Tuesday 11/30 Mission: Moscow 6 (Rjev 41)

[WWCephas]

I am busy this week finishing up a 110 year old bathroom rebuild/expansion at my daughters residence as well as traveling back home Monday (to where it is warm), so this week's mission is Duck's old PWGC mission "Rjev" tuned for our current plane set and with variable scoring difficulty.  While we have run this one a few times it is a classic and I am sure it will be a hoot again and the mission is located within a hundred kilometers or so West of our current battlefield. 

If JG51 joins us again I suggest we try integrating them into our flight groups this time. 

Hopefully I will get home in time to run this, but if not the files will all be on the Ded-Server for you Duck.

 

[WWSandMan]

Oh yes... This one never fails to provide plenty of action for everyone involved. 

[Mainz]

This looks like it will be a fun mission, I am excited for Tuesday!

[WWDarkdiz]

Oh yeah, 190 I'm comin' home babe!

[WWCephas]

Sorry, no 190 it is 6-9 months away (game calendar) on the Eastern Front.

[WWDarkdiz]

Darn!

[WWCephas]

I added a new mini mission to this map, and I am planning on flying Italian tonight if anyone cares to join me.

[WWChunk]

Gotta work tonight, so I’m out. Give ‘em hell, boys!

[WWSandMan]

Gave it our best shot, I believe. Always a cool mission, lots of stuff to find, lots of bad guys and targets. 

I'll get to a more complete mission re-cap from my point of view as Gold 4 sometime soon.

For now, @WWFrylock, your Ju-88 bomb runs were recorded. My track-file is available here ( https://www.wingwalkers.org/vault/sandman/tracks/11-30-2021_sandys_ju88_track.zip ), look for the bomb-run stuff roughly half-way through it. In your playback you should be able to bounce between all friendly aircraft via Left Shift+F2, and the friendly bombs by Left Shift + F5 or F6 (I forget which.) 

Critique of the passes by the three Ju-88's: Both Geezer and I dropped our large eggs from low altitude a bit too late. That said, I didn't want to drop on the civilian population so delayed my drops by an extra second or so. Mine were manual drops, no inter-velometer set to separate the big eggs. I assume Geezer's drop settings were the same. The result was some damage to the factory, but not as much as hoped for.

The numerous smaller bombs dropped from high altitude by Fry should have produced more damage, but after seeing the drop in the track, I see why they didn't. They needed a longer drop delay per individual or pair of bombs, as they hit almost on top of each other. Which is great for a pin-point target, but not so great for an area target like the factory complex. An extra one or two tenths of a second second between bomb releases would have spread them out nicely from that altitude, and really wreaked havoc on that factory.

 

 

Fry's drop... The first couple bombs

 

The impact (little dark spots in the left-center are the bombs just about to hit) ; they will obliterate the small inverted-t-shaped building and the larger building to the left. 

[WWCephas]

I probably need to rework the scoring variability on that map as well.  I use variability mostly for fighters strength on my missions, but on that map it is only used for target scoring and PWGC generates all the enemy aircraft.  I forgot to limit the input of fighter players in scaling the difficulty so you were set to max difficulty.

I was hoping to go Jabo as Red Flight last night equipping the gunpods on the MC202 but since I was alone I joined Blue Flight comms, but for the first hour I could hardly take off from the Italian base without running into an enemy.  I eventually was able to head North to try to hit the Fuel convoy but almost got jumped by a P40 just before I got there with a lucky spot checking my six.  I was able to reverse on him with extensive engine power usage but did some engine damage to my self, and after downing it still ran well enough so I continued after the convoy, although I was pretty well disorientated after the dogfight for a while.  When I finally found the truck route I had thought I was first to travel that way but when I searched the Northern end of their route I came up empty and got lost again around the big turn to the West and ended up at the destroyed train station when Gold notified me they had found the convoy as it was approaching the end of the line near Klimovo.  I could see AA coming up from the road so I notified Gold I would hit the AA.  After taking one Gaz72 out I found that the other had been hit already and their were fuel trucks heading West.  I made a couple of passes on the trucks when I got the message that Sandman had been shot down and I knew he was close by in Gold Flight.  I was unaware we had an enemy in the area prior to that.  I scanned around and quickly found the enemy P40 which made a nice broad turn right in front of me making it easy to get on his six with my reduced power output.  Unfortunately I got a little too close with those MG151/20 gunpods and he exploded into dozens of large pieces, one of which destroyed my prop, so I bailed as far South as I could.

Speaking of gunpods I am not sure if it is the new graphics or something different about the MG151/20 HE rounds on the MC202 but the 20MM impacts were massive compared to what I am used to with the same gun on the Bf109 (just a single gun of course), and it was just shredding air and ground targets.

 

[Mainz]

It was a fun mission. Definitely a lot of action defending our friendly airfields from the constant fighter attacks. Somehow I randomly ran into a flight of two Pe-2s as well.

[WWGeezer]

Nice recap all....yes the bombing targets had a lot of buildings too destroy.  Honestly I think the level of difficulty on the ground targets was about right, but the skies were busy. 

One of the P40's followed me half way home after attacking the convoy.  A lot of wild juking around while my rear gunner got airsick and put some random rounds into the attacker.  He finally peeled off and made it safely home.  Was very immersive and lots of fun.

