Armchair Aces updated!

[Crawford 570]

You are right, of course.
Yes, I quite understand that 'the WWI planes can't reach such accelerations' and so on. I not a full idiot. )) But I meant that in FE the Roland D.II (for example) at dive develop a speed of 400 km/h (!). However, if you move vigorously the control column forward or backward, occurs neither the blackout, nor redout. While the He-51 (for example) if to switch off its engine and to speed up to 250 km/h and then to push the control column away from itself - the redout is guaranteed. That is why until yesterday I was confident that Gs settings are hidden somewhere in the DATA.INI. It must be admitted, I was mistaken. For my part it was a very stupid idea - to try to insert these effects into FE. Moreover, I knew that the developers of RB3D err against realism.
Thank you for help and your patient explanations.
And sorry for my bad English.
 

[+ojcar 157]

I don't know. I suppose it's also a question of control sensibility. WWI aircraf had very primitive ailerons, rudders, etc so I think that more modern aircraft gives you faster response, hence more Gs. (or something like that)

 

Nevetheless, the important think is you can change BlackoutStartG and RedoutStartG to your taste.

 

And don't worry about your English. I'm from Spain and you are from Ukraine. It's a miracle I'm talking with you and we are understanding something...

[Buddy1998 2]

Ok. So now I've got FE2 to where I now like it a lot after following ojcar's excellent instructions on the Armchair aces redux MOD. Also, I've done some additions of different engine sounds to all the aircrafts from other FE mods. I've been playing WOFF and RoF, but it doesn't satisfy my WW1 gaming needs like FE2's great modding community has done.

 

I do have a couple of areas of concern so far....

 

1) Pilot kills. It seems like when I encounter an ace ai, they kill my pilot in one shot. It is possible that I'm a bad virtual pilot, but I'm used to seeing blood splatter effect to know that at least I'm injured before I get killed. Is there anyway to get this effect or at least make my pilot withstand a few more bullets before getting killed?

 

2) None of the WW1 airfield figures, officer cars, maintenance objects are showing on the airfield like they do in the Eastern Front Campaign. What could I be doing wrong?

 

Salute and a big thumbs up to all the modders who made this sim so wonderful to play.

[+ojcar 157]

Hello, Buddy!

 

I'm happy you are enjoying the game and understand my English-with-mixed-Spanish-gramatics-instructions

 

1- Aces are really good shooters, but can be defeated (with a lot of practice). This game doesn't have such effect (another bug), but i have finished some missions and when I have read the debrieffing, I have found myself injured. My advise is: never go head to head against an enemy (specially against two guns fighters) and don't be "target fixated". When you see tracers coming at you fron your tail, break!!!! and use the strong points of your plane

 

2- All these (excellent) objects must be installed by hand in each terrain (a true pain, believe me). You will need to moddify each targets.ini and types.ini. It's a hugue lot of work. In the Eastern Front (and I think in Palestine), Stephen did all this work.

 

Now I'm working for the next update!

[33LIMA 972]

Looking forward to the new update Ojcar, that SPAD XI from Stephen sort of snuck in under the radar, not surprising as there was none :)

 

 

FWIW I think the ghost trees and ground objects are a trivial matter. Nor does it bother me, that the AI knows with certainty when a target has been shot enough. It's remarkable in fact how well a jetsim has adapted to WW1, though it took a patch or two.

 

I absolutely find and believe that the air-to-air and dogfigthing experience in FE/FE2 is the best of any of the current WW1 sims, thanks to a good combination of convincing air-to-air AI, mostly very good flight and damage models, an excellent view system, very effective visual and audible stall effects; decent Archie target indication, and an under-rated but very capable campaign system with convincing air activity including an adequate 2-seater presence..the campaign aspect enhanced of course by your very own work (and of course Stephen's great freeware planes). Now all we really could ask for for the Western Front is a Dorand AR, a 'Big Ack' and a 1918 German 2-seater (hint!). I have over 200 aircraft and variants active, all flyable, and that's just my Western Front install. Super stuff. I mean, where else would you find all the usual planes, plus the likes of these - and many more besides?

