[Nicholas Bell]

B Bandy RFC, on Jun 24 2007, 08:15 AM, said:

and made FALSE all fire suppression system for engines and fuel tanks...) have made them Roman candles waiting for a match

Fire Suppression stops any chance of the plane flaming. Self-healing nearly does too. Been doing a lot of testing on the damage models lately. The only way to get a balance between flaming with 1 bullet and never flaming at all is to keep self-healing and fire suppression false and armor the tanks with steel. 20-30 mm seems to work as a reasonable balance considering machine guns and cannon are such radically different animals when it comes to damage modeling. Increasing structural integrity of the tanks or the assembly they are in (fuselage, wing) doesn't impact the chance of a tank flaming. Apparently there are critical hits modeled unaffected by this.

If you want to tweak the DM yourself I recommend setting up an "all friendly" mission and have at your buddies :biggrin: rather than attempting to see minor differences while actually dogfighting the enemy.

Thanks for the convergence tweaks!

[Tailspin]

B Bandy RFC, on Jun 24 2007, 09:55 AM, said:

TS, did you use the GunEditor to save these changes to the APRoundChance?
I seem to vaguely remember that that is/was a necessary step in the procedure in order to make Cat file changes to guns, otherwise you might be shooting blanks [sorry, had to say it...]

No, I didn't. Since it was a tweak that didn't involve any of the weapons or gun files I didn't think it necessary. I just assumed this applied to objects and how they reacted to impacts from bullet types. However this tweak may not be necessary if we can get the planes to catch fire as they should without it. Still, I think its worth a little experimenting.

BTW....good job on the convergences. I didn't find the geometry site until after I'd done a bunch of trial and error stuff myself. Not sure the trial and error wasn't the better way to do it. :biggrin:

[Bandy]

Tailspin, on Jun 24 2007, 09:12 AM, said:

Not sure the trial and error wasn't the better way to do it. :biggrin:

Oh yeah, I had a blast!!! For me, it was a much more organic process.
Told my wife I had a project I needed to work on... :ok:

Mr.Bell, that is exactly what I decided on as well; I dropped the self-healing and sealing, but armoured the tanks up with 10mm and improved the cockpit where I found mention of further supplemental armour in some historic sources... It worked very well initially, but now with convergence, its back to square one!

The Anthony Williams' analysis link I posted on page 2 mentions historical accounts of RAF testing programs involving self-sealing tanks sometimes working even with 20mm cannon hits, but this was the exception. Thus the Brits decided to also put angled armour on the back side of their tanks during BoB, and put massively thick (up to 90mm) bullet-proof wind screens on the Spit and Hurricane. The 109 also had good pilot armour, but no self-sealing tank(s) [likely trying to keep the operational range up]. And again, from one account, the Stuka had NO cockpit armour! Unbelievable!!! Talk about over confidence!!!

All this makes for some interesting tweaking... This must be a labour of love... Couldn't imagine what a flight model from scratch must be like, all that tweaking just to get it to a point where one last tweak causes the whole thing to start over...

This post has been edited by B Bandy RFC: 24 June 2007 - 04:58:47 PM

[keith]

Baltika,

1) I have noticed in some of the briefing messages for Luftwaffe strike missions that the objective is to protect bombers from enemy MiGs - where is this data held?

2) When on escort missions, I never seem to meet up with the bombers I am meant to be escorting...

Keith

[Baltika]

Hi Keith

keith, on Jun 25 2007, 09:00 AM, said:

1) I have noticed in some of the briefing messages for Luftwaffe strike missions that the objective is to protect bombers from enemy MiGs - where is this data held?

I'm having trouble recreating this one - which unit are you flying, what type of mission, and what screen are you on when you see it?

The data for briefings is held in .../Terrain/Battle of Britain/Battle of Britain_Briefing.ini which Gepard has edited in keeping with the terrain, and certainly no reference to Migs there. There may be other text elsewhere which I haven't been able to track down - certainly on escort missions (I think that's what you're talking about) I see references to "preventing enemy interceptors" from attacking the strike force, but again, no reference to Migs.

keith, on Jun 25 2007, 09:00 AM, said:

2) When on escort missions, I never seem to meet up with the bombers I am meant to be escorting...

