[REL] Wamphyri's Plane Attack Mod

[robbythesub]

Thanks for your efforts- I thought I was going mad as I was overflown by 2 Spitfires in broad daylight, and they ignored me several times!

I cant believe that this game was released without aircraft attacking you, this means it is completely unfinished surely?

I will keep an eye on your mod, so keep up the good work!

[kapitan_zur_see]

Originally Posted by robbythesub

Thanks for your efforts- I thought I was going mad as I was overflown by 2 Spitfires in broad daylight, and they ignored me several times!

I cant believe that this game was released without aircraft attacking you, this means it is completely unfinished surely?

I will keep an eye on your mod, so keep up the good work!

The game is indeed extremely unfinished (I never saw such an unfinished state in my years of gaming experience that spans from amstrad CPC6128 and PC1512 onward), with lots of critical things left behind or simply forgotten ( could only be that given the fact some things can often be restored within 30 minutes of your modding time only!!).
Also, the game features quite a bunch of animations made for the crew you will never see ingame because they didn't took the time to fiddle the scripts (no crew repearing animations, always looking as cool as a cat be it under the most dangerous of situation, or during safe travel and countless of things like that, really countless).

I suspect the devs only years of devlopment wasn't even entirely span making SH5, but rather part-time in between another project (too few additions, lots of things left behind whilst retaining though 70% of SH3-SH4 and etc.

[wamphyri]

Well planes attacking is in the stock sh5 .. barely. Out of the 30ish planes in stock sh3 only 5 would attack a player. Plus you would only meet these much later in the war as some wouldn't spawn from an airbase until mid '41 and some not until '42.

[AOTD_MadMax]

Hey, you can use Bombdummy´s from RDA-Mod, no Problem !

http://www.aotd-flottille.de/Maddy/R...Beta_V1.02.rar

Regards

Maddy

[wamphyri]

Thx madmax. I'll look into using it for the next release. Btw everyone .. new release. All the planes spawned from a british airbase want you dead.

[Pintea]

Originally Posted by robbythesub

Thanks for your efforts- I thought I was going mad as I was overflown by 2 Spitfires in broad daylight, and they ignored me several times!

I cant believe that this game was released without aircraft attacking you, this means it is completely unfinished surely?

I will keep an eye on your mod, so keep up the good work!

Planes weren't equipped to attack subs until later in the war !
In the early years, they only reported your position.

[Church SUBSIM]

Can confirm this def works ... one thing though ... when I am surfaced they only use guns, when diving they came around and I heard a bomb explosion (I play without external views)

Great fix! Look forward to further revisions!

[The General]

Thank you for this MOD. Aircraft have never been a realistic part of this franchise. Hopefully with your help they will be soon

I am finding that I have a record number of Mods to get SH5 closer to what it should've been upon release . Having said that, I think the Devs deserve credit for creating something special in the time they had. SH5 certainly has the potential to be incredible and we have Dan & Co to thank for it.

The next couple of Patches are crucial.

See here:

[pythos]

Someone stated something people do not seem to get.

Planes were not used to attack until later. Hurris, spits, and so on WERE NOT EQUIPPED to attack U boats!!..They radioed your position to surface units, which in turn b-lined their way to the reported position. Or Merchants would get re-routed.

It was not until late 42, and early 43, that planes became a real threat, namely that monster the Sunderland.

Try this when you spot a British plane call all stop, and then go to high TC. I will bet, you will get pounced on by a destroyer or other warship.

Another thing. Spotting subs in a fighter was not easy. They are small, and do not leave that much of a trail at low speed. Some mods of SH3 made the attack frequency from fighters so unrealistic it made the game unreal. Just because a fighter was in the area did not mean the pilot sees your boat.

Donitz's book states that most of the early losses were due to surface action, including ramming. Planes were not a real threat until the time frame I have stated.

On that note, if a boat got spotted by an avenger, or Swordfish....they were pretty screwed, Swordfish = torpedo, Avenger = DEPTH CHARGES, large ones, and a torpedo. Catalina, and Sunderland = death in shallow waters, and a pounding in deep waters.

Please modders keep this in mind when dealing with air threats.

[wamphyri]

Originally Posted by pythos

Someone stated something people do not seem to get.

Planes were not used to attack until later. Hurris, spits, and so on WERE NOT EQUIPPED to attack U boats!!..They radioed your position to surface units, which in turn b-lined their way to the reported position. Or Merchants would get re-routed.

