comrpnt

The VMFA-531 mission pack 'Gold' is now complete and available for download. See "here". Regards, comrpnt.

View File VMFA-531 Mission Pack 'Gold' (WOV) V1.0 Welcome Welcome to VMFA-531 Mission Pack 'Gold', for Wings Over Vietnam (WOV). This pack covers the entire set of missions flown by Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 531 (VMFA-531) between the dates of April 13 through April 30, 1965. Where possible I have tried to stay true to the historical write-up of Mike Wanamaker and Lee R. De haven*, given the constraints of the publicly available aircraft and ground objects in WOV. Where necessary, certain stock aircraft and ground objects are used in place of their historical counterparts. *Special mention goes to Ken King (531_Ghost) for commissioning this work. NOTE: This mission pack has been optimized and tested to work with the October 2008 patch for Wings Over Vietnam. VERSION: 1.0 Missions included in this Pack This pack contains over 60 single missions, scripted to reenact the engagements undertaken by the F-4Bs of VMFA-531. You will also get the chance to fly sorties in support of VMFA-531 in other aircraft, such as the A-6A, F-100D (acting as a Misty fast FAC) and the F-105D. Acknowledgements, Disclaimer and Terms Thank you to all those modders that have provided the prerequisites I have used in my mission packs. If there are any problems with these missions and my own modifications, then please contact me directly, not the authors of the prerequisites. Note that some models used by this pack may have different terms and conditions (consult the accompanying documentation for details). Released under Fair-Use terms, as defined at CombatAce Special thanks Some contributors deserve a special mention, either for explicitly granting me permission to include their work in this pack, or for publishing their work under the aforementioned Fair-Use terms at CombatAce, and therefore permitting its inclusion in whole or in part in this pack*: Kesselbrut – US_Squad_early and VC_Squad ground forces, updated by TeTeT**. Ravenclaw_007 – Martin Baker Mk7 Ejection Seat, used in F-4B. Suicidal – Type-21 Frigate. Sundowner – VMFA-531 (early) F-4B skins. Swambast – M18 smoke canisters, used with the marker smoke effects in missions involving US ground troops. Veltro2K – C-141A transport aircraft, and KC-135 tanker aircraft. *Please contact me if you feel this list is incomplete or contains errors. Thank you. **Included in this pack after consultation with USAFMTL. Contents This mission pack replaces all previous VMFA-531 mission packs that I have published since late 2007. Briefly, the contents are as follows: New smoke marker effects New formations Comprehensive mission briefings documentation 60+ scripted single missions Static aircraft with low-rez skins to populate your airbases during scripted single missions Pilot skins to personalize your strike aircraft FM tweaks to provide an auto-opening canopy for each strike aircraft used by this pack Loadout enhancements to match the ordnance expended during the 'real' missions A static frigate and carrier to replicate carrier task forces for both Yankee and Dixie stations Comprehensive target definitions for each mission, with some enhancements to existing friendly airfields New type definitions to support the new targets Full airfield approach, tall structure anti-collision and ramp flood lighting for all friendly airfields Installation Download this pack to a neutral location on your local machine, extract the files, and then consult the detailed ReadMe for installation instructions. Files are included to drag-drop this mission pack onto a clean install of WOV (patched to October 2008) with minimal configuration required. Detailed instructions are also included to perform a merge-install. A final word This 'Gold' release of the VMFA-531 mission pack completes the set originally published in a series of mission packs from late 2007 onwards. This final version is intended to replace those earlier separate mission packs by offering everything in one place, re-written and enhanced to make full use of the October 2008 patched version of Wings Over Vietnam. The work presented here is the culmination of over 2 years worth of effort. I had a lot of fun doing it, learned a lot, and met some good people along the way. I hope that you enjoy it. I think you will. Good luck. comrpnt (February 2010). Submitter comrpnt Submitted 02/08/2010 Category User Made Missions

Gents, perhaps I can help. Campaigns were something I was going to look at in time, and I prefer to read up on this kind of thing using a local copy, so please see attached for a HTML version of what I think you seek - pictures and all (courtesy of Bunyap of course) :-) Regards, comrpnt. SFP1 Campaign Tutorial (HTML).rar

Many happy returns Jeff. All the best.

