Yep a 109.

I 'was' going for hours over the channel lol... i returned with 6kills from that sortie

Actually it was neither. It was me hitting the wrong button while fiddling around on the server.

Sorry about that :oops:

Wow, that's just massive :o

I haven't flown online much, i just joined in today with a buddy and ended up with 3 sorties for a total of a bit more than 3 hours or so of flying :-P

As part of my thanks for your hosting service, here's my initial assessment.

Server is smooth and stable most of the times.

I do get some kind of pauses every now and then which are not something i've ever seen offline. It's a few seconds during which the screen might freeze but control inputs are still accepted and when the screen unfreezes i am at the expected position.
It's just like the video pausing for 2-3 seconds while everything else goes on normally, then it resumes and instantly synchronizes with the rest of the game. I guess it has to do with with the amount of objects and missions you describe and most of the times it doesn't detract much from the fun as it's pretty infrequent.
I suspect loading of AI and static objects along with their containing segments of terrain loaded in batches when overflown, because i can clearly see my hard drive light go on when it happens.

I did get ghost contacts (disappearing dots) today, especially near the allied ships. I was flying a CAP between Folkestone and Dover and that's where it seemed to occur for the most part (not sure if it's visible elsewhere too), a couple of formations on each side of this route.

I still had a blast nevertheless ;-)

Thanks for hosting and good luck with ironing out any remaining issues.

I only erally get those pauses when human pilots spawn in tbh. Server was pretty full up last night and showed no detrimental effects.....ping stayed the same and saw no warping at all....had no sound loss....except for the ghost planes (less frequent) i think we are pretty close!

I am really enjoying the server. Got my game running good and ya'll got your server running good and now we are having a blast.

I flew last night for about an hour in a 110C7. Started off with a furball just off of calais so I jettisoned my bombs and engaged in the fight. When that was finished up I climbed to 4.5km and began my hunt for bombers. All I came across was some HE111 returning from a sortie. I then got a message that some Blenheims were spotted in A17 and off I went.

I never found the Blennies and decided to turn for home as fuel was getting low. Yeah, even the 110 will eventually run out of fuel, lol. As I flew eastish across England on my way back to France I thought I found the Blenheims but it turned out to be HE111 inbound to London.

To my surprise there was a Spitfire chasing them and I gave him a squirt diving and head on. Saw chunks come of his plane but even a disabled Spitfire is more than a match for a 110. I tangled with him for a bit at around 4km and neither gained the advantage. As my fuel has now gotten critical I decided to nose it over and head home.

Before I even hit the coast my engines were hiccuping and I was switching tanks furiously to suck the last bit of fuel or fumes from each tank. I had relegated myself to a POW camp and was going to land at Folkestone airfield. There was a spit taking off an I couldn't resist giving him a squirt as I flew over. He crashed on his take off attempt before I could even pull the trigger! So to add insult to injury I strafed him anyhow.

I decided that my fuel tank switching tactic might actually be working and I continued out over sea to at least make it back to friendly lines if not my airfield. I got too low and was too busy clicking fuel tanks to realise I was about to plow into the channel.

Well karma got me in the end and I paid for strafing the poor pilot on his failed takeoff attempt as I plunged into the channel at a little over 300km/h. All in all phenomenal mission and a great time.

Moral of the story, while clickable is cool it's best to map buttons. ;-)

I noticed today there seems to be alot of messages saying Ai gunner/bombardier/pilot of (bombers) crashed etc etc on the server..

These are not engaged in combat because there were only a few players online, and we kind of knew what each other were doing..

Are these bombers flying into each other when they spawn or taxing?, there were no radar messages before these crashes..

I spent probably 30/45 mins flying over the channel without getting a radar message with contacts yet in between there must of been approx 10-15 bombers lost due to what was happening above.

any ideas Bliss?

I think it is the way the script gets rid of landed/despawned aircraft. Essentially the script will kill the aircraft and the message shows up. To test grab a 110 or whatever you like, spawn it in then go back and spawn in another aircraft at the same airfield. You will see your old aircraft sitting there and about 10-20 seconds, a guess, you will see the first aircraft you spawned in disappear followed by a message stating AI in 110 were killed or similar message.

Hmm, The only thing is these bombers didnt do any missions as we would of seen them or we would of had radar msgs for them before hand?

And it certainly wasnt players spawning these aircraft in as like i said there were only 5-6 off us flying..

strange

Bliss.. was it the AI that was causing the stutters tonight or just player numbers..

There was a lot on so maybe that?

On a side note I read something in a message regarding turning down the AI..please dont, you only have to look at the scores to see that alot of people are not finding any contacts lol...thats a big map and even with 60+ in there tonight i wasnt coming across loads of contacts, quite the opposite tbh..

If there wasnt as many AI bombers as there was i would of give up flying around trying to find cons..before you arrived it was mentioned by others too

It might just be me and everyone is skimming the ocean but i dont see much happening between 3.5/6k

Custom Skins? The download can be switched off from the server side?
If not, should announce warning occasionally in order not to be used then.