KAW B-29 Incorrect Ceiling Impacts Mission Profile (?)

[Nicholas Bell]

I've noticed in single player missions that the KAW B-29's have always been at high altitude - which is great.  But I was wondering why, because normally one sees a lot of odd mission profiles (usually too low) based on the missioncontrol.ini altitudes - like TU-4's at 8-12,000 feet.  I was doing some editing on the B-29 to toughen it up a bit and noticed it's ceiling is 32850.  My initial thought was in was incorrectly entered as feet.  But something told me there was more going on here so I tripled the ceiling of the TU-4 and now it's flying at high level too on a couple of tests I was able to run last night.

 

So either:

 

1.  I've just got a lucky and the program is "rolling" high altitude missions consecutively, or

2.  Maybe the program takes the mission aircraft ceiling into account in selecting the mission altitude profile

3.  And maybe this is old news and it didn't get pinned.  The search engine (not the best) didn't come up with any threads...

 

If any old hands can confirm,  I would be grateful so I don't waste time further testing something already known.

 

Thanks,

Nick

[Do335]

The ceiling value is just a "hard deck" in the flight engine as in per my tests you don't get any lift once above that altitude.

As for bombing altitude it is firstly determined by ReleaseAlt= in the [LevelBombAI] section. B-29 gets 9144 which is 30,000ft so that's why it's always that high.

Secondly I think aircraft role have a factor. B-29 is set as "Bomber" so it level bombs at altitude as set. If aircraft role is "Attack", the [Altitude] section in missioncontrol.ini coupled with mission generation could determine if the attack is coming at low/med/high alt.

..What i come up with so far.

[Nicholas Bell]

Thanks!  I didn't notice the bombing AI stuff, which doesn't say much for my attention to detail.