Many thanks for this Krfrge. This is more good work and adds to the immersion. Kind regards, comrpnt :-)

You star! It's just what we need. A kind gesture indeed. I'll integrate it into the mod and refresh. Kind regards, comrpnt. :-)

Thanks Steve - these smoke canisters really help FAC missions with friendly troops "in contact". Much cleaner than alternate FACs marking friendlies. As for VMFA-531 (which is why I needed the smoke markers in the first place), it's getting close now. I've cleaned up everything up until April 26. Only have to go up until April 30 to complete this. The last set of missions are all written (completing the tour) so I'm just going back through and getting everything else up to the same standard as the final batch, then it all gets shipped as a single package. Other news from the revamp is that pre-reqs have changed a lot, and now I only use publicly available models, or stock models. I also took some artistic license and removed the helos, replacing them with F-105 strikes to escort, and ditched the O-1E FACs in favor of fast FACs using stock F-100s. So, not absolutely historically correct but more fun and offering more scope to the player. Now you get to sit through a couple of 'Misty'-style fast FAC missions (with extra AAA thrown in for good measure to keep you on your toes), and you can also can be a Thud driver for a few days. Kind regards, Paul.

Hi Uhu, greetings. Many thanks for posting these wonderful photos. I particularly like the night-time shots and the panoramic. Kind regards, comrpnt. :-)

View File Marking smoke canisters (Red, Green, Yellow) Marking Smoke Canisters (Red, Green, Yellow) Here are some simple marking smoke canisters, defined as GroundObjects, that I have developed from the ideas published at CA by Pappa Goat and Krfrge. Acknowledgments Many thanks to Pappa Goat and Krfrge for sharing their own work and ideas on the CA forums, from which this work is derived. Terms and Conditions This work is published under Fair-Use Terms, as defined at CombatAce. Installation instructions are included, together with a sample (WOV) mission to test each type of smoke marker and to show how to define their use in single scripted missions. comrpnt (January 2010). Submitter comrpnt Submitted 01/19/2010 Category Single Ordnance Files

I thought that I'd comment briefly on this, as I've also had a play with this idea in order to tidy up some of the missions I'm revamping for VMFA-531. First, thanks for Pappa Goat and Krfrge for sharing their work and thoughts here on this subject. It was something that I'd wanted to include in my scripted missions for some time (without using FACs and WP rockets) but never got around to it. Until now... As a foundation I've taken Pappa Goat's work from a previous posting* and reworked it to match my own needs - now we see the benefit of sharing work-in-progress. Thanks for your previous post on this PG! :-) *If any CA Admins read this, please could you look into why there is only 1 page of Mission-related posts here. I'd expect to see numerous old posts for this topic. Is this a bug, or a feature? For my version of this I've moved away from using a VC or US GroundObject model as the origin of, what I call, "friendly smoke". Instead I wanted something small and inconspicuous. The best I could come up with using the stock objects was a single oil drum... I simply extracted the LODs and INIs from the terrain CAT and turned it into a static GroundObject with a Gun that fires smoke. I also camoflaged it to make it even more innocuous. I then use PG's idea of creating two 'smoke' objects from opposing sides and sat them on top of each other. Once placed they happily have a go at each other, or cause nearby enemy forces to 'have a go' until you get detonation... I tweaked the emitters to remove the WP hit debris and sparks so you get a clean explosion, then up'ed the amount of time the smoke is visible. When combined with one of my FAC missions the results are just what I need (VC forces occupy the ridge South of US forces lower down the slope - as now indicated by the different coloured smoke. White smoke is courtesy of a 'Misty' who has just arrived on scene)... Of course, with all of this the question is about timing and the placing of any smoke objects to get them to emit while the FAC and strike force are closing in on the target area. Lots of re-runs and tweaking the StartDelay values of the various players in a mission eventually work this out... For now I've played with red smoke (as you can see), but will add yellow and green options and then post the results in the download section. Thanks again guys for starting this thread - I've now solved an issue that's been annoying me for some time. Kind regards, comrpnt.

