Skewgear

The Spitfire LF.Mk.IX came in two main armament variants: the 2x 20mm cannon + 4x .303" machine guns, which is what is currently modelled in DCS, and one with 2x 20mm + 4x .50" guns. Modelling this should be a small task: copy the existing aircraft and swap the appropriate weapon entries. The ammo capacity was slightly reduced for the 50s. Our in-game aircraft has the type C wing, which was the universal wing capable of mounting both machine gun types with no further modification required: http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/concise-guide-to-spitfire-wing-types.html/2

Presenting the 4YA Project Overlord One Life Event! 1-Life 1-Plane Event on the 4YA Project Overlord WW2 server! Next event: 25th October 2022 at 2000UTC: https://projectoverlord.co.uk/blog/2022/10/25/new-one-life-special-event-saturday-29th-october/ For this 2-hour long event, each player will get 1 aircraft to fly and fight with until they're shot down or crash. The last pilots standing win the tournament. Experience the thrill of flying and fighting in a scenario where survival matters as much as splashing your opponents. Tactical flying and teamwork will be crucial to survival. If you are interested, please sign up in the spreadsheet under the link below. The sign-up will close this Friday at 2000 UTC. Please also join the 4YA Discord as the passwords for each side will be distributed there to event participants. This event will need a decent balance between the teams (in the past many have wanted to fly Allied), so if you would be willing to switch to Axis in case of imbalance, please put a cross in the field "Can fly Axis". We also want GCIs for this event! Some familiarity with LotATC would be helpful. Active use of SRS or text chat is required. Previous results: https://projectoverlord.co.uk/project-overlord-4ya-one-life-event-results/ If there are any questions, please ask here or in the 4YA Discord's #ww2-general channel. This event repeats every other week or so and this post will be updated accordingly.

The current Normandy map is built using land class scenery with vectors to describe roads, rivers and coastlines etc. It's very old (mature? Well understood? Outdated?) tech. It happens to work very well for producing large scale maps provided you don't fly too high and spot the repetition between land class areas. Unfortunately the less variety in areas, the more they stick out. This is the case with England in the current Normandy. On the flip side, less variety means less overhead - and better in game performance. I can't see a full scale overhaul with the most modern scenery building tech. There are lots of unconvincing details around coast lines especially, though the rest of it is reasonable. What's the total market, 10 or 15,000 customers? And all that for free? Can't see a full rebuild coming. We'll get some bigger land class areas with better definition of towns and cities. I'm more interested in features like Dreux airfield and others around Paris. That opens up longer range bomber and escort / intercept missions.

New 4YA Project Overlord server rules, as published earlier this week on the 4YA WWII Discord: 1. Be respectful of others. Excessive bad language or any abusive behaviour is not tolerated here. 2. Respect the military simulation (milsim) ethos. This is not an instant dogfight server. The emphasis here is on teamwork with your side, helping your comrades and completing the mission objectives from the briefing and F10 menu. 3. No intentional team-killing. Learn how to identify aircraft from each side before engaging. Allied aeroplanes normally have invasion stripes on their wings. 4. Use of SRS or ingame text chat is mandatory. Players who connect to the server but fail to acknowledge text or SRS callouts will be returned to spectator at moderators' discretion. SRS is the standard DCS in-game radio addon. It is free and can be downloaded from www.dcssimpleradio.com. Radio procedure on Project Overlord is informal and easy to pick up by listening. Our players are helpful and welcoming to new users. 5. Remember that 4YA has a WW2 Training Server. It is named "[4YA] TRAINING 24/7 CAUCASUS PVE V2.0 WW2/WWII BETA UK". If you want to learn about your aeroplane's weapons or flight handling, it is best to start here where unit labels, external views and the F10 map are all fully enabled. 6. Do not disconnect or change slot in combat while being chased. This is very bad manners and spoils the immersion in the game for others. If your pilot is killed count to 10 before changing to a fresh aircraft.

I'm fascinated to learn more about the AI engine out glide pathing and decision making. We have missions on the Normandy map that typically involve B-17 formations at heights of 25,000ft or so. When damaged, they drop out of formation but then spend up to half an hour drifting down at very low forward speeds (~100kts) with 1 or more failed engines before trying to land at Carpiquet airfield. Invariably they pick Carpiquet no matter which coalition controls it or which side's vehicles are there. I know the next question is "have you got a track". I'll see if I can set up a test in the next week or 2 to capture this behaviour.