Yes, this can be a problem. Use Red Crown to give you a bearing to your "Primary Target" as early as possible and vector to intercept them. Once they hove into view it's a matter of keeping your eyes peeled to keep track of where they get to!


Cheers,

baltika

[Baltika]

Just read this on Mike Kelsey's 151 Sqdn site http://www.151squadron.org.uk/

"Of being shot down on June 30, S/Ldr Donaldson wrote in the Daily Telegraph as follows:-.

'Air Vice Marshall Keith Park, Air Officer Commanding No 11 Group, which directly faced the Luftwaffe across the Channel was utterly dedicated to the winning of the Battle and was not an entirely Defensive man. On certain days he sent Squadrons over France to fight Germans over their own bases. I think this gave the Germans the impression that the R.A.F. was much stronger than it was.
On one of Park's trips over France on June 30, my Squadron was ordered to escort Basil Embrey to destroy a large enemy fuel dump in France. We did not particularly like this assignment because Basil, absolutely fearless himself, took so long with positive identification of the target dump, for the Germans had so many dummies.
Basil was not about to waste bombs On dummies so round and round he went with his Blenheim bombers being shot at from the ground while we were continuously attacked by Messerschmitts from above. But we did not leave him and this kept the Messerschmitts from attacking the bombers.
Eventually, flying home from this, Basil's Squadron was jumped by Messerschmitts low over the sea and a terrific battle started. It was then that a particularly threatening Messerschmitt arrived and went straight for me. We fought for fifteen minutes ending up with head-on attacks on each other. Usually, Messerschmitts did not like this, for a Hurricane could turn more sharply, so it usually made off, which it could do so at 60 mph faster than the Hurricane.
In this case, On about the fourth head-on attack, shells and bullets started to strike my poor aircraft. The first shell knocked my poor oil tank clean out of the leading edge of the wing, so I knew the engine could not run much longer.
Then the petrol tank blew up and my clothes caught fire and I became hot but still the b-----d continued to shoot. My gloves were burning and my goggles frizzled up but I took neither off - luckily!.
I undid my straps and climbed on the wing, for the Hurricane was flying very slowly and I could actually see the burning wing bending upwards. Then I realised with alarm that I was only 800 ft off the sea. I thought this too low for a safe bail out but at this time I fell off and it took me seconds to locate the pull ring, which I must have pulled, for, as I was about to hit the water, my parachute opened. I disappeared to the full extent of the cords and the wind got under the parachute and lifted me like a missile to the surface and started pulling me at about 5 Km/hr towards the French Coast. Boulogne was two miles away, so I got rid of it at once, but then again shells started coming over, even when my head was under water. It certainly hurt my ears.
The Germans had been shooting at pilots In the sea at that time but my Squadron flew over me as long as their fuel lasted. They were not going to let the Germans near me.
Later the Y Service which listened to all R/T prattle told me it was General Galland who had shot me down.
I met him in London recently and I still don't think much of his conduct that day, for he must have known that my Hurricane was dead as far as fighting again, but he never stopped shooting.
After this encounter neither did I.'
Basil Embry was later shot down, taken prisoner, but escaped from Imprisonment with a price on his head. He was later to become Station Commander at Wittering as Group Captain when 151 Squadron was stationed there in 1942/1943, thus furthering his association with 151 Squadron. After the War Basil Embrey was a Senior Commander in the R.A.F. before retiring back to his native New Zealand.'


My question is this:-

Given the above, how about I add a couple of squadrons of Blenheims for the odd bombing run over Luftwaffe bases in France, and add a few escort missions for fighter squadrons?

Cheers,

baltika

This post has been edited by Baltika: 25 June 2007 - 12:33:13 PM

[Tailspin]

Excellent idea. Something different to try amongst all the intercepts. :clapping:

BTW....is anybody getting any engine fires or smoking from the bombers? All I can seem to get to burn are the fuel tanks. I noticed the Engine nacelles have no hit boxes (Min./Max. extent in the data.ini...although the engines themselves do). Wonder if this could be the culprit? :dntknw: Like Nicholas Bell suggests (Thanks NB) right now I've got the fuel tanks without fire supression or self sealing and with armor values of 25mm. Its still fairly easy to get a good fire going for me. I had the armor set to 30mm which was a little harder but the AI seemed to have trouble getting bomber kills. This is with all the defensive guns of the bombers shut down and me taking deliberate, well aimed shots directly at the fuselage/wing root so it might be OK when I turn the gunners back on. :biggrin: The only thing I don't like about it now is there seems to be no damaged but still flying bombers. Its either burning and going down or not. I can turn the Fire Supression back on and get more "smokers" that stay in formation longer but then I almost never get one to burn real good. Can't seem to find a happy medium. :dntknw: Any ideas?

