baffmeister

VERY HIGH for the initial testing. something like 1000m. After seeing the problem I went down to about 100m but was still seeing some hits in front of the gun so I'm trying 10m now and no problems, but the artillery doesn't really act like artillery when it comes to lobbing rounds over hills. There is a bit of an arc to the high velocity rounds but not much. It is a limitation as far as modeling realistic artillery and I don't see a work around except using semi smart rocket rounds for the artillery. Monty CZ had an artillery piece set up like that but I didn't try it out. I can imagine some potential problems with that approach when used in campaigns, such as the arc of engagement coupled with a high viewing height causing the artillery to attack some target areas I would prefer it didn't. I might be able to use the present line of sight limitations to advantage if there is a target area in range that I would prefer not to receive artillery support.

Nefarious, here's a link to the old SF1 approach to installing a carrier station for a campaign. No water map required and I think it still works in SF2 but not 100% sure. You may have enough sea room in the north west corner of the GermanyCE terrain but not 100% sure about that either. http://combatace.com/forum/190-adding-carriers-to-campaigns/

I've posted this link a few times but here it is again. http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_6.html It may be worth installing the Nvidia Inspector software to get access to additional settings not available with the stock Nvidia install. The issue I had with my present Nvidia card was crappy antialiasing compared to the old card/drivers. With the Nvidia Inspector software I was able to access something called "Sparse Grid Supersampling" which improved the look considerably. No idea why the newer card/drivers had worse antialiasing but it may just be related to the age of the SF2 series.

Could it be done the old fashion way? Add a carrier station in the Targets ini and the appropriate entries in the campaign data ini? I think that approach just generates a static carrier with no supporting ships but at least gives you a carrier to fly from.

Yep! I have that and the 90mm as well but not installed yet.

Defending 75mm Sherman's getting some much needed help from an artillery base and Geezers' new 75mm AT gun. Back to thinking out loud. I had to reduce the artillery viewing height to something more realistic otherwise the guns would fire at objects hidden in valley's, resulting in the flat trajectory artillery rounds sometimes hitting the ground just a short distance in front of the gun. The elevated viewing position should still work well with the Sturm Tiger. It actually did fire a rocket round, although the barrel looks more like a low velocity howitzer. The "semi-smart" higher trajectory rocket round should be able to navigate any hills and valley's OK. Still messing about with the tanks but I've decided to use AP rounds with no explosive charge. Those types of rounds weren't always widely available but that seems to be the way ThirdWire does it and it keeps things consistent. Using this approach, I've seen some ineffective hits at longer ranges, mainly with the lower velocity 75mm gun on the Sherman. As well as higher velocity guns, the German tanks had considerably more armor protection as well, with even the late model Panzer IV's getting significant upgrades. Edit: Geezers new gun is actually a 76.2mm M5 AT gun.

Had a quick look through the FE objects but think they are all too old for 1944-45 time frame. Some of the objects might be OK for early WW2 use but there are model size differences between the two games, with FE objects being scaled at, I think 63%, so the FE objects probably can't be used anyway. Some building objects are OK, like one of the FE church models I'm using. What looks like a big church in FE becomes a considerably smaller one in SF. Thanks for the reminder about the SF2 AAA pack! I thought I had that one but it turns out I had been looking through an earlier SF1 package so now have a few more AAA objects to check out. Some of the objects described as MOBILE_AAA are really just towed guns so I would say there is a shortage of "self propelled" AAA guns for WW2 use. After some light research I think many of the dedicated self propelled AAA guns were built in quite limited numbers so the majority might have been the ones adapted for half track use, of which I have a German and US version installed.

With the Battle of the Bulge tank and artillery situation more or less under control I'm taking a closer look at the available AAA pieces for the different countries. For Germany, all I have are a couple of versions of the 88mm flak gun [MontyCZ and Geo], a static 20mm gun[MontyCZ and Geo], a mobile 20mm gun on a half track[Geo] and another half track with a machine gun that I've been directly placing on the map and does engage air targets. For the US all I've got are a 90mm and 120mm flak gun, both adapted from other models, a 50cal quad mount on a half track[Geo], and another half track with a machine gun set up for direct map placement like the German version. For Britain, I'm still looking things over but don't think there is much available except maybe a static bofors gun and a larger gun for higher altitudes. I've had a look through the SF-1 and SF-2 downloads but haven't found much so would appreciate it if anyone is aware of AAA objects I may have missed. I would also be interested in any British vehicles with machine guns that could be set up for direct placement similar to the US and German half tracks. The German 88mm and US 90mm are all I need for high altitude flak on this narrow focused project but would really like to add more mobile AAA. Any post-war models that would make convincing mobile AAA for WW2 use would be of interest as well.