I'm very happy with the performance of AAA in WWII, with one glaring exception. Most of the time it misses, whenever it hits it tends to be because players approach AAA units with minimal or zero evasive action. The exception is UK and US 3.7" heavy AAA. These units did not get the accuracy changes made to the Third Reich Flak36/37/41 units last year. The US and UK units still aim perfectly under all conditions, which ruins the in game immersion.

4YA PROJECT OVERLORD - VERSION 4 - MAJOR MISSION OVERHAUL Today the Project Overlord mission development team are proud to unveil our initial Version 4 missions. These new releases include air-to-air objectives for the first time, overhauled bomber raids making full use of the south and east of the current Normandy map, and - of course - lots of rich historically accurate detail! The three newest missions are 10th June, 17th June and 24th June. Each includes: * New air to air patrol zones and road recce as mission objectives * Moving convoys as search-and-destroy objectives * More historically accurate bomber raids flying to the farthest reaches of the Normandy map * Revamped static ground targets in historically accurate strike locations for both sides * Expanded mission points system: Kills as well as RTBs now count towards the mission points We have worked hard to bring these new features to the 4YA Project Overlord community. This is a semi-experimental release and some issues might appear: these are the most ambitious large scale multi player DCS WW2 missions ever released on a public server. Please let us know if you encounter any problems. Over the next few weeks we will be publishing blog posts about the historical background to the new missions and their features, as well as explaining how the coalition points system (now visible on the F10 menu) works. Please leave suggestions for future updates in the appropriate 4YA channel, and don’t forget to report bugs whenever you spot them. See you in the virtual skies!

From the 4YA Project Overlord server / mission design side we're enforcing no settings that should affect this. If repair is possible (most of the time it isn't at certain places such as Carpiquet airfield) then from our point of view everything should be repairable as normal.

I don't think there is any real world wartime guidance on not overcooling the engine, mainly because the Spitfire is well known for running hot and overheating on the ground. Probably something to do with the 80C cutout in the radiator circuit which is not correctly modelled in DCS, which I find strange given what the module manual says. Perhaps modern operators, who run at what us gamers would consider very low power settings, might have some kind of internal wisdom they share with their pilots. One major operator of two-seaters trains their pilots to select -5lbs boost and 1850rpm when turning downwind in the circuit, and I imagine that leaves temps on the lower side. The BBMF flies their LF.IX, MK356, at cruise settings between 1800rpm and 2100rpm, no higher than +4lbs boost. Their limitations document for the Spitfire IX also says normal oil pressure is 60-80psi at 0lbs boost and 2000rpm. In DCS I've never seen oil pressure lower than 90psi with the engine running, no matter the power setting or temperatures.

Dear players, It has been a while since our last WW2 event - so here we present: **1-Life 1-Plane Event** on the 4YA OPERATION WW2 server! 17th September 2022 at 2000UTC For this 2-hour long event, each player will get 1 aircraft to fly and fight with until they're shot down or crash. The last pilots standing wins the tournament. Experience the thrill of flying and fighting in a scenario where survival matters as much as splashing your opponents. Tactical flying and teamwork will be crucial to survival. If you are interested, please sign-up in the spreadsheet under the link below. The sign-up will close on the 16th September at 2000 UTC. This event will require a decent balance between the teams to be fun for everyone, so if you would be willing to switch to Axis in case of imbalance, please put a cross in the field "Can fly Axis". Sign-up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1omsSrZEZSpP-kP3L2fcgXf5HUk-tQBmWfRYQiuwxeTw/edit#gid=0

The ingame modelling of switches and their covers seems to have been done so cockpit builders can associate each and every movement with a physical switch. Not just in the Mosquito but in every module. Quite a nice touch. It would be nice to have some extra binds created to bypass the switch stage, though. I don't mind as I fly left handed and use the mouse for a lot of actions but fiddling with the flap lock on final gets hair raising.

