Stonehouse

Earlier than I planned but here you go. B17 with upgraded damage rating and now is hopefully as people expect. Unfortunately I could not get the left outer wing and left engine damage animations to work nor the stabiliser/elevators but all the other animations including the fuselage damage is working. Again not a mass of testing of bombing as I was only changing the damage table. Hopefully no one will now tell me it's too hard to shoot one down lol. Regards, Stonehouse B17G.lua

Pretty sure it is this bit that gives you a 4ship mapclasskey = "P0091000025", attribute = {wsType_Air, wsType_Airplane, wsType_Fighter, WSTYPE_PLACEHOLDER ,"Battleplanes",}, Categories = {"{78EFB7A2-FD52-4b57-A6A6-3BF0E1D6555F}", "Interceptor",}, Intruders/Strategic Bombers (current B17G, B29 setup) are limited to 1 plane per group. Battleplanes are configured by DCS are 4 per group. It's possible to try fiddling with the B17 but it may stop bombing as a result. Experimentation required.

Yes this issue was discovered a week or so ago while testing the PBY mod and confirmed by several people independently. The issue seems to indicate that DCS doesn't recognise the ships introduced by modding as valid targets and essentially from the AIs point of view they don't exist. It appears to be all mod ships by the way.

It's Markindel's call as they are his mods, I am just helping him with the lua side. I believe he feels they are all WIP and he plans to upload them to DCS user files when he feels they are ready. Cheers, Stonehouse

Sorry guys the B17 is still giving me grief and I am having trouble getting all Markindel's damage animations to work even though I don't think I have changed anything material. In any case I'll post up whatever I have for the B17 at the end of my Sunday so at least the increased survivability is there for you. The PBY and B29 seem ok on the other hand so here they are. I've been pretty busy with some real life things so while I don't think I changed anything other than the damage table on the PBY and B29 and therefore I believe they will still bomb and shoot back as previously I did not have time to test them much. Cheers, Stonehouse B-29.lua PBY5Catalina.lua

No there is no template for the B29, DOLs instructions for alternate liveries http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2361120&postcount=125

I'm hoping someone can give a better explanation of how the damage location system works. So far my understanding is you have a damage table and each entry in the table corresponds to a damage location. So eg the following refers to the left hand side of the fuselage as per comments in lines 41 - 137 in damage.lua: [4] = {critical_damage = 12, args = {154}, deps_cells={1,56}},--cabin left I believe the critical damage is the value of damage for that location that when reached triggers the damage animation referred to by the argument id in the args list. I believe this can be multiple arg ids so you could get multiple animation effects triggered. I don't know for sure if the above is correct but I think it is from trial and error. I start to get a bit lost from this bit on. The deps_cells seem to correspond to the damage_cells listed in lines 142 - 370 so the 1, 4 and 56 above would be nose left, cabin left and tail left which I think is basically the front third, middle third and back third of the left fuselage. The animation I've been given for argument 154 has different stages of damage which are displayed as the value changes so as the value increases to 1 the severity of damage displayed on the fuselage increases. Does this link to the deps_cells components reaching their critical damage value? So does this mean when nose left hits it's critical damage the first stage of damage is displayed, cabin left hitting critical damage gives next level etc? How does progressive damage work? Since the deps_cells are listed under [4] does that mean that each deps_cells location is part of the critical damage for [4]? ie if location [1] is critical damage 4 and gets damaged to that level is that 4 points of the 12 for location [4] or is the 12 points for location [4] unaffected by damage to location [1]? I also know that you can specify droppable = false for the location. I believe that this Boolean defaults to true and can be used to control whether a damage part will fall off or not when the location reaches critical damage, possible also needing the locations in the deps_cells list to also be critically damaged? If someone can talk me through the above and give me a clearer picture of how it works it would be really appreciated. Even just confirmations of things I have correctly understood or not or some clues would be great. Thanks, Stonehouse PS I really have searched by the way but the best I could find was this which doesn't really do more than something very basic and unconfirmed. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1771619&postcount=12

DOL gave his ok as long as it remains his mod so I'll look at generating a alternative lua for the B29. Someone needs to organise a basic Russian skin though for the package though.

I've contacted DOL to see if he agrees to me creating a revised Tu4 lua for his model. If he is ok then it can be a B29/Tu4 mod. You would need to install it twice though to have both available. I can't do skins so you'll need someone to put Russian stars where the USAAF markings are at least.