Took awhile to get all the new building objects sorted out but now the town construction is picking up speed. The twin town of Krinkelt-Rocherath with the American strong point of Elsenborn Ridge on the horizon to the west. The small church in between marks the location for the town of Wirtzfeld.

I noticed that as well with my low end Nvidia card, better performance with most settings set to max. The main limiting settings for me are shadows and viewing distance.

Say good-bye to the "GDE CommBuilding" for this project. Instead, you will get to blow up some "GDGL CommTrucks!" [Gosh Darn Good Looking]

Quite a few new Geezer objects getting deployed. German troops entering Dasburg. and, US troops entering Monschau.

A very nice Geezer 105mm American field gun installed and working. Still experimenting a bit but the flat gun trajectory requires careful placement of the artillery. The line of site viewing limitation can be addressed OK with the elevated view port. I think having some artillery positions will work fine in areas that require strong offensive or defensive capabilities but might be a bit tricky to apply in campaigns. For a semi-historical campaign, some areas might require artillery positions that have a date range to provide a temporary slow down to the German offensive.

RELEASE THE STURM TIGER!!! Ravens' Sturm Tiger in action, firing a large 38cm rocket projectile. These were built in very limited numbers but seven of them were moved to the front line prior to the Battle of the Bulge offensive. Not sure to what extent they were actually used but they will make good strike targets. I hope to get it working well enough to use as artillery within the 5KM range limit I'm using.

Never actually tried it but if you have SF2[desert] installed you can fly the campaigns as a mercenary.

The German town of Prum under construction. The buildings are mostly Geezer and Wingwhiner objects with a few others in the mix. Some of the larger towns will get strategic targets like warehouses, small factories and command/communication buildings but most targets will be more of a tactical nature like supply dumps, fuel caches, command/communication vehicles, tanker trucks, ammo trucks, ammo bunkers, high value tanks and whatever else I can think of.

Updated Skyray FM attached, Beta 0.93. I took a closer look through the flight manual to try and get a better idea of the wing design and behavior of the Skyray and it might best be described as a bit of a design compromise. It seems to exhibit some behavior similar to a conventional swept wing and other behavior like a delta. The compromise was likely required to make the delta style wing acceptable for a carrier based aircraft. The useful alpha range is quite low for a delta, with max AoA at 22deg. The flight manual describes AoA past 22deg as the stall zone. Similar to a delta wing, it does generate significant drag at the upper end of the alpha range so I increased the induced drag quite a bit past 16deg AoA to try and replicate the behavior that is experienced during approach to stall practice. The flight manual warns of sink rates around 4000-5000 fpm with idle power during that exercise. After a bit of research I think the low alpha range is probably related to wing sweep angle of 52.5deg compared to the more typical 60deg angle used on the Mirage III and F-102. Another reason might be related to using a thick airfoil and maybe a blunt leading edge that may not generate good vortex flow. The flight manual has some charts showing a buffet zone that I think occurs around 18.5deg, based on some extrapolated data. The flight manual says it's OK to fly up to "moderate" buffet but at any sign of yaw instability the AoA should be reduced. I spent quite a bit of time messing about with some TW alpha tables to try and generate a gradual loss of yaw stability but couldn't make it work in a convincing manner. With the new FM everything basically lets go all at once, with a departure / nose slice happening only at low airspeed combined with high angle of attack and rough use of the controls. In other words, it's actually quite docile. The Skyray was not approved for intentional spins and required unconventional spin recovery techniques but this FM will recover from spins with the usual power to idle, stick forward and rudder opposite to the rotation. Other stuff: Gear speed is 220kts maximum. The automatic tail flipper has been adjusted a bit to get a smoother transition. This new FM did a carrier trap on autopilot! [no guarantees] The corner speed for 6G is quite low at 280kts and I've set that in the data ini but the speed loss is rapid. If the AI is having difficulties consider increasing it. From the flight manual the recommended procedure for a maximum performance afterburner climb is: After take off accelerate to 500kts IAS at low level. Upon reaching 500kts start the climb while maintaining 500kts. Upon reaching mach 0.87 [around 8800ft] continue the climb to desired altitude maintaining mach 0.87. Here's the new FM: F4D-1_DATA0.93.zip

Tiger maintenance. Getting some great looking Geezer trucks and buildings installed.

