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[fokker95]

I have been fiddling aroundmaking some b17 missions in the ETO (cross channel), and wondered if anyone had interest in them ? If so, I will upload them at somepoint. I was thinkign of making a campaign out  of them. I have been using 8th AF mission history to build them, though I have had to do some "fudging" since the maps are nto actually large enough to do an england to germany run, but still, they seem pretty fun.

I just thought it might be cool to make large bomber and escort formations. My system runs them fine, but mine is pretty beefy, so a low end system might have trouble with 60+ aircraft in the air at one time. Its pretty nifty though to see a fort formation of 32 bombers with 16 escorts being attacked by 24 bf109s and fw190 fighters at 24k feet

I have been doing them in 1.6 DBW, so i dont think they will work in 1.7, but I am not sure, since I have not tried DBW1.7 yet.

Anyways, let me know if there is interest and I will upload them later in the week.

[fokker95]

Of course we are interested! I love missions with huge formations of enemy planes colliding... plus the "carpet bombing" effect on the ground when all bombers deliver their punch

hahah actually i have it figured out  ...there have been no collisions in the missions. basically by setting the waypoint alts with a 30 meter difference between the aircraft groups...it has eliminated any mid air collisions during flight. I havnt even seen any in combat after quite a few test runs. I only have a few done so far, and they could be fleshed out a bit, but they are pretty fun to fly none the less, and it gives a pretty neat feeling to have such massive flights in the air. It reminds me a bit of the S3 days when I was flying warbirds Of course nothign will touch those S3, but it gives it that type of feel (a little bit anyways). Flak is pretty heavy too, although I noticed at 24k feet, the aircraft almost have to be right above the flak before it starts shooting.

[Foofighter]

Yes Please!!!! Would love B-17 missions!

Many thanks,
G

[dpeters95]

Absolutely...  Please upload missions/campaign!

[tomoose]

I've actually created a B17 campaign using the Western Front 44 map.  I'm still testing at the moment as I'm new at actually creating custom campaigns.  I've locked the frontline for now as I'm not sure about the dynamic part yet but I have created lots of targets in France, Belgium and Holland.  I've used the Manston airfield as it is a broad concrete runway and I can have bombers taking off at either end simultaneously while having P47s taking off on the adjacent grass field. 
One problem I have to sort out is getting my plane to be the lead in a mission so I can set the 'pace' so to speak.  If I am a "follower" it is a constant fight to maintain formation as the AI bombers speed up then throttle back and it's a bitch to do the same LOL.  I'll post the campaign once I iron out the bugs.

[fokker95]

I've actually created a B17 campaign using the Western Front 44 map.  I'm still testing at the moment as I'm new at actually creating custom campaigns.  I've locked the frontline for now as I'm not sure about the dynamic part yet but I have created lots of targets in France, Belgium and Holland.  I've used the Manston airfield as it is a broad concrete runway and I can have bombers taking off at either end simultaneously while having P47s taking off on the adjacent grass field. 
One problem I have to sort out is getting my plane to be the lead in a mission so I can set the 'pace' so to speak.  If I am a "follower" it is a constant fight to maintain formation as the AI bombers speed up then throttle back and it's a bitch to do the same LOL.  I'll post the campaign once I iron out the bugs.

Heya moose !

I am not sure I am following you, but I always make my bombers waypoints and link them to the lead flight(player is always in the lead flight for my missions, and then player has complete control of all flights under him). If the player is to be in a fighter group giving escort, then i link all fighter squads to lead fighter squad, and lead fighter squad to lead bomber squad, that seems ot keep the fighters flying escort over the bomber group (they will zig zag and loop around and generally stay right near the bomber group) Because player flight is lead fighter group, player then has control of all fighter squadrons beneath him.


BTW, I did get some collisons in the bomber formation last night as I was testing the newest mission(player flys B17s), I had about 40% bomber losses (which I think was typical of many of the daylight raids), so I thought it was pretty good outcome. A group of fw190s dropped onto the bomber group, and one of the lead elements looked like he panicked and banked hard, and clipped another bomber, and they both went down in flames LOL. Lost another to a direct hit of flak, and about 4 more to Fw and bf. ONnly 16 forts in this mission.

