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Mission for Tuesday 1/18/2022: Meuse River Sandbox (UK) (Southern Sweep)


WWCephas

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I rebuilt the Southern portion of this map and it is ready to roll next week.  I would like to concentrate on the Southern target areas to look for any potential bugs to clean up so this map can be part of the rotation on our Full time dedicated server.

With 1378 potential targets this should keep you guys busy.

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Some notes on how things work on the Sandbox server.

Enemy Airfields are marked with the ACTIVE label, they have a 10-20 kilometer detection radius to launch scramble fighters.  If you kill enough scramble fighters thy base becomes "Suppressed" on the map and no more fighters will launch.  Damage the base itself enough and it becomes "Destroyed" and is shut down.

Enemy CAP patrols also patrol the areas.  They are Variable strength and very random with 36 possible waypoint location & altitudes changing every 2-10 minutes.  They cover an average of 80km diameter patrol area, as they grow in strength the number the number of flights increase, each receiving their own WP instructions.

Be sure to keep an eye out for road convoys as well as barges, they are randomly triggered upon entering a new control zone.  If you are fired upon by an AA vehicle on a road there is probably a convoy nearby.

Trains also are enow triggered instead of constantly running as in the old version, but there is randomness with them as well.

Any industrial building in a city target like "Bearing Factory" is a valid target.  Some targets are worth extra scoring if they are non-building objects that are directly related to the target name.

Keep an eye out for enemy air traffic like transports that may occasionally pass though the area.

Try not to fly together and not spread out too much.   There is a fair amount of free resource overhead but if 6-8 guys all fly out in different directions activating many zones it will probably trigger a server overload warning.  When all players leave a zone it does deactivate though.

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Another Update on how the Sandbox missions work:

Enemy airfields now broadcast to CAP patrols in that area they are under attack, in addition to launching their own scramble fighters.  So you better keep one eye on the sky when attacking airfields or the Air Cavalry will catch you with your pants down when they come to save the day.  If the server is running at max AI strength that could be quite a few planes arriving.

I have decided not to represent on the map the extent of each airfield's defensive perimeter to keep some guesswork involved for the players.  Suffice it to say it is possible to find routes to a large percentage of targets without enabling an airfield response, while other targets enjoy great protection being near an airfield.

I am also going to add an Axis Opfor player base.  These bases, if utilized, will reduce enemy AI strength to compensate for balance, i.e if there are 13 Allied players and 6 OpFor Axis the Dynamic Control routine will set the AI strength as if there were only 7 Allied players.  There are no missions for the Opfor players (at least at this time) other than CAP patrol seek and destroy.

 

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I found this video on Youtube and it caught my eye due to the fact we flew over this town and bombed some targets last week.  It is amazing to think of all the conflicts that have happened over the centuries on the European continent. 

 

 

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Another mission update you need to be aware of for tonight.

This one might not be popular because it is a boost for enemy AA and changes how we attack them, but I wanted to give it a go.

At enemy airfields only (so far) I have implemented a routine that makes the rapid fire 60mm and below caliber guns very accurate when the range is below 500 meters.

Therefore, it is INADVISABLE to attack straight at them at under these ranges. 

I, like many of you, have gotten in a habit of flying straight at these guns since they are set to low and pulling out even closer than 100 meters away (or much less), and 90% of the time get off scot free.

This basically just makes these guns like shooting ducks, and while it sucks to take an AA hit, I think it would be better if we had more of a challenge in how we deal with AA, especially if it involves teamwork. 

This is part of a greater plan to make the Scramble Airfields a more formidable presence on the battlefield, kind of like how castles were used to provide control over areas, to deny the opponent easy access to targets.

 

It is very possible though to take these guns out from long range if your convergences is set to 450+ meters, kills even up to 1200 meters are not all that hard to obtain when you factor in some bullet drop.

The American .50 cal equipped planes really shine in this (especially loaded with extra ammo), and even if they do not destroy the AA it is pretty easy to make them abandon the gun which tactically is a kill, just without the stats boost.

This accuracy boost for the AA guns is only really effective when flying straight at them.  If you fly past or even circle around without heading straight at the gun at under 500 meters they generally cannot turn fast enough to track you.

If you fly straight at an enemy base before knowing where the flak is you could be in for a nasty surprise though, so be wary.  If you try to take out an enemy scrambling to take off from the field low and slow, before the AA is taken out you may find yourself shot to pieces.

 

I am going to also look into making AAA guns more susceptible to large bomb blasts.  I have a few ideas that may work but have not had a chance to test them yet.  The current blast radius of the bigger bombs is ridiculously under modeled in the game.  They give them bigger blast effects but the actual radius of the damage is still pretty small.  IRL a 500Kg bomb would knock out a huge radius, whereas in the game it barely affects anything over 50 meters away, or at least the soldiers within a couple hundred meters would be so concussed they would be out of action.

Edited by WWCephas
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A few bugs to work out, especially on the AA.  The 88mm's piggy backed onto the 20m's accuracy boost, and not just at under 500m giving them some really nasty flak at the airbases.

The heavy artillery success was also borked and the Synthetic Rubber factory icon as well.

The half track factory was a really tough one, but it was set to toughness 4 then.

There also was some weirdness with airplane spawning at Beirset and later when Craven and I flew near Diest airbase it launched all four fighters even though it was level 1.

 

On the plus side everything ran really smooth even with people flying in different zones.

 

We did manage to beat the Tiger tanks @WWSandMan, that final disabled tank took a hit from a 1000lb'er and was vaporized so you must have killed that other tank you lost on the road.

