Night Missions (early war)
 

I have begun to make a complex MDS mission with Bf-110 intercepting single British night bombers. The mission is still in the early stages but a few of us played it online tonight and the feeling is just superb, with the FoW set to 20 sec update to simulate being talked onto the bandit by GC.

I'm also experimenting with searchlights etc (weather really needs to be no cloud or good only to get them to work at a decent alt) but they work very nicely indeed.

Anyway, much as I am looking forward to airborne radar etc later, you can already do a really good simulation of the Kammhuber Line.

Thanks TD! Loving it!

ian

Sounds really interesting :)

When finished are you sharing ??

Good Luck

Well I don't have a website, so if someone can host it ...

I would dedicate you a page on my Foo'blog if you want to :)

would love to try it out as well
if u need hosting f19vs.se can help

Save it and perhaps it can be used by Nachtjagd server when all is ready :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j3QwqwN6Dc

All the best!

Thanks, I'll hurry up and finish :)

night airwar features in IL2 would be realy needing a new groundattack "target".
a target circle wich counts the total ammount or (as best selectable) weight of bombs that are hitting the inner circle.

Nightbombombing was no precision bombing IIRC
and hiding trucks in the houses is annoying .................................

Well the mission I have at the moment involves only playing for the defenders. It uses MDS to generate a number of inbound bombers of various behaviours (including rising after dropping bombs, turning away from heavy searchlight concentrations etc) and FoW to generate radar returns that update every 20 secs.

The best tactic in this early Himmelbett/Kammhuber Line phase of the war seems to be to loiter near a Himmelbett Beacon in a searchlight zone and try to pick off the raiders as they come past. Not easy - you have to be in the right place and move fast. And there are problems like being picked up by your own searchlights that makes things tricky.

But it's LOADS of fun.

I love the fire next to the no smoking sign :), Gaga.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6

Really looking forward to this mission :)

Have sent a text and the mission to Foobar so hopefully he'll have it up on his site soon.

Nice topic.

A very good idea!!!

Mission and text now available here thanks to Foo'bar

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/a-guide-to-night-fighting/

Put the mission in a dogfight folder and fly as the Germans, trying to intercept British bombers using ground control and radar.

The mission only makes sense full real with just the Fog of War switch off.

Thanks Ian! Really looking forward to having AI radar in Il-2, myself. In the meantime, though, time to swot up on the new nav stuff in 4.10 before I even have the slightest chance of shooting something in this mission. :D

Thanks Ian, can't wait to try it! I hope, like everyone else, that TD continues with the night fighter content. The new darker night is a welcome addition

Clever! The runways where you're not supposed to land inside forests!

But the concrete runway is very visible from many kilometers even with the lights off. I've changed the date to the 27th, no moon. Darkest possible is December 28th 1940, and due to a bug the runway is only visible when you have cockpit lights on. A grass field is probably harder to see.

There is one searchlight around BD that's red. I've changed it to blue.

Cool mission! Thanks!

Without searchlights, December 28th is so dark it's probably impossible to find a bomber. And no runway visible at all :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...o/grab0002.jpg

I've added a few lights for taxiing off the runway, just for multiplayer. Look at the dash, never seen it so dark before!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...o/grab0003.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...o/grab0004.jpg

azimech, the red searchlight is meant to be red at bd. planes were often tracked by their own lights for a bit.

You can kind of see how wise it was to paint your nightfighter in light colours. You can be staring out the window looking for some landmark or hostile, without realising you're staring at your own wing. Getting the ghost of an outline helps a lot with maintaining ones orientation.

lol yeah I've done that.

Although the real reason was because of all the clouds. With clouds lit by fires, flares and searchlights, a black plane stands out a lot!

Thanks Ian, just played the mission and I can say that is the probably the most fun i've ever had in Il2, kind of like Silent Hunter in a bf-110, lol. I tuned the BD beacon, flew towards it, and loitered until the searchlight picked up an aircraft. I could see the white belly above me for a while until it disappeared out of the range of the searchlight, I knew he was heading for the target, so I tuned AR and climbed up towards the beacon. I reached AR and saw him again near the target, lit up by searchlights. Just flew in down behind him and shot him down, never got shot at once. Loitered again at AR going back and forth over the beacon, really fun. I would like to try this on a moonless night with some mosquitos loitering, but I suppose we will need to wait for radar, or at least AI that can use radar instead of visual tracking. Something that I suppose will need to be done for the future, outside of multiplayer is an intelligent AI crew member that can give radar information to the pilot. However I have started on a campaign based on your ideas.

Thanks a lot Tempest! I'm really glad someone gets it. I'm guessing less than 10 people will give it a proper go as it is so different to what people are used to.

I have a dumb question but I don't see the difficulty option for turning on FoW icons in the difficulty switch menu?

It's on the third page (I know there used to be only 2 pages). Third one down iirc.

Shot down six bombers in one sortie yesterday. But with moon :) And I'm not very good at gunnery so someone else should be able to shoot more. I Love those night missions!

Ahh thanks, DT and their stealthy "next" buttons, lol.