Well, two missions and six kills - but POW for nine months. Can I create a new pilot and fly for nine months then pick up the other again when he returns? I seem to remember the game crashing with two active pilots?

I'm only playing vanilla but I don't remember any crashes ... but I haven't played very far into it with any of them (it's on the back-burner right now so I could be wrong). However check to see if your POW pilot has a backup file, if so you might be able to reset him to before the mission where was taken prisoner if you want to fly the same pilot through those 9 months. How to reset your pilot is on the 43 page of the manual in Tutorial 5. Cheers.

I can do that using the CM11 program just didn't want to :) Really, I could fly the POW until he dies then start a new campaign when he was captured too. In my way of thinking, it just seems like it should work. But at least Goering will stay dead :) (at least I think he will)

For your PoW pilot, yes Goring remains dead if he died, but if you create another camoaign, he will be alive for that one.

Besides CM11 there is Tymphril's <sp?> Campaign Editor. You can reactivate a pilot to fully live status without going back a misssion. A very nice tool, Has one bug, in there is a date change ability and it always sets the year to the current, real year, not the game year.

Gotta be one lucky guy. He was shot down one time at about 2500 m, jumped out, and was flying again a few days later after my guy had a mid-air collision. Its a "what if" thing; if I had designed the game, a campaign would have been defined as the full war not a new PC pilot but, then, if I was the designer, the game would have been very amateurish too :) .

Gee whiz, i keep jumping from ten/twenty feet and die :)

Actually, since figuring out how to edit the saved campaign file, I am running a campaign that is the war. My Pilot dies, I create a new one, and then replace the dead one with the new one by copy and pasting with a hex editor. Even once, when my main pilot ended up injured for numerous months, I took one of the NPC's in the squad and made him my active pilot. He lived long enough that I was flying both during the same time frame.

This went completely unbroken until i had a computer crash about a year and a half ago and lost the saved games. But it happened just after I started a new pilot, so was able to in a sense recreate the squadron somewhat due to the stories I wrote. But I lost a complete squadron list of pilots, and all their victories :(

I just posted part 25 of my saga over at:
[url=http://vonhelton.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=war ]http://vonhelton.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=war [/url]

Couldn't you also go back before the pilot died, start a new pilot, then delete the "dead" one?

If you want to keep your squadmates with their kills, keep dead the aces that you have brought down, or keep the extra non-historical kills those aces earn when you are with them, and keep that pesky Escadrille to just a few usable machines (They go through the repair and waiting for new planes just like you), then you need to use your old campaign file and modify it.

I just make a copy, numbering it up by one, then add my new pilot in and make what modifications I need, like replace the squadmates that died with you with new pilots also.

I learned how to edit the campaign files from Sygrod's web site. The original is no longer up, but you can access it from the Internet Archive's Wayback machine:
[url=http://web.archive.org/web/*//home.golden.net/~ksharman/rb/Main.html]http://web.archive.org/web/*//home.golden.net/~ksharman/rb/Main.html[/url]

Looks like I got a little research to do. I though maybe one or both of the campaign editor programs could do that. Oh well. :)

Tymphriol's Campaign Editor (the one in French) does it best, for you can copy the campaign file, then reactivate/relife your pilot, change his name, delete his kills, and do so to the squadmates that died in that ill-fated mission.

But it take CM11 to change the enlistment date, and the actual date the new pilot arrives.

But with hex editing, you can add new planes to your squadron if the squad was wiped out in that ill advised mission HQ ordered that caused the death of your pilot. Hex editing also allows you to move or share kills with other pilots. I have returned from missions knowing i killed no one, but get rewarded three kills because I put a few bullets into them, knowing other members of my flight are the ones who tore them apart.

Also, hex editing allows you to remove awards/medals, or give you them. For example, RB3D awards the German's the Blue Max after 80 kills, but earlier in the war, 20 was what was needed. I have also used hex editing to change an enemy squadron from elite status to average after my squad had a third successful engagement against them (had destroyed a flight of 5 or six while protecting a balloon, then two days later caught 4 them on the deck as we attacked their aerodrome, then met 5 more three days latter and sent them all down in flames. felt after that, that they had no experienced pilots left, so downgraded their status.)

Hex editing the campaign files is also like working a puzzle, the more you do it, the easier it is to see the pieces.