[WIP] Air Layer

[donut]

AkbarGulag;Digital_Trucker;CaptainHaplo;Donut,have teamed to attempt to rework,Nite attacks,A/C spotting's at PD w/Periscope stowed,& radar mast lowered,Less patrols directly on your radial location search planes only. If detected 40% chance of air strike frequency. As we decide balanced game play,through testing,your questions will be answered in due time,with developments.
We could fall short of our goals,but it won't be because we didn't give it our best shot. Please subscribe,& post help,I will try to keep you abreast,w/teams assist.

[DrBeast]

Good luck, guys! :up: Anything specific you need help with?

[ReallyDedPoet]

Best of luck to you lads :yep::up:


RDP

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

If I can help why not? Besides I've resorted to pelting rocks at Zero fighters now.

[Digital_Trucker]

If I can help why not? Besides I've resorted to pelting rocks at Zero fighters now.

I've discovered that the use of a slingshot greatly improves both accuracy and lethality with this practice:rotfl:

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

Slingshot? Boy what technical advances. What would they think of next?:rotfl:

[AkbarGulag]

Good luck, guys! :up: Anything specific you need help with?

The planes.

Nah just jokeing :p

Thanks all.

[DrBeast]

Good luck, guys! :up: Anything specific you need help with?
The planes.


Oh, those are handled by Digital_Trucker and DavyJonesFootlocker. They're frantically shooting away with their slingshots :rotfl:

[CaptainHaplo]

Well, if anyone has a known easy way to modify how airbases perform in certain ways - ie - to define specific search patterns or at a minimum the specific range it "searches" (independant of plane range) - that would be a great help to us. From what we have seen, there is little chance of defining specific search patterns - but a range change would accomplish the same thing for our purposes.

*We have tried playing with the range in the airbase file, it does not seem to have the effect desired.

Thanks!

[AkbarGulag]

Just to keep everyone in the loop, an air layer with a massively reduced frequency has been achieved. But it's merely the start. The team is at the point where we will shortly be able to say 'Cake', whenever we need to do something.

To those that like historical accuracy, plane allocation dates have been changed to reflect their actual service entry and to a lesser extent availability by those dates.

Anyway, we have said to much already. Many changes.

By the looks this will initially be made for only SH4+1.4 patch and thats great news for those who run fairly clean versions (i.e not one of the major mods or mods altering how the planes work). That said, as a person who runs major MODS myself, I would imagine something to be compatable with others would follow.

[DrBeast]

Sounds promising. Keep it up! :up:

[AVGWarhawk]

An area that is in dire need of work. Looking forward to this. :up:

[Defiance]

Bravo Guys

Hope it goes to plan for you while creating :rock:

Have fun

Ciao

Def

[tater]

As you know (I'm sure) the way to change the ranges is to change them for the planes.

"BP-clone" planes and make variants for different purposes, IMO.

I made VERY short ranged versions for carriers since a CAP flies over the fleet, not at the max range of the plane.

Ditto for airfield CAPs.

The only plans you'd expect to see far from home would be patrol aircraft, or planes flying somewhere to attack it (or CAP farther from home).

The ideal solution would probably be a mix between using the airbases (limiting you to the crappy "airstrike" stuff) and adding some campaign layers with the planes following waypoints (use random groups). Some might be strike groups (say from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, or later to Sunlight, Munda, Ondonga, etc). Such groups I would actually have unarmed, except for maybe a plane or two so they don't all unrealistically abandon their mission to attack a speck in the ocean.

I tried to no avail to get the ACE program to make radial patterns, looks like they need to be done by hand for that.

I have a mod out there someplace that makes som variant plane with short range, and I think the airbases are published WIP, too. Take all you need.

[LukeFF]

Whatever you guys do, if you can, PLEASE try to get rid of the multi-engine aircraft (Mavis, Betty, Emily, Q1W) that patrol together in pairs. They simply did not patrol this way.

[CaptainHaplo]

Thanks Tater. We were hoping for a way to limit all the various planes - regardless of range - to one specific search radius. Not sure its possible. Thanks though!

