Does that mean that in MP' it has generally been just scout vs scout? No AI flying at all (at least more then a drone to attack)? Seems, well, weak. I think people who play MP will thank you guys greatly if that can be pulled off.