New mission from Wolf now on Server 1 rotation

[ATAG_Colander]

All,

The new mission from Wolf is now on Server 1 rotation.
Please let us know of any issues you find.

Note:
This mission penalizes not returning to base by decreasing the availability of the plane model that did not return.
Also, rewards the completion of objectives with additional counts of planes.

Enjoy!

[Dutch]

That's excellent news mate, just what the Doctor ordered. :dthumb:

[III./ZG76_Keller]

This worries me a bit. The load-in times are long on this mission, I foresee a lot of people cancelling the load and ending up locked out of the server with "Aircrew NIL".

Maybe we should add "Long load time" into the server name.

[Doc]

I never asked but what constitutes a completed mission in this situation?

I cover a bomber in a fighter and then fend off a fighter in my fighter but crash or midair collision. How is this counted towards plane availability? Bomber makes it but two fighters don't return to their respective sides.

Doc

[ATAG_Colander]

Server 1 is a lot faster than server 2. I'm unsure if it will take the same amount of time to load.

Anyway, "Possible long loading times" warning to all.

[ATAG_Colander]

I never asked but what constitutes a completed mission in this situation?

I cover a bomber in a fighter and then fend off a fighter in my fighter but crash or midair collision. How is this counted towards plane availability? Bomber makes it but two fighters don't return to their respective sides.

Doc

Both sides should get penalized with -1 of each plane (as it would in real life).

[Doc]

Dumb question I know but I swear Keller was thinking about it so I just wanted to ask it for him. You know how them Canadians can be.

[Dutch]

Load in time is much quicker with server 1.

Just came off the server. Had a smashing scrap with a 109 at about 15,000ft.
Blew up his fuel tank on the first shot. He was then venting fuel all the way down to zero feet during a cat and mouse dogfight which was great fun.
Then I lost him amongst the trees and he blew a hole in my wing.

Then the bloody mission ended. :sad!:

[ATAG_Colander]

Then the bloody mission ended. :sad!:

How long did the mission last? was it too fast?

[Dutch]

I jumped in soon after I saw your post. It did seem to be over quickly.

When I spawned the score was about RAF750 and LW820. Then blue destroyed a bomber formation and game over. I only flew the one sortie.

[ATAG_Colander]

uhm...
The magical number is 1799. Maybe we will have to look at the scoring values.

[Dutch]

Quick question.

How many missions are now rotating on server 1?

It's nearly 8pm over here which is usually the time a lot of the regulars come on, and it's currently playing the oldest mission with no Spit IIs.

I'm just wondering roughly how long to wait for the start of the new mission again for a proper workout.

[ATAG_Colander]

there are 6 missions now.
The 2 new ones are 1 and 4 in the list. so...

New
old 1
old 2
Newer
old 3
old 4

[Dutch]

Okay, thanks.

:thumbsup:

[ATAG_Colander]

Just so you don't have to wait, I just set it to run after the current one is finished.
:)

[Dutch]

Thankyou Mr Colander Sir!

Most thoughtful and generous if I may say. Now I'd better go fly a Blen to shorten this one a bit! :Grin:

[ATAG_Colander]

Always glad to help! :)

That is the difference between our forum and banana's.
Here the word before "you" tends to be "thanks" instead of ...

:Grin:

[Dutch]

Yep, and that tends to come from the developers! :bgsmile:

It's a joke, it's a joke :Grin:(not)!

[ATAG_EvangelusE]

This will be a fantastic mission with the anticipated new GFX - I enjoyed it very much, particularly the large formations of bombers and at a variety of altitudes. Problems ...........

a) Spit2a was not selectable despite messages that numbers available were increased. Messages from the Blue players seem to indicate a similar problem for the E4. Shortly after the mission started only Mk1a's and E3 were available

b) the Ghost problem was exceptionally bad (no suprise given the number of AI)

c) Load times were very long and many commented that they were experiencing the same issue.

d) Things got somewhat confusing as there were large numbers of Bombers both Axis and Allied at the same time and almost in the same airspace.

e) a lot of folks were having FPS/lag issues and gave up.

[Dutch]

Woah.

There were some horrendous technical issues going on tonight for me.

I spawned with a single digit frame rate until I turned off teamspeak overlay (not notifier). Nothing to do with the mission though.

There were some awesome sights, like heading towards 3 waves of bombers heading for England only to find out they were Wellingtons coming home! :)

Unfortunately a lot of blokes reported lag and other issues in chat. I asked them to post on the forum, but many left as the new mission got into its stride.

