First Eagles wish list #2

[33LIMA 972]

Again is it just me, or do balloons in FE/FE2 seem rather undefended much of the time? I can live with them not being winched down but Archie often seems to be absent or asleep if I visit (in the Mafia sense) an observation baloon. Maybe it's just the ones that appear rather far behind the front and if (as in the Flanders terrain) they tended to be located closer to the Lines they would be more likely to be in areas covered by AA fire.

 

This lack of defense seems to be the case in most campaigns/terrains. I wonder if there is anything that could be done to improve this? I don't have a death wish and i definitely don't want balloons with dummy observers and a large command-detonated bomb in the basket or even Flaming onions, but a little more AA fire more often would be nice.

 

PS if we must have mostly undefended balloons, then maybe, after all, a command-detonated balloon bomb trap Ground Object mod might be a good idea, scattered amongst the 'real' balloons, so that you would never know for sure when that nice, undefended balloon you were about to pop, might go bang and take you with it, instead...:)

 

See what I mean? The only pyrotechnics visible, in the second screenie, are those caused by the gasbag's demise.

Edited April 24, 2013 by 33LIMA

[+ojcar 157]

This is "easy" to fix. You can go to the Targets.ini in each terrain folder and add whatever you want (trucks, static infantry, field guns, machine gun nests, tanks, static ships.......and, of course, AAA)

[33LIMA 972]

Ah I see Ojcar....I'd need to extract the .cat files to look at the stock terrains, but looking at Flanders_targets.ini. I see this entry:

 

[TargetArea196]

Name=Balloon Unit 1

Position=132250.00,149750.00

Radius=100

ActiveDate=01/01/0001

Location=1

Alignment=FRIENDLY

Target[001].Type=Balloon

Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00

Target[001].Heading=0

Target[002].Type=AAA

Target[002].Offset=0.00,0.00

Target[002].Heading=0

Target[003].Type=AAA

Target[003].Offset=10.00,-20.00

Target[003].Heading=0.0

 

If I am reading this right, the Flanders terrain designer has (sensibly) located two AA (AAA) units near this balloon, one right underneath (same co-ordinates) and the other slightly offset.

 

So in other terrains - I fly in the Cambrai one mainly - I would need to find all the entries for 'balloon' in Cambrai_targets.ini, and for those which did not already have AAA target types, add in one or two, for each undefended balloon? Possibly a ground MG too.

[+ojcar 157]

You're right, bro!, but you don't need to extract the files from the CAT. If you have the current Armchair Aces, you should have new Targets.ini for Cambrai, Verdun and Vogesen (with a lot of field guns and machine gun nests added).

[33LIMA 972]

Thanks Ojcar - I was wondering why the extra MGs and stuff were showing up in campaigns when I could not find the target.ini files in the Terrains folder - which after reading your post, I now realise was because they are in the Campaigns folder!

[SpinyNorman 1]

The 1pdr Pom Pom / 37mm SockelFlak AAA is very scary! I have it defending most of my Balloons.