malibu43

Hey all, I'm creating "late" model F-4's for the later campaign in WOE. I read that F-4E's may have gotten the dispensers around '73 or '74. Is this accurate? Would the F's and M's have them as well? Around the same time? Thanks!

Interested and waiting to see if WoV and WoE get any sort of similar revamp.

I have one, but it looks a lot like a desk or a kitchen table with a laptop on it and a Saitek Aviator on one side. Not too impressive in pictures.

Just for clarification, Wings Over Vietnam does not include Anti-ship missions unless merged with Wings Over Europe. Also, Anti-ship missions are available as single missions only, and don't show up in campaigns.

Yep. Autumn and Winter have their own folders with their own data.inis. I tried installing just Autumn and Winter in a clean germanyCE terrain folder, and I wasn't getting the new cities or forests. It was the new tiles with the same tree and city layouts on top of them. So that seems to confirm that there needs to be a modifed data.ini in the main terrain folder, otherwise the game pulls the one out of the .CAT file. So my question is which data.ini file is supposed to go in the main terrain folder? If I use the one for Autumn, it screws up my summer forest and farms. If I use the one from forest and farms, it screws up Autumn and Winter.

v2.0 available now... http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=7730 If anyone gives the limited ground war option a try, please let me know what you think about the frequency of strike missions in the south. Because of the way the campagin engine generates missions, it's really hard to check the frequency of mission types (takes a long time and seems to be very random). So I did the best I could, but feedback would be very welcome!

v2.0 availabe with different install options to deal with these issues. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=7730 If anyone gives the limited ground war option a try, please let me know what you think about the frequency of strike missions in the south. Because of the way the campagin engine generates missions, it's really hard to check the frequency of mission types (takes a long time and seems to be very random). So I did the best I could, but feedback would be very welcome!

Updated to v2.0. See the first post for changes.

I installed the 3 in 1 version, by basically placing the new seasons in their own folder and adding the new germanyCE.ini. I left the summer tiles and data.ini files in the main germanyCE folder. Is this correct? Also... Looks like some coastal tiles are missing for Winter and Fall...? Also I'm not getting the improved cities anymore. *edit* - I just checked, and in my stand alone Fall version, I get regular tiles where those costal tiles should be, so it appears that there are some tiles missing...? Also, how do I get the new cities in the original summer forest and farms. *edit* (again) - the problem seems to be that the game is going to pull whatever data.ini file is in the main terrain folder, and there are some differences between the data.ini's for winter/fall and the one that came with the original forest and farms. If you use the orginal forest and farms data.ini, you get the weird coastal tiles, and the old style cities. If you use one of the new data.ini's, fall and winter are OK, but summer is all screwed up. 40' cows and whatnot. And if you put all three of these in their own respective folders and put no data.ini in the main terrain folder, the game defaults to the one in the cat file and you get now forests at all. So CA_Stary, I hope I'm just missing something here regarding installation... can you help me out?

Thanks! Very helpful information. I think I'll bump up the frequency of missions in the south, at least in the first half of RT, and maybe a little in LBI. LBII will remain concentrated on the North, since it's such a quick one. hgbn, Dixie station is already in the targets.ini, but I did add some AD-7's flying off of a carrier down there. By reducing the mission radius of skyraiders and F-100's, you can ensure that they only get tasked with missions in the S. Vietnam. All the rest of the aircraft will have to get the same mix of North/South, whatever that ends up being. I'm shooting for about 50/50 or maybe even a little less south and more North. Even if it's not totally realistic, I think that'll be best for gameplay reasons. I should have this uploaded today, hopefully.

I'm working on modding the WoV RT and LBI campaigns to add missions striking VC camps and such in the South Vietnam and Laos. I'm using the primary and secondary air offensive targets to control the frequency of strike missions in the south, and I'm curious about the ratio between strikes up north and strikes down south. Now, I know some aircraft and units were specialized for CAS and missions in South Vietnam (F-100's and Skyraiders, maybe even A-7's). But for a lot of the other strike aircraft (F-105's, A-6's, F-4's, A-4's), how often should they be hitting soft targets in the South vs heading up North for heavily defended targets. Is it a one to one ratio? Should one or the other be the exception? Like I said, I know it varies between aircraft types, units, and individuals, but I'm just looking for a general idea for how to balance my campaign. Input from experts and those with experiences welcome! Thanks!

"Why don't you jump up on Uncle Rabit's lap..". "I don't think that's such a good idea right now, Thorny..."

