A-6 Superpak - Trying to Tweak it a Little bit Further.

[Arrow 83]

I managed to bring over my A-6A cockpit from WoV and integrate it with Homefries and Malibu43s' A-6 Superpak for the A-6E - haven't gotten to the A-6E 79 or A-6E 90 yet. I followed Wrenches's guide in the KB re. using cockpits from other aircraft and the A-6E is working well, with the 1 exception that my pilot has his helmet stuck out of the windshield like he's expecting to fly up to a Starbuck's take-out window and pick up an expresso.     I'm loving the CCIP bomb site by MigBuster - previously was dive bombing in the Thud and that Intruder CCIP seems seriously, deadly accurate in comparison!

It was a steep learning curve for a n00b like me, for navigating the INIs and figuring out where edits needed to be made. In the end, I'm still left wondering if I got it all right? The mock-up DIANE screen and scope seems to be correctly situated, but the scope on the bottom pilot side is just blank and never displays anything. As well, the radar in the TV windows above is also different than what it was in my stock A-6A.  So...I'm wondering if there's anyway to take it 1 step further and make that blank scope function, or is it that just due to some limitation when integrating a WO cockpit or a limitation in the SF2 engine?

I've attached screenshots of how the A-6E looks and what my converted, stock  WoV A-6A looks like. If anyone can give feedback or suggestions, I'd be appreciated.

Edited September 6, 2018 by Arrow

[Arrow 83]

Actually, now that I look at my screenshot of the A-6E more closely, I can see that the Diane needs to be slightly shifted to the left as toggle switches are poking through the right-most screen - doh! I don't even know where that position setting is, but tonight I'll dive into the INIs once again and figure it out. I can see where one could spend more time tweaking this game than playing it.  

[+EricJ 4,201]

12 hours ago, Arrow said:

I managed to bring over my A-6A cockpit from WoV and integrate it with Homefries and Malibu43s' A-6 Superpak for the A-6E - haven't gotten to the A-6E 79 or A-6E 90 yet. I followed Wrenches's guide in the KB re. using cockpits from other aircraft and the A-6E is working well, with the 1 exception that my pilot has his helmet stuck out of the windshield like he's expecting to fly up to a Starbuck's take-out window and pick up an expresso.     I'm loving the CCIP bomb site by MigBuster - previously was dive bombing in the Thud and that Intruder CCIP seems seriously, deadly accurate in comparison!

 

 

 

Back when I flew the A-6E that was secondary to the Super Hornet as far as A2G goes. The Intruder is a great plane for those who like the old mixed in with the spoiling of LGBs and just iron bomb fun.

[+yakarov79 11,002]

21 minutes ago, Arrow said:

I can see where one could spend more time tweaking this game than playing it.

that's how you play this game...if you are not modding - you are not playing.

[Arrow 83]

24 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Back when I flew the A-6E that was secondary to the Super Hornet as far as A2G goes. The Intruder is a great plane for those who like the old mixed in with the spoiling of LGBs and just iron bomb fun.

Well I probably won't get to the Super Hornet, but I will get to the F/A-18 Hornet before I'm done with my northern campaigns, as it's one of the birds my country flies.

I think a lot of my enjoyment with the A-6s is all the "stuff of legend" surrounding them; the Coonts novels and the cheesy, but entertaining movie all add to the fun I have with it. I've read little non-fiction about the Intruder so I can't gauge how realistic its flight model is in SF2, but its handling does seem remarkable to me. Especially its ability to maintain energy after performing some serious mud moving. That seems to make it a suitable bomber for a n00b player or one that's returning to the series. Too bad it wasn't made available as a default aircraft in the 2nd series. 

[Arrow 83]

12 minutes ago, yakarov79 said:

that's how you play this game...if you are not modding - you are not playing.

Think I've got it - its a sort of extra-curricular, aeronautical engineer-hangar mechanic-flightsim game.  Or if your designing terrains of campaigns, a sort of God mode strategy-historian-flightsim game 

[+Menrva 4,194]

42 minutes ago, Arrow said:

Think I've got it - its a sort of extra-curricular, aeronautical engineer-hangar mechanic-flightsim game.  Or if your designing terrains of campaigns, a sort of God mode strategy-historian-flightsim game 

You said it! I have spent more time modding the game than flying with it. Speaking of the A-6, I enjoyed using it in the SF2NA campaign in Iceland. Low-level bombing missions while avoiding the enemy missiles, a nice experience!

[+EricJ 4,201]

5 hours ago, Arrow said:

Well I probably won't get to the Super Hornet, but I will get to the F/A-18 Hornet before I'm done with my northern campaigns, as it's one of the birds my country flies.

