Baltika

Yes, it's a tough one, isn't it? A follow up question to my previous post:- Has anyone who flies strike missions ever been given a runway as a primary target? I am trying to force attacks on runways, for obvious reasons, and I can't make the campaign engine do it. And I am getting hard crashes to desktop a lot ever since I started messing about with the "AirOffensive[XXX]=" settings. It is getting so frustrating that I have taken up skinning for light relief - well, I can't have 603 (City of Edinburgh) Sqdn flying about with the wrong squadron codes, can I? Let me just say that that experience is making me realise how lucky we are with all the talented skinners around. S! to everyone who ever posted a skin. You guys are great Cheers for now, baltika

I am trying to work up 3 separate phases for the campaign, as Bandy suggested, Channel Shipping Strikes, Airfield/Radar Station attacks, then attacks over London. All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be in place:- The Airoffensive types listed in the campaign.ini for each force, the targets themselves on the terrain in the Battle of Britain_targets.ini, and the target types to match up with ther airoffensive types as defined in, you guessed it, the Battle of Britain_types.ini. I have successfully added extra target areas to give 5 or 6 Channel Convoys, complete with 7 or 8 Cargo Ships in each and a few Destroyer escorts (OK, they don't move, but hey, it's a start). However, when I start altering the Airoffensive types as defined in the campaign.ini, in order to force attacks only on certain types of targets at different stages of the campaign, the game engine seems not to like the targets I have selected. Very occasionally, I will successfully be assigned strike missions on my new Channel Convoy target areas. Most of the time, however, I get endless runs of Recon missions (even when set to 0 for the particular squadron) other times I get CTDs when clicking "Accept" after a failed or successful strike mission. There seems to be some rhyme and reason to it, but I can't fathom it out. Any suggestions on how this fits together? I have scoured the forums on this issue but info seems pretty scant in this area. Cheers, Steven

Hi Bandy, Fair comment, the Luftwaffe bomber formations do seem to have nerves of steel. However, the WWII Formations mod is simply directed towards (a) putting more planes in the air per formation than the stock install (whatever flavour) and (b) providing them with enough slots to sit in so you don't get planes "piled up" on top of one another in formation. There is a good thread on this somewhere, with screenies, who knows where now, that shows what happens if you have WW2 formation sizes without the formations mod - basically lots of overlapping planes. Now, by all means it is possible to tweak the WWII formations mod to spread the planes out a bit - look in the FORMATIONS.INI file and you will see a straightforward x,y,z matrix of formation positions (in metres) which determines where each plane flies in formation relative to the others (the base point being 0,0,0 or lead plane - the player). However, that is not the root of the issue. Charles has set it up so that bombers fly in combat boxes and their defensive fire is concentrated - the ultimate example of the technique being the USAAF B-17 style combat box. You'd have to be crazy to go anywhere near a formation like that But that's what the bombers did, for obvious reasons. The real issue you are getting at (and quite properly, too) is the AI behaviour of the planes in that formation when confronted with a mad RAF pilot making ahead-on attack and zooming between the individual bombers. Now, where do we get at the AI? A number of factors (as I understand it - I'm happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable) come in to play. There is the "Waypoint" transition routine which the AI will fly - I'm not getting into that argument here, but it has been the subject of criticism elsewhere - maybe the bombers just don't "see" enemy planes when they are en route. There is the overall training level of the particular nation's pilots (see the NATIONS.INI) and there is the morale and experience level of each individual unit (as defined in the BOB_DATA.INI). And then, as capun pointed out earlier in this thread, there is the [AIDATA] entry for each aircraft which controls game-engine AI responses for builds of the core game engine which were introduced after some of the planes included in this campaign were released. Where does that take us? There's a lot to fiddle with, basically. It might be worth looking at Stuka formations - I have noticed they do tend to break up when attacked, and replicating that response for other formation types is the name of the game. As ever with SFP1/WOV/WOE/FE, finding out how it all works can often become more time-consuming than flying the missions. But, hey, when something works out, it's fantastic. (Still loving that gun convergence mod). And the changelog for v0.60 of the campaign pack just keeps getting longer. One of these days I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and fire it out where I've got to already. But, as you know, Bandy, you got me started on implementing the different phases of BoB - Channel Shipping attacks, Airfield/Radar Station attacks, then the "Terror over London." Let's just say that it's not been as fiddly as I thought it would be - and it's damn scary sitting in your 109E-3B trying to bomb a convoy protected by destroyers with nothing but sea out to the horizon Cheerio for now, baltika

