Daidalos Team's Room -QUESTIONS AND REQUESTS ONLY - For 4.11

[IceFire]

For those of you calling for high poly warships... I encourage you to arrange a dozen KGV's in a harbor in some sort of mooring formation like you might see in any major port. Then fly over that mass of ships.

Even my latest PC which can handle Battlefield 3 on Ultra... balks at this and my frame rate drops from 140+ to the mid 20s at times. Double the number of polys on a ship and do the same thing and I just can't see it happening. The game engine wasn't designed to handle it.

[Lagarto]

By the way, we could use some more variety of other surface vessels: more types and sizes of merchant ships, large troop transport, tugboat, self-propelled river barge and Asian sampan;
Another thing is to make the in-game rivers navigable - most of them look neither too narrow nor too shallow for that; is it feasible?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

By the way, we could use some more variety of other surface vessels: more types and sizes of merchant ships, large troop transport, tugboat, self-propelled river barge and Asian sampan;

+1

I'd love to see more boats and small ships in the game. They were much more common prey for strike fighters and attack bombers.

A large troop transport would be sort of interesting, but the really big troop ships didn't usually get that close to enemy planes. Smaller troop transports would be welcome, though. I believe that there are some modded LSTs and other US transport ships.

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Another thing is to make the in-game rivers navigable - most of them look neither too narrow nor too shallow for that; is it feasible?

I believe that it's currently possible for rivers to be navigable. Actually, one of the issues with many maps is that the rivers are too wide.

[Lagarto]

Currently rivers are not navigable, unless they're as wide as Volga.
Recently I've been flying some south-east Asia scenarios and it struck me how dead the rivers look; in real life they would be teeming with water traffic. In his book "Into the Teeth of The Tiger" Donald Lopez wrote that they frequently flew interdiction missions against Japanese sampans, because due to scarcity of roads, rivers were main traffic routes.
Another thing is the odd color of the rivers in the PTO scenarios; I imagine they're more like muddy brown than cobalt blue.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Currently rivers are not navigable, unless they're as wide as Volga.

Pity. I thought they were.

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Recently I've been flying some south-east Asia scenarios and it struck me how dead the rivers look; in real life they would be teeming with water traffic.

This would be true for any major river. There was, and is, a lot of traffic along major European rivers like the Rhine and the Danube. Europe also had a fair bit of barge traffic along its extensive canal systems. From 1943 to 1945 there were lots of Western allied fighter bomber strikes against river and canal traffic, as well as canals and lock systems themselves.

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Another thing is the odd color of the rivers in the PTO scenarios; I imagine they're more like muddy brown than cobalt blue.

This is sort of fixable. I believe that river color textures can be selected by the map creator. I've seen modded maps where the rivers are muddy brown.

Sadly, it's harder to get mixed water effects, like where a river meets the ocean, producing a mixture of muddy and clearer water.

[EJGr.Ost_Caspar]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Sadly, it's harder to get mixed water effects, like where a river meets the ocean, producing a mixture of muddy and clearer water.

Water color is unique per map, you cannot change it.
Whyt you can change is the water ground texture in areas of rivers, but rivers have to be shallow then everywhere.

[Luno13]

Hi DT,

Really loving the work so far, and I hope I can offer some ideas for future updates. It's a bit of a long list, but I'm not making any demands:

- Windsock model that can be placed to show the wind direction on a specific mission (wind is constant over the whole map anyway unless it's gusting). Dynamic windsock would be nice too. This would be useful for coops especially.

- Bomb-bay door function for the planes that had it. These would have to be affected by airflow in a similar manner to gear/flaps (they couldn't be opened beyond a certain speed). Also, a toggle for bomb salvo release on planes with automatic bomb-sights - ie short, medium, long (large cluster vs. spread out).

- Similarly to the above, a feature which limits how far cooling flaps could be opened based on airspeed (maybe a jam, tearing off, or snapping shut?).

- Gunners and observers which call out enemy fighters and give updates periodically or when requested (ie, "He's on our five! Now he's on our six o'clock low! Break left! Pull up!"). This is especially important on the Beaufighter when flying long closed-pit sorties.

- Some love for reconnaissance aircraft! Namely, game-play elements for such unarmed aircraft: Bomb-drop button activates camera. An invisible object is placed in the target area. If the player aircraft takes a picture over the object at a certain altitude(based on camera focal length), he gets points. Taking the photo at the wrong altitude or when jerking the plane leads to blurriness and taking the photo with the wrong exposure could lead to a washed-out or too dark image. The AI can also complete objectives in this manner, or the player gets points for successfully escorting AI reconnaissance aircraft. On the next mission offline, the player can click a button which shows the photo that was taken on the last one. Online, the player or AI lands and the photo appears in the briefing screen and helps bombers know what to aim for.