[AkbarGulag]

So you know Tater, we decided that maximum ranges of aircraft as seen in things like Wiki-pedia are generally for an unloaded plane. It's a different story to load a plane full of bomb and charges then fly 2500km :lol: thus, planes with weapons will have less range than planes that search.

As far as the Zero fighter is concerned, I really don't think you would ever have seen this more than several hundred Kilometres for an airfield. And the game does not require fighter escorts for bombing historic land targets. I think a range of about 300-400km is ample for those. (even though it's range was far greater)

A lot of what you mentioned is between our teeth right now.

As to cloning the planes and bases, we wil not be using any of the traditional airbases and all planes used in our alpha tests are clones.

Your right about the airfields and placement also, it's pretty much going to have to be done by hand.

And Luke, I still don't know how the game decides these things should fly in pairs, for example. Even if I give a base, say, two sqaudrons with for example 20 planes each, it will still send individual planes. But if I assisgn 2 planes to a squadron, it may patrol with them both :doh: The only way around this would be to create a lot more airbases... We are going to have to find some balance here on what is actually able to be done and what will take far to long and be far to complicated.

[tater]

I never could find that file (whatever cause them to fly in 1 or 2s).

The only way I thought of was to only use "airstrike" planes (airfields and airgroups) that might be seen in pairs (the japanese flew in 3s, actually, not pairs).

So you'd only put planes with the ranges dropped a lot on the air bases. The maritime patrol planes could be added by hand.

One thing to remember as well is follow up attacks. Those could be in pairs.

So you make the H6Ks, H8Ks, and G4Ms fly search pattern waypoints. You then have airbases with those planes in them, and even long ranges---but you set the airstrike probability to near zero.

Then you set the % modifier based on being already detected to very high.

Now your waypoint flying planes do the detection, and the airgroups can followup.

tater

[tater]

Yeah, I know, my PM box is full. It's just that all the stuff in there is USEFUL, lol.

[AkbarGulag]

Yeah, I know, my PM box is full. It's just that all the stuff in there is USEFUL, lol.

Tell me about it... up to about 80 messages... but what to delete!

I think I get what your saying... thats what testing is for ^^

To start with we just used the H6K's to run searches. I also wanted to reduce the use of betty's by the time the americans roll up to guam etc.

Does anyone know how prolific float bases were during WWII?

Also, thanks for the starter notes you gave us Tater, some of the small slivers of information we got from you formed the backbone of this MOD ;)

Goes to prove, it's not the volume of information that counts, its the accuracy of that information. Tater = GOLD :()1:

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

Check here for some specs and ranges of Japanese planes.

http://www.aircraftaces.com/ww2-aircraft-japan.htm

[Digital_Trucker]

Yeah, I know, my PM box is full. It's just that all the stuff in there is USEFUL, lol.

Tell me about it... up to about 80 messages... but what to delete!



Why delete any of them? If you want to keep them, just check the box next to the one to keep, select the type of file on your computer that you want to store it in (in the selection box where you select delete) and click "go". Then you don't even have to be on the site to look through them.

[AkbarGulag]

Thanks for the resource Davy. And thanks for the tip Trucker ^^

Air MOD update. We have nailed something that has held us up for a lot of time. Moving now onto another aspect of the MOD.

[JimRat]

The Japanese relied HEAVILY on float and Seaplanes during the war for recon work. this was one of the reasons for their defeat at Midway. One of the float planes from the Cruiser Tone was let getting airborne and sighted the US fleet too late for Nagumo to attack it efficiently. As for where their main seaplane bases and such were located, I will have to get back to you on that.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Why delete any of them? If you want to keep them, just check the box next to the one to keep, select the type of file on your computer that you want to store it in (in the selection box where you select delete) and click "go". Then you don't even have to be on the site to look through them.

Nice tip DT :yep::up:


RDP

[AkbarGulag]

Just to keep people interested, this project is moving along.. here are some changes. All work is subject to change... no beta test release is planned yet. Indeed, no release date is even being considered at this stage.



