peter01

Hi bandy, Again, thanks for bringing this up. Not 100% sure, but for DFW, it could be two things. The Aircraft Role, which i changed (and not sure why!). To change, replace two lines in [MissionData] at top of data.ini PrimaryRoles=RECON,ARMED_RECON,CAS,STRIKE SecondaryRoles=CAP,ESCORT to PrimaryRoles=RECON,ARMED_RECON,CAS,STRIKE SecondaryRoles= Other than above, the AI parameters for the Aviatik and DFWC5 have not been changed to make them more aggressive (i think, no longer 100% sure what is default). it may be possible to do the converse however and make what was happening in the game different by reducing default ai parameters for bombers by making them less aggressive. An obvious and powerful one is: RollForGunAttack=1.0 -> 0.1 or so, or even 0.0 for say DFW (the default was probably 0.5 in aircraftobject.ini) This will mean that they are less likely to "attack" you unless you are within a certain angle in front of them (the angle varies according to skill level in aircraftobject.ini). 0.1 is very small. i'd guess that the Allied bombers/corps planes could be similar. that is i haven't made them more aggressive, but they could be made to be less so via RollForGunAttack=. Also true to for morane/pfalz 2-seaters. If they are ok presently, probably best to leave i'd be very surprised if the Aviatik did attack: it is defined correctly and doesn't have a forward firing gun. But you could reduce the RollForGunAttack= as above also. i'd leave the Salmson as is, it was capable of fighting. The Roland is different (as are PfalzB1 and Fokker B1): i've intentionally defined them as multirole, and they will fight as fighters (tho Roland for its time is not very capable). i'd assume in a mission, if they were on a bombing/recon mission, they would act as bomber/recon rather than taking on all comers, but i may be wrong. Anyway, thanks for raising this, you a couple of other guys are great in finding issues, i wouldn't have found this one easily. if others have views on 2-seater aggressiveness, how the 2-seaters are defined, please post. i will make the above changes for the future, but will not update the current downloads at present. i have several other "fixes" so they are slowly adding up, but TK's addon can't be too far away..........

its good your taking this up christian......... what you have done will indeed improve the N17 AI, no doubt. probably similar AI parameters may work with the N11/16 too (and certainly other nieups), though PitchForRoll=0.2 may need to be reduced to somewhere around 0.04-0.12 for the others. You will know this if you test in a 1:1 against the plane and when it rolls and turns it goes into a bit of a circle/even looping - the more so, the more you need to reduce this number, ie, its how much pitch the ai pilot applies on rolling, and its a tricky one for the ai to handle. This number would be different for different planes. You can in extreme cases reduce this to 0.0, without really a problem, but obviously it will not turn around as quickly when it rolls to change direction. Its also best if the Flight Control section in data.ini is changed, for example as follows: From: [FlightControl] StallSpeed=24.59 CruiseSpeed=42.12 ClimbSpeed=25.88 CornerSpeed=34.53 To: [FlightControl] StallSpeed=12.70 CruiseSpeed=41.12 ClimbSpeed=37.34 CornerSpeed=41.93 The AI starts throttling down in a climb well before the "defined" stall speed, so best to keep the "defined" stall speed lowish, otherwise you reduce its ability to climb significantly. The ai will not stall if the FM is done correctly. I believe the Nieups can handle it (haven't tried it on N11 tho). Its also best to keep other ai speed numbers high, its the best way if its not a really really capable AI. The AI flies at some sort of average of these speeds. if some numbers are low eg climb, and the AI is good, the AI becomes even more interesting and capable, but in this case and for N11, best to keep high (the N24 and n28 are different) Unfortunately, even with improved ai parameters the N17 may not be good as it should. The capability of the AI is also "built into" the FM as well - i spent months working out how to do this. My guess is that the N24 and N28 will be greatly improved as AI with similar ai parameters, not sure about N11. just two words of warning : many ai parameters are also used for both dogfighting as well as formation flying (some only one or the other), and changes to these can very easily cause problems with takeoff, crashing etc. What you have done is fine, but if you experiment more, keep that in mind. And if you use these improved ai parameters, please use the standard aircraftobject.ini skill level values. Otherwise, problems. anyway, its good you are taking the plunge, trying it out, and posting what you are doing.

Thanks Tailspin. Works perfectly. And with Monty's mod, looks great.

Thanks Monty!!!!! It really is a new plane now. Thanks also to Christian and Tailspin.

