Stonehouse

Don't get me wrong I like real maps of real places but they do tend to be more long winded to create and a 1940s map with that era's buildings etc does not easily translate to the 1980+s nor a modern era map to the 1940s. Just taxiing out to take off ruins the immersion if you are trying represent an era that the map doesn't. So I was thinking that non era specific maps which could represent the more sparsely populated areas of the world that had not "kept up" with time could be used across multiple eras to give mission designers more scope. It also may generate some more cash for ED to further support the real maps. eg a 1940s Normandy will probably not be purchased by a person only interested in modern era jets and likely a modern Hormuz map might not be of interest to a person only interested in WW2 but representative maps that could be used for any era could interest both parties. Particularly if it became possible to name towns etc in the editor - which probably should be feasible I would think if map items had internal references to kept database operations correct and also "display names" which could be set by the mission builder. I was thinking that the representative maps would supplement the accurate ones not replace them and perhaps wrongly I assumed they would be quicker to develop. SDK would be perfect but realistically may not eventuate, just have to wait and see.

PS Noticed that I've stuffed up somewhere in the damage for the He111 and you may occasionally see the tail piece drop off but the tail remain attached problem. Working on an update to fix it

Try putting the bombers waypoints as flyover points rather than turning points and lock their ETA at the waypoint and see how you go. I have been experimenting and it seems to make them a bit less crazy until the fighter is closer. You may need to adjust the waypoint speed from the default to a slower speed or you may get an error when you try to run/save the mission

@SageOT - stopping the pursuit when borders are on was on my to-do list prior to lukrop's arrival. I would suggest you PM him or go to his github site and leave an enhancement task request as I haven't seen a post from him here for at least a couple of months so he may well have moved on or just r/l is making him scarce. You are more likely to get some response that way I think as he stated previously his intention to mainly use the github site to monitor for bugs etc and not this forum thread. Cheers, Stonehouse

Different impostor settings (ie model enlargement)? Interacting with the two skins differently? Standard 1 has white bands while the other doesn't so perhaps the imposter system works differently with each skin as a result? Maybe at medium range the standard 1 aircraft is shown as whitish pixels so becomes hard to see while the other is black/grey? No idea really just throwing out theories.

If people remember the dogfight maps from IL2 that is an analogue of what I am thinking of. A collection of representative maps which are simple with a few airfields, a few towns and strategic features that are not era specific and could be used to represent any battlefield from WW2 through to the latest period in DCS. An example might be a desert map with a river delta with a port at the delta and a few small towns with non era specific buildings (eg no modern glass and steel towers) and some roads/tracks. This could represent North Africa for WW2 missions or somewhere in the Gulf of Aden/Arabian Sea or Libyan area coast for modern missions. Something with a SE Asia feel could represent Burma/Malaya/Vietnam etc and cover multiple eras depending on the planes and objects inserted into the mission. A few threads down someone mentioned an open sea map. Pretty obviously this also fits this scheme of representative maps usable for more than one era. A largish number of people I know who are interested in WW2 flying won't transfer to DCS simply because the current terrain ruins their immersion. I believe they are representative of a lot of the guys flying Clod/IL2 still. Normandy will solve some of that but it seems a labour intensive process to produce a map like Normandy which seems to place a limit on how many maps will be produced in the near term. It also is an era specific map meaning the people flying modern aircraft won't find it fits their missions well. Due to the sparseness of objects and generic nature of the "dogfight" maps it seems possible that these could be produced with less effort for the dev team doing the work and sell well as a DLC and also open up literally huge amounts of mission making opportunities for any era of aircraft found in DCS. The 3 example maps mentioned above by themselves would keep people happy for a long time and bring more people into DCS and make the waiting for the more elaborate real world maps easier.

Just to advise that after learning a lot from the P-38 this is now working for the Zero for human pilots. One thing though, historically the Zero took 60kg bombs only so I have used the SC-50 as the closest match. I am hoping there is no dependency on the FW190 or BF109 but there might be. In which case perhaps I'll change it to the FAB-100. Not sure when Markindel will re-release the Zero but guessing it won't be too long.

Few thoughts: It is a heavy plane empty P38 weighs more than a loaded P51 I wasn't able to put 100% real weights in place as the AI did not seem able to take off. Thrust and Pmax values are double the values of a P51 but this didn't seem to make any difference (even when I went crazy and made it 10 times). My temp solution was to reduce empty weight until the AI was able to take off. Currently this is 4550 and should be 5342. <edit> so you may be experiencing this sort of thing ie lack of thrust or too much drag or not enough lift etc. No real work has been done on the SFM side so potentially flaps do underperform. Currently the values are as the P51.

