Shahdoh

its what was available for a german bomber at the moment.

Very impressive flying! Bravo!

Thanks, will have to fix that speed as well. You will need to try my modified B17 I will use for my campaign. Its a LOT tougher.

So far, frame rates looking pretty good, without all the tracers from the bombers, not as much impact there. Bomber defense is handled by another script which seems less impact then the tracers. Will be going several hours. I will be shutting it down around 6:30-7 Eastern as I have another engagement. Will probably be doing this again tomorrow and should be able to go later into the evening as well.

Starting at 3PM Eastern on 14 June 2016, I will have a server up to demonstrate/test the WWII campaign I am developing. I will swap between 2 different demo missions, 1 with allies attacking with bombers and the other with axis doing the bombing attack. I will start 1 of these missions every other hour (maybe every hour, depends on the previous mission length). Requirements to participate: Teamspeak - Connect to 73.24.143.155 ( I will give out the Password to the server there) JSGME to install the WWII items mod - I will give you the link to DL the mod when you get on TS Best if you have over 60FPS on MP servers, missions heavily scripted and can bring a lessor system to a crawl. Additional info on the campaign idea can be found here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=167940

hughlb, no fair using real pictures of Vegas for DCS screenshots!! LOL just kidding, beautiful shots!!

Make sure that all waypoints for the bomber have the desired speed, that may help. The max speed in the .lua looked fine to me (I have seen this issue as well). Though like other things the AI does, seems to override settings and uses its own.

Yes, but at a cost. You have to turn off all offensive(bombers can not directly drop bombs) and defensive(bombers guns will not fire) capabilities. To solve those 2 issues, I have scripted the bombing and defensive capabilities. See this thread for details: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=168153 The bombing is convincing enough, and you do not want to hang out inside the enemy bomber formations for any length of time, you will get chewed up. This is a temporary solution until ED changes the bomber AI. So far, all those that have tested the missions are pretty convinced of their effectiveness.

Yeah, thats what I tried to do, but the mist function is giving me an error. I decided to do the math directly with the point information I have and that worked. Seems I am somehow passing the wrong values to the mist function or something, but anyways, I got it working. Thanks

I have a vec3 position and I have a zone. I am looking for a function that will tell me if that point is in the zone or not. I use mist but do not see a comparable function. I have tried the mist.utils.get3DDist but am getting a 3627: attempt to index local 'point1' (a nil value) error even though when I display both points, they seem valid (both have the required y,x,z values). Thank you.

I figured as much ;) Just letting you know what has been working well for us as far as speeeds and why.

Not totally based on reality, but we have been using a taxi speed script on the VA server for a while now. Its main intention was just to stop taxiway/ramp take offs. We have the warning kick in at 35knots and then we remove them(move to spectator) if they go over 50. We tried higher, but was allowing some in the props to take off anyways. We get some complaints its to slow (even though a 40-45 knot taxi is pretty quick) but it does indeed serve the purpose of stopping the annoying taxiway/ramp takeoffs.

Stonehouse, take a look at the Crit locations(I think thats what they are called) on my lua file for the B17, I also bumped those numbers up as well. If you can find a historical report of any single pilot downing 4 or more B17's by himself in a single sortie, would like to hear about it. Really doubt it is possible.

I would look into toughening these a/c up quite a bit. I know the B-17 and B29 are quite fragile. Some recent tests had a single Bf109 taking down 7 B17's and damaging 2 others. For my campaign, I have toughened up the B17 to where a 109 MIGHT be able to take down 3 or 4 if hit in the right spots. Take a look and test it and see what you think. I know some values are probably way off and need to be adjusted. Think I was working with an early copy, also, only a rough understanding of what relates to what. My goal was to allow the bomber to soak up more damage so a single fighter could not take down an entire formation. B17G.lua

Soon I will be posting signups for single mission tests. For those, the bomber mod will be handed out. And when we feel we got the bombers damage model finished up, will make it openly available.

In the future, will probably end up creating a challenge page or something. For now, we are still testing how well this will work and if the numbers check out. If interested in helping test, organize 2 groups of 4 to 8 players per side (can be more for reserves/spectators/live streamers to a limit). and we will try to schedule a test run. This campaign idea is kind of a long haul deal, will take several weeks to play out. Thanks for your interest.

