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

[Xilon_x]

the italian autoblinda transform for go to RAIL WAY.

[Alien]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

A whole gaggle of fighters latching onto a single opponent might be realistic, but it's also a rookie mistake. It's just stupid for a whole squadron of supposedly "veteran" or "ace" AI to be trailing along behind you in a stern chase.

If you've got the advantage of numbers on your side, you "box" the enemy by sending off pairs or sections to cut off his lines of retreat or to try to hit him with fire from multiple directions.

At the very least, if you're chasing an opponent you should send out a couple of sections in a line abreast so that there are more guns to bear should the enemy decide to turn.

While I'll reserve comment on AI behavior until I get the 4.11 patch, it seems to me that AI could be further improved by:

1) Having fighters target the lead bomber of a "box" (group formation), or lead bombers of each element of a "V".

Historically, this was important because the "command bomber" often decided when the rest of the formation would drop its bombs, and the "lead bombardier" aboard the command bomber was also likely to be the most experienced (hence, most accurate) bombardier in the group.

2) Have fighters cooperate when attacking enemies, rather than "every man for himself".

While it would be too much to ask for full-developed and historically accurate section, flight, squadron and group tactics, some attempt to split defensive fire with simultaneous attacks or to cut off an opponent's line of retreat would be easier to model.

3) Trying to better model historical doctrine, such as the reportedly low initiative and focus on formation keeping by early war Soviet pilots or British early war 3 plane fighter formations.

4) Make wingmen slightly smarter and have more options for your wingman.

Right now, wingmen slavishly follow their leader and almost never shoot unless an attacker makes the mistake of getting between the lead plane and the wingman and attacking the lead.

By contrast, if you tell them to "attack my target" they're in competition with you for the kill, and sometimes accidentally shoot you!

Wingmen also don't immediately report enemies on your tail, nor do they tell you what to do to get them off.

If asked, a good wingman could be ordered to get into a position to cut off an opponent's line of retreat or bring him under fire when he turns, in the classic "drag and bag" manuever.

He should also tell you to break right, left, up or down to avoid an incoming attack, and possibly even attempt to use a "drag and bag" himself.

Likewise, you should be able to order your wingman to take the lead, or act as "bait" so YOU can try a drag and bag:

Basic commands:

1) Break Right.
2) Break Left.
3) Keep steady (i.e. go straight).
4) Dive.
5) Climb.
6) Hold course (i.e., keep doing what you're doing).
7) Chop the throttle/try to get the enemy to overshoot.
Cut off - i.e., try to get a position 60-90 degrees off the enemy's current course so you can get a shot at them as they turn.

Yeah, that would be great to have something like this!

[magot]

Originally Posted by Xilon_x

the italian autoblinda transform for go to RAIL WAY.

This is not bad idea. Is count with new railroad models in next updates.
How much pieces of autoblinda was converted to railway?

[Patton521]

Ok I have a question regarding the use of custom skins for aircraft while in multi player. I remember in the 4.09 patch that when flying online if someone had a custom skin for a plane I could see it. But while using the 4.10.1 patch I can't see another players custom skin unless I have that exact same skin and I have the Download Skin option enabled. Will the new patch have something that will address this problem or would it be possible to have something like what was used in the 4.09 patch?

[char_aznable]

Originally Posted by magot

This is not bad idea. Is count with new railroad models in next updates.
How much pieces of autoblinda was converted to railway?

There was a conversion kit made on purpose, any Autoblindo could be converted then reverted to the previous configuration. They were used in the Balkans to patrol the railroads.

BTW, the above depicted one is actually an AB 40 (some 25 built) painted in 'Colonial Kaki' camo...

[Luno13]

It came up in another thread that apparently the La-5FN uses 1944 performance figures. An Early and Late version with different power outputs or FMs might be useful.

Just thinking out loud: maybe there could be a way to consolidate all "Early" and "Late" type FMs into a single 3D model for the specific plane type, and is selectable by the user or mission builder. ie, you select "Fw-190 D-9", and in the loadout menu, you select "Late" and when you fly online, etc you see "Fw-190 D-9 Late". This could be used to add weapons, skis, or floats to planes with a corresponding FM change without adding another item to the list of planes to consolidate some I-16s, MiGs, etc.

I posted this in another thread a while ago, but it might be useful to overhaul loadout options as well. Right now there is only one field, and some planes have in excess of 30 options in order to cover various combinations of bombs etc. It might be better to set multiple fields such as "Hardpoint 1" "Hardpoint 2",Hardpoint 3" etc as well as "Weapon 1", "Weapon2" for guns.

Under Weapons fields you can select type of gun (ie Mk 108 in Bf-109) and long or short belts of ammo, or certain historical belting combinations (For instance, tracerless until the last 50 rounds or so), or simply empty.

Hardpoint 1 represents the left wing, 2, the belly and bomb-bay, 3 the right wing. If the player selects a heavy bomb load in the bomb-bay, and tries to add bombs to the wings, an "Overweight" message could appear, and prevent him from pressing "Fly" unless fuel was reduced or some bombs removed.