Sorry to change the subject, Baltika. I think the idea of attacing the German airfields is great!

[Baltika]

Tailspin-

No worries mate, my bad for introducing a new theme. Thanks for the vote of confidence, the sadly often forgotten (and highly dangerous) daylight efforts of Bomber Command over Luftwaffe bases in France in the early stages of BoB will gain due recognition in the next campaign update :ok:

As to getting those bombers to burn, but not too much, I have been following the discussion with keen interest. I have currently set up my Luftwaffe bombers to have FireSuppression and SelfHealing set to TRUE for fuel tanks (otherwise I get the Roman Candle effect Bandy describes, especially with new improved gun convergence) but I have set FireSuppression for engines to FALSE. The idea being, hopefully by targetting an engine you can get a flamer, but not a massive explosion every time you hit a bomber. Your comments re hitboxes are interesting. I've not done enough testing yet for any clear results, but the night is young :biggrin:

In the back of my mind I have those reports of bombers making it to homebase with 2 or 3 hundred .303 bullet holes in them. Sometimes hard is just hard :tongue:

Oh, and BTW, my completely soulless but very precise mathematically calculated gun harmonisation works just fine, thank you :wink:

Although I must admit, Bandy's trial and error is surprisingly accurate - running his figures through the machine gives the outer guns converging at a shade over 219metres, or 197 yards. Battle experience led the RAF to reduce their convergence from 450 yards to 200 yards. Go get 'em Bandy :good:

Well, so much to do, so little time.

Cheers,

baltika


PS I see armour values of 2 or 5 or whatever in the _data.ini, but what is the unit? For, say, 30mm, what do I set it to?

This post has been edited by Baltika: 25 June 2007 - 01:45:51 PM

[Tailspin]

The armor values are in mm. Don't worry about using the calculator, I finally did the calcs. and used them anyway.

[Baltika]

Tailspin, on Jun 26 2007, 01:25 AM, said:

The armor values are in mm.

Thanks for that - further testing required.

Cheers,

baltika

[keith]

re: MiG message - it was in the Me109E 3 Hangar screen. I think the problem may be that I had used a WoV install instead of SFP1 for BoB. I have since reinstalled over SFG and alles ist gut!

This is getting better and better! What a fantastic community!

[Bandy]

Another quick thought I had about the fighter/bomber issue is about the almost infallible formations that they fly in the face of attack. Those Luftwaffe pilots must have nerves of steel!!!

I read an account of a skilled RAF pilot over Dunkirk attacking a formation of Do17's from the side, taking one out then diving beneath, popping up and over another Do17, then diving down and so on, making hits as he went across the whole formation at speed. Amazing tale. His less experienced (or perhaps somewhat less insane...) wingmates however were managing only one hop per pass. In this mannner, they broke up the formation and went after the strays.

Not sure who mentioned it in the forums, but they suggested diving through the formations as a tactic t break them up. I've lead my wing into battle by trying this several times, and I guess my aim ain't too good at that speed, as well as the angles involved, 'cause I've never hit anything, and afterwards I'm only left chasing the solid block of the intact formation but now with greatly reduced airspeed and no altitude advantage should there be escorts. While it doesn't work for me, perhaps it does for others???

Anecdotally, I attack from beneath and find I can break up the Stuka formations easily, but the He111, Do17, and Ju88's seem to maintain a solid "core" with perhaps only a few AC breaking off. Not sure where the "reality" is on bomber formations, but from the squadron histories (Baltika put me on these, great reading, thanks!) there is mention of the RAF recording mission encounters as "frightening off" the bombers on many occasions. They obviously had a lot of respect for the fighters.

Perhaps there is a need to tweak the "WWII formations" mod to loosen them up a bit??? Would like to hear what you guys think.