4YA OPERATION WW2 CHANGELOG VERSION 3 RELEASE - 25TH AUGUST 2022 This major update to all of the Project Overlord 4YA WW2 missions brings performance and stability improvements as well as some tweaks to the missions you all know and enjoy. Removal of ingame scoreboard. It's known to be inaccurate - your kills are still visible in our Discord server - and, of course, www.ProjectOverlord.co.uk/stats Performance improvements that should reduce black flickers and random stutters Mission points display on F10 menu - this shows the percentage of points completed in the mission. Points are awarded for successful bomber escorts (more than half of aircraft making it back to England) and completion of ground and anti-shipping tasks. The more targets your side completes, the closer you get to mission victory! Revamped EWRS to cure reliability problems. The script will run every 7 minutes to inform you of the closest two enemy aircraft. More upgrades to EWRS are planned for future releases. Weather changes to introduce more clouds and to bring the Project Overlord experience closer to historically accurate weather data. Display of airfield labels on the F10 map. You can now see at a glance whether an airfield is open or closed and what capabilities it has. (repairs, fuel, bombs, rockets) Allied heavy AAA swapped for German 88mm guns due to over-accuracy of the 3.7" guns Other updates: Allied airfields now have water in stock for P-47 rearm/refuel taskings following ED bugfix. 6th July 1944 now includes another historically accurate Allied ground target: strike raid on Evreux airfield, as discovered in 416th Bombardment Group records for that day Enjoy!

This is something that worries me. Project Overlord has its hard-core players who are very happy flying with minimal external aids. We've all memorised the terrain and know where to go and what to do. But for the newbie this is a confusing and demoralising experience. You don't even know which parking stand you're on at the airfield you spawn in at. Unless you know how to mark the knee board map you may never really know where you are unless you climb to altitude and compare it with real maps. While peacefully flying around an empty sky you suddenly get shot down by someone you haven't even seen, let alone had a chance to fight against. Similarly, I'm convinced nobody reads the ingame briefing notes until they're told about it (LAlt + B) and many players don't bother with SRS because theyre too shy or don't have native English competency. Turning on things like BDA, labels and external views certainly makes the gaming more enjoyable and lowers the barrier to entry but destroys the USP of Project Overlord - the very reason people come and fly with us. 4YA WW2's growth in player numbers is steady, so I don't think we're doing anything wrong as such, but the learning curve is very steep. The 4YA training server is a good place to master the very basics of flying and operating weapons but we don't have an intermediate step in the DCS WW2 world between that and full fidelity WW2 combat.

Part of the problem is nobody's willing to invest the time in attracting and building a new community. Instead you've got the same 500-600 players per month flitting between the same servers. Starting a new WW2 server becomes an exercise in cannibalising the existing player base and finding increasingly imaginative ways of saying "don't play over there, play here instead". There's no growth. A small team with imagination could easily build something compelling that attracts the jet players to try something new. But it needs a lot of dedicated marketing. We've talked internally about bringing the mainstream 4YA PVE style missions with BDA and F10 map fully enabled to our WW2 training server and perhaps as the season changes we'll dedicate some time to making that a reality. If it brings new players to the WW2 fold, that's a benefit for all of us. Project Overlord is great fun but is very hard core by its nature. It's not really a place to learn, and if DCS WW2 multiplayer is going to grow, we need well-marketed servers aimed at newbies and casuals.

Object export was turned off this afternoon. Again, and this goes to everyone reading: if you have concerns about something on the 4YA servers, please come and raise it with us directly. You can PM any of the staff who've posted on this thread or open a support ticket in our Discord server, if you're on Discord. Encouraging everyone to install and use cheat software, especially when that's your very first response after discovering something's not right, is simply going to get you banned. Responsible, community-minded players don't do that sort of thing. We're committed to maintaining a safe and fun server environment that's free from cheats and malicious software.

If your neighbour leaves his front door unlocked and wide open, do you: 1. Contact your neighbour directly to tell him his door is unlocked and suggest that he might want to come and close the door. 2. Erect a billboard on the street with a big arrow pointing to your neighbour's house saying "THIS HOUSE IS WIDE OPEN, EVERYONE PARTY HERE UNTIL THE OWNER COMES TO LOCK THE DOOR!" -Slayer- decided on option 2. He's edited his posts, as you can see, to delete all the bits where he encourages other players to use his cheat. There is a sensible, mature and responsible way to disclose exploits in good faith. This episode was none of those.

The cheater's account is permanently banned. End of conversation. If you don't understand how to behave in our community, go and play somewhere else. You're not welcome here.

