Battle of Britain Campaign Feedback

[keith 0]

Volunteer here for a Portsmouth (pawtsmiff) accent!

[+Baltika 84]

About the Brit voice pack. Great idea indeed. But the 3 o'clock thing can be tricky. My wingmen often gives me warning of bandits on my tail, but full clock reference? Is it in SF? I haven't meet with it.

 

This thread over at SimHQ seems to suggest it is possible to have wingmen give directional calls to targets - or SAM launches at any rate. Not much use for BoB, but calls to bandits also seem to be possible. Deuces has done some work on this and posted his results, so I will take a look at it and see how (if?) it can be modded for BoB.

 

http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?...rue#Post2115490

 

Thanks to our voice artist volunteers

 

The above thread also has info about the content of the various voice files, as I said there are a lot, but I will see if I can track down the main ones. Re-cycling wavs from "abandoned" sims would be a good short cut, but I don't want to run into licensing issues.

 

 

CA - have been using your updated WW2 effects and they are fantastic - great stuff

 

Cheers all,

 

baltika

Edited July 8, 2007 by Baltika

[+Stary 2,427]

Thank for link, Baltika, reading it now. As for effects, wait until bigger release but no hurry. I will post some parts from time to time for your feedback

[+Stary 2,427]

Good news regarding ballistics and such. I did some ini tweaking and it turned out that we can have different smoke tracers for different gun types. Have been doing some fx tests, and now I have individual smokes for .303 Brownings or MG17 and other for 20 mm MGFF's. It gives you a nice view when bursting 3xMGFF and 2xMG17 at Blenheim.

 

Another thing. Haven't your morale dropped first time when it turned out that 8 machineguns can't reach that slow Dornier 0.5-0.6 mile away? The "dissapearing bullets" thing. Perhaps this matter was already discussed in other topic but anyway. It can be easily solved by changing one number in BULLETOBJECT.INI (in Objects folder).

 

Line:

 

MinBulletMach=0.7

 

defines minimal projectile's speed (in mach, about 533 Mph) below which it's simply removed from world. It's as simple as changing to sometching like

MinBulletMach=0.35 to extend the bullet's range. Downside is that more power is required for additional calculations, having some impact on my trusty old komp.

 

Cheers

 

CA_Stary

[+Baltika 84]

Egress from target zone - a few ships going to the seabed. Getting out of there before the destroyers get lucky.

Successful mission, generated by campaign engine - then CTD after pressing "accept" at mission result screen. WTF?

 

 

Hi - squashed this particular bug, which embarrassingly enough I caused myself by borking my attempt to create a separate "armed" CargoShip, which crashed the game every time it tried to fly an antiship mission. Cheers to Typhoid for putting me on the right track. I have gone with a modded CargoShip which is armed, but which doesn't crash the game.

 

A release of v0.60 is therefore creeping ever closer. Any requests, comments, bug reports meantime?

 

Cheers,

 

(It's friday night and mine's a)

 

 

baltika

[keith 0]

Baltika

 

Will v6 include the new gun convergence sttings etc?

[+Baltika 84]

Will v6 include the new gun convergence sttings etc?

 

Hi keith,

 

A little bit of .ini editing is required to the [aircraft]_data.ini to implement gun convergence, and in this (as in real life during BoB) there are differences of opinion as to what works best. Personally, I have my guns harmonised to converge at 250 metres, or 225 yards, which falls nicely into the 200 - 250 yards harmonisation I have read about the RAF using. Others may like it a little bit closer, or a little bit further away, depending on personal preference.

 

Anecdotally, (Len Deighton is good for this) pilots would talk to their mechanics to fix their guns just how they liked them. I know that B Bandy RFC has added a little bit of y-axis positive pitch to help with lead pursuit targetting, which seems pretty fair.

 

So I probably won't go so far as to alter the settings for the planes included in the package. I would require permission from the authors concerned before doing so in any event, and not everyone may like my settings. A reasonable compromise would appear to be to include edited.ini files to be dropped in to the aircraft folder if people wish to do so, which would take away the hassle of having to do all the editing, but would not impose a so-called "standard" setting on everyone - as no such setting existed in RL.

 

In general, my preference would be to implement things where possible, and to make the package as much of a one-stop install as possible. All 3rd-party contributors have been extremely understanding and helpful in that respect, so I don't anticipate any problem. Thanks to all concerned.