- Some love for bombers!
- Area bombing "target" which allows for city and industrial targets and point values for specific objects such as oil tanks.
- Bomber pilots could use more incentives online: currently, any aircraft destroyed on the ground is only 20 or 30 points.
- Point sharing for torpedo-bombers: currently in coops everyone wants to be the last one to drop a torpedo in order to get the points for sinking a big ship, or the main target is abandoned in favor of one-hit targets like merchants.
- Small formations: currently a lot of online players fly bombers alone and are massacred by fighters. It would be great if one, two, or three AI aircraft could spawn with the player, making an element or flight, and follow him to the target. The player could chose his position in the formation so that other players don't always know which bomber to shoot first (ie, always killing the player's lead plane to break up the formation). Also, incentives could be placed for escorts to take time to ensure their bombers make it back!
- Troop concentrations and livestock objects: A lot of troops moved on foot during the war and the Germans and Russians in particular used lots of horses to move supplies around. Troop camps or marshaling areas could be placed to give a target for fragmentary AB bombs, for instance (gore isn't a necessary feature).

- Switchable fuel tanks and manual fuel pump. It's annoying to have all of one's fuel leak or burn out when it would have been possible to switch to the undamaged tank and pump fuel from the leaking one. Also, medium fires (black smoke) always progress to full fires (yellow flames). Either the appearance of the medium-level fire needs to change or a random progression of fire size could be implemented. Also, emptied fuel tanks continue to burn at full force.

- Flag signal officer model on aircraft carriers: An invisible glide-slope is projected from the back of the carrier. Based on the player's position, the flags change, telling the player if he's too slow/fast, too high/low, etc.

- Catapults from carriers and capital ships (would require some seaplane models for the latter).

- Water geysers which affect aircraft flying through them. Sometimes, ships would fire their guns into the water with the intention of having an attacking aircraft hit the fountain and crash or at least temporarily lose control.

- Aircraft fragments from an explosion cause damage if collided with. If a wing is chopped off at the root, the wing stays in one piece rather than always disintegrating into its 4-5 constituents.

- Simple self shadowing. I heard a rumor that it's possible in Il-2.

- Simple exhaust flame graphic for night operations. It doesn't need to be tied to CEM like in Clod.

- Fuel grade load-out option for mission builders. Low octane results in reduced power output and maybe a "dirty" exhaust smoke effect.

- More advanced reliability set by mission builders: some aircraft were more prone to engine or structural failures than others, especially new types. Aircraft can lose wings or tail, get oil spills, or even total seizures. Guns also could jam, and some jammed if fired at high G.

- Option to change high-altitude clouds for a mission. Currently there are three types (common type for most maps, one for Slovakia and Bessarabia, and clear for the MTO).

- Wake turbulence from aircraft. This would have a big effect on formations and close-in shooting/maneuvering.

- Reload feature for drum-fed rear gunners. Graphical representation like in Clod isn't necessary, just a key press and wait two seconds to begin firing again. Currently, ammo drums disappear one-by-one in the He-111, but not in planes like the Betty.


Cockpits:
- Adding periscope in soon-to-be featured Il-4 to Pe-2.
- Observer for Beaufighter or a version with a gunner.
- Rear gunner in Il-2 "field-mod".
- Mosquito Mk.IV (glass nose).
- G4M2, also with "normal" load-outs.
- Su-2

Aircraft:
- New slot Beaufighter Mk.X (nearly identical to Mk.21 in game which was Australian licensed model. Differences in engines and armament).
- Default 4x mg for I-16 type 24 (some sources state that the original mg armament was modified with cannons. Others state type 28 was identical to type 24 except for the upgraded cannon armament). The type 29 had 2x mg and 1x hmg under the nose.
- R-10
- Ki 51 or the similar Ki-30 or Ki-15.

[Arrow]

For me one of the single most important features to greatly enhance offline flying would be the AI loosing sight of player's plane, I can't recall how many times I was chased by 20 planes across the whole map. I truly also hope that with new AI's shooting abilities it won't be able to seen through clouds...

[Xilon_x]

Italian flottiglia X-MAS in the LA SPEZIA port
Battle in the volga

HUDSON RIVER

[Asheshouse]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Currently rivers are not navigable, unless they're as wide as Volga.
Recently I've been flying some south-east Asia scenarios and it struck me how dead the rivers look; in real life they would be teeming with water traffic.

It is possible to create missions with moving ships on narrow rivers but it cannot be done with Full Mission Builder. You need to manually text edit the mission file to add the ships and waypoint coordinates. Also useful for creating moving ships in the narrow fiords on the Norway map, or for making ships run close to the beach on amphibious operations.

The problem seems to be related to limitations of the Full Mission Builder, not the Game Engine itself.
Since this is the request thread could I request that this feature be fixed in FMB?
Also on some maps, like Berlin, there are bridge objects which are impassable to vehicles.
Would it be possible to fix these?

This example shows gunboats on the NW Europe map. Take care to avoid bridge piers when plotting waypoints.