So, the upcoming DFW C.5...

[BlitzPig_EL]

Is this going to be another slow, cumbersome German two seater that can't get out of it's own way?

 

I guess I am just spoiled by the Entente attack birds, the Kaiser's boys sure have a tough row to hoe in the ground attack department.

[SYN_Vander]

No ( well yes, its slow), but if I remember correctly from RoF it had a good climb rate!

Edited November 29, 2021 by SYN_Vander

[Zooropa_Fly]

Horrible plane to fly in RoF.

Can't see nor shoot from the thing.

[Cynic_Al]

"Oops - we forgot the radiator!  Now where could we put it?"

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Great plane for high flying.  Hangry for fuel. 

[BladeMeister]

Enter J30 to testify to the DFW's deadly abilities in,...

3,...2,...1,... and.......

 

SBlade<><

[AndyJWest]

I've got vague memories of having some success with it as a level bomber in RoF multiplayer. Though that mostly depended on waiting until the inevitable low-level furball dogfight developed on the front, and then sneaking around it as high as my patience would allow.

 

As for forward visibility, I'd rate it not much worse than the Spads, where actually being able to point your aircraft at things was more of a priority.

[No.23_Triggers]

Shouldn't be ground attacking in the DFW at all unless you have a death wish...DFW will be best used as a recon ship, like the DH4 on the Entente side. 

[RNAS10_Mitchell]

Wish i could get excited about the 2 seaters.   They just don't do it for me.

[US103_Baer]

10 hours ago, RNAS10_Mitchell said:

Wish i could get excited about the 2 seaters.   They just don't do it for me.

It's the missions and gameplay mechanisms that can do it. 

 

RoF career had an Arty spot mechanism that used clock code..(or was it a grid arrangement, its been a while) around a target. Gun corrections needed to be 'given' to the battery. 

 

High altitude bombing missions where getting to and from the target is a challenge, but you have to hit the damn thing too.

 

Photo recon where you have to take photos with limited plates and balance mission time with photo coverage (altitude) and safety (altitude and course to and from)

 

Been said a million times before,  but 2-seater roles are the reason for the air war in the first place.  

The missions can be awesome fun and strategically valuable in-game.

What's missing imho, are the role mechanisms for proper arty spot, photo recon and other typical mission types. 

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by US28_Baer

[Monostripezebra]

11 hours ago, RNAS10_Mitchell said:

Wish i could get excited about the 2 seaters.   They just don't do it for me.

 

Have you tried this? It is so much fun to watch...

 

I mean all the singleseat scouts invention was to stop mission planes, ie: twoseaters.. like their whole reason for existing, especially in terms of recce and arti-direction the 2 seaters where among the most influencial weapons in WW1, but alas, that is not really represented in the game in terms of player rewards/points or sense of achievment in game.. So I went to just bomb stuff. Bombing player stuff is very satisfying... as are AAA barges.

 

 

On 11/30/2021 at 2:29 PM, AndyJWest said:

I've got vague memories of having some success with it as a level bomber in RoF multiplayer. Though that mostly depended on waiting until the inevitable low-level furball dogfight developed on the front, and then sneaking around it as high as my patience would allow.

 

As for forward visibility, I'd rate it not much worse than the Spads, where actually being able to point your aircraft at things was more of a priority.

 

I remember it beeing very tanky.. and a good climber at light loads, which made it especially deadly in early war scenarios

[AndyJWest]

Yeah, these days I generally use the DCS F/A-18 to get similar results, though that involves laser-guided bombs and a targeting pod. And a lot more button-pressing. And I still screw it up more often than I should.

 

Level bombing in RoF was clearly far too accurate to be realistic, and no doubt the same can be said for FC. On the other hand, sim limitations etc generally necessitate unrealistically small targets, so it all evens out, and giving the player a nice satisfying kaboom as a reward for their efforts is a definite bonus.

 

Maybe I'll get back into multiplayer level bombing in FC at some point. Preferably with one of the heavies. It's probably my best option as far as multiplayer goes, as neither my reaction times nor my eyesight can really compete with the younglings any more. Getting Gothic on an entente airfield from high altitude was always fun, and didn't require a lot in the way of multitasking, once the beast was in the air, since it wasn't capable of doing two things at once anyway. You could climb (just about), or you could turn, but trying to do both at once was inadvisable, at least until you'd dropped your pointy iron sausages. 

