Finally Got WOFF

[Sailor Steve]

I've already watched dozens of videos, possibly more than one hundred. I was a big Red Baron fan back in the day, and this looks at a glance like it could have been called Red Baron 4. I also considered Rise of Flight, but online multiplayer just isn't my thing.

I kind of wish I could start even earlier in the war, but I understand their reasons for the start date they did pick. In 1914 you would be flying some very primitive planes with no opposition, just doing your job. I have one pilot who was given the very earliest possible date, March 1915. I don't like that a French pilot is training in a BE.2c, but they didn't want to waste resources developing models just for training. It's still cool since April 1 was the date of Roand Garros' first victory as a single-seat pilot shooting a gun through the propeller. The first Eindeckers didn't go into service until the very end of June, and the first victory in one was July 1, with the first confirmed kill coming on the 15th.

So far the modelling and scenery are first-class, and the sounds are also quite good. I'm getting my fill of more primitive planes with SFX, flying a Bleriot XI out of an unused grass strip in England. That's been fun too.

[Mud]

Do you still need the original CF3 to play it, very tempting to buy it.

[Sailor Steve]

For the earlier versions you needed to put the disc in the drive to play it. With this latest Ultimate Edition they say you need the key code from CSF3, but in fact it never asked me to enter it. I'm sure they reserve the right to ask for it, since they originally were tied together, but now I don't know. I didn't, but who knows if they'll ask you or not.

I bought CSF3 last year just for this purpose, and I consider the money well spent. So far I've been having a blast, and I haven't seen any combat yet. I've set up several careers for January 1915, six months before the Eindecker made its appearance, and I've been using the Quick Combat function to just fly around behind the lines, pretending it's July 1914 and waiting for the war to start.

[Sailor Steve]

I've started my first WOFF careers. Not really the first, but what I had before is just experimenting.

I found that the earliest I can start a new career is January 1915, and that all the QC mission I fly will be applied to that day. I then realized that I could use the QC to practice and write my own personal log to assign those missions an earlier date. I then wondered how far back I could take it.

Then I realized that, while the 100th anniversary will never return, the 104th is happening right now. RAF No 3 squadron was the first to cross over to France for the war, with several others only days behind. That was August 13. Since I wanted to have a fighter pilot and a two-seater pilot from each power running simultaneously, I figured why not do the research for the squadrons I wanted and find out where they were on August 1. Or July 30, which was yesterday, and the day I wanted to start this mess. So I created a French pilot. The earliest date I could find was August 12, so I created the pilot and flew a QC mission, choosing an airfield for my "training" base and practicing touch-and-goes in a Caudron G.IV. I'll continue this sort of thing until August 12, then move to the base they were actually at during that time. It's weird, but I'm starting a career at the very beginning of the war, and almost a year before the eindeckers made their first appearance.

But that's just me...

[Sailor Steve]

And then something really awesome happened, all by itself:

It's not enough for me to just make up a pilot. I want real names, so I came up with a generator using dice and websites dedicated to names - British, French, German - first, last and middle, and to generate city names as well. And that's where it got weird.

My first pilot is French. I rolled a 14 for the first name, so it starts with 'N'. A further roll came up with 'Noel'. I rolled for a middle name, and he has one. Being French, he might have a few more, so I rolled for that. Nope, only one. The next roll was a 15, so it begins with 'O'. The only 'O' I could find on the list I had was 'Odil'. For the last name it came up 11, which is 'K'. The only French last names beginning with 'K' on the list I had were 'Kay' and 'Kirouac'. A further roll said his full name is Noel Odil Kay. Unusual, but there it is. Except it gets even weirder.

For the city I rolled an 9, which is 'I'. I could find exactly zero French cities beginning with 'I'. Well, except for "Irish Nantes". That's a nickname, and it came about apparently because Nantes was founded by Irish smugglers as a base from which to sneak things into England. And it turns out that 'Kay' is a Celtic name. One source says it's related to MacKay and McKay, but it's also the name of King Arthur's foster brother and Chamberlain, Sir Kay, or Sir Kai in the earlier versions.

So there you have it. Noel Kay's surname comes about because he's descended from the Irish smugglers who founded Nantes. And that's the weirdness. I didn't come up with that origin and then make up the names, I rolled up the names and the story is a logical explanation for something that actually had nothing to do with me at all. Like I said at the beginning, "all by itself".

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

. I could find exactly zero French cities beginning with 'I'.
.

Issy-les-Moulineaux... Ivry-sur-Seine

[Sailor Steve]

Hmm...I wonder why they didn't show up on Wiki or any of the other sites I checked. Anyway, I found another more detailed site.