A Quick and Dirty Normandy Conversion

[pagsab]

As described in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/100072-following-your-leader-through-the-low-european-clouds and in my popular recent video at https://www.youtube.com/@philipsabin1653, I like to use SF2 to fly entire short missions in real time as a wingman.  I usually model fighter vs. fighter combat in slow motion and tactical detail using my various manual designs, while using SF2 instead to simulate the equally common experiences of ground attacks or interceptions of unescorted bombers, in which the actual combats against flak or enemy air gunners are fleeting enough for our planes to reform easily for the satisfying and atmospheric formation flight back to base.

The reduced scale of most SF2 terrains helps to shorten missions, but full scale alternatives like Gepard’s MiG Alley and Battle of Britain terrains include much richer detail.  The price of longer flight times is compounded in the latter case by the need to cross the Channel twice during complete ground attack missions, but I realised that I could tweak this to tap a rich vein of short and unopposed ground attack sorties, namely those conducted by the Allies from forward airfields during the Normandy campaign in summer 1944.

All I needed to do to permit Allied single missions from Normandy was to edit a copied version of the Battle of Britain 2_targets.ini to change a few target areas from enemy to friendly (and from Airfield_LW_Fighters to Airfield_for_Fighters just in case).  You can start with 065 Crepon to simulate the earliest forward missions in June, and then add areas 066, 063, 064, 227 and 299 as the front line advances through June and July.  I also found a quick and dirty way to simulate front line German flak, namely by copying the 114 Hyde Park flak zone and adding a dozen or so enemy clones as new target areas at short intervals along the front, with gun headings tweaked if desired.  You can select appropriate locations with reference to the locations of the airfields and towns you have tweaked.  223 Le Havre could do with flak copied from 227 Cherbourg and re-numbered in sequence, and you may do the same at other German-held towns if you wish.  As a finishing touch, you may copy the 16 cargo ships from 225 Calais, and add re-numbered versions as two new friendly target areas at 610/410 and 670/402 to represent the Mulberry harbours, doubling the visibility distances in the CargoShip4.ini to make them easier to spot.

The picture below shows me returning to the beachhead with my colleagues after too close an encounter with flak and my own bomb bursts during a 25 minute sortie from Caen to and from the railway bridge NE of Le Havre.  Once you have learnt to make these simple targets.ini tweaks, you may easily customise any terrain for a single mission, using your ingenuity to find simple short cuts and focusing only on the few locations involved rather than needing to convert all the target areas across the map to reflect the front line at your chosen date.  Thanks to the cornucopia of aircraft and terrain mods available, SF2 offers a wonderfully accessible sandbox to create endlessly variable vicarious air missions.

  

[+Gepard]

Dont change the entries: Airfield_LW_Fighters to Airfield_for_Fighters

This entries define the position of taking off and landing and the position of the parked aircrafts. If you change it you will mess it up.

It has nothing to do which side is operating the airfield.

For changing the side of an airfield you must change enemy to friendly  and you should modify the frontline.

[pagsab]

Many thanks for your advice, and even more for the wonderful terrains you have given us.  I will restore the original Airfield_LW_Fighters entries in the airfields concerned.  The frontline is at the start of the Battle of Britain 2_movement.ini, and it is easy to modify it as desired.

[pagsab]

Even when using reduced scale terrains like EuroWW2, historical missions take a long time in the slow piston-engined craft of the 1940s.  I just finished a 1943 B-17F raid from East Anglia across the North Sea to Schipol airfield, and it took over 2 hours from take-off to landing despite not even penetrating as far as Germany itself.  However, holding close formation at high altitude in these ponderous craft presented ample compensatory challenges, and the experience was much more immersive than Microprose's clunky dedicated sim of the B-17.  The picture below shows us dropping back down across the English coast, as portrayed by Lacsap's lovely new HD terrain tiles for Wrench's version of EuroWW2.

