empty land facilities

[mongoose]

Could someone explain to me the purpose of empty land facilities which I see often added to the gsl next to other facilities like HAA?

[Daiwilletti]

Hi James, the use of empty land facilities was started by Charles Simpson, IIRC, in order to block out pesky autogen trees from the landing approach by airfields. It looks as though the ETO team found it good to mask autogen stuff near HA facilities, too. Maybe having houses pop up next to large active gunnery installations looked a bit silly.

Anyway, thats my best guess!

[mongoose]

Sounds reasonable!

[mongoose]

So back to this. As I have added a lot of searchlight and AAA sites to a gsl, I'm assuming it would make sense to add empty land facilities at the same location as them? The plane size I assume should be the same as that of the main facility?

[greycap.raf]

Not sure why you'd need a separate empty land facility, at least one of the same size.

If you have a 1000x1000 plane on the main facility, the sim will clear a correspondingly sized area for it. Putting another 1000x1000 empty land facility in the same spot won't change anything. Now, if you have a, say, 100x100 plane for the main facility and need more space you can then of course use the extra empty land but if it's built in to the main facility, there's no need for it.

[mongoose]

OK I think I get your meaning. I'll look more at the current examples as well to see why they were used.

[crossram]

So back to this. As I have added a lot of searchlight and AAA sites to a gsl, I'm assuming it would make sense to add empty land facilities at the same location as them? The plane size I assume should be the same as that of the main facility?

I have added several 'objects' into mine, without using a groundplane. Any time a groundplane is used, it blocks off anything that it covers, existing in the scenery there. Buildings, trees, etc., and also flattens that area.

Just adding in objects, such as the Berlin flakturms, and the control, I did in mine, simply placed it on the existing area. Works fine.

Something like searchlights, and flak batteries, working up a flak field, could be laid out in the right location, using the existing terrain/scenery. At least it could be tried. That's exactly what I was going to do, on any flak fields I made.