Most of them are for B17 flying, but some of them I did as fighters. I guess I could go back and basically turn each bomber mission into a fighter mission as well, it shouldn't take much to do that. Perhaps i will wait and string them into a campaign for release instead, but I have ot tak ea look at DCG, as I have just been doing them as single missions. Would be cool to get some dynamic weatehr and keep track of the pilots and plane losses and awards I guess.

[tomoose]

Fokker95;  Each mission is generated "dynamically" by DCG so I don't "control" who escorts who etc unless I go into FMB afterward but I'm hoping the dynamic campaign won't require after-the-fact tweaking.

Gents;
given my current schedule it's going to take a long time for me to fly enough B17 missions to test for bugs/anomalies etc ad naus.  I will post a link on the weekend and anyone that wants to grab it and do some testing it would certainly be appreciated.  I only ask that bugs and problems be posted back here so I can address them.

Points to note so far:
1.  Put your pilot name at the top of the list in DCG (Squadron Info section) for the first squadron so that you are the lead bomber.  The reason being it is MUCH easier for the AI to keep in formation with you than for you to keep in formation with the AI as the have a tendency to throttle up and down a lot.
2.  I'm not sure but there may be a couple of targets mislabelled so that the target in your briefing may not match the target indicated on the briefing map.  I haven't found any mislabelled yet but I still suspect some may be in there.
3.  A glaring disadvantage of the game is the briefing map.  It is not detailed enough to give you a clear idea of what you are supposed to bomb.  I would recommend that after the mission is generated that you go into FMB and have an 'overhead' look at your target.  This wouldn't be cheating but would simply simulate looking at recce photos of the target.
4.  Recommend you start the bombers at max/min 12/4  and the fighters at max/min 8/4.  This is only so that you have better Situational Awareness for the first few missions before you increase to 16 aircraft etc.
5.  Make sure your difficulty settings are squared away particularly the digital readout for the bombsight.  In addition leave your "map path" on and your own a/c icon on as it will help in navigation (you can always change this later).
6.  Even the short flights will be long as you take time to form up etc.  Not for the impatient flyer.  That being said, you can program the Time Skip to speed things up a bit.
7.  Recommend enemy fighters be set to "stupid" (aka: rookie) initially or your mission will be a lot shorter than you intended.
8.  I have not made the frontline dynamic as it historically didn't change until 6 June 44.  I didn't want it to change arbitrarily during the bombing campaign prior to that date.  This way you can concentrate on the bombing campaign and not worry about the UK being invaded in 1943 or some other innacurate BS.   I am looking at inserting a future change in the timetable file so that the Normandy invasion happens correctly off-map etc.

I will include the above points in a readme with the campaign files.
Check back here on the weekend. 

[MackStones]

In case people didn't know, I had done a B-17 (and similar B-24) campaign for UP3, which also appear to run in DBW 1.71.  Fokker, you might want to take a look at those, and you might find some things useful for your campaign.

The campaigns were uploaded to Mission4Today.com under the name "JackStones". Some of you know me as MackStones, an admin. and a mission-maker at Warbirds of Prey's family of servers (Spits v. 109s Modded, Zekes v. Wildcats, Spits v. 109s).

As long as I'm adding the links, I add ones to all of my single-player campaigns.  Each of these campaigns uses Ultr@Pack 3.0, RC 4, but all seem to work in Dark Blue World as well. 

Each of the campaigns is designed with an eye toward historical realism, and a more realistic perspective for a pilot (i.e.- not everyone was in a large aerial combat each sortie). Some of them involve long (1-3 hour) missions, but time-skip and time-compression can reduce them to manageable times. As with all of my campaigns, please see the admittedly too long Read Me for for important information about the campaign, its features, the reasoning behind certain features, warnings, pilot notes, known issues, etc.