 

Roland D.II and D.IIa:

 

 

Other sims have had an Albatros D.II, but FE has a D.I, as well:

 

 

Likewise, we have not just a Fokker DII, but also the twin-gun, twin row rotary D.III:

 

 

Lots of 2-seaters, also, like the LVG C.II...

 

 

...a Farman F40...

 

 

...and a Caudron G IV:

 

 

There's even a Sopwith Tabloid:

 

 

And a BE2e, rather than the 2c having to soldier on, till the RE8 is available:

 

 

And it's Armchair Aces that intregates all these great planes into the FE/FE2campaign system!

[+Stephen1918 1,473]

I love your screenshots, 33Lima!

 

When I started with FE a few years ago, I only flew single missions. But lately I've been flying ojcar's campaigns most of the time. They really improve the experience for me.

 

I hear your hints, all the planes you mentioned are near the top of my list. But not at the very top yet, I'm doing the SPAD 16 now, then another plane for the Eastern Front, then...

 

By the way, I see you're flying the old Caudron. I uploaded a version with better wing tips back in June.

[33LIMA 972]

Thanks Stephen and please keep 'em coming! I'll seek out the new Caudron now!

 

Gotta go - something's brewing, in our patrol area...

 

[Crawford 570]

Saludos, ojcar! Sorry for the question, but whether you know how teach the planes in FE to enter into a spin? I remember that in SF1 there was no spin. In the new games by Third Wire a spin has not appeared also. When you pull a control column to yourself - the plane is softly pancaking! At the same time, some planes (only some!) represent a quite realistic spin. Probably, this bug can be corrected for all other planes? It is necessary to correct some variable parameters, which influence behaviour of the plane as a result of loss of speed, isn't it?

I shall be extremely grateful to you for any help.

[+ojcar 157]

Some planes are more spin-prone than others. It's difficult to fine tuning it. You can start here:

 

STALL FACTORS IN SF
The Stall parameters for the wings [LeftWing, RightWing, LeftOuterWing and RightOuterWing] are as follows:

CLMax is the maximum Lift Factor
Alpha is the Angle of Attack
AlphaStall is the angle (in degrees) at which the aircraft stalls
AlphaMax is the maximum angle of attack (in degrees) the aircraft becomes uncontrollable or enters a spin
AlphaDepart is the maximum angle of attack (in degrees) before the aircraft will definitely spin

All of these Alpha terms are in degrees from horizontal
The lift "curve" is modeled as 4 connected straight line segments - first part with slope of CLa to AlphaStall, then at reduced slope to AlphaMax, then flat top segment to AlphaDepart, and it drops off from there. Also, past AlphaStall, there is some randomness subtracted, so none of the wing panels have exactly the same amount of lift. (this randomness increases in magnitude as Alpha increase).

StallMoment is the additional pitching moment you get when the wing section starts to stall. positive pitch (+) makes it so it pitches up as you stall (making it more unstable), negative pitch (-) makes it so it pitches down when you stall (making it more stable). The default value, if you don't specify a value, I think, is -0.02, which I think would make for gentle mushing forward type stall I was looking for...

There are a couple of other stall/depart variables added, all of them have default values so if you don't specify, you just get the default behaviour you see...

PostStallCma= determinesthe Cma (pitching moment due to Angle-of-Attack (Alpha)) past stall. Pre-stall, the engine uses lift value and xac value to calculate the pitching moment. Once the wing stalls and departs, additional pitching moment of StallMoment + the PostStallCma * (AoA - AlphaDepart) is added. I think this defaults to -0.2 or something.

StallHysteresis= (should be from 0.0 to 1.0) determines how far the AoA has to be reduced in order for the airflow to reattach itself. I think 0.0 means the wing section will be unstalled as soon as AoA goes back under the stall angle, 1.0 means wing will unstall only when AoA goes back to 0 deg. I think the default is 0.4 or something.

PostStallZeroLiftAlpha = this is the angle at which the lift goes down to zero. Post AlphaDepart, the lift is linearly reduced down to zero at this angle. I think this defaults to 90-deg...

