Tailspin

"Well, if your flying German say E3 in a campaign or missions you'll be meeting mainly Fe2Bs and Dh3s - tough times indeed, and tyhe E3 is the best German plane for a good 6 months!!!" Hmmm...I have to say "Thats the way the cookie crumbles." There were periods where both sides enjoyed air superiority from the beginning to nearly mid 1917. IMHO that is just as interesting to gameplay as trying to maintain a balance. Fair dose of reality AFAIAC and it surely cuts both ways.

I've just recently revisited Gepard's excellent Vogesen Terrain and I really like it. I did a search and didn't find anything where Gepard had done anything to update the airfields yet so I took it upon myself to try and fix them. Its really just a simple .ini edit so I thought I'd post it here for anyone who wants to do it themselves. First open the Vogesen_targets.ini. Luck would have it that all the airfields are right at the beginning of the file. The first entry is Sundhoffen. You will see it has all of the targets like hangars, tents, AAA, etc. in place. If you scroll down you will find the rest of the airfields only have the runway Target[001]=Airfield entry. So what we need to do is go back to the Sundhoffen section and select (left click/highlight) entries Target[002] through Target[038]. Then right click...COPY...and PASTE [002]-[038] in all the rest of the ENEMY airfields in the target.ini. There are 9 total. SAVE your work and then do the French side next. Scroll down to the French airfields [TargetArea010] and do the same thing using Rehaupal Airfield as the source for the FRIENDLY airfields. There are 6 of them. Now we are going to have to change some of the Airfield heading entries to get all the stuff to appear on the fields correctly. Look at the first Target entry [001] on each Airfield section. You will see this: Target[001].Type=Airfield Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00 Target[001].Heading=90.0 <----------This is the entry we want to change on some fields Some don't need changing but unfortunately when I was doing this I forgot to note which fields I actually had to change so I will list the Heading entries for all the airfields. Just make your numbers match these and you'll be good to go. ENEMY: Sundhoffen.....90.0 Ensisheim.......90.0 Habsheim....... 90.0 Freiburg..........90.0 Breisach........180.0 Colmar.............0.0 Schlettstadt...180.0 Neubreisach....90.0 Marckolsheim..90.0 FRIENDLY: Rehaupal........90.0 Gerardmer....270.0 Belfort............90.0 Ronchamp....180.0 Ternuay.........90.0 Errevet..........90.0 Now all the fields should be populated and everything oriented correctly. Of course now would be a good time to add those Machine Gunners too.

Very nice. I like it. I kind of missed the explosion when you hit the ground so I used Windows Sound Recorder and mixed the SmallExplosion.wav with your sound. Now it crunches real good and then goes BOOM! Thanks for the new sound.

Third line FC. You are correct. You have to add the lod's and bmp's from the Flanders Terrain and also both the Targets and Types inis Christian has modified. Speaking of the Target.ini, Christian...what are those references to "No man's land" etc.? They don't appear in the "stock" targets.ini?

I would be suprised if something that would work doesn't already exist. There are several different Smoke and WP type bombs and rockets for Strike Fighters.

There was a previous discussion about that. Consensus was that the railroad bridge model was more or less one big rectangular hit box and it would take a revision of the 3d model itself to fix it. It would be nice if someone could do that. The railroad bridge needs some approaches anyway. Right now I'm working on introducing the small bridges from the Vogesen terrain into the Verdun terrain. They work just fine but its a time consuming, tedious process. I'll get it done eventually and with permission from Gepard, I'll eventually post it for everyone.

Thanks Charles. This is a neat little terrain, isn't it?. Its got bridges and some of the airfields actually have roads leading to them.

Bonds has a long history of being a jagoff. You reap what you sow. AFAIC he can ESAD!

Cool...what did you use for the sound file? Why not post it?

Thanks a lot Peter. I've one request...the A-Team's Albatros DIII. They like to fight in the vertical, which is good, but they usually wind up hanging on their props at less than 50mph...sometimes a lot less. I know TK is getting ready to release a DIII with the next update but maybe there is a quick fix? BTW....You do know that once you've gotten WWI perfected we're going to get you started on the WWII FM's next. :yes:

Would the convoy missions work better as Anti-Shipping?

Krazy...I'm pretty sure those are Polak's horizon clouds available here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autom...p;showfile=1867 Originally made for SFP1 but they work just as well for FE.

Results can vary widely from mission to mission. If one side is flying a superior aircraft the AI will get more kills. You can tell the attack order works. Often when you order your wingmen to attack some will open fire immediately after the order. Peter is right. If you let them fight on their own, they will continue to fight until there are only a couple left flying. I've even seen them firing at the "soft" landed planes on the ground. I guess its all about expectations. The thing I don't get is why such high expectations. I've had several flightsims on my HDD over the past several years and I don't see where the AI in First Eagles so bad. Certainly no worse than many "classics" IMHO.

Its a good'n. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=20131

I dunno. If I set Enemy air activity to Heavy and always order them to engage air via the comms the friendly AI regularly, no not always but often, get nearly half the kills...especially if there are some experienced pilots in the Squadron. Yes, I can still get 4 or 5 kills but in my experience the AI isn't totally useless. I get shot down by the enemy every now and then too. Also the AI in the campaigns seem a lot more aggressive than in single missions. Regardless IMHO lame, seemingly defenseless, sitting duck type pilots were a very real part of air combat. To paraphrase some British pilots from the Battle of Britain most pilots that got shot down didn't have any idea there were even any enemy planes about. We should be thankful for the fact that in the sim the AI doesn't make a pass, shoot off a few rounds and hightail it home...like they really did IRL. And of course the game's shortcomings have nothing to do with Charles' very good campaigns so perhaps a general gripe about the AI should be a separate topic?

