Adjusting the Game's Start Year

[Wrench 9,847]

It seems that folks can never find this Fix, so I'm re-posting it, in EVERY ONE of the KB main Forums, in the hope people can acutally find it and use it.

 

This will tell you how to change to 'year spread' of the game; making it cover a wider range of calendar years, and not having to mess with aircraft data ini service years, which should

 

NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER!!!! be messed with.

 

The ServiceYear= of an aircraft should only be adjusted when you are,

 

1) creating a 'nation specific' version that has carved in stone, hard data service years, or

2) correcting a mistake in said service dates

 

That's covered in another thread in the KB, and not truely relevant here.

 

Ok, there are 2 files you need to tweek for expanding the available years in ANY of the 3rd Wire games.

 

Options.ini

Singlemission.ini

 

Options ini is found in the root directory of your game ie: assuming the standard install path,

 

C:/ProgramFiles/StrateyFirst/StrikeFighters

 

or

 

C:/ProgramFiles/WingsOverVietnam

 

or

 

C:/ProgramFiles/WingsOverEurope

 

or

 

C:/ProgramFiles/WingsOverIsreal

 

(should be the same for SF2, and later iterations)

 

Open the options ini in any text editor; notepad works really good, and scroll down until you find these entries:

 

 

StartYear=

EndYear=

 

 

There'll be 3 of them, one in each of the entries for SingleMission, DogFightHost and CoOpMission

Change the start and end years; I use at least a 100 year spread, due to having several WW2 installs. So, it can look something like this for your normal, jets install:

 

 

StartYear=1950

EndYear=2050

 

If you have aircraft pre-dating these years, use the entries below (this will include ALL WW2 style aircraft):

 

StartYear=1930

EndYear=2050

 

Plenty of leeway there.

 

Save and Close the Options ini.

 

Now, using the Cat Extractor, available here at CA in the Downloads/Utilities section, open the MissionData.Cat, and extract the SingleMission.ini. Remember, the extractor always puts the extracted file into the folder where the cat it's pulled from resides. In this case, it'll be in the /Flight folder. This is were THIS particular extracted file will now reside until, well, the End of Time!!

 

Open the SingleMission ini, and you'll see this:

 

[Years]

PeriodStart=1950

PeriodEnd=2050

MaxServiceLife=5

 

 

This is also another nice little tweek:

 

[TargetValues]

MinStrikeTargetValue=05

HeavyStrikeValue=1000

NormalStrikeValue=200

 

 

Note, this is my modified one. Also, look at the TargetValues section; these have also been modified, so you'll have a wider variety of targets, based on values assigned in each terrain's **_types.ini. The targets are assigned randomly in single missions, and semi-randomly/partly scripted in campaigns. So, in some missions, you might find yourself being tasked against a high value target such as a HQ building, or something as lowly as a single tent.

 

Save and close the SingleMission.ini

 

That's it...your done! Go Fly!!

 

Wrench

kevin stein