Hi ext, yes, for my part I've completed the set of VMFA-531 missions for April 1965... You get the typical F-4B VMFA-531 missions, of course... ...and I used a certain amount of artistic license (i.e 1967 ported into 1965) to add in a few Fast FAC 'Misty' missions to replace the slower O-1E missions, and... ...aside from the historically documented missions, I also put in an Aggressor mission - playable from both sides - ... ...and..finally I stuck in a farewell flypast to test your formation flying skills right at the end, trapping on the carrier for the cruise stateside and 'home'. Publication for this pack should be sometime towards the end of January if I don't get any R.L. distractions ;-) I've revamped the entire set of 65+ missions to be compatible with the post-October 2008 patch and use stock aircraft whereever possible. Regards, comrpnt.

Merry Christmas one and all. And all the best for 2010... comrpnt :-)

Hi Eric, ok, let's go down through the list... The Huey missions are integral to the missions undertaken by VMFA-531 during their tour. I had to soften my requirements from the UH-34 Choctaw as Capun's model was 'restricted access'. Moving it away from the replacement public access Huey to something else again would be even more tricky as there's nothing else even close that can provide a flaming arrow-style mission. Nothing in the inventory really moves slow enough to make the escort as demanding as it probably would have been during the real mission. I'd recommend dropping these from your pack if you don't want to use helicopters. I'll keep them in my available version. 'Cardiff' copy that! :-) 'Infantry' copy that! :-) Weapons pack: The requirement to use this pack is not a hard pre-req. In fact I only tend to use pretty standard ordnance, as defined in the historical mission logs. White and red smoke are the only non-standard weapons I use. As for loadouts, I have my own named loadouts, such as Strike_Mk82, Strike_LAU-3A, Strike_LAU-10A, Strike_WhiteSmoke, associated with F-4B or F-100D. Ant's 531 skin - copy that! :-) Veltro2k's KC-135 - copy that! :-) As for the parked statics, these are my complex statics derived from the stock F-4B and F-100D, using low-res 531 skins or stock skins. As for the 707_static, I'm not sure if I'll keep this. I may provide Veltro2K's C-141A as a static instead with low rez skin - I think it'll be simpler. I'd be interested to see if anyone gets a CTD. Unless it's an install issue, I've never seen anything with these new statics I do for the October 2008 patched version. Perhaps the old ones I did before are causing the problem. I'll need more details on what people have been using to be sure. The new stuff I do in this area seems very stable. Finally, formations. Papagoat seemed to imply that using my formations ini changes broke his formations outside of my single missions - did I read that right? This is puzzling as the formation changes I define are additional not replacement for the stock formation definitions, and the only place you'll ever see them being played out is in one of my single missions. *** By copy: Pappa Goat, send me your formations.ini please - I'd like to see what you're running with. Thanks. *** Ok, so aside from the Chopper issue, the rest seems like a good fit. I'll be in touch once I have something you can consider merging (hopefully before Christmas if RL doesn't make too many demands on my time ;-) ) Cheers, regards, Paul.