I'm sure some of you have already seen this site. If not then its a good read. The only problem I have with it is that it relies heavily on theory based on mathematics. I would imagine there are many, many poor Luftwaffe aircrew souls that would earnestly dispute the "numbers" where the "puny" rifle caliber guns of the RAF are concerned. The sections on bomber defensive guns and aircraft armor are interesting. http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/han...un/fgun-in.html

The armor values are in mm. Don't worry about using the calculator, I finally did the calcs. and used them anyway.

Excellent idea. Something different to try amongst all the intercepts. BTW....is anybody getting any engine fires or smoking from the bombers? All I can seem to get to burn are the fuel tanks. I noticed the Engine nacelles have no hit boxes (Min./Max. extent in the data.ini...although the engines themselves do). Wonder if this could be the culprit? Like Nicholas Bell suggests (Thanks NB) right now I've got the fuel tanks without fire supression or self sealing and with armor values of 25mm. Its still fairly easy to get a good fire going for me. I had the armor set to 30mm which was a little harder but the AI seemed to have trouble getting bomber kills. This is with all the defensive guns of the bombers shut down and me taking deliberate, well aimed shots directly at the fuselage/wing root so it might be OK when I turn the gunners back on. The only thing I don't like about it now is there seems to be no damaged but still flying bombers. Its either burning and going down or not. I can turn the Fire Supression back on and get more "smokers" that stay in formation longer but then I almost never get one to burn real good. Can't seem to find a happy medium. Any ideas? Sorry to change the subject, Baltika. I think the idea of attacing the German airfields is great!

I've decided to place some extra trouble around the airfields in FE. AA Machine Guns. So, you say, AAA MG gunners have been around since the ATeam released them waaay back in December 06....what's the catch? The catch is these are placed in addition to the heavy AAA already there. These are separate ground objects and will always appear as MGs and only MGs. I've only added three guns per field and haven't messed with the original ATeam gunner parameters but, take my advice, don't go flying low and slow over an airfield unless you're sitting on a helmet. You can find the guns by following the tracers in the screenshot. Hope you enjoy. Any comments, suggestion, problems contact me here. Oh yeah...."How to" text file available here in the downloads section. Follow the link in the Files Announcement.

Thanks Peter. Good to see you back.

No, I didn't. Since it was a tweak that didn't involve any of the weapons or gun files I didn't think it necessary. I just assumed this applied to objects and how they reacted to impacts from bullet types. However this tweak may not be necessary if we can get the planes to catch fire as they should without it. Still, I think its worth a little experimenting. BTW....good job on the convergences. I didn't find the geometry site until after I'd done a bunch of trial and error stuff myself. Not sure the trial and error wasn't the better way to do it.

Hurricane...Start a single mission...Pick an Offensive or Defensive Patrol. Once you are high enough off the ground (your alt. reading will turn from red to yellow) hit ALT + N. This will "jump" you to the IP in the target area. Keep flying toward the target waypoint and the EA should show up within a few seconds. Again, in single missions you have to go to the target area to find EA. If you just fly to any old enemy airbase or anywhere but the target waypoint (the triangle in the mission map) you won't find any EA.

http://www.ajdesigner.com/phptriangle/law_...ion_angle_a.php There is another formula for figuring the length of the other side of the triangle (a^2 + b^2 = c^2) at the site too. Using the formulae I get a value of 1.19 for the outer guns on the Spit @ 200 meters. I haven't got the chance to see if the guns converge at 200m in the sim though. Seems like they converge pretty quickly at this angle but its hard to tell how far it is in the virtual world. BTW...AFAIK the first number is all you need to set convergence. A postive number angles to the right and a negative number angles to the left. As to the question of somehow incorporating an API or incendiary rounds, if you extract the AIRCRAFTOBJECT.INI you will see a section titled ObjectFire. In that there is an entry for APRoundFireChance=1. Try increasing that to a higher number. I have mine set to 3 at the moment. FYI, I am trying these things out for the first time myself. I don't know what effect they will have and I haven't had time to fully test anything. I hope you all will try them too and we can compare notes.

We're on the same page B. I've been tinkering around with gun convergence and it seems to work visually. The aim offset seems to be in degrees so you can either guesstimate the angles or you can actually do the math given the muzzle postitions from the centerline and the convergence distance as two sides of the right triangle. I gotta do some work today so I'll have to post more later this evening. Interested to see what you come up with and whether you think the sim actually calculates the effect of convergence.

Another thing to consider about the German bombers in the sim.... If you will take a look at the Data.inis you will find that all of them have a StructuralFactor of anywhere from 3.0 to 6.0 added to their component damage. This means that they take 3 to 6 times the amount of hit points ABOVE normal to achieve the given damage rating. In addition to this some components are also given ARMOR values thus adding more to the hit points required to do damage. If you look at the Brit fighters, they have no such increase in StructuralFactor or armor. So the rifle caliber guns of the British planes are required to inflict as much as 6 times (or more in the case of armored components) the damage to the German bombers as the rifle caliber guns of the German bombers are to achieve the same results. Hardly seems fair. In other words...IMHO the damage models for the bombers need a little tweaking.