 

 

Good luck.

[Crawford 570]

Muchas gracias, ojcar! All is very detailed and clear. Thank you for taking the time to me. And once again I'm sorry for your trouble.

[jeanba 1,915]

Too bad I cannot connect to DAT, I sent a mail to cesar I cannot connect for few months now, but no answer :(

[+ojcar 157]

Armchair Aces Redux has been updated again!

 

Go for the 1.5 version!

 

-New  in 1.5:

-Roland D.II
-Roland D.IIa
-SPAD 11
-SPAD 16
-Fixed some typhos in campaign files

[+whiteknight06604 931]

thank you for the continued updates.

[+Stephen1918 1,473]

Wonderful work Ojcar! I also appreciate your continued dedication to First Eagles. Your many campaigns really bring it all together.

[+Coupi 4,279]

Many thanks!!!

[jeanba 1,915]

As usual, it is a torture to see this work and know that I cannot play it, because I cannot access the A-Team forum :(

[+Stephen1918 1,473]

Jeanba, I do not have access to the A-team site either. You can still fly the campaigns, but you may see blank spots in the campaign menu screen. Be careful not to fly a unit that doesn't have an aircraft listed and you should be OK. - Or you can edit the campaigns to substitute planes you do have.

 

 

I just noticed that Capitaine Vengeur has just uploaded a revised Medals Pack for the Western Front, the timing couldn't be better!

[vonOben 55]

Hi

I've bought First Eagles 2 for myself as a Christmas present and is now busy installing all needed stuff for the Armchair Aces Redux campaign.  

First of all would I like to thank everyone who has contributed to improve FE from the original game release.
If it wasn't for all dedicated modders I probably never would have bought the game.

Now for two minor questions.

According to the Armchair Aces Redux readme file:
Hanriot HD1 -by EmID Add Peter01 FM
Aviatik C.I - by A Team (add Peter01 FM)

I've downloaded a few files with Peter01 FM's, but I can find any Hanriot HD1
There is a FM for Hanriot_HD1_CAM, is it that one I should use?
I can't find any Aviatik C.I in Peter01 FM files.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers
vonOben

[+ojcar 157]

These are what I'm using now

Aviatik-Hanriot FMs.zip

[vonOben 55]

Thank you very much ojcar! 

[vonOben 55]

Hi ojcar   

I've recently started my first FE2 campaign ever using "Armchair Aces Redux" flying for KEK Nord based at Le Cateau aerodrome, Cambrai, France.
The campaign started in August 1915 and I'm quite suprised how much air activity there is so early in the war. I encounter a lot of enemy flights during the missions and I get lots of kills and it's fun missions, but perhaps not that historically accurate?

Is it possible to tweak the campaign files to turn down the air activity slightly?
What should I modify in that case?

Is there any Career Linker for FE2, like the one DOM did for EAW?
The EAW Career Linker worked like this:
This utility is designed to copy your exact score (kills/missions, rank, points and medals) from a career (or campaign) you completed to another one you are starting. It may also transfer some active pilots from the last career to the new one.

Such a program would be nice together with "Armchair Aces Redux" IMHO.

Best regards

vonOben

[+ojcar 157]

Hello! I agree. There are too much air activity in the early campaigns. I let them as they are because the fun factor. Maybe I can tweak this in next version. For Armchair Aces I'm using some old Red Baron 3D mods and copying them into the FE system (with some changes, of course). For some reason the FE code is much more aggresive than the Redbaron 3D one and so you'll have much more dogfights than Western Front Patch, for example. Some things I can do (and needs to be tested):

 

-I can change some Allied "Fighter" squadrons into Recon ones, 

 

-I can reduce number of fighters in fighter squadrons.

 

-I can play with Moral in the Squadrons.

 

-I can play with the kind of missions assigned to the squadrons.

 

-I can play with AircraftReplacementTime and AircraftReplacement.

 

What do you think?

 

BTW: the career linker is a very good idea (for example, start the war in Western Front and being transferred to Palestine), but I think some kind of career transfer could damage your earned medals.