Compiled by AkbarGulag, Donut, Digital_Trucker and Captain_Haplo

0.1 Alpha
---------

-Removed 'un-needed' files.
-Added the SingleMission 'Sanbox_Alpha' for testing purposes.
-Added the 'MOD_H6K_Alpha' Aircraft. This was cloned from the 'H6K'.
-Added the 'MOD_FloatPlaneBase_Alpha' This was cloned from the 'LAB_SmallFloatplaneBaseJP'.


0.2 Alpha
---------

-Removed more 'un-needed' files.
-Added the 'MOD_StrikeBase_Alpha' This was cloned from the LAB_LargeAirbaseJP.
-Added the 'XXXXXXXXX' File. This has not been implemented, but is within the file structure.
-Changes to ALL Japanese Aircraft except the Zero (due to its use as a fighter) to historic ranges. Initial Range number calculated in KiloMetres.(all are Radius, not one way flight ranges)
-Initiated Airstrike.cfg Changes.

0.3 Alpha
----------

-Removed ALL bombs on search planes. Retained a limited number of depth charges to make diving to escape difficult. (to be reviewed).
-Changes to the Airstrike.cfg file.
-Changes to ALL Japanese Aircraft Ranges. Due to game limitations and controls, historic ranges are often not obtainable without disrupting game balance.
-Renamed 'MOD_FloatPlaneBase_Alpha' to 'FloatPlaneBase'.
-Renamed 'MOD_H6K_Alpha' to 'ASW_H6K'

0.3b Alpha
----------

-Removed more 'un-needed' files.
-Cleaned up all Base and Search Plane Names. Includes ASW_H6K, ASW_H8K also StrikebaseJP and FloatPlaneBaseJP.
-Retweaked plane ranges to take into account game limitations in scripting.
-Changes to the Airstrike.cfg file.
-Completed Aircraft Entry Dates. Planes should now become available at historic periods.

0.4 Alpha
---------

-Added Jap_AirCover.mis
-Modified Jap_AirCover.mis, this includes replacing all original bases with the new StrikeBaseJP and adding 4 new FloatPlaneBaseJP.
-Corrected Airbase Date End of Rabaul to Feb 14 1944 (last operational aircraft removed to Truk)
-Corrected Airbase Date End of Wake to Oct 5 1943 (last operational aircraft destroyed in carrier raid?)

[tater]

Thanks, DT, never saw that. Doh!

Regarding the Tone's float plane, Shattered Sword sort of debunked that. They looked at the timing of the float planes, and it would have not made any difference. Contrary to myth, the Kido Butai was not moments away from launching their planes. All the planes were still in the hanger spaces when the SBDs came (the CVs had done landing ops within a few minutes of spent CAP planes). It took maybe 30 minutes to strike the planes on deck just for one wave (the IJN launched in 2 waves usually). That would be under ideal conditions. While wildly maneuvering during air attack, it would take longer.

They did use floats for recon, however, the trick is understanding what they were looking for. NOT submarines. Launching the cat floats off the CAs is easy, recovering them is not. As a result, they were used to scout for the enemy fleet when it was considered possible that one might be about, but they were not routinely in the air for patrol.

Any realistic air mod should have few (if any) ship borne aircraft, IMO, due to the poor way the sim deals with such air groups.

[CaptainHaplo]

Tater - we are not yet at the point of modding the carrier born air cover - but I do think we will go with a very short "range" cap if at all possible - and that would be fighter aircraft, not search and strike craft. At least we hope so!

[AkbarGulag]

Any realistic air mod should have few (if any) ship borne aircraft, IMO, due to the poor way the sim deals with such air groups.
The float planes launched from CA's, as you say, are a cumbersome recon craft. It appears the F1M Pete is the one used mainly in the SH4 game. After pondering this for a while, it was decided the Pete would not feature in any increased role for the MOD and has not been added to any of the float bases. (try and find a photo of one :lol:)

Unforunately we have not found a way to dictate how a base defines an aircraft range. The game engine seems to be limiting and has frustrated efforts to create 'good' balance. Effectively, so far it looks like Zero fighters will be limited to 250km. Even the Val and Kate have some reductions, though you will still see them much further out than a Zero. Betty bombers will naturally be seen far from any airbase, but will be individual. Don't expect to see them ganging up on you :)

The betty will now appear more of a lone transport moving between airfields. I realise they were used heavily in anti-naval operations(?) as in the sinking of The Prince of Wales etc.. but not sure how they progressed in this to the end of the war.