I also made a run out to the Eupen Dam to test that out and that mission worked great, once again when I dropped to more big bombs there on the tower.  The water stream is much abbreviated from the mission we ran last spring (when it ran all the way down the valley and flooded the factories in the town on this same target) so that it keeps the server load low.

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Craven and I stayed late to do some hunting but that turned out to be a bad idea.  It started out great with a fantastic 2 on 3 (I think it was) near Vise trying to help Sandman RTB, but then a little while later we both ended up dead, ruining a fatally free night when the AI pulled a nice bounce on Craven and then a drag and bag on me as I went after his attacker. 

In late war you really cannot let the enemy get a shot on you like you can risk a few hits in early war.  Those cannons are brutal.

 

Thanks all for flying and helping me get the bugs out.  Next week it will probably be the same updated with US planes as a mirror mission.  We need to hit some of the targets we have not tried as well.

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, WWCephas said:

...

I am going to also look into making AAA guns more susceptible to large bomb blasts.  I have a few ideas that may work but have not had a chance to test them yet.  The current blast radius of the bigger bombs is ridiculously under modeled in the game.  They give them bigger blast effects but the actual radius of the damage is still pretty small.  IRL a 500Kg bomb would knock out a huge radius, whereas in the game it barely affects anything over 50 meters away, or at least the soldiers within a couple hundred meters would be so concussed they would be out of action.

Whoa... I know the bomb blast radius was ridiculously small, but that's terrible. For example: a real life 4.2" (107mm) mortar HE blast kill radius was listed as 50m <~150 feet> way back in 1982.

A 500kg bomb ~== 1000lbs. A 107mm mortar shell weighs about 8 lbs. Why on earth would these be modeled for the same kill radius in-game? Much the same arguments have been made about the effectiveness of the 37mm guns on some aircraft such as the IL-2 and Ju-87. There is actual video footage of Ju-87's shooting up targets with the 37mm guns and being extremely effective; in-game, they barely dent a dandelion. 

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29 minutes ago, WWCephas said:

There also was some weirdness with airplane spawning at Beirset and later when Craven and I flew near Diest airbase it launched all four fighters even though it was level 1.

And then I died

Craven and I stayed late to do some hunting but that turned out to be a bad idea.  It started out great with a fantastic 2 on 3 (I think it was) near Vise trying to help Sandman RTB, but then a little while later we both ended up dead, ruining a fatally free night when the AI pulled a nice bounce on Craven and then a drag and bag on me as I went after his attacker. 

And then we died

Cephas had it right, fatality free night until everyone left, and then we died😩

Was a heck of a mission though, full of thrills, chills and spills.  On an even better note we had some well mannered guests pop in and join us who also really liked the server and mission..

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I found the AAA errors and it was a big FUBAR so an apology to anyone who got tore up by the flack at the airbase, (I got raped twice by it).

I ran the new routine through my test mission and it all worked well, but then when I imported it I realized the Checkzone routine had an error so I redid it from another template....but I forgot to reset the ranges on the checkzones so it was going max accuracy at 8000 meters and then since the 20mm's were linked to the 88mm's (even though they were not the command vehicle) the behavior modify command to increase the AI level back fed into the 88's making them long range at max accuracy.  🤦‍♂️  We did manage to take them out though anyway.

 

I also found an error in the reset mechanism for the scramble airfields that caused the 4 planes to launch (level 4) when only Craven and I remained on the server.  I will test that fix out tomorrow.

On a side note if anyone is still reading at this point.... once an airfield is triggered the difficulty level of Suppressing and Destroying is locked in permanently.  Once targets start getting damaged it is too late to try and reset counters.  The number of planes that will launch though will continue to vary with difficulty level.

Edited by WWCephas
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9 minutes ago, WWDarkdiz said:

Despite my inevitable bitching at the 1-shot kills, this was one of the better missions I have seen.  Lots of choice with both A-A and A-G.  Perhaps some defensive CAP to stop OPFOR or OPFOR AI bombing our side?

We are the defensive CAP!

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Opfor is very limited and only enabled when there is Allied pilots so it would be a waste to use precious CPU resources adding allied CAP.  

I do have in mind a smaller scale Sandbox mission to make later with balanced targets and mutual AI CAP.  I need to perfect this map first though.

I made this mission to be like all the WWII guncam footage I have watched ever since I was a young lad of Allied fighters ranging over Europe wreaking havoc.

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I think it was Craven with me when we had a great sequence with transports, we were near the Arty site and I looked up though a hole in the dark skies and two JU52's were lumbering across a clear blue sky.  We immediately kicked it into high gear to climb up to them when their escort blasted out of the clouds (they might have hit Craven or someone else as they dived past)  2-4 of us then scrambled to deal with that threat while the JU-52's just kept on trucking and were long gone by the time the escort threat was over.  It was very cool.

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Yup, Cephas called out the contacts and when I looked up through the gap in the clouds there were 2 JU's lumbering along.  I immediately pushed forward to full power to catch up to them.  As I was climbing up, Cephas called out a warning that a bandit was closing on my six and going to guns, took a few shots to the tail as I was rolling away, nothing major but I ended up loosing both the bandit and the JU's. 

I believe Cephas or someone else took care of the bandit but it was a shame I/we couldn't find the JU's again, was very cool looking up and seeing them sedately moving through the cloud gap.

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Kind of funny you say that Chunk because I found some HUGE errors in the dynamic AI routines that required almost every target to be extensively reworked and I still have more to do to get it working right.  Hopfully it will reach that level soon though, and then I can start replicating different theaters.  

It is somewhat like remodeling your own home though.  When you live in it you see every single flaw and shortcut you had to take every time you look at it and then friends and family visit and say how wonderful it looks but you are thinking "no this is a hack job, but I am too cheap to hire a pro".

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