I'm not suggesting turning this into an ego-fest, where the bombers are fish-in-a-barrel, there is no fun in that; I'm trying to search for that holy grail of a balanced challenge, and currently find the bomber cross fire murderous (even with the gunners toned down, and with tremendous evasive action by me), especially to our AI wingmates who seem to wander about inside the formation like they're going for a walk on Hampstead Heath...

This post has been edited by B Bandy RFC: 27 June 2007 - 06:21:02 AM

[Tailspin]

I'm sure some of you have already seen this site. If not then its a good read. The only problem I have with it is that it relies heavily on theory based on mathematics. I would imagine there are many, many poor Luftwaffe aircrew souls that would earnestly dispute the "numbers" where the "puny" rifle caliber guns of the RAF are concerned. The sections on bomber defensive guns and aircraft armor are interesting.

http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/han...un/fgun-in.html

[Bandy]

Another excellent site if you haven't already found it is Lone Sentry which has links to dozens of articles from:

Quote

"Tactical and Technical Trends" was published by the U.S. Military Intelligence Service in WWII from June 1942 to June 1945. Publication was initially biweekly, and later monthly. "Tactical and Technical Trends" covered much of the same material as the Intelligence Bulletin, although generally more in-depth. The same articles frequently appeared in both publications.

While not an aircraft specific publication, there are some really good short takes on quite a few that include armament, armour placement and thickness, as well as self-sealing fuel tanks etc. (excellent for modding your DATA INIs historically), for example see the Bf109G article.

Some of the "Intelligence Bulletin" articles are also on that site. Very interesting stuff...

Also just saw mention of this in another CA post, Spitfire Ace Parts 1 to 4

This post has been edited by B Bandy RFC: 28 June 2007 - 07:27:42 AM

[Baltika]

B Bandy RFC, on Jun 27 2007, 01:17 PM, said:

Perhaps there is a need to tweak the "WWII formations" mod to loosen them up a bit??? Would like to hear what you guys think.

Hi Bandy,

Fair comment, the Luftwaffe bomber formations do seem to have nerves of steel. However, the WWII Formations mod is simply directed towards (a) putting more planes in the air per formation than the stock install (whatever flavour) and (b) providing them with enough slots to sit in so you don't get planes "piled up" on top of one another in formation. There is a good thread on this somewhere, with screenies, who knows where now, that shows what happens if you have WW2 formation sizes without the formations mod - basically lots of overlapping planes.

Now, by all means it is possible to tweak the WWII formations mod to spread the planes out a bit - look in the FORMATIONS.INI file and you will see a straightforward x,y,z matrix of formation positions (in metres) which determines where each plane flies in formation relative to the others (the base point being 0,0,0 or lead plane - the player). However, that is not the root of the issue. Charles has set it up so that bombers fly in combat boxes and their defensive fire is concentrated - the ultimate example of the technique being the USAAF B-17 style combat box. You'd have to be crazy to go anywhere near a formation like that :crazy: But that's what the bombers did, for obvious reasons.

The real issue you are getting at (and quite properly, too) is the AI behaviour of the planes in that formation when confronted with a mad RAF pilot making ahead-on attack and zooming between the individual bombers. Now, where do we get at the AI?

A number of factors (as I understand it - I'm happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable) come in to play. There is the "Waypoint" transition routine which the AI will fly - I'm not getting into that argument here, but it has been the subject of criticism elsewhere - maybe the bombers just don't "see" enemy planes when they are en route. There is the overall training level of the particular nation's pilots (see the NATIONS.INI) and there is the morale and experience level of each individual unit (as defined in the BOB_DATA.INI). And then, as capun pointed out earlier in this thread, there is the [AIDATA] entry for each aircraft which controls game-engine AI responses for builds of the core game engine which were introduced after some of the planes included in this campaign were released.

Where does that take us?

There's a lot to fiddle with, basically. It might be worth looking at Stuka formations - I have noticed they do tend to break up when attacked, and replicating that response for other formation types is the name of the game. As ever with SFP1/WOV/WOE/FE, finding out how it all works can often become more time-consuming than flying the missions. But, hey, when something works out, it's fantastic. (Still loving that gun convergence mod).

