18 August Hardest Day PtII Mission testing

[mongoose]

Testing 18 missions for the StG77 Stuka missions to the South coast. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Day 'Large-scale Ju87 operations'.

Pretty crowded up here with about 200 aircraft forming up!



Stukas of III./StG77 and other gruppen on the move.

[mongoose]

Close escorts of JG27 109s with StG77's Ju87s



JG2 109 'frei jaeger' sweeping at 27K feet.



In action!

[mongoose]

III./StG bombing RAF Poling. I have yet to fully test the RAF missions.

[mongoose]

All 16 missions on the way to Clive and the BoB update team! Subsequent to these I have added wieght ot all ai single engine fighters as AIs are out turning everything far too easily! For example on JG26 ai chatter

<Loadouts>
<Loadout Name="Clean" MissionType="anti_ship,bomber_intercept,cap,cas,co nvoy_raid,escort,gai,intercept,recon,search_destro y,strike,sweep"></Loadout>
<Hardpoint ID="" PylonType="750_pylon_null"></Hardpoint>
</Loadouts>



Hurricanes on the way to engage bogies



I seem to be outnumbered and am clobbered!

[33lima]

Flippin' marvellous!!!!

[Daiwilletti]

All 16 missions on the way to Clive and the BoB update team! Subsequent to these I have added wieght ot all ai single engine fighters as AIs are out turning everything far too easily! For example on JG26 ai chatter

<Loadouts>
<Loadout Name="Clean" MissionType="anti_ship,bomber_intercept,cap,cas,co nvoy_raid,escort,gai,intercept,recon,search_destro y,strike,sweep"></Loadout>
<Hardpoint ID="" PylonType="750_pylon_null"></Hardpoint>
</Loadouts>

Hi James,

Do you think the aircraft.cfg route would work for the 109s? One single change to the empty_weight parameter works for me. IIRC there is only one aircraft.cfg file for all the ai 109s of the Staffel?

David

[mongoose]

Perhaps you could elaborate on that for me and others here. What do you think about ai Hurricanes and Spitfires?

[Daiwilletti]

I'm sure there are plenty of previous posts on this. In the aircraft.cfg, you can list a lot of individual aircraft, as long as they have the same flight characteristics. The .cfg file acts for the .air file the way a .bdp file acts for an .xdp file, AFAIK. It is a summary of key characteristics, enabling your computer to handle more aircraft at the same time.

The .cfg file lists multiple aircraft in this format: [fltsim.0], [fltsim.1], [fltsim.2 etc]. An example is the stock Ju88. Thus it is ideal for a whole passel of ai 109s or other ai groups of aircraft.

The parameter to tweak is empty weight, as I said.

Here is the AH 109:
[WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE]
max_gross_weight = 6500
empty_weight = 4438

So in an install, I have a flyable version which is available for campaigns or as a player aircraft for missions with Spawn="n" in the xdp.

In a separate folder is an ai_109 version in which the aircraft.cfg specifies a higher empty weight - say an extra 350lbs or whatever works. Spawn="y" in the .xdp.
[WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE]
max_gross_weight = 6500
empty_weight = 4788

The reason why ai aircraft zip around everywhere is that they are flying on the empty weight setting. Increase the empty weight and they behave more like the player's aircraft.

The beauty of this approach is that, rather than being confined to a couple of specific pylon weights, the cfg can be refined for each variant of an aircraft (like the difference between a bf110C4 and a later bf110C6) to reflect minor changes like the addition of more armour around the cockpit, versus a slight increase in power of the engines.

It is such a quick thing to set up an ai version, that in many of my installs the aircraft which spawn are mostly ai versions that do not defy gravity.

[Daiwilletti]

By the way, James, in my Beta BoB Campaign Package the main ai culprits are Hurricanes and Spitfires! Having heavier ai versions is a must to even the playing field.

[33lima]

I reckon heavier AI versions of every fighter type would be best - including the 110s. First time around with modded CFS3, they were the ones that annoyed me the most, being hard to catch in a high-speed turn in a Hurricane or a Spit.

As for bombers - it can be unrealistic how quickly they climb out on takeoff, compared to the player's A/C. But as they won't dogfight it's not so much of an issue. Making the empty weight mod for OFF, I applied extra weight to all AI types IIRC, but had to compromise a bit as the low-powered WW1 aircraft, on taking off, could easily end up in the trees at the end of the runway, if too much weight was added.