Originally Posted by
Daiwilletti
Hi Chris,
You are starting on a great sounding venture.
Once spawn files are prepared so that whole squadrons can show up in a formation, the next step is to get the squadrons showing up at the right airfields. I have been wanting to experiment with this for a while never found the time. But the idea is to heavily revise the country.xml file, so that 11 FG, 10 FG etc for the BoB era are set up as countries. Then in the global layer historically accurate ownership of airfields to 11 Group 10 Group etc can be assigned (Column O of the global layer.csv). In much the same way as USAAF and British owners are assigned in the ETO for their own airfields in the Global layer.
It would allow a new unlimited pilots.xml with historically accurate sets of names for each RAF group however firstnames and surnames would still get doled out randomly but every now and again you would get one right! The approach I am talking about allows for campaigns with better representation of aircraft in squadrons for BoB era aerial warfare. Your creation of AI aircraft with individual lettering is a great thing to get the ball rolling.
Remember Ndicki did a whole lot of AI skins with the same name which had to be put in separate subfolders to the aircraft folder concerned. Which in theory allowed for random apprearance of different markings for the same aircraft. However IIRC once a skin had spawned once it tended to repeat again until the bdp file was deleted. Also the same skin spawned for all aircraft in the spawn unit, it did not distribute different skins sadly. Your approach of totally separate AI aircraft would work better. They could still be in one a/c folder and use only one cfg file (like the Ju88 and possibly IIRC the mossie).
cheers,
D
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