Thanks for that - further testing required. Cheers, baltika

Tailspin- No worries mate, my bad for introducing a new theme. Thanks for the vote of confidence, the sadly often forgotten (and highly dangerous) daylight efforts of Bomber Command over Luftwaffe bases in France in the early stages of BoB will gain due recognition in the next campaign update As to getting those bombers to burn, but not too much, I have been following the discussion with keen interest. I have currently set up my Luftwaffe bombers to have FireSuppression and SelfHealing set to TRUE for fuel tanks (otherwise I get the Roman Candle effect Bandy describes, especially with new improved gun convergence) but I have set FireSuppression for engines to FALSE. The idea being, hopefully by targetting an engine you can get a flamer, but not a massive explosion every time you hit a bomber. Your comments re hitboxes are interesting. I've not done enough testing yet for any clear results, but the night is young In the back of my mind I have those reports of bombers making it to homebase with 2 or 3 hundred .303 bullet holes in them. Sometimes hard is just hard Oh, and BTW, my completely soulless but very precise mathematically calculated gun harmonisation works just fine, thank you Although I must admit, Bandy's trial and error is surprisingly accurate - running his figures through the machine gives the outer guns converging at a shade over 219metres, or 197 yards. Battle experience led the RAF to reduce their convergence from 450 yards to 200 yards. Go get 'em Bandy Well, so much to do, so little time. Cheers, baltika PS I see armour values of 2 or 5 or whatever in the _data.ini, but what is the unit? For, say, 30mm, what do I set it to?

Just read this on Mike Kelsey's 151 Sqdn site http://www.151squadron.org.uk/ "Of being shot down on June 30, S/Ldr Donaldson wrote in the Daily Telegraph as follows:-. 'Air Vice Marshall Keith Park, Air Officer Commanding No 11 Group, which directly faced the Luftwaffe across the Channel was utterly dedicated to the winning of the Battle and was not an entirely Defensive man. On certain days he sent Squadrons over France to fight Germans over their own bases. I think this gave the Germans the impression that the R.A.F. was much stronger than it was. On one of Park's trips over France on June 30, my Squadron was ordered to escort Basil Embrey to destroy a large enemy fuel dump in France. We did not particularly like this assignment because Basil, absolutely fearless himself, took so long with positive identification of the target dump, for the Germans had so many dummies. Basil was not about to waste bombs On dummies so round and round he went with his Blenheim bombers being shot at from the ground while we were continuously attacked by Messerschmitts from above. But we did not leave him and this kept the Messerschmitts from attacking the bombers. Eventually, flying home from this, Basil's Squadron was jumped by Messerschmitts low over the sea and a terrific battle started. It was then that a particularly threatening Messerschmitt arrived and went straight for me. We fought for fifteen minutes ending up with head-on attacks on each other. Usually, Messerschmitts did not like this, for a Hurricane could turn more sharply, so it usually made off, which it could do so at 60 mph faster than the Hurricane. In this case, On about the fourth head-on attack, shells and bullets started to strike my poor aircraft. The first shell knocked my poor oil tank clean out of the leading edge of the wing, so I knew the engine could not run much longer. Then the petrol tank blew up and my clothes caught fire and I became hot but still the b-----d continued to shoot. My gloves were burning and my goggles frizzled up but I took neither off - luckily!. I undid my straps and climbed on the wing, for the Hurricane was flying very slowly and I could actually see the burning wing bending upwards. Then I realised with alarm that I was only 800 ft off the sea. I thought this too low for a safe bail out but at this time I fell off and it took me seconds to locate the pull ring, which I must have pulled, for, as I was about to hit the water, my parachute opened. I disappeared to the full extent of the cords and the wind got under the parachute and lifted me like a missile to the surface and started pulling me at about 5 Km/hr towards the French Coast. Boulogne was two miles away, so I got rid of it at once, but then again shells started coming over, even when my head was under water. It certainly hurt my ears. The Germans had been shooting at pilots In the sea at that time but my Squadron flew over me as long as their fuel lasted. They were not going to let the Germans near me. Later the Y Service which listened to all R/T prattle told me it was General Galland who had shot me down. I met him in London recently and I still don't think much of his conduct that day, for he must have known that my Hurricane was dead as far as fighting again, but he never stopped shooting. After this encounter neither did I.' Basil Embry was later shot down, taken prisoner, but escaped from Imprisonment with a price on his head. He was later to become Station Commander at Wittering as Group Captain when 151 Squadron was stationed there in 1942/1943, thus furthering his association with 151 Squadron. After the War Basil Embrey was a Senior Commander in the R.A.F. before retiring back to his native New Zealand.' My question is this:- Given the above, how about I add a couple of squadrons of Blenheims for the odd bombing run over Luftwaffe bases in France, and add a few escort missions for fighter squadrons? Cheers, baltika