Okay, no probs christian, just thought i'd ask if it was easy and possible. Thanks

Fantastic.

I agree re model. Its a pity.

Ahh, good stuff christian, i'll have to invest in some windsock datafiles - but which ones! about same max speed -> must have higher drag, despite bigger engine thus bit heavier in feel higher wing loading -> less climb, offset in this case obviously by bigger engine, therefore probably slightly better climb higher wing loading -> slower roll higher wing loading -> probably higher stall speed greater weight (esp on nose) -> less responsive pitch greater weight -> lower acceleration greater weight -> probably less propeller torque change in weight distribution -> given pilots weren't that impressed, probably less balanced, harder to fly bigger rotary engine -> maybe more gyro/precession effects (but we don't have any of this ...yet!!) Easy! Do you know how to mod the plane so that lewis gun can be replaced with a synchronised vickers? Edit: just saw your post Tailspin. I think the nie.16s replaced the nie.11 tho not completely, the RNAS (an early nie.11 customer) didn't upgrade, 2 RFC squadrons converted (probably more - re confusion "13s" - so exact number is unknown). the French probably kept most - I don't have numbers however. Suffice to say, it was used in late 1916 on the Western front; but was overtaken by other developments as you imply, nie.17, spad, pup etc. Still worth including IMHO.

Very nice Shrikehawk, & I like 'em all! Thanks.

I think its a great idea Christian. The nie.16 was far more widely used than the nie.11 by mid/late 1916 on the western front, all a bit confusuing in records as they were generally referred to as "13s" (based on wing area, not official designations). So i assume performance was similar and slightly better than the nie.11 - the larger engine should do the trick. The nie.11 was then relegated to training and converted to 2 seaters once the nie.16s were available. I believe the nie.16 mainly used a single synchronised Vickers. Any chance of this, since you are so good at it ?? And it would distinuish the two types. A nie.11/16 megapack! Both would look great with Alligators enhanced cockpits. If not, could you explain how you would do it, especially gun changes if possible at all? A bit of a pity we don't have the correct model - it may have only required an addition/change to the headrest Tailspin pointed out, I think.

Downloaded, and works a treat Christian. Well done, it was a bit complex and fiddly. Ditto, thanks to everyone involved - Whiteknight, Christian, Czech6, and Alligator Devil (cockpit's great).

Christian59, I hope you do this, otherwise there are only a few of us more experienced modders that will enjoy the great ideas and work involved in improving the N17 and doing variations (maybe N11 too?). You may just need to PM a couple of people.

That is weird. If you haven't fixed it yet, you may need to do something drastic, like reinstall. Or maybe its your graphics card?

Very nice skins ShrikeHawk. Have to try out these with Alligator Devil's cockpit changes :fan_1: Thank you.