After careful deliberation, the 4YA WW2 admin team has decided to ban -Slayer- permanently for the following reasons: 1. Use of cheat software. Cheating in any form goes against the ethos of the 4YA servers (all of them, not only WW2) and is not tolerated. Furthermore, an existing loophole does not in any way justify the use of a cheat software. 2. Active distribution of cheat software and promotion of its use in DCS forums. Since cheating itself is violating the server rules, enticing others to do so is punishable as well. The 4YA WW2 admin team condemns the use of any form of cheats. Any violation of this rule will result in a permanent ban. As is the case with all bans, the player in question has the possibility to make an appeal in the 4YA Discord. I'd like to point out that we all have access to Google Translate. Editing your Russian-language posts on this forum hours later doesn't mean we haven't read the original versions. -Slayer- can open a ticket on the 4YA Discord to appeal against his permanent ban if he wishes. To be clear: the ban is not for telling us about something players can use to cheat. It is for encouraging other players to use the cheat software, which he did here and on the Russian language ED forums. -Slayer- made no attempt to privately or directly notify 4YA staff about this problem. Had he done so, the outcome might have been different.

I frequently see single shot 30mm kills while watching from from god mode on our server. Key is to get really close (2 or 3 aircraft lengths) from low 6 and then plant the 30mm into the mid fuselage from underneath. Rarely fails to take the tail off. From dead astern it takes many more shots for whatever reason.

From what I remember of the ED Discord discussion from months ago the Mosquito FB.VI's main air bottles are towards the tail (presumably for the ballast effect?) meaning the pipework to the guns runs for most of the fuselage length and therefore accounts for most of the delay between pilot pressing the trigger and shots being fired. There was a suggestion that the difference in pipe length between the outboard and inboard guns is the cause of the firing delay. Somewhere out there is an RAF AP that specifically details electro pneumatic aircraft gun firing mechanisms. I can't remember its number or title but the Mosquito AMM that's available online does reference it. That's the only part of the Mosquito trigger mech that's a mystery at the moment. I can easily imagine why you wouldn't want all guns firing in precise synchronisation but similarly, maintaining a specific firing offset is a lot of overhead in wartime.

It was resolved over on the ED discord. Someone involved in keeping PZ474 airworthy who advised on the ED Mosquito explained how the pneumatic system as modelled is accurate. The firing solenoids at the gun end of the firing circuit have an inherent actuation delay, apparently.

Ah, beta and stable have merged. You won't see the server after the next open beta release when the branches split again. Recommend you upgrade to open beta, there are guides out there on doing that without redownloading the entire game again.

We don't have a stable release version. Server runs on open beta only. Are you sure you were flying on 4YA? There's a night mission in the rotation (5th/6th June) and we have a few dawn/dusk starts and finishes. Both sides flew quite a lot at those times of day, some Spitfire squadrons didn't RTB from their final sorties until after 11pm in the days after D-Day. The Luftwaffe carried out most of its effective raids at night to avoid the Allied day fighter patrols, totalling ~150 loitering on CAP over the beaches ready for GCI to call them in.

Our latest update released over the weekend, comprising all ten missions in our rotation: 6th AUGUST 2022 4YA OPERATION WW2 CHANGELOG - Changes to Allied heavy AAA (added Director to all units, adjusted skill to compensate for their higher precision) - Increased amount of AAA units near the front line - Adjusted position of Allied radar stations to precisely match the historical locations - Added hot-start P-47s to 22nd June mission - Reduced critical health limit for destruction of bunkers in 28th June mission There's also a little insight into our thinking on flak guns and their placement over on our dev blog: https://projectoverlord.co.uk/blog/2022/08/07/research-populating-project-overlords-mission-from-combat-reports/ Our next targets for updates will be lowering the cloud base and setting weather to a rough approximation of historical conditions on each day (including turbulence), and enabling random birdstrikes at low level. Both of these are subject to ingame performance not taking a big hit. Weather conditions at the moment are far nicer than they were in reality because rendering thick low clouds in particular is a real tax on performance. But after months of relentless optimisation we think we have the overhead to make some cautious changes and enhance the experience on Project Overlord. See you in the skies!

If you want to expand DCS WW2 you need a group prepared to put time and effort into building a community around a new server. Project Overlord / 4YA WW2 is what it is because it's got an active vibrant community who enjoy what's on offer and make the whole experience fun and rewarding for others. There's a few PVE multiplayer servers out there but they have no community so there's no reason to join them and fly. Thus all those servers are dead. A random YouTuber might mention one and give it a brief blip of users but that effect lasts about 2-3 days max. Without a community there's nothing worth sticking around for. On topic: The B-26 has a crew of 5 made up of pilot, co pilot, bomb aimer, gunner, radio operator. That's a lot of slots to fill in one go but as it works with the Huey, maybe it would work on a WW2 bomber?