I think a lot of my enjoyment with the A-6s is all the "stuff of legend" surrounding them; the Coonts novels and the cheesy, but entertaining movie all add to the fun I have with it. I've read little non-fiction about the Intruder so I can't gauge how realistic its flight model is in SF2, but its handling does seem remarkable to me. Especially its ability to maintain energy after performing some serious mud moving. That seems to make it a suitable bomber for a n00b player or one that's returning to the series. Too bad it wasn't made available as a default aircraft in the 2nd series. 

That's cool man, as the appeal with the Intruder is that you move pretty good,; or it has a good speed where you can go low and fast, or high and fast and get to the target. It's just one of those planes that never got much love in the real world (in my opinion) and all around a good plane.

[+daddyairplanes 10,134]

5 hours ago, yakarov79 said:

that's how you play this game...if you are not modding - you are not playing.

its why i dont actually want mue to make tga visible in the lod viewer..... i get reminded now and again that you can go flying with this thing too!

[Durasoul 138]

17 hours ago, yakarov79 said:

that's how you play this game...if you are not modding - you are not playing.

Agreed 100%. As a newbie myself, I started by questioning like "Nah, this missile can't be that accurate; holy **, those bombs just ain't that effective..." One eventually at least try to take a look at the DATA.inis 

That's when somebody really begin to enjoy the game(and recognise its possibilities & limitations)

[JosefK 911]

Hey @Arrow wonder how this project is going...

[Arrow 83]

On 2019-02-12 at 12:21 PM, JosefK said:

Hey @Arrow wonder how this project is going...

Sorry I missed your post earlier this month. Everything is working for the Intruder including the computer bombsight addon. I had to abandon trying to fix the cockpit panel so that toggle switches no longer protrude through the right-side DIANE. Despite going over the model in one of the fan-made viewers, I could never identify the component that had the switches on it. So it still has the switches protruding out, but since there isn't anything displayed or interactive on that cockpit section, I just live with it.

I haven't configured any internal countermeasures, which I'm thinking should really be done for the AI, considering the type of missions this bird flew. That of course isn't realistic, but from my reading here it appears to be the only way to work around a limitation with the the game, where AI can't dispense external countermeasures.

Edited February 27, 2019 by Arrow

[JosefK 911]

Thanks so much @Arrow, just do the best you can.  

[+Nyghtfall 2,154]

5 hours ago, Arrow said:

So it still has the switches protruding out, but since there isn't anything displayed or interactive on that cockpit section, I just live with it.

Did you try to hide the switches away in the cockpit.ini? The names of the nodes can be found with Mue's LOD-Viewer.

[Arrow 83]

On 2019-02-27 at 1:12 PM, Nyghtfall said:

Did you try to hide the switches away in the cockpit.ini? The names of the nodes can be found with Mue's LOD-Viewer.

It's been some months now, but I'm fairly certain I was using that LOD-Viewer to try and determine which component was the source of the toggle switches. With the idea of doing exactly what you sugggest, disabling them in the cockpit.ini. Despite giving it a good college try, I couldn't find the source component.

[+Nyghtfall 2,154]

Obviously TK made a bunch of switches grouped together, so unfortunately you cannot deactivate just the 2 switches.

If you want to remove them anyways, you can add the following to the cockpit.ini to make them disappear. xxx = next free number.

Instrument[xxx]=REMOVE_toggles03

[REMOVE_toggles03]
Type=inactive
NodeName=toggles03

 

[Arrow 83]

Many thanks Nyghtfall for finding that component and providing the example text to edit it out. I just loaded up the LOD-Viewer again with the A-6A_PIT.LOD and can see now how I missed that the nav_panel node had sub-nodes. Looks like I'm over the last hurdle. Um...actually, I still need to figure out how to create internal counter measures, but that will be a fun challenge once I find the time. IIRC the last mission I ran was in North Atlantic in the early 70s to bomb a ship and my Intruder wingman all got shot out of the sky by  SA missiles.  

[Edit] Flew a mission with the A-6E and the cockpit looks terrific - no more skewered DIANE.  

Edited March 1, 2019 by Arrow

[+Nyghtfall 2,154]

Have a look at a plane that has countermeasures...(ECM + CM-Dispensers). You'll find the data in the planes data.ini below the wingstation-stuff.

[Arrow 83]

I was mistaken about this; the A-6A already has an internal chaff dispenser and the A-6E has internal chaff, flares and ECM. I was actually thinking of the 66 Thud, which I'd read could take both chaff and flares via a hardpoint dispenser by the early 70's. I was doing a what-if of the RCAF in the North Atlantic, where the procurement team weren't theoretically as bone headed/cheap and selected the Thud over the F-104 Starfighter. I used Sundowner's "The Other CF-105" mod. It was a mission of Thuds out of Keflavik to attack a USSR ship, where all my wingmen got shot down.

Anyhow, good thing it got me investigating the DATA.INIs, because now my RCAF 66 Thuds have counter measures.  :)