I came up with this to serve as a temporary solution to how the AI reacts. It will come down to what is more important for your mission, do you have to see the bombers dropping their bombs and shooting back at the fighters, or do you want them to stay in formation. With the AI programmed the way they are, you have to choose which works best for you. For this to work, you have to disable the offensive and defensive abilities of the bomber (set up a single aircraft in the group, this is so you can create custom formations with the following command). The code for the bombing is really quite simple. I had initially stripped down and reworked the flak script to create it, but looking at the results, would have been simpler to just do it directly. Had I been more of a coder, would have realised this from the start: Carpet bombing script: It simply tracks the location of the aircraft, once it is in a designated trigger area, gets its position, randomizes it a small bit for bomb floating around due to winds or whatever, and then creates the explosion on the ground. This is setup on each individual bomber so that if that bomber is destroyed or diverted even, it wont be in the trigger area and thus, no "bombs" dropped. Only creates explosions for the bomber that is in the zone. 1 bomber, 1 series of explosions, 30 bombers, 30 sets of explosions, roughly, but directly linked, to the location of those bombers. If you are concerned about the number of bombs per bomber, adjust the size of your trigger area with the airspeed you have the bombers set to, so that the number of seconds inside the trigger area matches the loadout of the bomber. Crude, yes but it works. For the bombers defense, I again reworked the flak script so that a moving trigger area follows the bomber, currently set at 300m. When the enemy a/c gets inside that zone, it randomizes a chance to hit, currently set to 2.5%(checks on the standard timing of 1 per second). When it does, creates a minimized flak explosion in a random location around the fighter, intended to only pepper the fighter with damage. When the fighter gets within 100m, the chance goes up to 4%. I used the ability to allow for multiple guns per bomber, just like the number of flak guns on the ground, but in testing, even just 1 at that low percent chance to hit is quite effective. This bubble is around each and every bomber, thus have the bombers in a good formation, and they will protect each other, get one separated and it becomes easier prey. Bomber Defense script: These both set up in the Mission editor like setting up the flak areas, examples are in the code remarks. Video of this in action: Will be using these in my WWII campaign idea: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=167940 /Salute

Yeah, you have to chose for now unfortunately. It (bomber defense script) really does work quite well, some say to well, but if you read about the tactics used, they had to minimize their time closing on the bombers or they would get chewed to pieces. Get in, get some hits in just a few seconds, get away and rinse repeat. The Bomber defense script simulates that pretty accurately IMHO, you just don't get to "see" them fire at you.

I came up with this to serve as a temporary solution to how the AI reacts. It will come down to what is more important for your mission, do you have to see the bombers dropping their bombs and shooting back at the fighters, or do you want them to stay in formation. With the AI programmed the way they are, you have to choose which works best for you. For this to work, you have to disable the offensive and defensive abilities of the bomber (set up a single aircraft in the group, this is so you can create custom formations with the follow command). The code for the bombing is really quite simple. I had initially stripped down and reworked the flak script to creat it, but looking at the results, would have been simpler to just do it directly. Had I been more of a coder, would have realised this from the start: Carpet bombing script: It simply tracks the location of the aircraft, once it is in a designated trigger area, gets its position, randomizes it a small bit for bomb floating around due to winds or whatever, and then creates the explosion on the ground. This is setup on each individual bomber so that if that bomber is destroyed or diverted even, it wont be in the trigger area and thus, no "bombs" dropped. Only creates explosions for the bomber that is in the zone. 1 bomber, 1 series of explosions, 30 bombers, 30 sets of explosions, roughly, but directly linked, to the location of those bombers. If you are concerned about the number of bombs per bomber, adjust the size of your trigger area with the airspeed you have the bombers set to, so that the number of seconds inside the trigger area matches the loadout of the bomber. Crude, yes but it works. For the bombers defense, I again reworked the flak script so that a moving trigger area follows the bomber, currently set at 300m. When the enemy a/c gets inside that zone, it randomizes a chance to hit, currently set to 2.5%(checks on the standard timing of 1 per second). When it does, creates a minimized flak explosion in a random location around the fighter, intended to only pepper the fighter with damage. When the fighter gets within 100m, the chance goes up to 4%. I used the ability to allow for multiple guns per bomber, just like the number of flak guns on the ground, but in testing, even just 1 at that low percent chance to hit is quite effective. This bubble is around each and every bomber, thus have the bombers in a good formation, and they will protect each other, get one separated and it becomes easier prey. Bomber Defense script: These both set up in the Mission editor like setting up the flak areas, examples are in the code remarks. Couple recent videos of this in action: and the stress test of 24 B17s (not recommended just yet, ended up crashing DCS, but looks cool) https://www.twitch.tv/dcs_shahdoh/v/71026460 Will be using these in my WWII campaign idea: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=167940 /Salute

Thought so, I have my own workaround where I script the bombing attack and also have a bomber defense script. So the bombers stay in formation. The bombing run works pretty well, and hanging out inside the formation of bombers is not the best of ideas.... So, for now, it doesn't actually drop bombs, nor shoot its weapons, but you wouldn't know it from the results..

24 B17's around 30k ft..... Testing for frame rate and effectiveness of the bombing script and flak. Unfortunately, it did crash the system after the bombing run. Does look cool as hell though if I say so myself... https://www.twitch.tv/dcs_shahdoh/v/71026460

Will these bombers hold a WWII style formation when engaged?

The Mustang can land on the modern carriers just fine, and if you dig, pretty sure there are some nice custom mods out there for WWII ships. Those tend to be a bit shorter though pretty sure, so a hook would definitely come in handy there.

Cool, what part of the world are you guys in?

Not yet, and also realise, this is a manually managed campaign (for now). This is so the commanders only see their side of the mission planning. Will take someone neutral acting as game master to make it work. For now, I will be doing that. Tonight (4 June 2016 @9pm EST) we will try to do an 8 vs 8 test run of the missions. If anyone is interested they can PM me and I will give them the details.