 

 

[Monostripezebra]

3 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Level bombing in RoF was clearly far too accurate to be realistic, and no doubt the same can be said for FC. On the other hand, sim limitations etc generally necessitate unrealistically small targets, so it all evens out, and giving the player a nice satisfying kaboom as a reward for their efforts is a definite bonus.

 Yeah.. I very much agree.. digital repetiveness of conditions and repeatability makes it too precise, but that makes up for the too few and too small targets.. In the densly packed logistics and people trails with 100.000ths of persons, horses ammo dumps etc.. the pinpoint accuracy needed in game was kinda moot, mostly, also. That beeing said, appart from some notable successes like the famous ammo dump destruction, bombing on the front must have been really neglectable in impact compared to artillery direction and reccon.

[SYN_Vander]

4 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Yeah, these days I generally use the DCS F/A-18 to get similar results, though that involves laser-guided bombs and a targeting pod. And a lot more button-pressing. And I still screw it up more often than I should.

 

Level bombing in RoF was clearly far too accurate to be realistic, and no doubt the same can be said for FC. On the other hand, sim limitations etc generally necessitate unrealistically small targets, so it all evens out, and giving the player a nice satisfying kaboom as a reward for their efforts is a definite bonus.

 

Maybe I'll get back into multiplayer level bombing in FC at some point. Preferably with one of the heavies. It's probably my best option as far as multiplayer goes, as neither my reaction times nor my eyesight can really compete with the younglings any more. Getting Gothic on an entente airfield from high altitude was always fun, and didn't require a lot in the way of multitasking, once the beast was in the air, since it wasn't capable of doing two things at once anyway. You could climb (just about), or you could turn, but trying to do both at once was inadvisable, at least until you'd dropped your pointy iron sausages. 

 

 

 

It's all in the hands of the mission maker though...In IL2 (and ROF I think) you can define four altitudes with different wind strength and direction. But I guess players would then complain about level bombing being too difficult. The simple solution should be bigger targets ?.

[=IRFC=Gascan]

Two-seater missions are good for more than just the two-seater pilot. He can also have a gunner and escort as well. I am of the opinion that the purpose of two-seater missions (and the various objectives in general) is to encourage fun, interesting, and historically accurate encounters and battles between players. The missions themselves aren't really the point, its the players having more fun than if they weren't there. If you've ever joined me on one of my recon missions, then hopefully you had some fun. The recon isn't the point: its the battles you had along the way.

Two-seater missions were the heart of the Entente plan for Black September, and shaped the fighting in a way we wouldn't have seen otherwise. The Big Wing was all about providing escort for the photo recon mission, and then we had to follow up with bombing strikes against other critical targets and (on week 1 when it didn't bug out) protect some of our tanks from a counterattack. On the regular FlugPark maps, I find the recon mission itself to be quite boring (I just fly over the target, I don't even have a simple mini-game to snap the photos). When I ask for escorts, there are plenty of volunteers because they know that there's at least even odds of getting into a challenging fight at historical altitudes (as opposed to the air-Quake that can be found at 3-6k feet near Arras). My enjoyment comes from planning it, communicating, and then watching the escorts duke it out with the interceptors while I try to find a safe way to finish the mission (or, if someone else is the recon, I'll dive in and clear the way home).

Level bombing is a natural follow-up to photo recon missions, and hopefully we'll see more of it in the future as the Big Two (Gotha and Handley-Page) come closer to release. Of course, bombing from altitude was still in its infancy during WW1, so the bomb sights have all manner of different capabilities. This means that hitting precision targets is not reasonably achievable. That's not to say some players can't plant a bomb right on the barge from 1km or even from 2km up, rather that takes significant skill as well as the right plane, bomb, and target. Changing up the targets a bit may help encourage level bombing. I'm currently leaning more towards large area targets with smaller targets inside like railyards, troop assembly areas and encampments, factories and shipyards. A few precision targets like a bridge, a large headquarters building, or a star fort might also be good. Once players start taking bombers up to altitude, they'll need escorts, gunners, or both. Patrolling fighters can try to spot and intercept these flights. Much like the recon flights we currently have, this will hopefully result in some great fights at cloud level or above.

Here's a video from the 28th with Oliver88, Andi, and my brother Kotori doing a bombing mission. Not the best result, but some fun fights and great moments. You can see how far apart the bombs land despite dropping as fast as possible: Kotori dropped a line of bombs and straddled a fuel tank but missed because the target was so small the bombs landed on either side of it. Oliver dropped his line of bombs on target and got lucky that one of them hit. I just missed completely every time, partly because the Breguet bombsight doesn't compensate for head- or tail-wind, partly because I was in a rush due to the Fokkers attacking me.