 

 

 

 

Progress update:-

 

Following some helpful advice from Wrench and others over on the "adding Destroyers" thread, the phased campaign is coming along, although, as ever, I get to the bottom of one problem to find another spring up in its place.

 

Targets for strike missions are picked according to the target type set in the "AirOffensive.[XXX]=" series of flags in the campaign_data.ini for each force. Those correspond to the targettypes set in the [terrain]_types.ini The problem is, not all types seem to be implemented, eg EW_RADAR appears as a type in the terrain file, but even if I set every AirOffensive flag to that setting, all i get are endless recce missions. Change the setting to WAREHOUSE, HANGAR, OIL_REFINERY, or, say COMM_BUILDING, and the campaign will fix strike missions on Radar masts, provided you change the setting in the terrain_types.ini to an implemented type. Yahoo! (Took a long time to figure that out!)

 

Problem is, I now only get one strike mission, interspersed with the odd Anti-ship mission, and stacks of recce missions, and the engine does not want to advance beyond the first AirOffensive type. I'm still scratching my head over that one, but I haven't given up yet.

 

Cheers all,

 

baltika

Edited July 15, 2007 by Baltika

[keith 0]

I fully understand Baltika - thanks for the explanation! Your work is giving me hours of fun!

[+Baltika 84]

Hi keith,

 

Thanks for the encouragement, glad you're having fun with it, but of course I am merely standing on the shoulders of giants.

 

Cheers to all devs and modders whose work is featured, without which this campaign would not exist.

 

 

Further progress update:-

 

Success! I have got the phase campaign working. It's all to do with the interaction of individual unit supply levels compared to the SupplyForOffensive= flag in the [Forcexxx] section of the campaign_data.ini.

 

We now progress nicely through Channel Convoy/ Port facility missions, Airfield and Radar defence suppression, warehouse/industrial targets, and finally terror attacks on London - Just loved it when I was tasked to attack Buckingham Palace for the first time, re-creating that infamous (Brit propaganda?) raid.

 

But this has brought the "scrunching" of air units bug back with a vengeance. The problem is, this now tasks the Luftwaffe to strike missions on airbases in Western France. Everything west of, and including, St Andre de L'Eure Bomberhorst turns allied.

 

Like I said, you nail one sucker and another little problem pops up.

 

I still haven't given up.

 

Meantime, if everyone who has seen this bug could please tell me at what stage in their campaign it happens, I can maybe work out a pattern. I have been running missions for what feels like months with a tweak here and there, and still don't have it nailed down.

 

Cheers for now,

 

baltika

[+Baltika 84]

But this has brought the "scrunching" of air units bug back with a vengeance. The problem is, this now tasks the Luftwaffe to strike missions on airbases in Western France. Everything west of, and including, St Andre de L'Eure Bomberhorst turns allied.

 

Like I said, you nail one sucker and another little problem pops up.

 

I still haven't given up.

 

 

 

Nailed that sucker.

 

Just been checking my diary. I first started speculatively typing the RAF & Luftwaffe OOB for BoB into a campaign file over a year ago. Shelved the damn thing a couple of months later because of the above bug. That was what stopped this campaign being anything other than a beta.

 

To say that I am happy this evening is the understatement of the year.

 

I put it down to a rather nice Reisling which my wife brought back from Germany for me, and which I cracked open tonight after we put the bairn to bed. It was obviously stimulating the old brain cells

 

Just opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Anyone know which Wehrmacht units were stationed in France in 1940?

 

We shall fight them on the beaches. . .

Edited July 18, 2007 by Baltika

[Bandy 3]

Great news! This must be such a welcome release for you... What was the solution?

 

RE: waiting wehrmacht units, only a book away...

 

:yes:

[+Baltika 84]

Great news! This must be such a welcome release for you... What was the solution?

 

RE: waiting wehrmacht units, only a book away...

 

:yes:

 

Hi Bandy,

 

As ever, deceptively simple once sussed out, but of course, the last thing I thought of to try. The number of times I re-worked strategic nodes from the ground up, to no avail

 

It seems to work like this:-

 

The campaign engine controls the front line on the basis of each Force's possession of strategic nodes. Nodes are defined in the [campaign]_data.ini, and must match TargetAreas as defined in the [terrain]_targets.ini. There are various rules for setting up strategic nodes which are covered in detail elsewhere on these boards.

