Adjusting Beginning & End Year Spread

[Wrench 9,850]

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= entries 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*

 

(*SingleMission.ini is optional, but add more targets and Fun Factor ™ to missions)

 

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

 

C:\Users\*nameofuser*\Saved Games\ThirdWire\StrikeFighters2

 

or whatever mod folder that EACH of the SF2 exes (SF2:V, SF2:I, SF2:E, and expansion paks 1 & 2) you may have created.

 

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. Now, mind you as SF2 dosen't have any multiplayer, they really don't do anything now. But, adjust them anyways.

Change the start and end years; I try 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=1945

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, given as with the SF2 expansion paks we have WW2 aircraft, and immeadeate post-war aircraft readily available (Mustang, Spitfire, Meteor, Mig-15, Yak-23; you get the idea)

 

Save and Close the Options ini.

 

Now, using the 3rd Wire Cat Extractor, available here at CA in the SF2 Downloads/Utilities section, open the MissionData001.Cat, and extract the SingleMission.ini. Place it into your mods folders /Flight folder.

 

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

 

[TargetValues]

MinStrikeTargetValue=100

HeavyStrikeValue=1000

NormalStrikeValue=200

 

These show the 'minimum value' for targets on the Strike Missions. Since us Terraformers put all kinds of interesting stuff on the terrains, many that have values far below those stock ones, do this:

 

[TargetValues]

MinStrikeTargetValue=05

HeavyStrikeValue=1000

NormalStrikeValue=200

 

 

This will give 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 or parked Jeep/BRDM.

 

Save and close the SingleMission.ini

 

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

 

Wrench

kevin stein