One or two asked for the mission to be changed as they were having problems, but I couldn't tell if these were similar to mine with the teamspeak issue, or related to the mission itself.

Little D was one of these, who as we all know is a decent geezer.

When does the American Continent come online then?

P.S. There are currently 119 SpitIIas available according to the server, but if you spawn in one, your ailerons fall off.

I'd suggest we take this back to server 2 for now.

[Tonka]

Similar story from me too, fantastic mission, but the game is not ready for it.

The first time i joined, just after the map flipped, load time was comparable to the old missions, an hour later it was a few minutes.

Similarly, the tab menu worked when i first joined, but stopped working after i re-spawned.

I got a screenshot of the planes available message showing the 119 Spit II's;

668

[ATAG_Bliss]

Based on the feedback I've removed those missions until we can get all the bugs ironed out. I remember trying to do some fairly intense stuff early on and the game just didn't like it. Granted it was fine for a small crowd, but soon we found out the steam issues/net issues/loading and timeout errors were compiled on top of each other.

So for the time being, "waiting on the holy patch", I think they'll have to be toned down a bit or we wait for a patch.

Hopefully Wolf and I can meet up this weekend and do some testing, colaborating.

[ATAG_Septic]

I'm sorry to hear there were people having problems because I have found the mission to be brilliant! The target rich environment is great, enabling several actions per sortie in the 110. I didn't have any problems that I could say are mission specific. The scoring will take us all a little time to learn, so we can judge where to place the effort and it may work better with a more populated server.

There have been many ghosts on the server today, perhaps more so on one of the older missions earlier. I experienced only slight lag when close to other human players on the new mission and the loading times were fine (I know I do have a higher end pc).

I'm sure there's tweaking to be done with mission balance and scoring but its sad that maybe the game engine is overloading hardware and objects might need to be reduced. All the time I wrote that little paragraph I was actually convinced I had a clue about all this. I don't.

Thanks Wulf for all your work, it's greatly appreciated.

Septic.

[Dutch]

Quite right Septic.

As I said, my issue was mostly sorted when I turned off teamspeak overlay. I haven't updated to the new ts version yet, which may or may not have been a factor.

Also, my antivirus stuff decided to update itself/run a scan and then update itself another two times whilst I was playing. Usually it has an automatic 'gaming mode' which kicks in. Bloody AV companies think they rule the world.

It could well be that others were affected in the same way, but assumed it was the mission (I'm hopeless with this stuff if you hadn't noticed, but my AV is a common one).

The mission itself is bloody marvelous, and I repeat my suggestion that ATAG members get on server 2 and test it, preferably at the same time. Everyone has commented on how good the mission is when trying it there in isolation, so lets get in there en mass and in the same ts channel and see what happens.

When then? :Grin:

[ATAG_Colander]

Now a few words from our sponsor...

"Crap, I didn't got to try it"

[Wolf]

Now a few words from our sponsor...

"Crap, I didn't got to try it"

Thanks for all the feedack. Goot to get a group on and test all at once. Hard to test when it is just me and I have no idea what another player may or may not see at the same time.

I will tinker with the Score maybe.... But I thought 1799 would take a while to reach...lol There is sooo much I can do here to adjust the scoring. I will try to hook up with Bliss and discuss.

The SpitII / 109 allowed issue. Well it is half working it would seem. I will fix this tonight also. Seems the counter of available goes up and up but the actual flyable is less stuck at 8 maybe. I will post the updated version on server 2 tomorrow morning and post update on here.

As for bomber formation sizes. It is not really and issue untill there are more AI online and it causes ghosts... Patch should fix. But i will scale down sizes and maybe space out the spawn times of different groups. The bad new is that the target rich environment may drop a little or I may just reduce the number of planes in each group so the groups still fly...just less planes.

Anyone notice the historical building layouts at Manstone and Hawkinge???

[ATAG_Colander]

Wolf,

When I said sponsor, I meant me.
I didn't get home in time to try it before it was gone :(

[ATAG_EvangelusE]

Saw the post at 1c asking for feedback on the ammended mission now running on server 2. From a RED perspective.....


Once again, the large formations are excellent and more what a BoB scenario should be. The allied airfields detail is excellent too! I have a fairly modest system and FPS was pretty good but there were only a few players on.

I think too many of the AI are very low altitude, OK for the Spit2a as currently modelled but thats about to change. May be some of the frequent small groups running from Calais to French point could have different altitudes rather than the current 900ft where Flak and proximity to many axis airfields make these targets a bit suicidal at 900ft.