Ok with me as long as you realise that without the SFM side being fully correct it will probably do what you want at 30K but not do things right lower down. Not every B17 raid went in a 30K, I am pretty sure that a lot of the stuff done on the French coast was more like 15-20k and would be weather dependent in any case and height over the target would be governed by predicted cloud cover I would have imagined. I've no problem with people doing experimentation however :D

The real SFM side of these mods is pretty much not really there, I fill in the upper part of the lua for speeds and weights, damage model, gun mounts etc and there is a very generic SFM section usually based of something close like the P51 for fighters or cloning that bit from the B29 simply because it works "OK" as is. Both getting the data in usable form, interpreting and converting into DCS useful values and plugging it into the lua and then flight testing it to see if it performs as per the real thing is a very large job. I think they will have to be tweaked bit by bit over time and hopefully sooner or later Eagle Dynamics or it's 3rd party partners start delivering AI SFM WW2 aircraft which can replace what is being done now. So will note your comments but honestly I have enough to do for now with getting Markindel's aircraft mods usable plus real life demands. Detailed SFM work will have to come later on. By the way I have a question mark over the mach number in any case - I am not sure if it is meant to represent Vne or just a straight conversion of max speed to mach. I am leaning towards the former right now due to a few things I have seen recently. I kind of see this exercise as a bootstrap to WW2 so it happens now/soon rather than a long time down the track. What is really still missing is generic maps like the dogfight maps from IL2. eg a generic desert coast area with a few roads, 5 or 6 towns ditto airfields, delta with a large town and port facilities. Make the buildings fairly era generic to allow jets to use them for late 70s/early 80s type conflicts. ED would I think do commercially quite well out of a DLC containing say 3 or 5 generic style maps from no particular era that could be used to be representative of many different places and times.

He111 is getting there. I've been having trouble adding MG151,131 and using the Browning .303 to act as a MG80 so you might see it with M2 .50cal placeholders. Although it may be a good thing as I am not sure whether adding the Luftwaffe guns might make a dependency on the Fw190 and Bf109. Still have the damage side to look at too.

Thanks Eddie they're great! I actually didn't think you'd do anymore after the last set. The bug must have bitten you lol.

Getting the real weights was part of the issues we were having. Ended up a bit lower weights than the values we should have. I think more than a few of the SFM values are not correct so setting the real weights caused issues with the AI taking off. An empty P38 weighs more than a loaded P51 so could also be a side effect of using the P51 somehow as increasing the max thrust and Pmax values didn't seem to help at all, almost like one of the engines isn't producing thrust as far as DCS is concerned even though the prop is spinning and all seems good and having double or more the thrust for a P51 in the lua. I'll keep reading up on what doco I have (which isn't much) to see I can find anything to solve it anyway.

:( Bugger they haven't shown up yet

Thanks Eddie, will grab them this evening after I get home from work.

I suppose it depends on how the devs define "incoming threats" if this is just SAMs etc then it is not a bug and passive defence is working ok, I assume active defences in that case is referring to ECM. If the definition includes aircraft however then it is a bug. If it is not a bug then my wish list post is actually valid as it was requesting an AI override that didn't manoeuver against aircraft and simply used passive and active defences to look after itself while maintaining it's flight plan. <edit> ok I just tried passive defence and evade against a sam site. On passive defence the aircraft didn't alter flight plan until after it was first hit (not sure if that was due to damage or the AI avoiding further missiles) and on evade it did try to evade incoming fire as soon as the first missile began closing, including dropping stores. So Sniper you are correct and it actually is not a bug and "incoming threat" doesn't include aircraft. Guessing it probably does include aircraft launched missiles though. Thread can marked as resolved. Sorry I should have tried that test first, it was just that the test team person seemed pretty definite that what I asked for in the wish list post was already available when it in fact is not.

I recently made a wish list post for a AI option to force an AI aircraft to follow the plotted flight plan regardless of attacking aircraft but still be able to use flares and tail defense guns etc to protect itself. What I was after was a representation of where the aircraft's crew has been given the brief or has decided to hit their target at all costs and avoid manoeuvers to save themselves in order to achieve their goal. Someone from the test team replied that this option was already available although they didn’t say which one. Some reading of the manual led me to the passive defence option, as per the manual: "Passive defense – utilize passive and active defense measures, but no defensive maneuvering against incoming threats." Unfortunately this option in practice doesn't seem to stop an AI aircraft from manoeuvring when an enemy aircraft gets close. Shown below is an example using a B52 and a Mig 15 with the B52 set for passive defence on its initial waypoint and no other advanced options. The role is ground attack. The B52 has a straight and level flight path plotted but always breaks to avoid the Migs attack. This seems to go against the manual's description of the passive defence option. In fact the only one that stops manoeuvring is "no reaction" but this also stops defences from working. Passive defence as it is now seems to be exactly the same as the evade options. It is 100% reproducible so far. If I need to do anything else to get this to work could someone please advise or if it is actually a bug could it be logged for fixing in the future please as it seems to have been an existing option not a new one and would be really useful to have work. Thanks, Stonehouse