Hi Rob, Sorry I did mean to reply but got side tracked. If it is just a matter of strapping a new lua onto the existing shape then I can possibly do it but would want to check with DOL first as the B29 is his. If a new model is needed then I have no idea on that side at all nor skinning I'm afraid. Cheers, Stonehouse

Ok sorry I think you have the original lua. 0.53 is a hold over from the B29 - Have you got the correct lua file Westr? There is a later one which has a 0.34 here http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2806283&postcount=307 and alternative loadouts and corrected number of guns. I am working on a new version that has updated damage values to make them survive a bit more as expected. Ditto B29 and PBY. B29 and PBY are done, having a few hiccups with the B17 otherwise it would be posted already. Once that is done and hopefully no more issues found then it's onto the zero and p38 to check over the luas and correct anything that needs it and is doable by me and to see if getting the zero to drop bombs for a human pilot is achievable in the short term.

I can answer for Markindel as this question comes up often, unfortunately all the bombers will act as per modern strategic bombers in that they will break and evade attacking fighters. This is a DCS issue and the ED development team will need to make adjustments somehow to the AI in the core game when they introduce a WW2 theatre. If you look back through the thread you will find a scripted version to force them to keep formation but then you will lose their guns and bombing and these functions will also become scripted. The PBYs typically operated at most in pairs so their current DCS behaviour is accurate but the B29, B17 and any other "formation" bomber will not react correctly at present. There are a few workarounds that delay the onset of the formation breakup but inevitably it will break up. They do reform and continue the mission after they lose the fighters as long as you don't allow them the option of aborting the mission.

The B29 is AI only. The issue is when you try to use the P38 as a flyable aircraft with a human pilot....so actually you'd be better off looking at any one of the modern flyable jets but if era makes a different then it would be the F86 or Mig15 that would be closest.

I think you'd need to use the vec3 point you have and the centre co-ords of the zone and then determine the distance between the two points using mist.utils.get3DDist and then if the distance is less or equal to the radius of the zone the vec3 point is inside the zone. trigger.misc.getZone(zonename) will give you the vec3 co-ordinates for the zone centre I believe.

@Custard, you should really be using Lukrop's version and test missions these days as my last version had issues and was back in Nov 2015 and quite a few patches ago. The most common reason for lack of spawning or some aircraft spawning and then stopping is the unit name being incorrect on the template aircraft. You must get this part right (and make sure there are not leading or trailing blanks accidently introduced by hitting the space bar by mistake) for it to work. If you check that and don't find an issue then report back and we can see what we can do. Cheers, Stonehouse

I haven't looked at it because I have been looking at the bombers but with the present set up I think it may be just the AI. It may be possible to somehow to clone and hack the P51 config to do it but I have a feeling it may require a substantial amount of work equivalent to taking the full 3rd party aircraft mod route. At this point really don't know but if you think about it then it seems reasonable that you will need to code all the cockpit controls side so that when the human pilot arms the bombs and presses the button they will drop. For the AI that is all taken care off by core DCS logic I believe. At the least it would need a big chunk of an FC3 style amount of dev work is my gut feel. As it is we have only been populating the basic FM stuff in the lua's and the part with the real aerodynamics and performance values towards the bottom have not been addressed.

Also to mention that as Shahdoh suggested I am working on the critical damage values side of things to make the b17, pby etc more robust. I had some discussions with Markindel via PM and have set up a test mission for checking damage in a standard fashion. It may take some time sorry.

Is that somehow related to the gun positions too? I was previously under the impression that a gun point connector was required for each weapon - so eg a turret with 2 M2s would need two gun point connectors. This seems to be what is done in the P51, 109K and FW190D9. However working on the B17 and PBY to help out Markindel it became quickly obvious that simply specifying the weapon in the guns table in the main lua would cause there to be weapon fire from the muzzle position co-ordinates regardless of a gun point being there or not. Are you able to advise what the gun_point connector does for you? Thanks, Stonehouse

You probably have already thought of it but going through the P51s config might help. In the end you might have to compromise in what load-outs you allow in your initial release. There was a post the other day in this sub forum I think about adding 2.75inch rockets to a P51 and why it wouldn't work because the control systems were not modelled in the current P51.

Ok I had thought they were related to when to show damage special effects from the damage modelling and hadn't realised they could also be amounts of damage to cause failure of the item. Thing is to a large degree these AI aircraft will be on fire and pouring smoke but still fly and fight without penalty so if you make them too tough you'll have problems the other way. If it works the way you think then it does explain why the B29 goes down quicker than a B17 however with the current setup. Walter Schuck was the guy I was remembering by the way. There were others too but not B17s at least one guy got 6 bombers in a single mission although they were DB3s I think but still pretty amazing. Anyway it doesn't matter really and it's all about getting a reasonable config so from a playability point of view it works out as generally believable. I'll start playing around with the numbers you suggest and see what happens.