Edited May 22, 2016 by ojcar

[+VonS 1,424]

Hi ojcar   

 

I've recently started my first FE2 campaign ever using "Armchair Aces Redux" flying for KEK Nord based at Le Cateau aerodrome, Cambrai, France.

The campaign started in August 1915 and I'm quite suprised how much air activity there is so early in the war. I encounter a lot of enemy flights during the missions and I get lots of kills and it's fun missions, but perhaps not that historically accurate?

Is it possible to tweak the campaign files to turn down the air activity slightly?

What should I modify in that case?

 

Is there any Career Linker for FE2, like the one DOM did for EAW?

The EAW Career Linker worked like this:

This utility is designed to copy your exact score (kills/missions, rank, points and medals) from a career (or campaign) you completed to another one you are starting. It may also transfer some active pilots from the last career to the new one.

Such a program would be nice together with "Armchair Aces Redux" IMHO.

 

Best regards

 

vonOben

 

These are excellent ideas 'gents. I've been contemplating the idea of a "single mission linker"-type application for FE2 for several weeks but this would probably require some fancy coding...will look further into this, to see if it is feasible. The idea is that you would start in a single mission in a theatre of your choice (let's say Palestine, Sept. 1915, flying as a Fokker. E.IIa pilot for the Ottomans - and then you would automatically after completing the mission be "randomly" thrown into another, perhaps a month or two later, either of the same type, for example, offensive, or randomly, another type doing a balloon busting mission or army coop....this would require of course code to "randomize" things...also to switch between "light" and "heavy" air activity depending on the theatre and period of war). The Palestinian theatre would have only light and moderate air activity, something like the Western front would shift to heave air activity by early 1918...other variations would be implemented for the Eastern and Italian theatres. This would then allow a kind of "linear" approximation of the campaign modes, but flying in "interlinked" single mission mode. Lots of ideas to think about.

 

Happy flying,

Von S

[Nicholas Bell 117]

If you're comfortable with hex editing it's easy to cut and paste the pilot data from one saved campaign to another using a hexeditor.  This enables me to play from one month to the next of ojcar's campaigns.  The fact that most of the squadron doesn't survive even one month is what drove me to finding ways to reduce casualties other than flying fewer missions.

 

Here's the decimal offsets for the FE2 campaign savegame file and for your pilot.  You might recall I did an MS Excel spreadsheet editor for FE1 and the first generation SF.  TK changed the file format so that doesn't work in the second generation sims.  I can't seem to code newer versions of Visual Basic to recreate that type of editor, and my ability to create a stand alone edit is nil, given coding "skill" got as far as Basic in MS-DOS in 1995.

 

So if anyone wants to code a quick utility for the community using this data, I'm certain it would be greatly appreciated.  Although I must say that hexediting isn't anything to complicated (heck I taught myself how to hack files back in early 90s) and encourage folks to give it a shot.

 

I should really upload this to the download section I suppose.

 

To create the environment of 1915 the campaign has to have very few squadrons, and the morale level needs to be real low (20) to keep the number of planes in a flight low.  I'd suggest "eliminated" squadrons by editing their aircraft and pilot quantities to zero rather than going through the hassle of actually removing and renumbering the squadrons.

FE2 Hex Data.pdf

[vonOben 55]

Hi guys

 

ojcar;
I'm glad that you agree. If you want to make any changes for your next version, right now. I can test the files for you in my ongoing campaign, if it's possible to swap campagn files during an ongoing campaign?
 
Nicholas Bell;
Thanks for the information!

I'll try to decrease the squadron number then and lower the morale for my next (October 1915) campaign.

It would be great to be able transfer the pilot data for both myself and for my squad mates to the next month in a  "Armchair Aces Redux" campaign, that would make the campaign more consistent and enjoyable for me.
I can't say I'm comfortable with hexediting, but I can usually manage if I get thorough instructions.
I'll open the Campaign and Pilot files in my hexeditor and check your pdf to see if I can figure it out. Most likely I'll be back with some questions.

 

Best regards

 

vonOben