Unfortunately no reaction is just that. They just don't react to anything even to use passive defences which is not what I am after. Thank you though. <edit> Sorry this is getting more convoluted than I planned. Apologies Weta but it turns out what I posted first up is not actually available at this time. The passive defence option doesn't regard aircraft as an incoming threat to be passive towards and passive defence AI only ignore SAMs and I think perhaps aircraft launched missiles and therefore what I wished is still valid. I suppose it is an extension of the passive defence option so maybe a tick box to include aircraft or a drop down list of threat types to not react to is my imagining of what it might look like if it is built. Thanks and sorry again for the back and forth.

Thanks eddie! They all look really great!

Ok thanks eddie. Be glad to get the other B17 skins if you post them up in any case.

Looks great Eddie. Do the bort numbers work correctly? So one skin can represent a big group of aircraft without repetition? PS If you are feeling keen and generous could you take the current B29 skin and redo it with Russian stars instead of US markings? A Tu-4 is slowly happening although a bit harder than expected as the correct gun is only in the Mig15.

Yes but it doesn't seem to stop them from manoeuvring when an enemy aircraft gets close. Screen shot below is a B52 and a Mig 15 with the B52 set for passive defence. B52 has a straight and level flight path plotted but always breaks to avoid the Migs attack. From the manual Passive defense – utilize passive and active defense measures, but no defensive maneuvering against incoming threats. Also I don't know if things like the tail guns on the B52 and Tu95 would be allowed to fire under this option. I think probably they would be since I assume they would be regarded as an active defence measure and if that is the case then that would be fine if the aircraft did not perform defensive maneuvering as the manual suggests. Perhaps it is an already logged bug? Or to stop the B52 performing breaks are other advanced options also required? eg ROE? That would seem to contradict the manual's description of the passive defence option? Thanks, Stonehouse

Cockpit hits from the rear are very rare but you often get nose left or right/cabin left or right hits. I don't know for sure how this maps out onto the fuselage but I interpret it as meaning nose to under the cockpit on whatever side and the region above the wing root - all pretty sensitive areas on a B17. Yes all from rear/rear quarter attacks - I assume at the time of firing there is sufficient offset to hit the side of the nose area even though the AI seems to be shooting at the rear of the plane. I do see tracers go past the tail and hit the nose. Not noticing them going for the engines and wings much mostly the fuselage - which I guess is consistent with a generic AI shooting at a modern jet aircraft as the fuselage is where most of the fragile stuff is these days. I think to a large degree the damage modelling is what it is until ED or a 3rd party builds a bomber or other similar large WW2 aircraft and adds code to handle it.

Only place I can really think of is some of the actual control surfaces like the ailerons - they were something like 6 or 8 and to me this was not right as they were like a third of something like a wing or a fuselage portion damage value so I cut them down to I think 3 or thereabouts. If a B17 goes down quickly using the latest lua I usually will find that it has taken several cannon hits in the nose/cabin/cockpit locations plus some general damage around the same areas, I feel this is reasonable as killing the flight crew and severe damage around the cockpit would usually from what I have read cause loss of the aircraft even if it was largely undamaged elsewhere. If this doesn't happen then I usually see the B17s fight on for a long time and often destroy or damage enemy fighters enough to escape. The gun positions also have a ridiculous amount of ammo compared to real life load outs because of the way the AI uses the guns. Currently each 50 cal has 5000 rounds. In reality I believe the tail gun for instance had about 650 rounds per gun so about 1300 in total. Nose guns had much less ammo, cheek guns for instance only usually had about 300 rounds per gun I believe. The mod plane is carrying around 50000 rounds (5000 x 10) of 50 cal so that the AI can fire for a seemingly reasonable time, trade off is I reduced the max fuel enough to allow the ammo weight. If I hadn't done this then the aircraft would defenceless in about a min. PS winmerge is your friend. Free and very useful for comparing files.

Add the ability to override the AI changing flight path and attitude and speed due to external threats such as attacking aircraft and instead force them to follow the plotted flight plan as closely as damage permits. Perhaps if not too difficult allow a % damage level or if they can no longer follow the flight plan at which point they will jettison their stores and attempt to RTB and resume normal evade tactics to enemy attacks.