Hi Keith I'm having trouble recreating this one - which unit are you flying, what type of mission, and what screen are you on when you see it? The data for briefings is held in .../Terrain/Battle of Britain/Battle of Britain_Briefing.ini which Gepard has edited in keeping with the terrain, and certainly no reference to Migs there. There may be other text elsewhere which I haven't been able to track down - certainly on escort missions (I think that's what you're talking about) I see references to "preventing enemy interceptors" from attacking the strike force, but again, no reference to Migs. Yes, this can be a problem. Use Red Crown to give you a bearing to your "Primary Target" as early as possible and vector to intercept them. Once they hove into view it's a matter of keeping your eyes peeled to keep track of where they get to! Cheers, baltika

OK, 200m seems a little close. Here are my figures for the Hurri Mk1, convergance at 250m:- [GunL01] AimAngles=0.504,0.0,1.5 [GunR01] AimAngles=-0.504,0.0,1.5 [GunL02] AimAngles=0.47,0.0,1.5 [GunR02] AimAngles=-0.47,0.0,1.5 [GunL03] AimAngles=0.435,0.0,1.5 [GunR03] AimAngles=-0.435,0.0,1.5 [GunL04] AimAngles=0.401,0.0,1.5 [GunR04] AimAngles=-0.401,0.0,1.5 I am definitely seeing concentration of fire on targets, with good results. Cheers, baltika

Cheers Tailspin, Having calculated the angles (OK, the website did it for me ) I have come up with this for the Spit 1A, for convergence at 200m:- [GunL01] AimAngles=1.096,0.0,0.0 [GunR01] AimAngles=-1.096,0.0,0.0 [GunL02] AimAngles=0.865,0.0,0.0 [GunR02] AimAngles=-0.865,0.0,0.0 [GunL03] AimAngles=0.772,0.0,0.0 [GunR03] AimAngles=-0.772,0.0,0.0 [GunL04] AimAngles=0.593,0.0,0.0 [GunR04] AimAngles=-0.593,0.0,0.0 I'm not sure how to confirm the actual in-game distance by any means other than Mk 1 eyeball, but I will try it out and see how I get on. baltika

Hi, Certainly it doesn't seem to be causing a problem. Kill rates are up

For the Hurri, I suggest setting guns on the right wing ALL to -0.2,0,1.5 and the guns on the left wing ALL to 0.2,0,1.5 This is simply because the guns on the Hurri are much more closely grouped together on each wing - 4 guns on each wing, each gun 15cm from the next one, if I am correct in reading the scale as metres. The y value I am leaving as 1.5 as that is what the stock Hurri Mk1 has - what difference this makes over the Spit, which has a stock y value of 0, I have no idea. "Roll" implies some sort of spin on the bullet, perhaps to simulate rifling on the weapon barrel, which ought to increase accuracy, but really I am just guessing. As to results in the field - I was working through a Hurri campaign with the above convergence settings, and although I had yet to encounter a Ju-88 flight, I sent a 110 down in flames in fairly short order, and I have previously found them tough birds to crack. A flight of Do-17Z was cut to pieces by my Hurri flight, and I could clearly see concentrations of fire on the targets I hit. Then, of course, I got target fixated on straggler whose engines were out, and I got blown to pieces by a 109 escort who arrived belatedly on the scene. Ouch! But the convergence settings seem to be making a difference. Tally-ho once more baltika

Alright, I suggest reducing my initial figures by a factor of 10 for something useful. Following the same scheme, set them like this:- 0.4,0,0 0.3,0,0 0.2,0,0 0.1,0,0 -0.1,0,0 -0.2,0,0 -0.3,0,0 -0.4,0,0 When I get the chance I will work out distances - I think that is rather closer than 300 yards, at least visually, but I tend to get in close anyway before opening up. You will see your fire being concentrated on a particular spot. Excellent