 

TargetAreas with airfields can be used as Strategic Nodes - various of my working builds were set up that way, and I had ground units showing up at Airfields which were also defined as strategic nodes. All hunky-dory, except Western France. After the Offensive Phase started (when a Force's overall supply level exceeded the SupplyForOffensive= value) all the airfields in Western France turned allied. BUT, confusingly, the front line didn't appear to move.

 

Cue months of frustration.

 

The other night, I had a good long look at the map, aided by a glass or two of German vino. What was different about France?

 

Answer:-

 

Only 1 TargetArea which did NOT have a runway, namely the Freya Radar station near Calais.

 

While Britain has a proliferation of non-runway target areas - ports, Factories, RDF stations etc.

 

The solution:-

 

Add a few non-runway target areas along the Northern Coast of France, defined as ENEMY in the [terrain]_targets.ini. In my working build, I plonked an extra 7 Freya Radar Stations strung out from Dunkirk to Brest.

 

The result:-

 

All the occupied airbases in France now remain Axis when the campaign enters offensive phase. The frontline behaves as it should (i.e. rock solid across the Channel), and all the Allied and Axis Air Units stay at their assigned bases.

 

Halleluyah!

 

I should say, that an immediate side effect is that I can now ensure that the Luftwaffe remain more or less in a permanent series of AirOffensive phases, and that air activity (on both sides) is substantially increased as a result. Things are looking good

 

 

Now, we can spend the next hundred years arguing about whether Sealion was (a) militarily feasible standing the Royal Navy's dominance, and (b) anything other than a feint to increase political pressure on Britain to come to the negotiating table, but, this is a game, and it seems to me that it would be entertaining, depending on how well your campaign goes, to see the Panzers rolling across England's green and pleasant land, or not. It would give each mission a definite sense of purpose, and I have to say, flying for the RAF and looking at a planning map with Division after Division of tanks lined up along the French coast waiting for the starter's gun, really gives you a sense of impending threat. Adds a certain sense of urgency to intercepting those bombers when you know a clock is counting up successful air offensives to a total required to launch an invasion. . .

 

 

Of course, I now have to re-work those strategic nodes, again

 

Any info on ground units greatly appreciated, thanks very much

 

Cheers,

 

baltika

Edited July 18, 2007 by Baltika

[+allenjb42 4,230]

Don't know much about the Germans, but here is some info about the Brits

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dad's_Army

 

L/Cpl Jones: 'Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring!'

[+Baltika 84]

Don't know much about the Germans, but here is some info about the Brits

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dad's_Army

 

L/Cpl Jones: 'Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring!'

 

 

Indeed

 

I can assure all concerned that the Home Guard will feature heavily in the event of invasion. Any 3d modellers care to rustle up long woolly scarves and pitchforks to re-equip the standard squaddie?

[Bandy 3]

Now, we can spend the next hundred years arguing about whether Sealion was (a) militarily feasible standing the Royal Navy's dominance, and (b) anything other than a feint to increase political pressure on Britain to come to the negotiating table, but, this is a game, and it seems to me that it would be entertaining...

Any info on ground units greatly appreciated, thanks very much

 

Just a quick poke in the google came up with these links...

Apparently some experts conducted a wargame/sim in 1974 to see what would've happened if Sealion had gone ahead with: a) Fighter Command in control of the skies, and b) Luftwaffe control. You'll have to read the outcome yourself...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea...order_of_battle

Quote from site: "Tk Computerware released a computer simulation called Britain Invaded! (aka Operation Sealion) in 1985." [couldn't be... could it??? :umnik2: ]

 

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1145

[this one seems very detailed, and perhaps even enough for campaign setup, right down to the number/type of tanks & accessory ground units (they had a lot of mobile flak!), transport fleet, and even the Naval elements proposed... Does SF support paratroops? Thought not...]

 

http://www.pillboxesuk.co.uk/

[from this Home page, click on <Why they were built> then <German Invasion Plans> ]

 

http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/proc/direct16.html

[This is supposed to contain Hitler's Directive16 (aka Sealion) but not sure on any details, as I'm blocked from opening it from my work computer, shhh!!!]

