Night mission building help needed

[Ramstein]

I am working on a night mission in the editor and cannot figure out how to make a night mission without the full moon and all the light from it. How do I make a night mission without the moon. I tried making night mission using clouds at night to make it darker, but the moon lights up the clouds too.

 

Thanx,

[HausDiesel]

Did you try to change too a different day of the month to progress through the different phases of the moon..? The cycle of the phases from new moon to new moon, takes 29.5 days. Half of that is 14.75 . So try adding 14 days too your mission start day and if DCS has "Moon Phase modeling" it should work but don't know.. maybe give it a try.

[Ramstein]

I wasn't even thinking the moon changes are modeled,, good idea..

:thumbup:

 

I fixed the problem of too much light, as the moon is actually modeled in it's phases and cycle in the 30 day period, I just chose day 16 (arbitrary day chosen) so it is close to it's least size and brightness.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Ramstein

[HausDiesel]

No problem man.... think i read something of the same nature about LOMAC but that was a wile back... anyways glad to help...

[TKMR]

No reason to make a new thread, especially since this one is by the top, but I've got a question about night missions too. I know in LoMaC with the A-10s I could use the SUU-10s to light up the battlefield, but I can't find the Russian equivalent of this to help with visibility for my Ka-50 (What I wanted to do was to have a plane flying AFAC and dropping them every so often, and I think I read in the GUI manual that you could do this but I just haven't been able to figure out how). This is rather frustrating, as all the planes listed under the AFAC mission type don't seem to have illumination flares under their loadout, so I'm not sure what to do at this point. Any help?

Edited July 8, 2009 by TKMR

[Ramstein]

TKMR, do yo mean have an AI aircraft drop flares? I never looked into that... maybe someone else has,, but sounds like a smart idea..

:thumbup:

[SNAFU]

For the flares I used a SU-25 AFAC with the Flare pods, don´t know the name of the weapons. Give the planes some height and speed and a pinpoint-attack on the location where you want the flares. Try a little with the approach / ingress and it should do it. I recomment 10km approach and 4km height and a loop function for the pinpoint attack and the ingress point.

[Druid_]

Beware, flares at night kill the framerate.

[TKMR]

Beware, flares at night kill the framerate.

 

It didn't in LoMaC. Does the AI drop hundreds of flares?

[Druid_]

Not hundreds but will keep dropping until his stores are expired. Think about it, the lighting /shadow etc effects must hit on framrate especially as the lighting is falling, you are moving .... and so on.

[TKMR]

Okay, so this is not going to be like the AI does a fly over, drops a couple flares (enough to illuminate the target, probably 2), loops around, drops more flares, etc. He is just going to drop all of his stores at once?

 

That's kind of a dissapointment.

 

What about doing mutliple pinpoint targets on different waypoints, would that help?

[SNAFU]

No, if you give the AI waypoint with "beginn loop" it repeats circling and dropping flares until its pods are empty. SU25 drops f.e. 5-6 double flares each time and can provide you with about 10 minutes light, depending on your waypoints/ looppoints.

 

But as mentioned the frame rate drops slightly, not as bad as an intensive ground battle, but you will notice it.

[TKMR]

Alright, I'll mess around with it and see what I can manage. Thank you. =)