We are still learning here though, regardless of my doubts of making this seemlessly balanced, if new information helps us to this end, we will be falling over ourselves to incorporate it.

[tater]

The PLANE range is the range.

Change the Betty range to 100km. Make an airbase with just the Betty. load the mod and open the air layer. Look at the circles, they'll be 100km for the betty airbase.

The range in the Air/Aircraft_type/Aircraft_type.cfg is the plane range, and the airbases are populated with planes. The circle they use for airstrike %s is based on the planes inside the airbase airgroup.

If you have mixed air bases with one plane range at 1000km and another at 10km, the circle shows the longest range.

It's that simple.

I broke the bases down to bases with fighters, bomber squadrons, etc., and just overlapped them. So one airfield might have 1 fighter squadron and 1 bomber, each with different ranges.

As for floats, I would certainly add floatplane bases, they were common. The fact that the Pete is it doesn't matter, it is the stand in for other floats, so what?

Tulagi (before the US invasion) etc.

Given short ranges for the patrol areas they might actually be expected to have they are fine, IMO.

[The General]

Is there gonna be a way to implement the previously disabled 'Friendly-Airstrike' facillity that should've been a part of the game in the first place?

Keep up the good work AkbarGulag & Team :up:

[donut]

& Although this idea is cool. The friendly AirStrike,was not the main purpose,Air-cover for invasion troops took priority most of the time,from Carrier based A/C.Please recall land based Air Fields were few close to Japan. Till we took Okinawa. Now if my concept is amiss please advise.

[CaptainHaplo]

Subsim modders - I need some assistance - if you could point me in the right direction either in a mod guide - or tell me how to do it if possible. This whole cloning business - I need to clone a sensor node - mod it and then attach it (or swap it) onto an existing aircraft. Preferably adding it as an additional sensor node. Any ideas how to do this? Thanks in advance!

[lurker_hlb3]

Subsim modders - I need some assistance - if you could point me in the right direction either in a mod guide - or tell me how to do it if possible. This whole cloning business - I need to clone a sensor node - mod it and then attach it (or swap it) onto an existing aircraft. Preferably adding it as an additional sensor node. Any ideas how to do this? Thanks in advance!

So what do you want to do ( in detail ) ?

[lurker_hlb3]

The PLANE range is the range.

Change the Betty range to 100km. Make an airbase with just the Betty. load the mod and open the air layer. Look at the circles, they'll be 100km for the betty airbase.

The range in the Air/Aircraft_type/Aircraft_type.cfg is the plane range, and the airbases are populated with planes. The circle they use for airstrike %s is based on the planes inside the airbase airgroup.

If you have mixed air bases with one plane range at 1000km and another at 10km, the circle shows the longest range.

It's that simple.

I broke the bases down to bases with fighters, bomber squadrons, etc., and just overlapped them. So one airfield might have 1 fighter squadron and 1 bomber, each with different ranges.

As for floats, I would certainly add floatplane bases, they were common. The fact that the Pete is it doesn't matter, it is the stand in for other floats, so what?

Tulagi (before the US invasion) etc.

Given short ranges for the patrol areas they might actually be expected to have they are fine, IMO.