Edited July 26, 2007 by Tailspin
Edited so links would work.

[keith 0]

Baltika

 

I am experiencing FPS issues with this mod. I thought it was my computer unable to handle the large numbers of aircraft in the sky but I have no such problems with Burning Sands 44 or Solomons. The machine goes into slideshow mode whenever I approach a flight of bombers and get within shooting range. It sometimes occurs with just a very few 109s etc.

 

Otherwise I just love it...

 

Machine spec: Acer Aspire 9504, Pentium M760 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM, ATI 700x 256Mb, 100Gb Hitachi HDD, 1280 x 760, mirrors off, shadows off, horizon distance medium

[+Stary 2,427]

Hi!

 

I have the same problem as keith, but my opinion is that's nowhere related to the campaign engine. My bet is that's the number (and quality) of bombers. Junkers and Dorniers? I guess SFP1 wasn't designed to handle large air raids, but I'm not a wise one on this matter. Notice that in all sims dealing with massive air formations bombers were always a bit less detailed -like in EAW or BoB (the one by Rowan). And in IL2 there were hi-poly planes but in fights of just 4 or 8 ships (that's why I sold it). But I may be wrong on the matter. Otherwise it possibly could be gunners' AI algorithm.

 

My spec: P4 2,4 Ghz 1GB ram GF 6600 256mb 1024x768 4xanizo, aa off, shadows off, mirrors off, horizont dist medium, ground texture low, rest on high. Good framerate (approx. 25-40 fps) until big formations in my REVI

 

Cheers

[Guest capun]

Two things to check

 

- Have you done the flightengine.ini mods to open up the graphics card memory limits?

 

- Try turning off Shadows, try from the game side and also try from the specific plane ini file

 

Something like this

 

[shadow]

CastShadow=FALSE ; Be sure it is not set to TRUE

ShadowLOD=

ShadowType=1

ShadowCastDist=10000

MaxVisibleDistance=400

[+Stary 2,427]

capun

 

You're talking about increasing "maxvertexcount=" value, right?

 

I remember doing that in modern installs for some planes (for example Tornado). Must check it in Knowlege base. But thanks for showing the direction.

[Wrench 9,795]

You know you can add a runway that's NOT a runway, right????

 

From my as-yet-to-be-re-released Iran/Iraq update:

 

[TargetArea116]

Name=Kharg Island

Position=799376,355882

Radius=2000

ActiveYear=0

Location=1

Alignment=FRIENDLY

//AirfieldDataFile=desert_airfield3.ini

//NumSquadrons=0

Target[001].Type=Radio_twr

Target[001].Offset=-1250,273

Target[001].Heading=0

--snip for bervity--

Target[008].Type=Runway3

Target[008].Offset=-964,510

Target[008].Heading=300

 

You add the runway like normal, with the airfield ini callout, place the object, the comment out the airfield data (or even delete it). Then it just become another general target area.

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Guest capun]

capun

 

You're talking about increasing "maxvertexcount=" value, right?

 

I remember doing that in modern installs for some planes (for example Tornado). Must check it in Knowlege base. But thanks for showing the direction.

 

[GraphicsSettings]

ZBufferDepth=24

MaxVertexCount=16384

MaxIndexCount=32768

MaxTextureCount=16384

MaxModelType=2048

MaxMeshPerScene=2048

MaxModelPerScene=4096

MaxLightPerScene=1024

AspectRatio=1.333333

MinPixelSize=1.0

[+Stary 2,427]

Flight engine updated. Thanks capun. Off to check it later

[+Baltika 84]

Hi there,

 

keith -

 

I am sorry to report that I get a bit of a slow-down as well - I think CA_Stary has hit the nail on the head when he says that the SFP1 engine isn't designed to handle the numbers of aircraft for BoB style engangements, especially given the beautifully detailed skins made for the bombers - the Ju-88A4 skin is 1500x1500 pixels and weighs in at 6.43 Mb! If you run into a flight of a dozen of those, it's going to slow things up!

 

Thanks to capun for the flightengine alterations, and turning off individual plane shadows. Cheers

 

I think this has been suggested already, but if you try re-sizing the bomber skin .bmps to something more maneageable, you should see a big improvement. Try 512x512, or even 256x256. You can go below that, but the "blurriness" of the skins at the smaller numbers may be unaccaptable to you. As ever, it's a trade-off between image quality and performance. OTOH, if all you want is a lot of targets to shoot up with minumum framerate hit, re-size the skins to 64x64 and see how it works. They still look like bombers from a distance. . .