Absolutely fascinating stuff chaps My preliminary experiments in setting up gun convergence have visibly shown that it does work, and is relatively straightforward - thanks to Bandy and Tailspin for raising it and to capun for explaining the settings. I am just now scratching my head trying to remember how to find out the angle at the base of an isosceles triangle when you know the length of the baseline and the length of the median to the far point (or something like that - maths was never my strongppoint ) Anyway, as capun defines the x,y and z, the only one you have to fiddle with is the x co-ordinate. The gun mounted at the extreme left of the plane requires the greatest positive angle, reducing for each gun as you get closer to the centreline of the plane. The gun at the extreme right has the greatest negative angle, again reducing as you get closer to the centreline of the plane. You can tell which gun is which by the x co-ordinate of the muzzle position. On the Spit 1A they are set up like this (looking down from above with the nose of the plane to the top of the page):- GunL01 GunL02 GunL03 GunL04 GunR04 GunR03 GunR02 GunR01 My initial experiment used the following AimAngle for each gun, following the above scheme:- 4,0,0 3,0,0 2,0,0 1,0,0 -1,0,0 -2,0,0 -3,0,0 -4,0,0 That resulted in tracers converging (and crossing over before zooming off into the distance fanning out again) about two plane lengths in front of my machine. Woo-hoo Now I just have to fiddle with the fractions of an angle to get convergence at, say, 300 yards, and go blast some bombers. Oh yes BTW, I have aslo followed capun's suggestions at post #6 re altering the bomber gunner behaviour. I reduced the gun range to 1000 (from 2000), reduced the burst amount from 50 to 10, and reduced the Pitch and Yaw AngleRates to 30. I have not touched the Gunner Fire chance and fire time in the AIDATA section (which I have, however, added to the data ini of each bomber) as that seemed to open up a can of worms. I can report that the gunner fire is reduced, but still poses a challenge, especially if you are leading the attack. May be worth thinking about trying, though, if you haven't already. I will let you know how my further gun convergence work goes. Cheers, baltika

I'm having trouble finding out which squadrons got the Hurri II in October 1940 - any ideas? Thanks, baltika

Tally-Ho, indeed, chaps Typhoid- You are a rogue, sir, a rogue What an underhanded tactic Seriously, though, that is an issue for developing the campaign - 90 missions at one per day was chosen as a reasonable compromise - RAF squadrons were flying three or four missions per day at the height of the battle, and likewise the Luftwaffe often launched more than one attack ina single day, BUT, RAF squadrons were at least sometimes rotated out of the frontline if too heavy a toll was being taken on them. Luftwaffe pilots did not have that luxury, unless they were invited to Berlin to be awarded the Knight's Cross, which of course eventually took a terrible toll on experienced pilots as battle fatigue mounted up. Perhaps I should look at adjusting the individual squadron's mission rate - hmm, any thoughts? keith - Well I can hardly complain "But that's cheating!" given that I told you how to go about doing it It certainly makes a difference being loaded for bear, doesn't it? Bear in mind the RAF didn't have the option - and Typhoid at post #2 above claims to have bagged a couple of Ju-88s with his trusty machine guns, so it is possible (Well, over-claiming was rife on both sides in the Battle, as the top brass were well aware, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised ) Bandy - Darn! I thought I'd seen the last of that. As a dedicated pilot I take it you are reasonably far into a campaign before it happened? I suspect it has to do with the individual Force's overall supply level, and the SupplyForOffensive= value being reached - you may see in the BoB_Data.ini that overall supply values are on the low side - that is on purpose to avoid this happening. Have the RAF unilaterally decided to invade France yet? If you are happy to do a bit of tweaking and sadly unpaid beta testing, try setting a high SupplyForOffensive= value for one force (say 200) and a very low one for the other Force (say 30 or so), and see what happens after a few missions. Let me know how you get on. As to Squadron upgrades, capun on behalf of the A-team has agreed to allow me to release a Spit 1B mod of the A-team Spit 1A for use by 19 Sqdn, at least until September 1940. I am working on getting the weapons modded appropriately just now. The problem I am having is that my modded early cannon is too reliable. The Guneditor has a reliability setting, but it doesn't seem to effect anything in game - I can blaze away with my full ammo load no problem. To maintain balance, I want to set up a situation where, as happened, only two machines out of a squadron intercept were able to fire off all their cannon ammo. If you think that sounds frustrating, well, so did the pilots of 19 Sqdn. Does anyone know if the gunjam code from FE is implemented in SFP1? If so, how do I get it working? Roll on the next round of patches, I say! (For the avoidance of doubt, none of my above comments are intended to cause offence, merely pull a leg or two - honest ) Toodle-pip for now, baltika PS, as to squadron upgrades, I will take a look at that - at least that is something which is no problem to implement!

