Any plans about making the RandomFlights and MissionDistance parameters work again?
I would only point out that RandomFlights is not at all missing: it is harmonized with AirIntensity. That's to say that random flights are still generated, just tied in quantity to general aerial activity. Perusing DGen_mod.log, for instance, often you may notice that a "vulcher" flight may be generated close to player's starting base, simulating an unpredicted enemy attack (of course, I'm not speaking of scramble missions). I think this is an improvement in respect of previous one, as well as the original DGen RandomFlights option, since it is not a "customary" staff flight, soon landing after mission start, and of no significance in mission deployment.
The RandomFlights function often generated more than just the staff flights you refer to, and they were a minority of random flights created. Moreover, no matter how insignificant they might seem to the actual mission, those "returning" staff flights still added a level of immersion to the game that is now missing.
The problem with tying the random flights function with air intensity is that in order for the player to see random flights generated during campaigns, he must also increase the quantity of elements of flights that are directly called for in the ops file. Frankly, with AirIntensity set to high, I'm still not seeing random flights, while the mission-specific flights (
the flights and numbers of aircraft specifically called up for in the ops file) are certainly altered.
The latter is not always desirable, especially for European campaigns, and particularly for certain phases of air combat on the Eastern Front.
Firstly, when using the default DGen, and with AirIntensity and RandomFlights being separate functions, increasing Air Intensity actually decreased the chance of seeing random flights generated, even if RandomFlights is set at 5. There is no indication given that this situation has been rectified in any version of the DGen mod. Secondly, eluding to European and Eastern Front campaigns, increasing AirIntensity is not always desirable from an aesthetic, "feel of the mission" point of view, depending on the campaign design. Usually mission designers set up the ops files according to how they want the actual misison-specific flights to be generated, with AirIntensity set to normal, and letting DGen take care of extra generated random flights with RandomFlights set to 5. Setting AirIntensity to High increases not only the number of aircraft in an element, but increases the number of elements within a flight as well (
i.e. 4Y becomes 4Y 4F; 2F becomes 3F 3F; 6F becomes 4F 4F, etc.). Obviously, in addition to reducing the chances that random flights are generated, this significantly skews the composition of the mission-specific flights on both sides, and this effect is not always desired, depending on how the designer aims to make a particular phase of the campaign feel.
Everything changes on Pacific campaigns (
or any campaign using the pacific mission generation mechanics). In the default DGen, RandomFlights did not function for Pacific campaigns, while AirIntensity still functioned. However, the campaign designer could assign more than one mission a day for Pacific campaigns, something that could not be done for European campaigns. I'm only speculating based on my own experiences using it, but it seems as though DGen Mod uses the Pacific mission generation mechanics for both Pacific and European campaigns, while doing away with the European mechanics (
and it's benefit of generating random flights) altogether.
There is a level of flexibility in having separate functions for AirIntensity and RandomFlights that is now lacking in the current setup of tying them together under one switch, which is presumably "have them both or not at all". With AirIntensity set to Normal and RandomFlights set to 5 (
for both the default config and the DGen mod config), I fly Eastern Front campaigns on both the latest default DGen (v4.0.8.7), and the latest DGen mod, and I can assure you that the level of random flights generated on the default generator is much more apparent than on mission generated from the mod DGen, where random flights don't seem to ever appear. This is also the case when I set the DGen mod config AirIntensity to high; As expected, I get more aircraft in mission-specific flights, but still no random flights that are out doing their own thing.
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Topic: Project DGen_mod (Read 376987 times)