Well, I found some very interesting and disappointing thing regarding my ground war mod. It all started when I realized that because of the way the game works, you get MiG's sent to intercept missions no matter where they are on the map, even if it's in South Vietnam. So I started to tackle that problem. The best solution I found was to reduce the mission radius of the 7 MiG's in WOV to 200 (km). OK, no more migs in South Vietnam. That's it, right...? Well, I was selecting units with mostly A/A mission types to test out the new "range" of the MiG's. What I found, was that units that are supposed to have all A/A, were now getting strikes almost all of the time. (F-8E's going downtown on a regular basis... I don't think so.) Through a ton of experimentation, I determined that it has to do with the ground offensives in the ground war. The game engine will normally schedule CAP's, escorts, and sweeps in the air space over wherever major offensive's are taking place (this is how it works in WOE, and it works out just fine). After adding a ground war and ground offensives, game engine trys to schedule all your A/A missions near those offensives. This was fine until I reduced the radius of the MiG's. The game engine knew that no enemy aircraft could reach the offensives and so it wasn't scheduling any A/A missions. So, all the 80-90% A/A units end up getting tasked with strike, SEAD, and CAS near those offensives instead. I think I've found a work around that removes the ground war, but keeps all the extra target areas in the South. I then added static ground units to the areas the ground battles used to take place, so you still get "CAS" in the form of "strikes" against infantry along the frontlines. I'm still working out the kinks, and it's not a perfect solution, since you don't have as close of control over mission types (ie - you can't have A-1 and F-100 units that do all CAS and armed recon; they have to do strikes now as well, sometimes up north). A/A missions may still be reduced a little; I'm not sure yet... So there are three options: Leave the ground war mod as is. You'll just have MiG's harrassing you all the way down to Saigon. Leave the ground war mod as is and reduce the combat radius of the MiG's. You'll keep the ground war and won't be harrassed by MiG's, but you won't get many A/A missions in units that should have them. My alternative method that removes the ground war but adds static "CAS" missions (and also uses reduced radius MiG's). No MiG's down south, lots of soft targets down south, and still plenty of A/A up North. Just no more real ground war with actual CAS missions. Once I finish testing, I'll post the 3rd method as well along with my original mod, so that one can choose how they want it to work.

Well, there are strikes in S. Vietnam, so the MiG's will still intercept for those. Changing the radius to 200 seems to have worked pretty well. No MiG's south of Vinh. I've had some interesting issues now with typically A/A units (F-8E units) getting lots of strikes. Still working on tweaking so that that doesn't happen...

Yeah, I think that will be my backup plan. However, assuming the game follows the mission radius specified in the aircraft's data.ini, I think I've got it figured out. Only 7 migs in WOV. About 250km from the southern-most used airfield in any of the campaigns (Bac Mai) to the DMZ. Changed the radius for those seven aircraft to 200km. So we'll see how it goes... Actually, since I'm at it. What is the furthest south I should have the migs go? Couldn't find any references on the internet. Thanks!

So, I'm pretty happy with my WOV Ground war mod that adds strikes, CAS, and Armed Recon in S. Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia to the stock WOV campaigns. However, I realized today that I'm getting Migs venturing down and interrupting my missions down south. Not a big deal in an F-4, but kinda ruins your day when you're in an A-1E. So I want to try and fix this, but before I start driving myself crazy over this, I want to double check and see if/how far south Mig actually went. Can any experts answer this one for me? Second, assuming the migs shouldn't be there, what creative ways can anyone think of for limiting Mig action to the North? The two things I can think of: 1) lower the max range of the migs. I don't think this one will work though, since there are airfields very close to the DMZ, so the range would have to come way down, maybe making the migs inneffective throughout the map. ??? 2) create separate campaigns for the war in the south, with no enemy air units. Ehhh... Any other ideas? Thanks!

Awesome work CA_Stary. This takes WOE to a whole new level. Can't wait for a campaign to switch seasons on me. I'll probably have to go in now and have some of the aircraft change skins part way through some of the campaigns.

Mistar Skinner to the managar's office... managar's office mistar Skinner.

Thanks for being interested. I didn't know if anyone was using this or not. One more suggestion: Switch the primary and secondary roles for the F-100D. This will get you more CAS, Armed-Recon, and strikes, and not so much MIG-CAP. The way the game engine works, it defaults to primary mission types for your aircraft when you aren't on an offensive (and doesn't necessarily use the mission chances defined in the campaign_data.ini). I found all the A/A combat in the F-100 a little anoying and not accurate. So I suggest changing the entry in the data.ini to look like this: PrimaryRoles=STRIKE,CAS,SEAD,ARMED_RECON,ANTI_SHIP,RECON,FAC SecondaryRoles=SWEEP,CAP,INTERCEPT,ESCORT This whole thing was inspired by me wanting to fly A-1's in a campaign without being tasked to strike Hanoi all the time. So, I also suggest downloading either the A-1 from the d/l section or Razbam and adding them to the Rolling Thunder campaign with 100% CAS and Armed_Recon. Lots of fun. I'm going to add this to the readme in the download as well.

All for the greater good...

Updated today with improved Armed Recon routes. Convoys won't be right on top of the target areas anymore. You might have to actually "recon" a little to locate 'em.

Yeah, this could be really cool. I've been wanting for a long time to add AAA randomly all over N Vietnam and Laos. I don't know if this will allow it, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Ahhh... that makes sense. I did notice that the harriers seemed to burn through fuel incredibly quick.

Downloaded. Looks good! Can someone explain to me how the bold change affects aircraft/flight/gameplay? I'm trying to figure out what to expect. Thanks!