Glad you're enjoying it v0.59 is just out (see the campaign hotfix download) and I am very gratified that others are joining in the fun by contributing - Allenjb42's new BoB Campaign music pack is fantastic - thanks Allen v0.60 is now on the drawing board - once the modding bug bites you, it bites hard If you spot any odd behaviour or bugs, please let me know. Cheers, Baltika PS I hear what you're saying about BoBII:WoV, and IL-2, but even the SFP1 version is not without its challenges. Just try surviving a Stuka campaign And, as you have discovered, those RAF intercept missions are not all that easy. . .

Hi keith, Yes, the 109 is tricky to fly, particularly on "hard" settings. You might want to check your controller sensitivity from the sound of things. And, yes, the Ju 88 is a damn hard beast to shoot down. Of the three main bombers used by the Luftwaffe in BoB, it was the newest and carried significant amounts of armour plating, especially round crew compartments. According to Bungay's "The Greatest Enemy," the Ju-88 was quickly recognised by the RAF as the toughest bomber target. In the design stages, Udet had required it to be capable of dive-bombing, and accordingly the fuselage was significantly strengthened, doubling the weight of the plane to 12 to 13 tons. There are reports of Ju-88 crews making it back to base with their aircraft riddled with bullet holes from stem to stern. The answer? The Mk 2 Hispano 20mm Cannon, but Spit and Hurri variants equipped with that did not enter general service until 1941. 19 Sqdn RAF experimented with an early version of the cannon until September 1940, but the spring-loaded ammo feed mechanism jammed repeatedly and was deemed too unreliable, and they went back to their 8 machine guns. If you want to take a (non-historical) technological jump on the Luftwaffe, try downloading the A-team Spitfire 2B, which is cannon-armed. Get it here:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autom...mp;showfile=894 Install the plane to your BoB install as per readme instructions. Then open the BoB_Data.ini file, (in the campaign folder) scroll down to [AirUnit005] and change "AircraftType=Spitfire1A" to read "AircraftType=Spitfire2B" (wthout the quotes). Then open the BoB.ini file, also in the campaign folder, scroll down to [RAFUnit005] and make the same change. Save each file, fire up the campaign, and when you select 19 Sqdn RAF they should be equipped with the cannon-armed Spitfire2B. About a year too early, of course, but if you take it for a spin you should notice the difference when you open up with your cannon. All completely non-historical of course, but it makes you realise why the boffins at Q Branch were so keen to come up with some bomber-destroying armament. Eventually, of course they did. Then things got ridiculous - the Typhoon Mark 1B has 2 20mm cannon on each wing, and will pretty much shred anything in sight. Good luck! baltika

New hotfix available now Thanks to all contributors. baltika

Brilliant Stuff Cheers baltika

Welcome on board, glad you're having fun with the BoB campaign Feedback is most welcome, so if you spot any odd behaviour or general weirdness going on over the Channel, let me know about it here:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=19928 Cheers, baltika

Happily working away (still) on Burning Sands 1944 Upgrade, got in a lucky shot, must have hit something important - ouch Glad I'm not trying to eject out of that

Hi Bandy, As to the weather, the campaign will create weather conditions relative to the date. The campaign starts in early July, and missions are assigned at the rate of one per day - it was higher at the height of the Battle, but one a day seemed a reasonable compromise - so you are flying mainly through July and August, or the height of summer. OK, British weather isn't that reliable, but it was one of the hottest summers on record at the time If you are getting variable weather on single missions by altering the weather settings, there is nothing wrong with your install. If you are still in the game by September, the weather should get steadily worse! Cheers, baltika PS 19 July 1940, Near Dover:-

Capun, Thanks very much for the input - a lot to think about there. I will play around with the changes you suggest and see how I get on. Cheers, baltika PS forgive my ignorance, but where does the [AIDATA] section go? In the aircraft Data.ini? EDIT: Sorry, found it!

And lest we forget, a previous upgrade or two added RussoUK2004's Bf 109E-3, Pasko's Stuka, and various mods by Kesselbrut, Charles, Kout, Geo and Allenjb42, so thanks to everyone concerned. Cheers all

Thanks for the kind words Please feel free to post feedback, comments, suggestions. If you spot any bugs or odd behaviour, particularly in connection with movement of air units, please let me know. Any RAF units show up in France? I am starting to think that it ain't gonna happen, and it was maybe a glitch in my original working setup. Of course, as soon as I declare it fixed, it will happen to someone Happy hunting, baltika