Good work guys. Thanks

Now I am taking a break from doing FMs, I'm doing a lot of flying :yes: . Not only FE, but other favorites as well, Bob2, Il2, OFF. Its been interesting, cos, although I'm a FS enthusiast from way back, I wasn't doing FMs until FE. So flying these games again I guess i was evaluating the FMs and the AI, the areas I have spent so much time in recently. And the commonality in Flight Engines and AI modelling, the issues etc, is surprising when you look at it this way, even across ww1 and ww2 games. And while looking around forums for these games (downloads, catching up), there are of course many discussions on these things within the game forums, and comparisons with other games. Should say firstly these are my own opions and if you disagree, you could well be right. And I am biased of course. And all the above games are just fantastic - but in different ways. Bob2 is amazing - developed for gamers, rather than just as a game, Il2 - very appreciative of the attention to the FMs for such a large number of planes and many of them, well - WOW, an epic work, OFF - a talented team produced a real gem thru a labour of love. So my view: Game Engine (ya know, that part driving FMs and AI, with real life modelling, engine management and cool stuff like torque takeoff, animations etc) 1. Bob2 and Il2 about equal, in different ways 2. FE (quite good, inc. torque, animations, downside is stress modelling and engine start ups) 3. OFF (basically limited by CFS3, but has a few things FE doesn't - eg, stress modelling, some engine mangement, engine gravity effects, takeoffs/landings etc are good) Flight Model 1 Bob2 2 Il2 - but because of the large number of planes, you could on that basis rate it as no #1 3. FE 4. OFF Its a little unfair to rate ww2 vs ww1, as ww2 is far easier to do - easier game engine. For ww1, all the quirks, and forces would have been far more pronounced. And all game engines have trouble doing this, so the easier a plane is to fly, the more realistically a flight model can simulate that (for AI as well), tho it may be more complex and time consuming to do eg jets - and I'm not talking engine management, radar, missiles etc all that is the game engine itself, above. So, ww2. say about equal. Individually, Bob2, but on number Il2, and many Il2 FMs are really very very good too. WW1, FE by a margin IMHO. The OFF FMs are probably as good as the developers could do, but each plane fundamentally is very much the same. And the feel of the planes is a bit ...well, bland to me. This is true too of FE, but less so, maybe because the flight engine is more sophisticated than CFS3, animations, torque, rudder (eg, never saw decent rudder in any OFF plane, all push back too much, no flat turns, and no induced roll, hence all the same) AI (or more specifically, the dogfighting. More generally, wingmen, bombing etc, it is a lot harder to compare but obviously thats very important too) 1 FE and Bob2 2 Il2 3 OFF FEs AI are now very tough - they may not be as sophisticated as say Bob2 though. And if you take the wider meaning of AI - wingmen, bombing, formations etc, Bob2 would win IMO. Ai is not a strong point in Il2, at least not in dogfighting (funny combination of either too weak, or too good!). In OFF its a definite weakness across the board, tho it depends at times on which plane and whether its campaigns or QC - but overall, IMO its worse than the original FE AI. Should say, tho OFF doesn't come out too well in the above assessment, I'm just looking at a few aspects, but I like the game very much anyhow!!! Its got heaps of atmosphere, campaigns are great, terrain is superb, so its a toss up say between FE and OFF. But just for dogfights, missions, even flying around (the cfs3 engine!), variety and numbers of planes (about 3 times as many in FE, models are better, cockpits too I think) FE is easily best. The 2 games are, simply put, just quite different. Now, don't mean to really get into Sim flame wars here, as i said these are actually my favourite games, I play them all, wouldn't give up any of them. But have read so much stuff in other forums, and like I said just feel I have different perspective on some of this, due to doing FMs and grappling with the issues in doing them (not necessarily correct!! or the same as others views), and since I generally post here, thought I post these thoughts here too. Interested in what others playing FE or the other games think too.

Thx guys. Glad you like them. I'm human too, and like some encouragement. Just should say one thing.......won't say it again, think I have tried to point this out in past posts and in the Readmes, but just to be sure. Its a lot of work (have i said this before ). Think I have done about 58 different FMs. BTW, we have 73 planes in the game by my count - thank you modellers, what an effort!. About half or more of the 58 FMs are my own work. The rest are substantially original work by TK (except DFWC5 and AlbDva) and Charles (about 10 of the Ateams, more or less, my own entirely) . I made changes to all, yep. Sometimes minor, sometimes very major, in performance, feel, ai etc. But without a doubt the hard work, basic feel and flyability was done by them for these......and they are very good too - otherwise I would have been tempted to redo them . In a way, its a team effort. We all certainly learn from each other. Even reuse others work. Charles has said to me when I was starting, the more people that do FMs, the better. He is right, and FMs can always be improved.

Thx, your right about the damage nodes. Fixed, looks lot better, new FMs in zip file for Avro504C, Avro504D and Martinsyde. No other changes. Fix_For_Avro_C_and_D_and_Martinsyde.zip If you just want to edit the 3 files (and 1st and 3rd duplicate entries are not mistakes), replace the DestroyedNodeName= line in existing files in 3 wing sections as follows: [bottomWingRight] . . DestroyedNodeName=Wing lower Middle R D . . [bottomWingMidLeft] . . DestroyedNodeName=Wing Lower Middle L D . . [bottomWingMidRight] . . DestroyedNodeName=Wing Lower Middle R D . .