Level Bombing

And here's a video from the end of Black September, with Kotori as the Recon and me as decoy. A couple of massive fights ensued during the recon flight and there was much challenging fighting to be had.

Recon Escort

Edited December 3, 2021 by gascan
add target examples

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

Aye, seeing some bigger area targets on flugpark would be excellent for those of us that enjoy level bombing, large encampments, marshalling yards, etc, perhaps protected by those flaming onions that were shown off in a recent DD to 'encourage' us to drop from on high. Right now the small targets and difficulty of level bombing means there's no particularly reason to do it. It's good fun, (especially when you bag people spinning up) but it's discouraging knowing that you would have been 5 times more effective by going in on the deck.

 

It's a big shame that the primary roles of two-seaters just aren't represented meaningfully in game. Artillery spotting especially is a big dream of mine, slowly talking a battery onto a target while trying to ignore the sound of your escorts tangling nearby would be brilliant fun. I've done it a bit in ww2, co-ordinating with player tanks 8km away to accurately strike the enemy airfield spawn point. I'd take some kind of mechanic to represent that in ww1 (along with photo recon) over new planes any day.

[[F.Circus]MoerasGrizzly]

12 hours ago, [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain said:

It's a big shame that the primary roles of two-seaters just aren't represented meaningfully in game. Artillery spotting especially is a big dream of mine, slowly talking a battery onto a target while trying to ignore the sound of your escorts tangling nearby would be brilliant fun. I've done it a bit in ww2, co-ordinating with player tanks 8km away to accurately strike the enemy airfield spawn point. I'd take some kind of mechanic to represent that in ww1 (along with photo recon) over new planes any day.

Rise of Flight's career mode had an artillery spotting feature, so I don't doubt we will see it again in FC.

[SYN_Vander]

I agree that having actual recon/artillery missions is very important. With the mission editor it's very well possible to make the logic such as aiming guns etc.  What is missing is a way to communicate with this logic from a player (in either single or multiplayer). Adding this should be a priority.

 

Right now we can:

 

-detect that an aircraft with a certain name/type has taken off, landed or has been destroyed.

-detect that an aircraft with a certain name/type has fired a flare, rockets, dropped a bomb, cargo, paratrooper

 

 

 

[J2_Trupobaw]

On 12/9/2021 at 1:21 PM, SYN_Vander said:

 

-detect that an aircraft with a certain name/type has fired a flare, rockets, dropped a bomb, cargo, paratrooper

 

 

 

So on 16 DFW bombs we can encode 64000 unique messages to the mission logic, or 5 letter word in Morse code... possibly 9 letter if we use flare as dash and bomb as dot...

Edited December 10, 2021 by J2_Trupobaw

[=IRFC=kotori87]

I just took the DFW up for a spin on the Flugpark today, and all I can say is WOW. If it has not been assigned to all of the recon missions yet, it needs to be. The difference in climb rate between the DFW and Halberstat is night-and-day. The climb to recon altitude was still hands-off, it just happened much faster. Once at altitude, I found the German bomb sight to be fantastic for navigation and level-bombing. Bomb payloads were also fantastic. It can carry up to 16x small bombs, 1 large and 12 small bombs, or 3 large and 4 small bombs. It cannot carry 4 large bombs, but that's still one of the best loadouts in the game.

 

Now for the down-sides. Although the DFW significantly out-climbs the Halberstat, the Halbie is faster than the DFW in level flight. You won't be out-running anybody in this machine, so you'd better bring escorts. Forward and upward visibility is also severely limited, due to the massive engine block, fat radiator, and upper wing directly overhead. So the forward machine gun is basically useless, and glide-bombing is also very difficult. I was able to glide-bomb targets with some practice, but there are no good references in the cockpit to help line up your approach. From the gunner's perspective, you've got the same options and firing arcs as the Halbie. So one or two machine guns, or a Becker 20mm, either way you have a poor field of fire compared to Entente two-seaters.

 

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to get into a fight in the DFW. I did run a few test maneuvers. Roll and yaw are rather sluggish. Thanks to its engine power and lift, it has a VERY tight sustained turn. It seems very similar to the Breguet in this regard - If you can roll over in time, you can pull the plane into a very tight defensive turn.

 

In conclusion, the DFW is a specialist aircraft that fills a vital gap in the German lineup. It's a dedicated high altitude recon and bomber, just like the Halberstat is a specialist ground-attack bomber. One cannot do the other's job. But now that we have both, we can actually choose the right plane for the job.