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[SpongeBob]

Hello everyone!

This is my modest and first contribution to BAT users. I try to add some flavour to the Great War campaigns by providing dedicated sets of medals suitable for this era.

Update: August 28, 2017

After a long, long time (las update was in April), I finally finished the German award set. It has been much harder than I expected, because in the Great War time, German was a rather young country, formed by the fusion of a lot of smaller kingdoms and states, each one with its own awarding scheme. It took too long to gather information and to decide which medals would go in or not. However, I feel rather satisfied with the result, I hope you like too.

Most of the time has gone into preparing a manual, where you can find detailed information about installing, awards, ranks, and small pieces of history:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/sk220kxfg3fcczh/Manual_BAT_DOF_Awards_and_ranks.pdf


This is the link to the second version of the Great War dedicated awards. It includes British medals from three services (RFC, RNAS and RAF), French and Russian medals, so the Triple Entente Alliance is complete by now. The German empire is also included, so the four main countries in the war are covered:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/rt2umc88eer8jp9/Great_War_awards_and_ranks_by_SpongeBob.7z

IMPORTANT:

If you have downloaded and installed a previous version of my medals set, I recommend that before unzipping the new file, you go to your BAT directory, search for #DOF2 > MAPMODS and locate a folder called Missions. This folder includes the previous version of my mod, so you can move it away to a different place. Provided you didn't include anything else inside this folder, it should be quite safe to complete delete it, but just in case, I recommend to move it away to another location so you can restore it if anything fails.

After Monty upgrade to BAT Operation Sealion, I suppose that everybody has installed the new version, and my previous version of medals is lost. If you have reinstalled my Great War awards, I recommend you to delete them and install the new version. It will go into the new folder #DOF3, which correspond to the latest BAT 3.1.

HOW TO INSTALL:

1.- Deactivate all JSGME mods before extracting files.
2.- Extract the zip directly into the main IL2 BAT folder.

It will create a new Missions > Campaign inside #DOF3 > MAPMODS, which will contain a group nation folders with suitable awards and ranks files.
It will also add some folder in BATMODS: #DOF_Awards_Allied-set1, #DOF_Awards_DE_Immelmann-set and #DOF_Awards_DE_Richthofen-set. This will permit to activate alternative medals sets via JSGME. These sets will show some medals awarded by allied countries, instead of showing just medals from the country you are flying for, or specific sets of awards suitable for the German aces.

Note: Royal New Zeland Air Force (RZ) has been used to hold the RAF ranks and medals. If you want to play a campaign for the RAF (any British campaign set from April 1918 on), you should place that campaign folder in your IL2 root folder > Missions > Campaign > RZ.

Russian Empire (RE) holds Russian medals. Do not be confused with Imperial Russian Air Service (RU), which in my opinion could be better asigned to the Revolutionary Army during the Russian Revolution. If you want to play a campaign for the Russian Empire (before 1917), you should place that campaign folder in your IL2 root folder > Missions > Campaign > RE.

Enjoy! Feedback is welcome

[SpongeBob]

Hello again!

I forgot to explain a perhaps little known tricky issue. When creating campaigns, a campaign.ini file must be included. It has the following general format:

/Main/
Class il2.game.campaign.CampaignRed
awardsClass il2.game.campaign.AwardsRUfighter

/list/
Mission01.mis
Mission02.mis
Mission03.mis
...

The /Main/ section describes the side you fly for (CampaignRed or CampaignBlue), and the systems awards are obtained.
Here is the trick: AwardsRUfighter means you will get your medals following the Soviet way, in which some medals are awarded more than once.
On the contrary, AwardsDEfighter does not imply anything about Germany, it just means that medals are awarded in a sequential order.

See the differences with these two examples:

French campaign after a score of 25000 points - AwardsDEfighter mode:

All medals are obtained in the original sequence.

French campaign after a score of 25000 points - AwardsRUfighter mode:

As you can see, the military medal is awarded three times, and the Silver Palm for the War Cross has been replaced by the higher-ranked Legion of Honor.

I recommend to set all Great War campaign in AwardsDEfighter mode. You can safely change this before starting a campaign.

Cheers!

[Flying H]

Great!

[Jenato]

SpongeBob,

this is awesome! I am a real fan of awards and medals and I must say…. this is quite a magnificent job you did! Thanks a lot!

Greetings!!!

[SAS~Monty27]

Thanks mate, this is brilliant, especially working out the unique module pathways.  I would like to package these with the French sets right away in one download and will make sure that the campaign.ini files are Award DE set as well.

