Campaign For Pat's BoB

[Daiwilletti]

I hear on the grapevine that work on Pat's BoB is progressing! Looking forward to that. Following 33Lima's sterling efforts with testing a BoB campaign for ETO, I'm going to incorporate some of the learnings into a BoB campaign package compatible with Pat's BoB.

Feedback from the ETO BoB package included - increasing the frequency of sorties, delaying the possibility of invasion until August, having a variety of aircraft available at the campaign outset, getting larger tighter formations of German aircraft.

Some of the features of CFS3 are hard coded and thus a CFS3 campaign will not be "realistic", but hopefully they will be immersive and enjoyable. For example, the player's wingmen are limited in number. So if enemy air spawns are designed to be too large, the degree of survivability becomes pretty tough. Which might be realistic, but it is less enjoyable also. Maybe I should offer two spawn sets, one for interesting variety of bogies, and another for more challenging campaign missions where the chances of survival are low.

One thing I realised only after sinking a couple of days into setting up RAF Groups as countries, is that in CFS3 as it stands, the aircraft from say 10 Group may well start the campaign from a 10 Group airbase, but when the squadron gets reassigned, it is a random process and you may well end up at an 11 Group or 12 Group airbase. Setting "Ownership" in the global_layer.csv is ineffective.

What Charlie did with his BoB-era "DC Diary" package was to create a big spawn set involving Manston spawns, Kenley spawns, Big Wing spawns, etc, keyed into specific locations. That may be as good as it gets.

With more use of .mos files, it would be possible to get flights using historically relevant squadron markings. Stock CFS3 aircraft had "bands" in the mos file where noseart and markings could be applied, so that each aircraft in the flight had a different marking. Unfortunately (my personal opinion) it became fashionable to get rid of that feature, and even mos files, from add-on aircraft. But for key bob-era aircraft it may be possible to retrospectively modify the .mos files and provide appropriate decals/noseart for the aircraft.

It will take a long time to get a good balance in a spawn set. Any package will inevitably be "beta" and hopefully over time it can be modified.

[Flamingskull5000]

Now there's some good news!

[sixstrings5859]

Fantastic news for my favorite addon for CFS3. A wonderful expansion that needs attention . Thanks ! Regards,Scott

[33lima]

Yes great news, and you've certainly got my list of top desirable improvements in there! And even if closer bomber formations can only be done in scripted missions, bigger bomber formations would be a big enough step forward.

The best way to reduce excessive casualties is probably not to limit LW numbers, but to limit lethality. Even in WotR which has AI which can run away, casualties can be way more than IRL. In WotR I reduced this a bit by reducing AI gunnery (accuracy?) to the lowest setting, which can be done in WotR's 'Workshops' settings page. In my ETO BOB campaign, I would readily settle for being able to get one or two kills a mission; fighter kills in particular are way too easy to get more than that. Reducing the effectiveness of most MG and cannon rounds, even by say 30% or so, might be the way to go there. Not so good to reduce AI shooting accuracy if that leaves the player able to go through enemies like a dose of salts.

Anyway I entirely get that CFS3 dynamic campaigns go their own way by design and that 'alternative history' approach is actually part of the attraction. While it happened too soon in my ETO campaign, fighting to try to stem the invasion, or at least wrest back air superiority, has added a whole new dimension. An alternative, more historical BoB can be achieved too, through sets of scripted campaigns, albeit with less replayability and results not carried forward.

[Daiwilletti]

Glad there are a few "campaign heads" out there . Whilst elusive, in some campaigns in some installs I've felt that the generated mission experience is as good as the better scripted missions. Some campaign missions remain in my memory, particular scenes like pursuing an Me110 diving into massive thunderheads. What was the optimistic Microsoft marketing shtick? "As Real As It Gets!"

I think a lot of people get put off because so many things are "not quite right" to get random air spawns, ground spawns and frontline spawns working effectively to create a constantly changing environment. An unmodified stock campaign has only a few variables and continual anti_shipping missions are unrealistic and tedious.

But continuous tweaking of my MAW, ETO and BoB environments means sometimes on a campaign mission, everything clicks. The challenge is repeatability - getting a good experience every mission.

33Lima, your mention of predictability in some scripted missions reminds me that some scripted missions have a diverse spawn set utilising the #randomiser, so they provide at least some variability (eg. Bodenplatte). However, there are some missions which seek the noble goal of re-enacting an historic event. Different strokes, I guess.

[Daiwilletti]

A Bit of Testing - a hard day at the office - no surviving wingmen hence the Mission Goals Resolved Sign.


The burning hulks of enemy a/c litter the airfield after a CAP mission. One enemy has just been brought down by ground fire.



This is an example of two 8-bomber formations called by a die roll from intercept.spawns. There will also be an escort somewhere - where?



There are two ways to show bullet hit damage - either by putting in small debris effects to the damageboxes in the aircraft xdp, or by building them into the air effect line of the weapon/round xdp file. This following shot illustrates the latter approach. Each white puff of smoke is caused when a .303 round hits the aircraft.