Friendly aircraft support

[XenonSurf]

I'm currently playing the Artic Convoys campaign with my personal modlist (close to TWoS, based on OH2 and NewUIs TDW_7_5_0). My questions also apply for TWoS which I play separately.

This has been discussed many times, I did search for related topics, but still i need to ask this.

"Send Contact Report" with a convoy (or contact) in sight should get the BDU answer 'Be more aggressive!', or if you are lucky you get the answer that a wolfpack is underway with the instruction to not attack the convoy immediately.
But what about friendly airplanes if you are close to a friendly airport? Will my radio message trigger air support? And if yes, only randomly or in regular fashion if they are within range?

For example, if such an airport is 400 km away, I can calculate that it takes about 70-80 minutes for planes to join my location and support me after sending the contact report. I can then adjust my attack/defense tactics in the meantime.
BTW, I have never seen any message from BDU about possible air support for me, what I know is: friendly planes will attack enemy ships in SH5, I have seen this in the 1st Campaign in Poland.

Do I have any control for such air support other than sending a radio report and just hope? Can I know in advance that planes will (or will not) come to help me?
If a convoy is very large and I lack torpedos, it would be the best to call for air support of course, also this would ease my evasion against many, many escorts in some cases :)

Thanks to tell me what happens in your campaign in this regard!


XS

[XenonSurf]

I have found a related entry in the TDW Generic Patcher.
It starts with 'Allow carriers to launch...'. See screenshot below.


It's disabled normally, but I wonder if activating it will do what it says, or if the game gets unstable.



Thanks for anyone knowing this to let me know!


Screenshot:

https://ibb.co/k5DbhZd

[XenonSurf]

Activating the above setting in the TDW patcher will work as intended. I've created a mission with the Mission Editor with a German airbase at 20 km away, and a non-moving British ship target.
A 'convoy report' will trigger friendly planes to appear which will sink the ship very quickly. Or it will trigger a wolfpack sub AND friendly planes to join me, but this has crashed the game.
Changing the airbase into a British one will turn the tables against me, if I'm detected by the ship it will radio an alert and planes come in to attack me :)

Now, I need to see if I can change the spawn probability somehow in the 'Airstrike.cfg' file. Historically, German planes did rarely support submarines - very much to make Karl Doenitz angry...

The 'Airstrike.cfg' file is from IRAI, I have not changed it and it contains the necessary prerequisites already.

I wonder what happens if I activate this in my TWoS mod and how it would perform, I should get much more action, but also make British coastal patrols very dangerous :D
That's very good news indeed, and still I have not tested the 'Aircraft Carrier launch planes' part. However, I'm afraid I will soon see why all this has been disabled by default...I had 1 game crash already, this is not coincidental I think.




XS

[TM=Bluntman]

Please tell us of your findings while running this in TWoS. Inquiring minds want to know :)

[XenonSurf]

Please tell us of your findings while running this in TWoS. Inquiring minds want to know :)

Situation:
I have asked this in the WoS thread, Veko said that it's disabled because it would 'occasionally mess-up savegames'.
I cannot confirm this up to now, in my modlist this works very fine, also during campaign , a fine tool against difficult convoys with many escorts - and a eyecandy cinematic battle to watch also :)

But I didn't try it yet in WoS, I'm too busy testing my own modlist, it takes a lot of time to generate contacts in a campaign and repeat all stuff to test it, even with TC feature.
However, TDW when he made the Generic Patcher, he did know much more than myself, there must have been a serious reason for him to disable this interesting feature, but up to now I don't see anything game-adversive. (It must be accounted that a decade ago when the Patcher was made, computers were much less performing, so today you are likely ok to enable this).

I will enable it for testing in WoS next time and will let you know, yes.

What you can do yourself in the meantime is:
There are 2 patch series to enable in the TDW Patcher (one has up to 15 sub-entries!). My screenshot above is 1 of them.
Do the changes and note if there are differences. You should see much more planes joining your location (friendly and enemies!) after using 'Send Contact Report'. Planes are comming from airbases if in range and if BDU thinks it's worth to support you. If you are detected, expect enemy planes joining the 'party' comming from enemy airbases or CVs in range.

Important:
If you have problems in your game suddenly after these changes, then revert the changes...


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XS