[jpten]

Looks good and I while I applaud your dedication to fill in details and make this sim the best, I must point out that the French Croix de Guerre was not issued without a device.  Except for the Silver Palm, the stars and bronze palm signified the level of citation (Regimental or Brigade, Division, Corps...etc)  so the lowest level should be with the bronze star.  A French flyer did not start with a bronze star and 'work their way up' to a bronze palm.  AwardsRUfighter would most accurately reflect the French awards system.
  As I wrote, I like your contribution but I can be a  picky 'count the rivets' player on military medals.

[Gaston]

Thanks ! That makes me think... in this package, we have French and Russian medals. Are other nations to come ?

[SpongeBob]

Thank you everybody for your support!

Gaston: Of course. Next sets will include British and German awards. Preparing the .tga files is quite easy and I found it very funny. The hardest part is the previous research, as jpten kindly pointed out. I have to find ranks and medals for the specific period, look for real pilot to see which medals they really obtained, so I get an idea of what could be a typical career, and adapt the list to the game engine. All help in this research is welcome. All I need is a list of seven/eight ranks and seven medals from your favourite country, and I can look for suitable pictures and prepare the tga files.

jpten: Thank you very much for your proposal. I am far away from being an expert in medals history, so these corrections and details are great help. I will remove the plain Croix de Guerre, so you will begin with the Bronze Star citation. I can also add a Silver Gilt Star distintion to replace the missing medal.

As for the awardsRU and awardsDE modes, I've performed several tests to better understand the differences. My results are summarized in the following table:



AwardsDE system is rather straightforward: you get medals in the sequential order described in awards.ini file as soon as you get the required score. Thus, it is very easy to adapt a set of medals for each country: you just need to make a logical order, and the player will get what you listed.

AwardsRU system is very specific. The medal you set in the third place (award02) will be offered three times, whenever you add 5000 points to your score. This may reflect the fact that the Hero of the Soviet Union could be awarded once, twice or three times (very rarely a fourth was given: according Wikipedia only Zhukov and Brezhnev were awarded four times with this award). Misteriously, the sixth award (award05) is never obtained in the AwardsRU system. After award04 at 12 500 points, you get award06 at 20 000 points. Thus, in the awardsRU system the player will never see the sixth award from the list (I've seen in other forums complaints about this, not knowing the cause. Probably they were using AwardsRU system in their campaigns). This scheme may be difficult to adapt for other countries. For the French case, another specific system should be created, so you get your citations according the Regimental, Division... level. However, AwardsRU doesn't applies to this system. It just repeats award02 up to three times, so you will never have something similar to this real medal:



Remember I can only 'disguise' medals from one country into another, I cannot change the game rules.

Moreover, AwardsRU system makes harder to get your first medals (you need 3000 points for the second and 5000 for the third). On the contrary, AwardsDE system is more 'generous' at the beginning of your career.
For these reasons, and taking into account that the Great War campaigns will probably be rather short, with few planes shot down (leading to low scores), I still think that AwardsDE system is more suitable for every country in DOF. AwardsRU system must stick for what it was created: the Red Army in the Second War World.

[jpten]

I appreciate your attention to detail.  If I may, the German award system replicated in AwardsDEfighter developed from Germany's need for troops to be returned to battle.  After each award, there was a higher award to be achieved and was rather unique.
  In most all other nations you could win the same award (usually lower level) multiple times.
A pilot in their first air battle could win the highest award.  In WW1 Cpt. Leefe-Robinson only held the 1914-15 Star when he was awarded the Victoria Cross, passing over the lower precedent awards.
   Because of the 'single combat' aspect of fighter pilots and the dangers undertook just by going into the air, most successful pilots gained the higher awards while the massed troops below saw only the lower.  In WW1 approximately only 218,000 Iron Crosses 1st Class (EKI) were awarded, while 5,196,000 Iron Crosses 2nd Class (EKII) were awarded.  A higher % of pilots in a squadron would be wearing a EK1 than in a ground unit.