You guy's may want to look at what I did in RSRDC. It basic what tater described above

[AkbarGulag]

In response to Tater. I'm already up with the play on that one bud. I was hopeing the airbases could have a range airstike% of their own, but found through trial the plane range dictated aircover. In response I had made dedicated bases and planes for, like you say, specific tasks. This is already a reality in the early version of the MOD. It was not until 2 days ago, that I truly realised just how many clones would be needed :p But hey, making new planes is easy. I was even hopeing to add missing aircraft from SH4, but would need people to skin them. Finding the frames was another problem, although there is one Japanese aircraft that looks like a BF-109, so importing the BF-109 model and painting it would be easy enough. (another way to limit base rangers is to limit the range in airstrike.cfg... but that affects even waypointed planes lmao)

Am currently working on Naval aircraft, these will be clones of the zero, val etc... but have ranges associated with carrier strike forces.

As far as the number of float bases go, when the H6K and the H8K have ranges of up to 3,000km I found that putting 4 float bases in to start with gave them pretty much complete JIE cover. I will add more pending further 'feel testing'.

And captain Haplo, I can't make the sensor file, but attaching it to the aircraft is easy ^^ I can do this in a jiffy for you. Thus why I update the alpha files on the upload site ;) I will email you with the 'how-to' for attaching sensors in the next 12 hours. Keep an eye on your email. Oh, and we dont have to make 'extra' nodes, we merely replace the objects in existing nodes. Like Lurker said, his RSRD MOD has files similiar to what we are doing, 2 if i'm not mistaken. Sorry if you were not aware of them, they were discussed early in the project. I'm pretty sure they are mentioned in our 'Resource' file.

As far as the 'Friendly Airstike' is concerned The_General, the game has these parameters in the files, at least in the 'Airstrike.cfg'... I was not aware it was not functional, but like Donut said, you probably never get a response as there was limited American air cover in the early stages. To have a strike arrive, you need to have a friendly base/carrier in range of your target. Even then you only have about a 50% chance standard to get a response when you 'radio in'.

[tater]

The jap plane that looked like a bf109 was the Ki-61 Hein ("Tony"). It was mistakenly called a 109 at first (code name "Mike"). It was a pure fighter, and a IJ Army AF plane. As such, it wouldn't be flying maritime patrol (due to the pathological inter-service rivalry between the IJA and IJN).

Not worth the effort, IMO.

IMO, the concentration should be on what the purpose of planes are in game: to force subs under water in the daytime. It;s not more complicated than that. With the exception of things like the US fleet boat (Cavala?) escorting a stricken T class (RN) back to freemantle, subs pulled the plug when they saw planes. (The T-class could not submerge, and the US boat maintained AAA gunners on deck and told the RN sub that in the event of air attack they would remain on the surface and duke it out.)

Adding a bunch of extra planes that won't be seen (or shouldn't be) seems like it's unimportant to start with, anyway. The important missing IJN plane is actually the G3M Nell, probably.

[tater]

Look at TM's new sensor for aircraft added. Copy that, and clone the node and add as many as you need. Note that as long as it lives in the Library, you can make an entirely new sensor file, no need to mod the existing sensors.dat.

[AkbarGulag]

Look at TM's new sensor for aircraft added. Copy that, and clone the node and add as many as you need. Note that as long as it lives in the Library, you can make an entirely new sensor file, no need to mod the existing sensors.dat.

Haha, i'm glad you cleared that up, I just wrote up the 'how-to' for the boys on the sensor file. Then realised I could not find any file association that links the actual .dat in library... I just told them it must be dynamic and live in the game engine.. umm, they called umm, sub-routines if independant... but these look to small for that. Just resident in game memory maybe? Anyway, thanks....

As for the Ki-61, they made about 5,000 of them, though I agree that for SH4, this sort of fighter aircraft is hardly relevant to smoothing out the gameplay. Regardless, none of this is important as you say for our intents and purposes... maybe later I might make a 'Historical' air layer for fun... then again RFB and RSRD add lots of this sort of stuff anyway. I'll go look at this G3M Nell.

