Organising flights in a multisquad campaign.

[Osprey]

Hi Kodiak, whilst Farber has done the vast majority of the work and it is a JG27 campaign, I am providing a large number of his enemy fighters for it (looking forward to that ) and I have been working with him on how this runs (though the buck stops with him).

Originally Posted by FG28_Kodiak

you wanna ask the operators with the mission menu? and than after 4min you will get the response? This is possible without problem.
Okay for clearance, when we use "radars" will you give the messages to the Airgroups in range of a spezific radarstation or to all. So if you hit the 'radarbutton' then you get Information of all Enemies Airgoups in range of any available radarstation or only from this you are in Range?

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

Hmm if the radar closest gave the information that would be good otherwise it is as if the aircraft has the radar, or maybe not?

How would you ask the radar?

Yes, mission menu! This is what I suggested in the first place. The flight leaders select #1



Everyone else selects something else, therefore this means not everyone gets the menu option and have to be organised by the squadron leader. Only 3 or 4 people on RAF would even have this ability so their workload goes up and the pressure for their team to stay together in flight becomes very important.

The information provided should be:
1. Location
2. Approximate numbers (30+??)
3. Height
4. Heading

The flight lead has to then direct his crew to intercept. If this can be provided vocally then that is even better.

Fighter Command had a WHOLE picture of the area via the plotting room bunker. This would receive all radar information from the RDF stations and observer corps, then scramble accordingly. @FARBER I imagine that for the purposes of campaign, that this event, ie "501 squadron scramble" could be handle by trigger. That way we start at the right time from the right place. I wouldn't want to be on some random patrol for ages because I don't know what's going on and then find ourselves 180 miles away with 1/2 tank of fuel left. Sorry to talk mission but I would suggest participating RAF squadrons being "At Readiness" with kites ready to scramble waiting for the off would be most realistic.

4 minutes delay
This 4 minutes delay for response is interesting since information cannot be absolutely up to date. I'm trying to find out the delay between RDF station and reporting to the squadrons. 4 mins seems a long time, you could cross the Channel in that time. An alternative suggestion is that the flight leaders have a time delay between plot requests of a few minutes, so once they request and get feedback they cannot select again until that time has expired - this would add in the random factor for LW course changes and human error until visual confirmation, it would stop a flight leader from just hammering the button!


This is why I love this stuff, because you learn so much about it all as you go I read that Ground Controlled Interception didn't occur until later because the RDF stations needed to scan the whole sky, therefore a squadron was scrambled and vectored to an interception position and that was it, though it was accurate. There was no 'within range of a station' since the entire coast was covered as one. It's really this we need to replicate. The difficulty would be that since we don't have the whole of 11 group in the mission then the Luftwaffe could 'slip the net' so we probably could do with a bit more reliability.
Here's a nice overview
http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/gci/gci.htm

Originally Posted by csThor

If my input is allowed. I agree with Kodiak about the menu thing. Think of it as a Squadron Leader "registering" with a certain Sector Station Ops Room to receive RADAR information. That could be easily done either by making this selection available in the menu (i.e. Select Sector -> Biggin Hill, Kenley, Tangmere etc - if you want more structure and accept a slightly higher workload for the squadron leader) or simply via a distance check for the airgroup (if it's supposed to be easier).

I do, however, suggest to take a look at how the Squad Select Series at Warbirds and the Friday Squad Ops at Aces High II operate. They appoint a CO prior to a run and he has to devise a general plan. Since we lack the numbers they can (theoretically) operate with there would, of course, be some adaptations necessary. My suggestion would be:

1.) Select one squad for CO duty prior to the run. Rotate this position within the squad pool after each run.
2.) Give the CO a number of targets he can choose from. For example a mission set in August 1940 would give the Luftwaffe CO a list of primary airfields of which he has to hit a certain number (depending on number of players, I guess no more than two for CloD) plus a list of secondary targets which may give the LW additional points. This way you create a more realistic Fog of War situation in which the RAF doesn't know which targets will be hit by the LW in advance.

For the RAF this CO duty is, of course, not that important. Later it will certainly become more important once we move to theaters which include offensive ops by both sides.

I see where you are coming from but I wouldn't want to sit out and direct anyone, and if you have a list of targets which the LW can hit then chances of even meeting in the sky are slim - which is the whole point. I don't care for tactics, winning or losing, I'm interested in experiencing the same as squadrons did in the BoB (minus the death).