  As far as BAT, I beleive that the AwardsDEfighter is better for a game environment regardless of nation.  I just wanted to lay out the historical basis in case you encounter a medals troll.  Another point is that many military medals were not in existence when the war began but it is an established standard that historical military sims will have use them regardless of game setting, i.e. a game battle in 1914 may award a medal not created till 1918.  it is a game, after all.
  In WW1 Germany still had strong influences as a 'New' nation and you will find many 'state awards' of Bavaria, Saxony...etc on pilots but as the founding kingdom Prussian medals were used more as an national award.
  Manfred Von Richtofen ordered a small silver cup as a commemorative each time he downed an allied plane and would order ones to give out as an award to other pilots in his squadron.  The British had "Mentioned in Dispatches" as a form of acclaim when WW1 began and this was the basis for the French stars and palms, they indicated at what level of dispatch you had been named.  To have your name mentioned in a Corps level dispatch was considered a higher honor than at Brigade level.  I would think the AwardsDEfighter system also works well for the French awards in the sense that as you gain for more kills (progressively higher score amount) you would start to be mentioned higher up the chain of command.

  Regardless, this will be your mod and you will need to make it to your vision.

[SpongeBob]

Wow jpten, thank you for the info.
I knew about some details, such as the cups ordered by von Richtoffen, and the fact that most medals could be earned more than once. But I appreciate all the knowledge expressed in a few lines.
I completeley agree, this is a game, so some simplifications must be made, although most people in this forum care for historical accuracy.
Choosing AwardsDE or AwardsRU modes is not a vital option. Just a matter of taste, although the first one seems to be more flexible.

I even thought of adding foreign medals to each set, after seeing that many pilots were awarded by allied countries (Légion d'honneur for British and Russian pilots or Victoria Cross for French and Russian, for example). However, I think it should not be necessary, since they should stay at the highest levels, and should only be awarded at very high scores. I doubt that Great War campaigns could be so long and intense to offer the opportunity of obtaining more than three or four awards. Maybe campaign designers can use the scoring table shown in reply #7 to provide final missions where huge amounts of victory points could be obtained, so a high level medal is more probable to be obtained. In order to find out the game scoring system, I used missions with twenty and more primary recon targets located very close together. Thus, I could get 4000 or more points in just a second. Wisely used, this can be a way to boost your career and feel like a Great War Ace.

Monty: I really feel happy that you like this little entertainment. BAT modular system makes way for a lot of opportunities. TGA and JTW modules can also house their own sets of ranks and awards, while keeping the default sets. Spanish Republican and Nationalist awards will embellish your Spanish Civil War campaigns. Soon!

[SAS~Monty27]

Let's make these part of B.A.T. - Dawn of Flight, to be installed with B.A.T. Expansion Pack Seven.  I am really humbled when our project receives such a great response and other talented people feed-back into it and improve the experience.  Thank you SpongeBob.  I will also make sure that all my DoF  'Campaign.ini" files use the 'De' system, since it makes sense aesthetically for this sim environment.

Especially with regard to WWI, I have not often considered medals:  Despite some adjustments to the flight model difficulty, to make the planes fly reliably, I otherwise fly a pretty realistic mission and get fully absorbed in the flying, navigation and dogfighting.  Pull off a good scrap and get away with it that's a victory and I'm ready to move on. 

With limited ammo you need to get in close and make enough of a hit to slow the enemy down.  Provide him with enough problems to leave you alone.  Once you have an enemy smoking you can look elsewhere and enjoy better odds for survival.

These beautiful medals by SpongeBob are a game-changer, encouraging more recklessness!  Now I will have to finish the job, close in and make the kill, watch my prey crash and burn.  That's usually when you get bracketed and shot up the arse when you least expect it!  But I want those rewards.

Either way, I have some very tough missions coming your way.  BATEP07.ZIP will be swiftly followed by the new campaigns.



...really looking forward to seeing more as you progress with this wonderful enhancement of our favourite sim... 

[SpongeBob]

Hi Monty, thank you for your encouraging words.

Take care with the eagerness for medals. Working of them makes me recall 'The Blue Max' film: a fictional German pilot whose need for recognition and awards made him no good at all. But as jpten said, this was the point, to encourage the bravery of pilots (especially in the German side).
Hoping to see the new campaigns, although my research about medals is draining me my spare time!

By the way, for those with wider knowledge than me, what about this British award sequence? I've been looking at British aces awards and it seems quite realistic to me. I am in the process of preparing British medals, so changes are easy in this stage.

award
0 Mentioned in Despatches
1 Military Cross
2 Bar to the Military Cross
3 Distinguished Service Order
4 Second Bar to the Military Cross
5 Bar to the Distinguished Service Order
6 Second Bar to the Distinguished Service Order
7 Victoria Cross

I didn't include the Distinguished Flying Cross or the Distinguished Service Order because the former was only established in June 1918, and the later was not available to the Air Service until April 1918, so they would be unrealistic for early campaigns.