Brief descriptions of the campaigns, with links to the respective download pages, are as follows:

Big Bird - 25-mission Western Europe campaign for B-17, designed to reflect a "tour of duty" in 8th Air Force during the beginnings of US bomber campaign in mid-1943

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=923

Boxcar - 25-mission Western Europe campaign for B-24, designed to reflect a "tour of duty" in 8th Air Force during beginnings of US bomber campaign (essentially Big Bird with B-24s)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=932

Little Friend - three separate 25-mission Western Europe campaigns for escort fighters beginning in 1943-1944, with P-51B-NA, P-47D-22, and P-38J versions (each version also has regular, hard, and easy variants)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=931

D-Minus-30 - five separate 25-mission pre-D-Day Normandy campaigns for USAAF fighter-bombers, with P-51C-NT, P-51D-5NT, P-47D-22, P-47D-27, and P-38J-15-LO versions (each version also has regular, hard, and easy variants)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=940

RLV- two 30-mission campaigns for Luftwaffe home defense fighters (Bf-109 and Fw-190) with LARGE formations of enemy bombers (96 in regular campaign, and 48 in reduced version)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=974

Finest Hour- two 25-mission campaigns for RAF fighters in Battle of Britain (Hurricane and Spitfire) with LARGE aerial combats (often 80-100 aircraft at a time)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=981

Jing Bao - three separate 30-mission southern China 1944 campaigns for USAAF fighter-bombers, with P-40M, P-51A, and P-38G-15-LO versions (each version also has regular, hard, and easy variants)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=955

Jolly Rogers - 25-mission F4U-1A campaign with VF-17 "Jolly Rogers" squadron on its first tour, in November 1943, from Ondongo, New Georgia (regular, hard, and easy variants)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=965

Honcho (UP3.0) - 100-mission Korean War campaign with F-86 (i.e.- a full tour of duty) - the original UP2 version is now updated to UP3 (more comments are with the earlier version)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=896

CPV (UP3.0) - 50-mission Korean War campaign with MiG-15 - the original UP2.0 version is now updated to UP3 (more comments are with the earlier version)

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=897

Hot Honcho - 14-mission "Best of Honcho" campaign, designed for people who don't want to fly the whole campaign, but just hit the highlights

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=893

[tomoose]

Mackstones;
cool!  Which map are you using?

[tomoose]

OK, here we go.  My first attempt at a DCG Campaign, sticking my neck out and going straight for a heavy bomber campaign.
It was a steep learning curve but I survived.  See link and please read the readme file!!!
Consider this a beta.  I don't have the time to test at length so I'm throwing it out to the community for anyone who would be interested.  I would really appreciate any and all feedback, suggestions etc.
I hope it provides some enjoyment for the serious bomber pilot, assuming I haven't screwed up royally LOL.
 
https://www.mediafire.com/?cnv2d5ksr52l1a2


Many, many thanks to LoneStar67 and Lowengrin for their tutorials and assistance.  Any errors, mistakes etc within this campaign are mine alone and I have my flakvest and helmet on.

[MackStones]

Mackstones;
cool!  Which map are you using?

WestFront 44, like you. 

I'm looking forward to flying your DCG campaign, which you just released in beta.  Mine is a scripted single-player campaign, and DCG should add some interesting aspects.

[tomoose]

MackStones;
just flew the first of your Big Bird missions (Ostend). Pretty damn cool to see all those bombers in the air.  DBW apparently has the same problem with rendering as you mention about HSFX in your readme.  I found that the target wasn't clearly rendered until we were almost on top of it.  I tried to adjust the bombsight in time but no joy.  Having the escorts buzzing around was reassuring.  Unfortunately I clipped a hangar while taxiing after landing and was killed, LOL.  D'oh!  Good mission though.
(I found that using the auto pilot during the initial flight was helpful for maintaining formation).

I wonder if there is some way to improve the DBW rendering speed.  My system is pretty good so it's not the equipment.