Battle of Britain

[U-190]

It would be interesting to implement a war in the air between the Luftwaffe and the British Air Force. I don't know if this is technically possible. Any ideas....

[Jeff-Groves]

TDW's scripts have air to air combat but does it actually work?
You can do a single mission to test that.

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

TDW's scripts have air to air combat but does it actually work?
You can do a single mission to test that.

It "kinda" does, planes do shoot at each other when passing by and try to turn back to attack, but it's not quite the cinematic dogfight one might imagine.

That said, it would be a nice touch for immersion to implement bomber formations following semi-historical routes, for example German bombers crossing English Channel during Battle of Britain or Allied bombers over North Sea in later years. Those would have to be set to non-aggresive and high altitude, so they don't abandon their mission to chase a lonely U-Boat.

Better still for immersion would be to implement realistic air raids on sub pens - high altitude formations dropping a lot of bombs all over the port from time to time - if you happen to be unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of it, it would make for unforgettable (and possibly career-ending) experience.

[U-190]

That's about what I meant. I think that you need to create waypoints for aviation.

[gap]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

That said, it would be a nice touch for immersion to implement bomber formations following semi-historical routes, for example German bombers crossing English Channel during Battle of Britain or Allied bombers over North Sea in later years. Those would have to be set to non-aggresive and high altitude, so they don't abandon their mission to chase a lonely U-Boat.

Strategic bombing raids over UK could be simulated by means of dummy "environmental" aircraft scripted in campaign with their waypoints set opportunely. I think a similar approach was used in an old SHIII mod by Kendras, where entire B-17 formations are made into a single air unit.
If the priority is having realistic aircraft formations crossing the English channel with a low GPU impacts this one would probably be the best approach. It would nonetheless disappoint U-190's idea of AI-AI dogfights, since these dummy aircraft formations couldn't/shouldn't dogfight.

If the priority is having German intruders and their escorts to dogfight with British interceptors over the English channel (with the AI limitations that you have already mentioned), then a more traditional approach should be adopted. Setting those aircraft to non-aggressive might prevent them from attacking surface targets such as ships and surfaced submarines on their way but, again, it might also affect negatively their attitude to attack other air units and/or to defend themselves against attacking aircraft. All in all, I think that equipping those aircraft with only machine guns would be enough to prevent them from attacking ships and submarines. Bomb-less aircraft ignoring surface targets even though they have gun bullets available, is an old SH5 bug that we could exploit for our own purposes.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

Better still for immersion would be to implement realistic air raids on sub pens - high altitude formations dropping a lot of bombs all over the port from time to time - if you happen to be unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of it, it would make for unforgettable (and possibly career-ending) experience.

I definitely agree and I have have been slowly gathering information on this sort of attacks, but my database is still far from complete. As I noted elsewhere I think that those air raids should be similarly scripted but of course, unlike bomber formations bound for inland targets, they should be composed of bombers equipped with actual bombs.

Conversely, airbase-spawned aircraft should simulate ASW/antiship patrols, coastal traffic escort missions, home defense, etc. and their max radius should be limited so to reflect their mission and to prevent them as much as possible from flying over enemy-controlled territories.

[Oby]

Sorry for negative energy, but such goal would be almost impossible to achieve, with the tool we have available. Campaign/Mission editor is just too clumsy for the task of such magnitude, or am I wrong? On the other hand, we all know the mod Open Horizons, which was done in this fashion. This is certainly an interesting idea, but I think would require a very dedicated group of at least 4 to 5 people, to realize it.

[U-190]

Originally Posted by Oby

Sorry for negative energy, but such goal would be almost impossible to achieve, with the tool we have available. Campaign/Mission editor is just too clumsy for the task of such magnitude, or am I wrong? On the other hand, we all know the mod Open Horizons, which was done in this fashion. This is certainly an interesting idea, but I think would require a very dedicated group of at least 4 to 5 people, to realize it.

I'm afraid that many people have already lost interest in SH5. I think that no one will help me with this idea. Thank you Oby for still being here!

[gap]

Originally Posted by Oby

Sorry for negative energy, but such goal would be almost impossible to achieve, with the tool we have available. Campaign/Mission editor is just too clumsy for the task of such magnitude, or am I wrong? On the other hand, we all know the mod Open Horizons, which was done in this fashion. This is certainly an interesting idea, but I think would require a very dedicated group of at least 4 to 5 people, to realize it.

I don't see the implementation of campaign-scripted air raids too technically complicated. For sure that would be far lesser complicated than it was for convoy traffic layers. Once you know how .mis files work and you have set up waypoints in Mission Editor, editing the other settings in notepad is certainly more practical.

On the other hadns we don't need air raids to happen on the exact same dates and locations as real ones, the same way we don't expect in-game convoys to depart from their origin and to arrive to their destination ports on the same dates as their real counterparts. Air raid layers should be based on history, but they should be greatly simplified compared to historical air raids, and made more random. Overcomplicating them would an useless waste of time and computer resources and, even worse, would make campaign too predictable.

The task I see more complicated and time-consuming, is with no doubts data collection

[U-190]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

TDW's scripts have air to air combat but does it actually work?
You can do a single mission to test that.

Ok, Jeff. Thanks.