US Navy numbers

[+drdoyo 2]

I'm curious how many would be interested in a US Navy number pack?

 

I have to admit, I like as much realism as possible personally. I was flying in the Europe 2007 Campaign a couple of months ago and noticed a VF-1 Tomcat flight with the numbers in the 400s. I've never seen a Wolfpack Tomcat with a modex number other than a 100 series number. This stroked me the wrong way a bit and I set out to find how the SF series assignes numbers to USN planes in the Campaign. I was successful with a bit of renaming in creating a properly working USN Modex Decal system. Traditionally for decades the USN System of numbering Carrier based aircraft was as follows

 

100's - Fighter Squadron

200's - Fighter Squadron

300's - Light Attack Squadron

400's - Light Attack Squadron

500's - Medium Attack Squadron

600's - Electronic warefare/intelligence assets

700's - ASW assets

 

In short, for the last couple of months I've been working on this numbering system and getting it to work in a campaign setting for the purpose of having historically correct modex numbers on my aircraft. What do you all think?

[Southernap 1]

For the time frame you are talking about the modex (the #'s on the nose of aircraft) assignment would look like this:

 

100 - Strike Fighter sqaudron (F-18E's)

200 - Strike Fighter squadron (F-18F's)

300 - Strike Fighter Squdron (F-18C')

400 - Strike Fighter squadron (F-18C's)

500 - ECM aircraft (EA-6B's)

600 - AEW/COD aircraft (E-2's and C-2's)

700 - ASW Helicopter (SH-60F's)

 

 

During the late 70's and early 80's a typical carrier air wing would of looked like this:

 

100 - Fighter Squadron (F-14 or F-4)

200 - Fighte Squadron (F-14 or F-4)

300 - Attack squadron (A-7)

400 - Attack Squadron (A-7)

500 - Attack Squadron (A-6)

510 - Medium Tanker Aircraft (KA-6)

600 - AEW Aircraft (E-2)

610 - ECM Aircraft (EA-6B)

620 - COD aircraft (C-2)

700 - ASW Fixed Wing (S-3)

720 - ASW Rotary Wing (SH-3)

900 - Special Mission aircraft (EA-3B, RF-8G)

Later in the 80's as the F-18 came online it would replaced the A-7 and the 300 and 400 series number would of been assigned to strike fighter squadrons. Post 1997 with the removal of the A-6 the EA-6B's would move up to take the 500 series numbers.

[Caesar 305]

Just something I noticed. My VF-124 skin has decals for 400-435; I noticed that if the game uses its randomly assigned numbers, anything outside of that range will result in no numbers showing up on the nose, and only appearing on the wing (ex. the random number 460 results in no nose numbers and 60 appearing on the right wing). Also, I have my numberlist to show only 400-435, so if the player selects the numbers, only those valid ones show; but if the game is left to itself, it can go outside the range and result in no decals on the nose. There may be a way to prevent this, but if there is, I don't know about it, so I'm not sure if a decal pack (though I would definately appreciate one) might not be a fix.

[+drdoyo 2]

Just something I noticed. My VF-124 skin has decals for 400-435; I noticed that if the game uses its randomly assigned numbers, anything outside of that range will result in no numbers showing up on the nose, and only appearing on the wing (ex. the random number 460 results in no nose numbers and 60 appearing on the right wing). Also, I have my numberlist to show only 400-435, so if the player selects the numbers, only those valid ones show; but if the game is left to itself, it can go outside the range and result in no decals on the nose. There may be a way to prevent this, but if there is, I don't know about it, so I'm not sure if a decal pack (though I would definately appreciate one) might not be a fix.

 

 

This is another symptom of the decal system that I was intending to address with the decal pack. I found that the campaign uses decals numbered 000 to 099, and usually a higher number (ex 070-078 for an 8 ship flight). That was why I was seeing 400 series numbers on the VF-1 F-14s. The USNFighter decals in the CAT file are broken down so that 000-024=100s, 025-049=200s, 050-074=300s, and 075-099=400s. What I've been doing is simply renaming the USN decals from the CAT file and repeating the 25 decal set so each series (100,200 etc) numbers 000 to 099. The pack, once I finish it, will just need to be placed into the Objects/Decal folder, and the skin's decal.ini modified with the new modex entries. The result is correctly numbered (ex 100-124,200-224,300-324 and so on) squadron aircraft in single mission as well as the campaigns.

[Caesar 305]

Sounds great; I'd definately appreciate an accurate number system.

[Southernap 1]

The only thing that I would add is that VF-124 was the West Coast transition squadron and was numbered out of sequence and assigned the Modex of 400.

[+drdoyo 2]

The only thing that I would add is that VF-124 was the West Coast transition squadron and was numbered out of sequence and assigned the Modex of 400.

 

 

Not a problem Southernap, it's just an entry in the decal.ini to use the correct series number. The only thing is that they will have to be numbered 400 - 424 since I'm using the original numbers from the CAT file. I'm using the originals because I can't seem to make an alpha channel that works. I have an old copy of PSP6 that was transferred through about 3 hard drives now, and bought PSP XI just to figure out the alpha channels again. I've been trying to work on deciphering how to make alphas that will work in game for a FA-18 skin that I've been working on since mid October, but the alphas are prooving to be smarter than me and not cooperating

[dannavy85 26]

So correct me if I'm wrong...if I create a numerical .tga file with a modex number and then reference that file in the Decal .ini for say my A-6F Intruder...that Modex will come up?

[Caesar 305]

Pretty much.  By making custom decal numbers, you can also eliminate the xx8 and xx9 MODEXes from Navy aircraft.  The Navy hasn't used those since at least the 1960's (I've heard at least two reasons as to why, one dealing with an IBM computer's data input limitations), so numbers would always skip from x07 to x10 (e.g., 106, 107, 110, 111, etc.).

 

You'd make your decal, using the numbers you desire to appear, and save each iteration followed by increment numbers (e.g. USFtrNum000, USFtrNum001, USFtrNum002, etc.).  In the decals.ini, call out the decal, but without the number (e.g., FilenameFormat=Aircraft/DecalFolder/D/USFtrNum).  I believe the DecalLevel= needs to be 2 for incrementing numbers.  An example from the F-14 SP:

 

[Decal001]

MeshName=Nose

DecalLevel=2

DecalFacing=RIGHT

FilenameFormat=F-14A_74/VF1NK74/D/USFtrNum

Position=7.70,-0.136

Rotation=0.0

Scale=0.95

DecalMaxLOD=4

 

Also works if you want to match appropriate bureau numbers to the aircraft, nose art, etc.