Yeah, thanks Alligator Devil, I need to fix the decal problems with the Avros and Martinsyde. Tailspin, sounds like your really getting into it Nearly all the absolute values in the FM vary according to tables in each section, including lift. The biggest impact in moving lift around however would be to stall behavior. Allocation of lift needn't be in outer sections necessarily, tho it should have some relationship to the area (massfraction mainly) and centres of gravity. My understanding is that most force/lift allocation is only really critical for stall and especially spin behavior. Re how it is actually in RL, don't know. But TKs initial release versions of the FMs are I believe an attempt to do things reasonably accurately - they may be the best guide we have. Of course, like all of us, TK modified things to make them work better and he redid them with patches. We all do this because in the end you are balancing so many things, its a fine art, and a matter of getting the right result. The flight models would be a lot different if there was no AI, and even no dogfighting - these two are major seperate considerations and there are many more to consider/balance. The most challenging to me currently is making the planes feel more like WW1 planes (with a jet sim engine and other limitations) and making different planes "feel" different. Involves compromises too. Cheers

Spent some time looking at damage modelling, and for those interested, this is how I think most of it works. And its all fixable, but as all things in this game, there are some decisions/compromises.I may be wrong, its certainly a bit complex, you will need to read this carefully. Its a bit of an essay - sorry about that, but thought I should get these thoughts down. So...... Firstly, damage modelling is completely different for the AI and the player. Its also done differently for different planes. And visual damage and expected "real" damage effects can be quite different for the player plane too (thanks for post on this capun). These differences are the basis for understanding how damage modelling works in the game, and sometimes the combination of these differences can be seen in one damaged plane at the same time - with some funny results. The important difference is the AI versus Player difference. On the AI side it should all be okay, "reasonably". The reason it should be okay is simply that a "DESTROYED" rating for a section does indeed mean destroyed. Its just a matter of ensuring that critical bits - inner wings, fuselage etc have a destroyed rating, and this is how they are done, by TK and all others. Without going into why this works, just want to point out it does - so the AI should be fine. It will be destroyed when it should be destroyed, if not, there is an error in FM that is fixable. I say "reasonably" because of 3 qualifications: Firstly, I did introduce errors by mistake or via experimentation in some planes, this may have confused things. All of my d/ls AFAIK should be now okay - tho they are beta still :) Secondly, with improved AI (parameters), the AI will not be affected as much as the player when control surfaces are damaged or destroyed - ailerons, elevators and the like. This was always the case - the AI flies a simpler flight model and I think an easier damage model is applied too. It may just be a bit more obvious now, due to the improved AI. They will chase you around more aggressively, destroyed control surfaces or not. Thirdly, how a destroyed AI (or player plane for that matter), plunges down depends largely on how the FM is done. Most should and do go straight down, some won't, may circle slowly etc. Changing this could involve a lot of redoing or it may be someting quite simple. As this isn't common, isn't such an issue, I'm uncertain what exactly causes this behavior, and requires an enormous amount of testing (for different damaged bits), I'm not going to worry about it. Its pretty trivial IMO. The player side of damage modelling is different. There are some issues here with the game and other things. Fundamentally the player plane is not destroyed if a section rated as "DESTROYED" is actually destroyed, with the exception of a pilot or fuel tank hit (or the component these are housed in eg nose), and the engine (in a different way of course). This is definitely a problem, though may be done for good reasons - eg, to simulate the difficulty of controlling damaged planes, rather than have them just destroyed etc. But damage modelling for the player plane can be improved/fixed, with some compromises. As an example - the Dr1 Tailspin raised before, but its true of many planes - not all lose wings when damaged, as I said, different planes are done differently. In this plane, the player can still fly having say lost the entire top wing - the AI can't, it will be destroyed (a difference between AI and player damage modelling). The reason the player can still fly is that although some lift is lost - should be 1/3 approx - the plane will fly reasonably with 2/3 lift (or even a lot less). So how the FM is done is largely immaterial (the allocation of forces and lift to different sections etc) - actually, i don't think you can do much with it in the FM. Its the game mainly - its based on a jet sim (one wing gone - all lift lost!), and no coding is in place to mimic the effect of losing one of several wings in the plane. That is, there is no way of mimicking the visual damage effect physically, that I know of. So you will get the situation of losing one wing, even in a biplane, and flying anyway. Obviously if you are in the plane and you lose a wing you'd expect it to be difficult to control - but thats not the case. So how does TK do it? Because i haven't flown one of TKs planes with one wing missing - have you? Well, its the visual damage modelling.... you don't lose a wing with TKs planes, you may lose parts, but not one wing. The physical damage modelling is the same in TKs planes as all the others - when a part of a plane is "destroyed" even tho the part may or may not fall off (the latter in TKs planes), the plane is actually impaired (I think!), you lose lift and the like. What is different is the visual damage modelling. So, the answer could be that you define parts in the FM of some planes so that wings do not become detached when destroyed. This would need to be done in this way, because as capun implies, if not done that way, there could be graphical glitches. But I didn't experiment with this, because in the end which ever way you do it, the aim of not have wings fall off when damaged is achieved, with no difference to anything else. The compromises? Although you are doing this for player planes, AI planes are affected in the sense that their wings won't fall off either (they will still be impacted, flying will be impacted for both player and AI). And, well, to state the obvious, you don't get wings being shot off - maybe some/most like this visual effect. The benefit - seems more realistic, not so annoying (it happens to me in some planes as the player all the time). Just as importantly you will not get "unattached wing sections" - for player or AI. The real cause of unattached wing sections is a bit more complex, and I won't go into that...mainly because I don't think its fixable from a FM perspective. One last point - a plane that has a bit destroyed that is rated as "DESTROYED" will not be targeted by the AI - as in the AI flying the planes or the player's plane. This was always the case, But if as player wings don't fall off, even though your performance may be somewhat be effected only, the AI will think you are gone. This is true whether visually the bit/wing comes off or not - its just that if you don't actually lose the wing, its a bit more perplexing if this happens. That last point also raises one last question to me that I haven't resolved - tho in some planes as the player I find I am no longer targeted by the AI when a section is I presume rated "DESTROYED" is destoyed (with wings becoming detached or not, depends as I said on the plane and the visual not real damage), I haven't come across this in TKs planes. Maybe I just haven't come across this - it doesn't happen all the time - or possibly TK has done something differently that eludes me presently. At the moment I am trialling out not having any wings detached at all, and seems fine so far. So i might go down this path, as on balance this seems preferable to me. Phew..... have to say, for a moddable game, there isn't much documented about all this!