Hi Eric, sure, that's good to know. Part of the revamp of these previous packs was to make them easier to consume - as the pre-req models were very hard to acquire and numerous. So, I've used Stock whereever I can - occasionally at the cost of historical accuracy but it's a tradeoff that's worth the price, and of course a few pre-reqs that are publically available. Finally there are a few 'specials' that I provide myself that aren't available anywhere else. As I'm nearing the end of this work, here's the final list I've come up with: Gramps' UH-1H Huey (Used in place of the UH-34 for "Flaming Arrow" helicopter escort missions) Hinchinbrooke's "Cardiff" Type-42 destroyer (Used to populate the carrier fleet with escort ships) Kesslebrut's Infantry pack for SP4 (updated by TeTeT) (Provides both VC and US ground forces) Mirage factory weapons pack, compatible with October 2008 Thirdwire patch (The latest weapons and effects, compatible with Thirdwire October 2008 WOV patch) Sundowner's VMFA-531 (early) F-4 Skin (The correct F-4B skin for VMFA-531 during 1965) Veltro2K's KC-135 tanker (Used to provide 'simulated' aerial refueling support for longer missions) As parked statics only appear in game-generated single missions, I provide my own for eye-candy, mostly for use at Da Nang and Phu Cat: F-4B static, F-100D static, 707 static (doubles for the KC-135 static). There are a couple of other Terrain folder objects that provide VC caves for a few of the missions, and then the usual Types and Targets definitions, new Loadouts, and finally some new Formations definitions. Pretty straightforward stuff and a lot smaller than previous packs in this series. Cheers, regards, Paul.

Hi folks, first, congratulations on this mod - quality work, thank you. Second, my completed historical re-enactment of USMC VMFA-531's tour from April 1965 is almost complete and I'll be happy to make the files available to the folks here to incorporate into this pack. I'm in final testing at present, having spent the last 5 months rewriting the existing mission packs to work better with the October 2008 patch and adding new missions to complete the set. For a teaser, see attached ReadMe extract PDF for what you can expect. Malibu - I'll send along the files you'll need once I have everything tested and in-place. Regards, comrpnt. VMFA-531 ReadMeFirst-short.pdf

Warm dark beer all round! Happy Birthday Ant. All the best to you! Regards, Paul.

Hi FC, aha! That explains a few things - such as why I wasn't seeing them (I only ever use my own single missions). But it's also quite useful as it turns out because I can design my missions starting positions as I like them and not have to worry about double-booking a parking space on the ramp for my own statics and the player's aircraft. Thanks for that insight - I appreciate the confirmation. comrpnt.

I trawled the forum posts a couple of times but couldn't find an answer to this seemingly simple question. Do auto-generated parked static aircraft appear in single missions that a user loads from the Missions folder - rather than appear in the 'created' single missions that the game also provides. From testing so far I've seen parked auto-generated statics using the 'created' single mission option but NEVER during a mission that I have created myself and then loaded. And I mostly only ever load and play my own created missions. So, I was just wondering. Anyone ever seen these birds appear within missions they've authored? The answer is going to affect my next deliverable. Cheers, regards, comrpnt.

Thanks greatly received and similarly dispensed to all those modders whose work I rely on in order to build my own mods. Speaking as a modder and, if I may, on behalf of modders we surely are standing on the shoulders of giants - the folks who build and provide the environment and models from which we then are able to go a little further. I call it the Brotherhood of Thirdwire, a kind of unselfish global collaboration that could teach the rest of the world a thing or two. Kind regards, comrpnt

Many happy returns. Regards, comrpnt.

Copy that - good scene. Thanks for reminding me of it. I also like this one from BoB... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncC0lOJPYRw&feature=related. Capt. Speirs... what a guy! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Speirs)

Hi folks, I just exceeded my bandwidth on Photobucket. Fair enough you might say, but this interested me as things have been bobbing along nicely for ages, until BAM!, someone or something started taking a real interest in one particular file. The past few days... Over the last 6 months... Possibly the particular file being hit by this site has been linked, or maybe even hijacked. I don't know. This is not something I have a lot of experience with but the reason I mention it here is that over 95% of any images I keep on PB are linked to from this site. Anyway, thought you'd all like to know and would be interested to hear from anyone with similar experiences. Cheers, regards, comrpnt.

Oliver, may you rest in peace my friend. comrpnt.