[WIP] Air Layer

[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

[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]

Originally Posted by 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!

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

[lurker_hlb3]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

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.

[tater]

Il-2 has them as well:

[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]

Originally Posted by tater

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

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.