Was disappointed on the Factory Sortie for all the things Sandy described, a little fine tuning and I think we could have taken it out in one trip.

Mainz, really happy you flew with us.  Getting a good number of pilots on Tuesdays definitely adds to the enjoyment for us.

[WWCephas]

Just an FYI on the factory difficulty scaling routine used in my missions in case you did not know:

Each factory block has multiple buildings to kill.  The scaling routine counts the number of kills per block and when it reaches the current set difficulty level number of kills per block it destroys the entire block so you know that block is complete.

When you kill a certain number of the total blocks you should get a 33%/66%/Destroyed annotation on the map.

The number of blocks cannot be changed, only how hard it is to kill a block of buildings.

@WWSandMan A full mission recap would be great!  Especially as a mission builder I like to hear how things went for future mission building.

Edited December 1, 2021 by WWCephas

[WWDarkdiz]

Was in Blue flight with Wolfie, Duck, Cephas and Mainz, and were kept busy all evening with multiple interactions between the German base (Borki) and the Italian base (Rjev).  I-16s, Migs, LaGGs, P-40s and IL2's were all encountered, and for the most part we managed to hold our own. Those IL2s are tanks, both Cephas and I spent most of our ammo on one, I observed pieces coming off of him during a close firing pass with my 20mm, but he stayed flying.  Died several times from not keeping a sharp lookout on my 6 (got separated from the flight).  Was a bit disappointed that I kept HAMMERING several aircraft to no avail (observed multiple hits from both cannons and MG at close range), yet on at least two occasions absorbed very few hits but still died.

The last death was a controller problem, even the log did not record any hit from anything.  The official term is "Controlled Flight Into Terrain" as my controls input froze, and I made an impressive divot in the ground, was VERY frustrating.  This phenomenon has only (in the last week or two) reared its head, I really don't know what is going on.  I checked the forums, apparently there are others experiencing this as well, controller input lag.  I feels like the aircraft has stalled, so the controls (pitch and roll) are unresponsive, and the scenery goes by as one would expect.  However, in this instance the throttle (ALL controls) is also unresponsive, and based on the flight regime I was in there is NO way it was a stall (gentle right, descending turn).  The controls remained unresponsive for 3-5 seconds, during which time I have input control deflections to correct, all the way to full left deflection.  Suddenly, the controls "catch up" and I snap to the new controls position, however, by then its too late, I am at about 15' off the ground, nose still down

Notwithstanding, this particular mission is one of the better missions, constant action, and the outcome is never certain.  The way the bases are laid out makes it relatively easy to get back into the fight quickly.

[WWSandMan]

Diz, that controller issue sounds like the game has lost focus ... maybe a mouse moved to a different screen and was clicked, so the video still plays on the main screen but control input is zero since where the mouse pointer was, no game was being played. Just a thought. 

[WWDarkdiz]

Possible, but it seems too random.  I could see if there was an overwhelming download or CPU/GPU process that suddenly kicked in, or something that overwhelms the control inputs so that they end up in a cache somewhere.  Seems that others are experiencing this as well.

[WWSittingduck]

curious, the devices that are not working, are they on the same hub?

[WWSandMan]

On 12/1/2021 at 11:38 AM, WWCephas said:

... 

@WWSandMan A full mission recap would be great!  Especially as a mission builder I like to hear how things went for future mission building.

Okay. Let's see how terribly inaccurate my memory can be... 

Sortie one: Attack the Encampment. Gold flight readied up in Bf-110E's with 2x500kg (or 250kg in one or two cases) and 4x50kg bombs. Aerial fighting was already in progress at various points by the time we got airborne and headed for the target. We kept to low altitude and were not bothered by enemy aircraft on the way to the target. Once there we made repeated passes on ground targets, with Fry and Zed taking some damage from ground and air fire. With bombing assistance from Blue, White and Red, this target was quickly brought under control. A few final passes by Golds 3 and 4 took care of a few straggling targets. Return to base was mostly uneventful other than watching enemy planes zip by with an assortment of friendlies dogging their heels. I believe Gold 2 lost engine power on his way home from this sortie and ditched. 

Sortie 2: Train Station. Using the same loadouts, Gold headed to the train station and commenced bombing AAA sites and the rail facilities. I hit a tree on one of my first passes. Enemy fighters were nearby and forced air combat on all friendly ships in the area. On a subsequent sortie I accounted for a single P-40 destroyed and another damaged before I took many hits and had to return home, leaking lots of fuel and with both wings shredded. All of Gold had issues with defending fighters and had to make repeated attacks to render the train station useless. In the meantime several trains tried to depart the town and were hunted down.

Once the station was finally subdued, we started hunting for the supply convoy going to the airfield/city just east of the train station. I was in the vicinity of the convoy and had made one gun pass on a lone AA truck (behind one Cephas had just strafed.) Several enemy fighters appeared and I made one wrong turn, taking a magic BB to the melon. 

(more later... )

[WWDarkdiz]

3 hours ago, WWSittingduck said:

curious, the devices that are not working, are they on the same hub?

I have them directly plugged into the back of the motherboard