No limitation just needs the fighters to be given CAP and weapons free and have their flight path take them close enough to engage. Alternative you can order them to do so via a game master slot which is handy at times. I just tried upping the latest version of the B17 to 200 as per Shahdoh, the B29 to 220 and the PBY to 170. Sent 2 B17s, 2 B29s and a single PBY in on bombing runs on coastal towns and had 6 FW190s intercept them with a pair of FW190s on each formation. The B29s killed one, mild damage of another for two bombers destroyed, B17s killed one junked two for one B17 lost (they ended up with 3 FW190s chasing them). PBY put a few hits on one and took a 30mm or 2 in the left engine and went down on fire. I guess you need to remember that B17s flying by themselves were easy prey and while PBYs were tough they had blind spots that got them killed fairly quickly as I understand it if the enemy pilots knew what they were doing. B29s lost so many in one daylight raid to Mig15s in Korea that no more daylight raids were flown for the rest of the war. So it will be really a life number that makes them able to be destroyed as per what you'd reasonably expect without making it too impossible. Also every time you run the same mission the results are slightly different due to the aircraft doing something a little bit different which results in different hit concentrations. So as I said there is probably a need to come up with some sort of std test scenario, run it many times and note the results and try to adjust the life number up or done to get something reasonable. I will see what I can come up with anyway. <edit> I guess also to point out the comments above are generalisations, B17s were definitely tough aircraft but I am pretty sure that there were Luftwaffe aces that knocked down 4 plus in a sortie while there were also B17s that took punishment for hour after hour and came home just as Spitfires and Hurricanes sometimes emptied their magazines in to He111s but didn't shoot them down. We need to find an average life number that gives good playability for both red and blue.

Yeah that is the value that is pure playtesting. It originally was like 18 (long time ago) as per a fighter when the B29 first was released by DOL. You've upped the life value to 200 (I believe this is the only one that counts for how hard it is to shoot down an AI aircraft that is not fully modelled from a systems point of view) but really it's going to be a sort of gut feel for what is ok. Probably best to come up with some numbers via playtesting and then average them for an "official" number. Also probably should use the latest lua I posted up a little while ago (the one you uploaded was basically the quite early version of the B29 slightly tweaked) as in the latest lua the B17s shoot back now quite hard and that also helps them survive.

I *think* these are final but see how you go with them. B-29 now carries 12 .50cals and a 20mm as per a factory fresh B29A and has two different bomb loads - 40 500lbs or 12 1000lbs - I can add more if the bomb sizes are available and it seems useful. B17G largely unchanged other than I adjusted the fire_pos to match what Markindel had put into the model. PBY also had fire_pos adjustments. Since the AI currently has no fire discipline at all I reduced the fuel loads on all three and increased the amount of ammo for the turret positions so the bombers all remain a threat to attacking fighters for a longer time. I hope they work for you but obviously let me know of issues. Again note the already mentioned problem regarding shipping strikes on mod ships not working. Also to reiterate that the B29 is courtesy of DOL and the fact that he allowed me ages ago to offer up a modified version of his original lua does not take any of the credit for his work away from him. IE this plane is 100% his and he should be always given full credit for it as should Markindel for his aircraft and ships in any published mission. Cheers, Stonehouse B17G.lua PBY5Catalina.lua

Sorry for the resurrection but since this thread seems to be the closest to a reference for adding ships to the game as a mod I feel I should add some recent news. While helping markindel test out some mod aircraft I discovered that ships (all so far tested that is) introduced by the mod/tech method are not regarded by the AI as a valid shipping strike target. That is, if you pick a stock or modded aircraft with the anti shipping role, arm it appropriately and give it a waypoint action of Attack Group or Attack Unit the aircraft will ignore the designated mod ship target completely. In fact if a stock DCS world ship is nearby then the AI aircraft will attack that in preference to the designated target. I am guessing this is because of the default anti shipping role characteristics. This implies that the ship introduced through a mod is not regarded as a valid ship from DCS Worlds point of view. This has been confirmed by at least two independent tests by other forum users. For what it is worth I have an unconfirmed hunch that it is because the mod ships are not listed in db_units_ships.lua

Thanks Razor and don't worry, I took two goes before I realised my F18 test AI pilot was hitting the wrong ship and ignoring his target :music_whistling:. I guess it is confirmed then that there is an issue with mod introduced ships. You probably have better contact with the author of the CVN George Bush mod than I do, would you let them know or arrange for the news to be passed back please so perhaps they might find a solution eventually? I think they are also the authors for a couple of the other mod ships you mentioned as part of your CV group and Markindel sees this thread anyway. That probably covers 50% or more of the ship mod authors.