Maybe the Z-Buffer Offset setting or FlatObject=TRUE missing for that airfield type in the ObjectTypes ini?

Hook angle/length in the aircraft data ini can sometimes be an issue.

I did an updated F-101B FM many moons ago but got totally bogged down regarding the missile stations. I wanted to get two IR and two Radar guided missiles as the default loadout with the two genies available as a player option but, with the rotating missile bay, couldn't get the AI to use both Falcon versions. Both Falcon versions worked for the player, however. Will be interesting to see what can be figured out. Regarding the F-101 FM's, I ended up switching to an RF-101 as a test subject, and will probably do an informal release soon.

Yes, the town site would have to be leveled like an airfield. I'm using some of Wingwiners damaged/destroyed building lods as stand alone objects and have noticed some ground flicker showing through the larger destroyed lod if the terrain isn't flat. I've been using Mues' target editor to adjust the positions of building objects and when zoomed in it's possible to do very fine adjustments so I think having smaller urban blocks and placing them close together would work quite well. More potential variety as well. Mues' target editor is a real time saver!

Artillery issues cropping up but I still plan on using some in a limited way for this terrain. ISSUES SO FAR: I installed MontyCZs' German 105MM LeFZ18 howitzer with Gun Data based on what I found on Wikipedia. The muzzle velocity is only 470ms and with the targets at about 3km the rounds were falling well short. Max range for that gun in RL is about 10KM. The only way I could get the howitzer to reach the target at the 3km range was to increase the muzzle velocity to 2000ms. I guess there is a game limitation regarding gun aiming as the gun barrel doesn't elevate enough to get the required range with the low muzzle velocity. I tried increasing the RangeFinder and BallisticComputer settings to 10 each but that didn't affect the range. I tried raising the ViewPort setting to 2000m but that didn't affect the range either. I think a higher viewport setting is a good idea though, it will make placing the guns in hilly terrain a lot easier. During testing I noticed at times there were no explosions when the rounds were hitting the ground. Added a tracer to see what was going on and for some reason rounds going into the side of a hill had no explosion effect. During one test, the howitzer wouldn't fire at the tank targets. Checked the tank data and the max visible distance was set to only 3000m. A typical TW tank max visible distance is 7000m so, with optical sights, all the targets that you want the howitzer to engage will need a max viewing distance within the desired max range of the howitzer. For the Battle of the Bulge terrain, I'm going to try and get the 105mm artillery to fire at targets out to 5km range which means even small targets, like squads of soldiers, will need a max visible distance of 5km. Anyway, I don't plan on spending a lot of time messing around with artillery but will do a bit more testing on FLAT terrain to see what kind of muzzle velocity is required to get the 5km range. Will also be playing around a bit with RangeFinder and Accuracy settings to see if I can get a convincing pattern for the falling shells. I am a bit curious about some weapon data included in Montys' artillery upload. It looks like a "semi smart" rocket fired from the barrel and was wondering if something like that would work with the big guns on the WW2 battleships and cruisers. Anyone ever tried something like that? Montys' gun in action:

Screen shot of the D-20 supporting Sherman tanks attacking defending German Panthers at about 5-7KM range. The D-20 had a DataLink=TRUE statement but the Sherman didn't so I added it. Not sure if that helped because I placed the D-20 at a higher elevation as well. [poor test procedures.] The D-20 didn't actually hit anything at that range, the rounds were well short. I did see a couple of hits at closer range during another test. I hope to make a semi-historical campaign for this terrain so plan to add the artillery at locations that weren't overrun during the Battle of the Bulge. That would include the Monschau/Hofen area and Elsenborn Ridge, on the northern shoulder of the battle. Will probably add some anti-tank guns as well. Any campaign will have to be VERY simplified compared to the actual battle which was very complex with lots of small unit action. For anyone interested, here is a link to a good article about the battle. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Ardennes/index.html#XIX

It might just be that I have to place the artillery at the higher elevation areas surrounding the target area. More experiments to do but maybe some kind of networking statement in the data.inis would help?