As in, they are as they were originally. Not that I had intentionally changed things, but when you redo FMs, things creep in - so just tired to make sure it was as done in all FMs. For example, "destroyed" "disabled" "heavy" damage to different wing sections are as in all other FMs, including ones done by TK - if the inner portion of the wing is destroyed, the plane should be destroyed - its not evidently the case, but it should be if "destroyed" actually means destroyed. And I asked Bandy which version he was using cos if I look at it, I want to know which one I should be looking at.... and of course, I'm not looking at previous versions I have done. Also asked a while back - was this happening before?

Don't know. But are you using my latest version, in d/l section? I ended up standardising damage modelling in that for all planes. Doesn't mean that nothing odd will be occurring, just that it is part of how planes are modelled and the game works, I guess.

USAFMTL posted this a while back .... its a sticky now, thought my comments would be more appropiate in a new thread. The only mod that would help new guys is a "Supermod(s)". One that packages up everything (or say just for a period like 1918 or 1916 etc), that can be downloaded and installed in one go. If you really think about it, why would anybody new go to the trouble of downloading all these things. And they don't - its why initial perceptions of the game (few planes, sparse, iffy terrain, weak ai, questionable fms) still remain. Who is going to come back and retry it all going to all the trouble of d/l'ing 50-100 files, many large? Its a pity - there are so many planes now, lots of improvements, yet we don't attract many new players IMO. They try the stock game, are maybe a little disillusioned, read what people have said in other forums, and then just play OFF for their WW1 fix. I like OFF too, especially the immersion aspects. But FE is better in many respects. To me its a toss up, and I am glad that we have two good WW1 aviation games - we didn't before, even OFF P1 wasn't that good. But we don't attract as many newcomers, or even people that may want to retry the game now, because its all a bit overwhelming. Its a pity.

Mmmm... Yes, keep the reliability about 97 or 98, I think they were the defaults for all guns....reducing even to 95 if I remember correctly will cause considerably more gun jamming. 85, 75 or less......well! Not sure why this is or how that works, but most other parameters can be tweaked very easily and effects seen immediately as you would expect without such extremes - even rate of fire and accurracy (I like 80 for accuracy but thats another story). Certainly modifying ammo weight. Cheers

They may show up in the editor as changed - from your gundata.ini changes. BUT my guess is that they they are unlikely to be in the game. I believe the gundata editor reads the gundata.ini then modifies the gundata.dat file and gundata.ini if you make changes and then save ... but the dat file is the one the game reads. Your manual changes only modded the ini file. Suggest you delete the gundta.ini and start again if you have the extract utility to get it again, if not, then mod the values slightly using the guneditor, save, then redo.