 

I have been playing around with this, with a view to scripting some single missions re-creating the big air battles over London, and by taking the bomber skins down to 64x64, I get playable framerates for this kind of interception - there are 18 Ju-88s and 18 Do-17s, and at least 24 109s and 110s out of screenshot as escorts, and a dozen Spits:-

 

 

As you close in, the bombers still look OK:-

 

 

But, as you can see, even on high detail settings, the small .bmps are not pretty close up:-

 

 

 

FYI, my system is by no means state of the art:-

 

AMD 64 3400+ 2.2GHz, 2Mb RAM, Gainward 7800 GS+ 512Mb (AGP).

Those screens were taken at 1024x768, with game settings all to high, shadows off, horizon distance medium.

 

keith, do you encounter large bomber formations in Burning Sands '44?

 

 

Wrench-

 

Thanks very much for the tip, I didn't know about that one.

 

Cheers for now,

 

Baltika

Edited August 11, 2007 by Baltika

[+Stary 2,427]

Hi!

 

I'd prefer to sacrifice bombers detail to maintian their number in formations.

 

Another thing that brought my attention a while back -anyone here thinks that 110's are waaay to tough to bring down? I usually spit most of my rounds to knock one. Scoring accurate hits into the wings or engines of course. And 109 a bit (but just a bit) to weak? That's just my opinion.

 

Cheers

CA_Stary

[+Baltika 84]

Another thing that brought my attention a while back -anyone here thinks that 110's are waaay to tough to bring down? I usually spit most of my rounds to knock one. Scoring accurate hits into the wings or engines of course. And 109 a bit (but just a bit) to weak? That's just my opinion.

 

 

Hi CA,

 

On the subject of 110s, I think Bandy RFC mentioned that, in the BoB timeframe, the 110s did not have self-sealing tanks, so you may want to make appropriate changes to the aircfraft DATA.ini. Let me tell you, they go down a lot faster after you have removed FireSuppression and self-sealing tanks!

 

Historically, the 110s came off so badly in fighter-to-fighter combat in BoB that they generally assumed a defensive circle formation and tried to dive for cover as soon as RAF fighters showed up, so making them easy to down for the BoB campaign seems OK. Loss rates for geschwadern equipped with the type were a major concern to the Luftwaffe. (Bungay notes the loss rates of 110s to Hurris & Spits as 4:1 - not exactly achieving air superiority for the Luftwaffe).

 

To be even handed about it, you may want to remove the self-sealing from the Hurricane 1A's reserve tank, which was a major cause of serious burn injuries (and death) to Hurri pilots. Again, the problem was of concern to the top brass and self-sealing reserve tanks were retrofitted to Hurris at the rate of 75 per month, according to Bungay.

 

And I agree, the 109 seems a little easy to take out - but I do not claim any expertise on the subject. However, again taking Bungay as my source, he has this to say, at p. 201:-

 

"But the aircraft the most vulnerable of all to the guns of British Fighters was the Bf 109. RAF pilots managed to get a bead on 70 of them, and of those they destroyed 54, some 77%, a markedly higher destruction ratio than the 63% the Bf 109s achieved in return. This may be because the damaged machines had further to fly home and force-landed in England or dirched and so were lost. But it also looks as if Spitfires and Hurricanes were even more deadly than the Bf 109 itself, and that in FIGHTER combat their eight Brownings were at least as destructive as the two cannon and two machine guns of the Bf 109E."

 

My emphasis on "fighter". The more I read about it, the more I reach the view that the bombers really were tough nuts to crack with MG fire, and that it's as hard as it should be in the BoB campaign to down them.

 

Having said that, I think it was Typhoid who in an earlier post pointed out that the Engine nacelles of the various bombers don't have hit boxes, although the engines themselves do. I tried the simple expedient of copying the MinExtentPosition= and MaxExtentPosition= values from the engines to the relative engine nacelles in each bomber's DATA.ini, and I have to say it seems to be more possible to target the engines and knock them out, without making things too easy.

 

Just a thought.

 

Cheers,

 

baltika

Edited August 11, 2007 by Baltika