I noticed a Group of Blenheims spawned at low altitude which attracted the attention of the 109's but this left the large axis group (that spawned shortly afterwards) completely unprotected - it would be nice to encourage 109 to escort but, as you would expect, the Blenheims were the preferred target.

The scoring and availability of ac seemed to work ok but one Blue pilot was not awarded a kill on a Spit2a for some reason though I was credited with a kill on his 109.

There was no large screen message regards the very large incoming axis bomber formation other than a small text radar message that 3 Junker 88s were spotted well into France - this later turned out to be a series of very large formations.

I like the personal messages regards - screwing up, success, etc - nice!

Load time is still longer than for the normal missions on server 1 but worth waiting.

Other than for too many AI at low altitude (for me anyway), engaging the large formations was excellent and these were well spaced but close enough to be seen.

The Allied Supply objectives all made safely it - there were only a few players on and there was no point in defending them. May be some of the AI ME110's could be asssigned to attack them - this would give the reds some thing to do while waiting for the bombers (and of course 109 pilots can always join in.....)

Great mission, thank you!

[Little_D]

Hi gents,

yes as bad it is i had to leave this mission because of my fps, they went down from normal avarage 35 when 40+ players are on the server to avarage 15 with 20+ players, even when no plane where around me.

what i saw in the mission was nice and i would like to fly this mission.

one think i dont like is that both sides have big bomberformation flying at the same time. there is no way for both side to defent there bomber and there targets at the same time. maby bring the mission down to 4 hours and make two of them 1 mission red devents and blue atack, the other mission blue defent and red atack, so every side has big bomberformation to hunt.

regards

Little_D

[9./JG52 Hans Gruber]

I agree that there should more time between bomber formations. Time needs to be given to re-arm & re-fuel between raids.

Also, with the exception of Bf 109's/110's from Erprobungsgruppe 210 & a Staffel of DO-17s from III/KG76, most Luftwaffe bomber units operated between 13-17k feet.

[Wolf]

I agree that there should more time between bomber formations. Time needs to be given to re-arm & re-fuel between raids.

Also, with the exception of Bf 109's/110's from Erprobungsgruppe 210 & a Staffel of DO-17s from III/KG76, most Luftwaffe bomber units operated between 13-17k feet.

Thanks for feedback Little_D and Notafinger.

I am woking on bomber timing tonight and I am reducing the size of some due to no patch. :(

I will leave some low flights as it adds change. But I will up the hights of some for 15-17k bomber flights

[ATAG_Snapper]

Great mission designing, Wolf -- see my comments on the other thread (yeah, yeah, I know -- you have eyes EVERYWHERE! :bgsmile: ).

It's good to move the formations higher. After the upcoming patch there won't be a Spit to be found below 16,000 feet! :Grin:

[Wolf]

Great mission designing, Wolf -- see my comments on the other thread (yeah, yeah, I know -- you have eyes EVERYWHERE! :bgsmile: ).

It's good to move the formations higher. After the upcoming patch there won't be a Spit to be found below 16,000 feet! :Grin:

On it as we speak

[9./JG52 Hans Gruber]

Had a go on the new mission and have a couple suggestions:
- Would it not improve load times to remove unnecessary objects from the map? I noticed the factory at K5 was still there but it was no longer a target. Didn't have time to see if other inactive targets were still present.
- The spawn point descriptions could use some attention. For example, Littlestone says something about Barges at K10? I'm guessing that is leftover from a previous version.
- Can we please fight in the daylight? It was 0530 when I joined and started up from Hawkinge hoping to see the new buildings but all was covered in darkness. Server #1 has Channel Dawn which has more than enough night fighting for most people as player count drops like a rock at the start of that mission. 0800 or later mission start please.

[Wolf]

Had a go on the new mission and have a couple suggestions:
- Would it not improve load times to remove unnecessary objects from the map? I noticed the factory at K5 was still there but it was no longer a target. Didn't have time to see if other inactive targets were still present.
- The spawn point descriptions could use some attention. For example, Littlestone says something about Barges at K10? I'm guessing that is leftover from a previous version.
- Can we please fight in the daylight? It was 0530 when I joined and started up from Hawkinge hoping to see the new buildings but all was covered in darkness. Server #1 has Channel Dawn which has more than enough night fighting for most people as player count drops like a rock at the start of that mission. 0800 or later mission start please.

Yes I agree I will remove all the dormant Targets for now. This is a very easy process. I may remove all the trains also for now. Such a shame.... :(

Last night I adjusted height of bombers. I have not had a chance to adjust the position display.