[peabody]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Might be FOTRS. Certain planes, well, most fighter/ground attack planes the loadouts are grayed, but they come stock with rockets and bombs. The P-51 has a Basic and a Fighter option. Assume Basic is Ground Attack and Fighter is a clean configuration. Guess as they tweak the mod, the options will be expanded.

The Random Group thing worked very well after I figured it out. Strange thing though. The historical date of the mission 4/7/45 will not work with the RGG. Groups will not spawn when the day is set to 7. Gave me fits finding the problem. When I set the day to 1, the groups started spawning. So my mission works, it just happens six days early.

It's awesome though. I watch it over and over like a movie. Thirty Dive Bombers arrive and pound the Japs. Then a group of Corsairs and Wildcats strafe 'em. Then the Torpedo Bombers arrive and things get serious for the Japanese, ships start blowing up, the Yamato takes hits and lists, ships water, loses speed. Rinse, repeat as necessary. Wave upon wave until every last Jap ship is a burning, sinking hulk. It's fun to use the external camera and watch the action from aboard the Jap ships, as if you were a crew member. It is intense. A hail of bullets and rockets from every direction, nowhere on deck to hide. Geysers of spray shooting up from near misses from bombs. It makes me want to crawl under something and hide until it's all over.

I mean, like, CRAZY JACK.

I could make it much more historically accurate, although to do so will take some balancing. The mission would take around two hours. My Yamato is sinking much faster than that--maybe half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, depending on events. It's been difficult to find information on the exact composition of the American Fighter\Bomber groups. There are some good time-line sites. Haven't been able to find the exact disposition of the Japanese Task force. I know generally that the CL Yahagi was leading the Yamato, and the 7 DD's were arrayed in a circle around them, all ships about 1500 m apart. But I don't know where the Hamakazi was relative to the Hatsushimo, etc. Some units are missing from the game, although there are enough to approximate. For instance, the Curtiss
Helldiver I have in game is a Torpedo Bomber, whereas the Curtiss Helldiver that attacked Yamato in the first wave was a Dive Bomber. So I use Dauntless Dive Bombers instead. My forces take much heavier casualties than we did in reality. The US lost 10 aircraft, according to one source. In my mission US aircraft explode like fireworks. On every pass a US plane bursts aflame. The Torpedo Bombers get it the worst, coming in low and relatively slow, whole formations are decimated by AA, although they do, by far, the greatest damage. It's sick to watch a Destroyer get hit by 8 torpedos, explode, break in half, sink. By the end, I think I average a loss of 50+ aircraft. The Destroyers claim most of them. They are lethal vs. planes.

Glad you have it working. The reason all the planes have loadouts in the stock game is because the planes will not engage each other. So they added bombs and torps to all the planes since fighters will not attack other planes.
The date of 7 should have nothing to do with it, you may have something wrong that is preventing them from working.

Peabody