I have learnt to make some small but crucial tweaks to my aircraft's details before setting up such missions.  One is to increase the visible range of detailed LODs in the plane's main ini file if need be, to stop details popping in and out of view while formation keeping.  A second tweak is to check and if necessary modify the plane's cruising speed in its data.ini, since some AI aircraft otherwise fly too slowly or too fast for me to formate successfully.  A final tweak which I now make in the engine sections of the data.ini is to cut the BSFC or TSFC values to 0.00, thereby stopping the engines burning fuel.  This is obviously unrealistic, but it ends the frequent and immersion-killing experience of my wingmates' propellers stopping during the return flight, regardless of my own plane's fuel use setting in the game options.  The time jumps which most players use to speed up missions also have the magical effect of negating fuel use, so my tweak simply does the same for my own fully real time sorties.  I compensate by starting planes with 60% rather than 100% fuel loads, so that their performance throughout the mission is based on this intermediate fuel state.  My aim throughout is to create an immersive graphical backdrop for my preferred 'wingman experience' games.          

[+Stratos]

Have plans to save a video of one of your wingman missions? from start to landing...

[pagsab]

That would be a rather 'niche' video compared to the standard combat-focused ones, given that the spectator would not have the diversion of flying the plane during the transits.  It would also show the limits of my formation flying, which is harder in the game than in real life.  All my previous videos are narrated slide shows, and I have never tried recording live videos while gaming.  Feel free to set up your own short wingman mission using the instructions which I provide in the previous thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/100072-following-your-leader-through-the-low-european-clouds.  That way you will experience for yourself the fun and challenge of formation flight, and you may even be able in due course to record and post your own video if desired.

[+Stratos]

Thanks pagsab

[pagsab]

To test the flexibility of the quick and dirty modification techniques which I described above, I decided to set up a bombing raid on a Soviet airfield by a flight of Bf 110s supporting Army Group North during the early weeks of Operation Barbarossa in summer 1941.  The modern Swedish terrain made by JonathanRL's TSF team gives a good coverage of the Baltic States, though it is heavily distorted at these high latitudes.  To backdate it quickly to WW2, I had the bright idea of using the 'Replace All' tool when editing the sweden_targets.ini in Notepad, thereby substituting FlakAchtAchts for the SAMRadars and SAMLaunchers, and VierlingsFlak for the AAA.  When I also remembered to replace these three classes in the sweden_types.ini as well as copying files into my GroundObject and Guns sub-folders if required, this wholesale substitution worked just as intended.

I opted to fly from Tukums across the Gulf of Riga to bomb the Haapsalu airbase in western Estonia, before returning to land at Riga itself.  All sites south of the Baltic are Enemy by default in this terrain, so I just needed to use the 'Find' tool in Notepad to locate the 3 Haapsalu entries in the targets.ini and change them to Friendly (Allied rather than Axis).  As discussed above, I increased the 110's LOD ranges, cut its excessive cruising speed, and axed its fuel expenditure.  It took a number of false starts to spot and correct other problems, but in the end I enjoyed an atmospheric 45 minutes of formation flying.  The picture below shows us crossing the islands of Saaremaa and Muhu as we prepare to dive through the clouds and brave the flak to attack our target.  The more practice one gets in tweaking SF2's wonderfully accessible files, the more satisfying the results one may achieve.

[+Wrench]

That's all well and good, but a great majority of people (myself included), don't have access to the site that HAS the Bf.110s.

Just so you know, anything that DAT is equivlant to "he who is not to be named" (like Cthulhu )

[pagsab]

As a latecomer with no understanding of the long-standing roots of this situation, I have deliberately avoided this touchy subject.  Suffice to say that we non-programmers are enormously grateful for the incredible efforts of people like yourself who have given us so much to enjoy.  Combat Ace has a cornucopia of riches in its own right (including all of the terrains I have mentioned), and it gives ample resources to take advantage of any small tweaks which I have managed to discover.

[+daddyairplanes]

like any community, SF2 fans and modders has its tribes and rivalries. some are healing, while some will go one until until both parties cease to exist.

that site has many issues, but it does also have some things that we just dont have here (at least until someone has the interest to make a new version). thats especially true on the WW2 fronts

[pagsab]

Even with all of my colleagues out of my control, SF2 captures very well the fundamental trade-off between accuracy and vulnerability in the age of 'dumb' weapons.  I have now flown several missions against or from the re-assigned Haapsalu airbase, and in every case, diving to low level for the bomb run let us hit the target runway, but at the heavy cost of one of our planes (in one case my own) being destroyed by the vicious flak despite accelerating to top speed for the attack leg.  As in real life, the combat was only a fleeting part of the mission as a whole, but it was a searing and memorable experience regardless.