Regards,

Akbar

[AkbarGulag]

More work done here... Still plenty to do though :o

Compiled by AkbarGulag, Donut, Digital_Trucker and Captain_Haplo

0.4b Alpha
----------

-Removed more 'un-needed' files.
-Added ASW_F1M_Pete.
-Cleaned Names.cfg
-Added ASW_H6Kb this is a XXXX only version of the H6K. As the H6K only appears to carry XXXXXXX.
-Changed MinHeight of ASW_H6K, ASW_H6Kb from 50-XX metres This is in response to constant AI Suicide.
-Airstrike.cfg has VERY LOW enemy activity.
-Disabled XXXXXXX


0.5 Alpha
---------

- Val and Zero JP Aircraft now both have ranges of 200km only. This reflects their purely carrier roles.
-Added H8K2 Aircraft, definition of ASW_H8K2. Has increased Range.
-Rework of all plane ranges due to earlier figures being for unloaded aircraft.
-Added and modified all other aircraft .cfg files for ensured range restriction.
-Removed second generation Radar from H6K aircraft.
-Added Radar to Q1W1 Aircraft.
-Added and modified all aircraft .sns files.
-Changes to entry dates for 1st and 2nd generation Radar on all aircraft, historic values taken from at least two sources.

[M. Sarsfield]

The jap plane that looked like a bf109 was the Ki-61 Hein ("Tony").

I remember flying the Tony in 1942: Pacific Air War by Microprose, if you chose to have the Japanese Army career. The plane always reminded me of a P-51B more than Bf-109. Although a P-51B model often got mistaken for Bf-109s over Europe.

http://www.angelfire.com/fm/compass/K61.jpg

[tater]

Il-2 has them as well:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v104/Onyxwing2004USA/Ki-61-1_56th_Sentai25.jpg

[AkbarGulag]

In regards to this MOD. A version should be tabled here in 2-3 days, it will be a BETA version and is designed to bring in feedback. Not sure if it will gave you errors, but am 95% sure it shouldn't. To be honest, the air frequency MAY be a little low. It is designed to make planes less of a nuisance and more of a threat to those crazy/unfortunate enough to be on the surface in daylight hours.

Here's what may be the final change list...

Compiled by AkbarGulag, Donut, Digital_Trucker and Captain_Haplo .

2.0 BETA (Testers Only)
-----------------------

-Added ASW_F1M_Pete.
-Added ASW_H8K Aircraft.
-Added ASW_H8K2 Aircraft.
-Added ASW_H6K Aircraft.
-Added ASW_B6N2 Aircraft.
-Added the 'FloatPlaneBaseJP'.
-Added the 'StrikeBaseJP'.
-Added the 'ASW-LandBaseJP'.
-Changes to ALL Japanese Aircraft ranges, the Zero, Val and Kate 200km(due to their carrier role), all others to historic ranges.
-Completed Aircraft Entry Dates. Planes should now become available at historic periods.
-Modified Jap_AirCover.mis, this includes replacing all original bases with the new StrikeBaseJP and adding new FloatPlaneBaseJP and ASW-LandBaseJP.
-Corrected Airbase Date End of Rabaul to Feb 14 1944 (last operational aircraft removed to Truk).
-Corrected Airbase Date End of Wake to Oct 5 1943 (last operational aircraft destroyed in carrier raid?).
-Changed MinHeight of ASW_H6K from 50-75 metres. This is in response to constant AI Suicide.
-Airstrike.cfg has correct(?) enemy activity.
-Replaced many radar sets with those from RSRD.
-Added Radar to Q1W1 Aircraft.
-Changes to entry dates for Radar on all aircraft, historic values taken from at least two sources.

[tater]

I couldn't find the link, but if you want I can upload my aircraft DC mod. It makes 2 DCs, one set to 25m depth, another to 45m (which were the RL settings). Planes with DCs then take them in pairs. If they have 2 DCs, they carry 1 25m, 1 45m, etc.

[AkbarGulag]

but if you want I can upload my aircraft DC mod.
Simply yes (please). I have done nothing with the DC depth, adding some variation will make the user less able to predict a course of evasion. Lurker has been kind enough to simplify a lot of the files in the air folder, so with some luck, I can stomach the change install easily enough... My clones didn't even have their own ID before :88)

As it stands Tater, there have been no changes to the Bombs etc (making yours a great idea).. hopefully this will should be easy enough to incorporate.