It was not until late 42, and early 43, that planes became a real threat, namely that monster the Sunderland.

Try this when you spot a British plane call all stop, and then go to high TC. I will bet, you will get pounced on by a destroyer or other warship.

Another thing. Spotting subs in a fighter was not easy. They are small, and do not leave that much of a trail at low speed. Some mods of SH3 made the attack frequency from fighters so unrealistic it made the game unreal. Just because a fighter was in the area did not mean the pilot sees your boat.

Donitz's book states that most of the early losses were due to surface action, including ramming. Planes were not a real threat until the time frame I have stated.

On that note, if a boat got spotted by an avenger, or Swordfish....they were pretty screwed, Swordfish = torpedo, Avenger = DEPTH CHARGES, large ones, and a torpedo. Catalina, and Sunderland = death in shallow waters, and a pounding in deep waters.

Please modders keep this in mind when dealing with air threats.

This is in the stock game. The only planes that will attack appear around mid '42 and I believe they are all based on the sunderland model (many planes use the same models .. just different names).

I also have reason to believe that planes from an airbase only report the contact to their airbase, and in the campaigns most of the airbases only spawn hurricanes. That's why when you get a plane flying over you'll soon see many more flying over roughly the same patch of sea as the airbase sends out more planes to where a contact was sighted. With the medium and large airbases this would be big trouble as they can send out the sunderlands and other baddies, but you have to get spoted by a plane from that airbase.

But at the moment all of this is moot really. There are so many glaring bugs with the game that even tho I'm going to keep working on this I don't really recommend anyone use it yet. I'm hoping for another patch or 2 so they cah fix many of the things wrong with the planes and the Flak gunner.

[Furia]

Well regarding the Aircraft not being a threat for sub until the 43 is not true.

Aircraft posed a threat to the U-Boats from the begining of the war.

This boats were lost due aircraft operations of different sort.

U-55 Sunk on January 1940
U-64 Sunk April 1940
U-26 Sunk June 1940

In 1941 a total of 5 U-Boat were lost related to aircraft attack one sort or another.

While there was no specialized ASW weapons on most aircraft on the early days it is more than clear that if a sub was spotted, it was attacked.
There are records of countless crash dives due the presence and attack from aircrafts even on the early days.

Depth charges (Mk VII) were tested and installed on the Coastal Command Sunderlands by spring 1940.

While it is unlikely that Spitfires would have detected a sub due they usually were flying high, a number of other planes types were a real threat for the U-boats.

[wamphyri]

Originally Posted by Church SUBSIM

Can confirm this def works ... one thing though ... when I am surfaced they only use guns, when diving they came around and I heard a bomb explosion (I play without external views)

Great fix! Look forward to further revisions!

This seems to be part of the AI's coding and I'm not sure there's much I can do about it. Soon I'll release a version that removes the bombs from the fighters in the early war so all they will do is strafe but I've noticed that what's happening with the ships happens with the planes.

Once they spot you they might stick around forever just doing circles, sometimes strafing where you'd last been spotted by them. I've been going over what parts of the AI code they put in sh5 that we can change(this is new.. didn't get to play with this so easily in sh3/4) and the only thing I can figure out that's going wrong is that their never losing contact. It may be that there's a default wait time between when they last had contact with you and decide they have no contact now, but there is a setting for that in sim.cfg but didn't seem to make a difference.

I know many want realism and in the long run that's what i'm working towards but for now I'm trying to figure out why the AI does what it does and correct things as best I can.

If anyone uses the mod can you plz give me a brief report about the damage the guns do. Many of the stock settings were setup for these planes never attacking so I may have some plane tweaks to do.

[wamphyri]

MAJOR UPDATE

All planes are done. I used info from the internet to determine if they were a fighter only or had bombs also. Made a few personal choices knowing that the way the code works if your spotted by a plane they will send more to your location.

Given the discussion in the thread I decided that since most of the airbases in Britain only sent out hurricanes that one type would attack and the other type wouldn't . I thought this would be a decent compromise because your never going to know which is which.

Stay on guard

[Sgtmonkeynads]

Good to hear your cleared for take off !

oh, I was going to add in that it can depend which way they are coming from if they would attack also.
Fighters flying escort latter on would save ammo on the way out, then use it , and if anything was left on the way back they would and did attack targets of opportunity.
Same with Bombers, if for some reason they had left over ordnance they would take pop shots at anything German.

[wamphyri]

Unfortunately there's no way to model that with sh5. Once the plane takes off it's either going to attack or it's not