A plane like the P-47 could add bomblet dispensers on the wings and a extra-large fuel tank on the centerline rack, and indeed, any historical combination, without a tremendously long list.

Ki-43s can have the historical loadout of one bomb and one droptank.

Pe-8s which have a bomb-bay and wing racks could select the appropriate positions of bombs for the mission.

A reload function for gunners and corresponding delay could be nice. This doesn't necessarily need to be animated (player presses "R" for instance, and waits two seconds). This could also be nice for planes which carried drum ammo such as earlier Bf-110s and Beaufighters, and planes such as early Ki-45s with a 37 mm cannon that was loaded one round at a time or B-25s with the 75mm cannon. If the appropriate crew member in these planes is injured, reload is longer, and if killed, reload stops entirely.

Thanks for the work so far DT. Can't wait to see what surprises 4.12 will bring.

Ok I have a question regarding the use of custom skins for aircraft while in multi player. I remember in the 4.09 patch that when flying online if someone had a custom skin for a plane I could see it. But while using the 4.10.1 patch I can't see another players custom skin unless I have that exact same skin and I have the Download Skin option enabled. Will the new patch have something that will address this problem or would it be possible to have something like what was used in the 4.09 patch?

Probably that skin is being downloaded into the netcache folder, but hasn't completed due to network speed. Sometimes I will see players' skins changing to the custom versions after 30 minutes of flying. Also, if the dedicated server you are on has custom skins "off", then you won't be able to upload or download custom skins.

Host a mission with your friend and fly a little longer to see what happens.

[Pursuivant]

Had the original designers of IL2 been thinking a harder about the future of the series, they would have designed the plane selection GUI and FM/DM a bit differently to make the game a bit more "modular."

For example, in the GUI, it would make sense to have 3 levels of menus for plane selection:

Basic Type --> Sub-Type --> Ordinance Loadout.

Example: Bf-109 --> G6 --> R6 field mod.

It would also be cool if the GUI had allowed you to select planes by year of introduction, nations or organizations that historically used a particular plane and/or role. For example, you could select by "U.S. Air Force, "level bombers" and "1944"

It would also be cool if the ordinance menu were somehow interactive, so when you click on particular ordinance combination, the plane in the view window changes to reflect the currently selected loadout. Or, when you moused over a particular ordinance layout, you'd get hypertext describing a particular weapon and its uses. That would be very useful for explaining obscure ordinance or foreign acronyms.

For FM, it would make sense to have engines and airframes separate, so you could model several different versions of the same plane, with identical airframe but different engines, using one airframe FM. Engine type would be selectable by the user or mission builder.

It would also make sense to model optional systems on the plane (e.g., radar, extra fuel tanks) as internal, non-droppable ordinance rather than as a dedicated part of the FM.

FM should also be alterable in the mission builder based on fuel type, state of repair, weather (e.g., ice on wings, moisture which soaked into wooden or canvas parts of the plane) and changes in mass or CG.

DM should be tweakable based on state of repair, quality of construction, sabotage, etc.

Modeling extra fuel tanks as internal, non-droppable "drop tanks" would eliminate the need for certain FM.

Certain internal weapons could be easily "swapped out" using meshes, rather than coding for an entirely different FM and 3d model. For example, British .303 caliber defensive guns rather than U.S. 0.50 caliber, or Soviet style dorsal turret rather than U.S. type, or removing the tail cone on the later G4M
series.

Other FMB/QMB niceties:

1) Being able to select Ammo loadout and amount of ammo for each weapon.

2) Listing amount of ammo available for each gun.

3) Listing types of guns rather than just saying "default".

4) Being able to select sight type (if multiple varieties were historically available).

5) Being able to select engine heat state when the mission starts (i.e., a dead cold engine which must be warmed before it can be safely started, or an overheated engine.)

6) Being able to "paint" damage onto an airplane so that certain parts have light or heavy damage when the mission begins.

7) Being able to assign special damage to an airplane (e.g., wounded crew, reduced engine power, oil leaks, jammed guns, landing gear that doesn't work) before a mission, or trigger failures at some point during a mission.

[Blackjack]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Had the original designers of IL2 been thinking a harder about the future of the series, they would have designed the plane selection GUI and FM/DM a bit differently to make the game a bit more "modular."

Seeing that at first it was planned as sim with il2 variants only, it was possibly thought of to be redundant at first and regretted later on

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by magot

This is not bad idea. Is count with new railroad models in next updates.
How much pieces of autoblinda was converted to railway?

It seems about 550 were built in all, all of which could use the rail bogies. The Germans used them too.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Had the original designers of IL2 been thinking a harder about the future of the series, they would have designed the plane selection GUI and FM/DM a bit differently to make the game a bit more "modular."

All that aside... people are still flying this sim a decade later and a top of the line rig from 2001 would choke on 4.10.1 .. so I don't know how much more they cold have looked to the future in the long run. There aren't many 12 year old game engines still running today. (IL2 was released in 2001 but IIRC the original engine was based on a space sim from a year or two earlier..) .