And the changelog for v0.60 of the campaign pack just keeps getting longer. One of these days I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and fire it out where I've got to already. But, as you know, Bandy, you got me started on implementing the different phases of BoB - Channel Shipping attacks, Airfield/Radar Station attacks, then the "Terror over London." Let's just say that it's not been as fiddly as I thought it would be - and it's damn scary sitting in your 109E-3B trying to bomb a convoy protected by destroyers with nothing but sea out to the horizon :blink:

Cheerio for now,

baltika

This post has been edited by Baltika: 28 June 2007 - 03:05:38 PM

[Bandy]

A sobering and excellent assessment and presentation of the relevant points Baltika. I mentioned one time before, this game is like peeling an onion, and can inspire religious zeal !!! :good: I'm still mostly hacking at the skin, looking in with my eyes watering

Funny, on retrospect over the weekend, the interception missions I've flown lately (where I go after the bombers rather than the escorts), I'm actually not getting knocked out as often, or maybe not as soon.... I've abandoned the head-on and dive-into tactics, and instead have adopted that historic tactic mentioned earlier: Approach from the side at speed as this is apparently a blind spot (I've found it best to go for the lead AC, maybe because I imagine it to be the group leader, and thus a morale hit for the rest when he goes down-in-flames...). Then afterwards some zig-zagging and rolling around etc. to keep the gunners on their toes... (and out of their yaw angle limits :biggrin: ). Yeah, I know, you guys likely already figured that all out... :blush: Now to get the AI wingmates to do it...

And I have to agree, the convergent fire has made a difference on those earlier tough bombers... Guess I was just used to the First Eagles bombers, which have been mostly a cake walk, until I installed Laton's AI Tweak (not sure why that hasn't been made into a regular FE/CA download...) now the AI bomber pilots maneuver to give their gunners a line of sight to you -- what they really would have done. I even had a group of bombers go into a circle-train the other night providing defense for each other... But I'm off topic...

Looking forward to the fruits of your much appreciated labor...

[Nicholas Bell]

Regarding why one can break up the Stuka formations but not the bomber formations may have something to do with AircraftRole. The Ju-87 has an ATTACK role and the others are BOMBERS. Might want to change that and see what happens. The waypoint "mission" problem will still be there. It's a real immersion killer when a flight of fighters or fighter-bombers flies straight and level after completed their bombing mission totally ignoring all threats. Like shooting clay pigeons.

[Baltika]

I am trying to work up 3 separate phases for the campaign, as Bandy suggested, Channel Shipping Strikes, Airfield/Radar Station attacks, then attacks over London.

All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be in place:-
The Airoffensive types listed in the campaign.ini for each force, the targets themselves on the terrain in the Battle of Britain_targets.ini, and the target types to match up with ther airoffensive types as defined in, you guessed it, the Battle of Britain_types.ini.

I have successfully added extra target areas to give 5 or 6 Channel Convoys, complete with 7 or 8 Cargo Ships in each and a few Destroyer escorts (OK, they don't move, but hey, it's a start).

However, when I start altering the Airoffensive types as defined in the campaign.ini, in order to force attacks only on certain types of targets at different stages of the campaign, the game engine seems not to like the targets I have selected. Very occasionally, I will successfully be assigned strike missions on my new Channel Convoy target areas. Most of the time, however, I get endless runs of Recon missions (even when set to 0 for the particular squadron) other times I get CTDs when clicking "Accept" after a failed or successful strike mission. There seems to be some rhyme and reason to it, but I can't fathom it out.

Any suggestions on how this fits together? I have scoured the forums on this issue but info seems pretty scant in this area.

Cheers,

Steven

[Baltika]

Yes, it's a tough one, isn't it?

A follow up question to my previous post:-

Has anyone who flies strike missions ever been given a runway as a primary target?

I am trying to force attacks on runways, for obvious reasons, and I can't make the campaign engine do it. And I am getting hard crashes to desktop a lot ever since I started messing about with the "AirOffensive[XXX]=" settings. It is getting so frustrating that I have taken up skinning for light relief - well, I can't have 603 (City of Edinburgh) Sqdn flying about with the wrong squadron codes, can I?

Let me just say that that experience is making me realise how lucky we are with all the talented skinners around.

S! to everyone who ever posted a skin. You guys are great :good:

Cheers for now,

baltika

[Tailspin]

Would the convoy missions work better as Anti-Shipping?