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SoW Reddog
Nov-29-2013, 18:12
To keep it fresh, here's a thread for your feedback.

Known issues:
Knocking out Hawkinge killed Red's ability to spawn at Southend as well (oops)
Time Left query gave 5hrs left near start of map when only 4hr mission....(Is this because <tl is a server script and set to 6hr missions?)
Blue AI Bombers not landing, and therefore just circling like lemons. (C'mon Reds, you shouldn't be letting bombers get back home :P )

epoch
Nov-29-2013, 18:37
Spawning at Biggin Hill occasionally puts your a little way outside the airfield, in a valley, up to your neck in wheat.

Love this mission though - great fun - thanks! :D

SoW Reddog
Nov-29-2013, 19:02
Spawning at Biggin Hill occasionally puts your a little way outside the airfield, in a valley, up to your neck in wheat.

Love this mission though - great fun - thanks! :D

Do you have a rough area of the airfield that occurs in? I can try and block the spawn point that's doing it.

Salmo
Nov-29-2013, 20:18
Do you have a rough area of the airfield that occurs in? I can try and block the spawn point that's doing it.

I doubt it's related to a bad spawn point. It's more likely that all spawn points are used at the time the player spawns in.

Player planes spawn randomly on airfield perimeter [airport.RField()] when all spawn points are 'full' at the time the player spawns. This result in players spawning in wheatfields or on hills etc. Bigin Hill has very few hard-coded spawn points, so this will often happen at this airfield. TF is working on providing more spawn points at Biggin Hill.

Check to make sure you have no objects covering spawn points & that the maximum possible number of spawn points are available to players.

ATAG_EvangelusE
Nov-29-2013, 20:23
Great Mission - thoroughly enjoyed it.

The on screen messages saying the map was won, server restarting, etc, etc, (won by the Reds incidentally!) went berserk at the end - repeating extremely fast and scrolling like nuts untill the mission finally ended. Other than that didn't come across any other problems.

9./JG52_J-HAT
Nov-29-2013, 20:30
That mission was great fun, Redog. Congratsnfor doing it.

I noticed the bombers aren't getting past Hawkinge area. They don't go all the way to Biggin Hill, for example. Or any other target for that matter. I saw a raid for one of the farther targets (raid 8 I guess, one of the last) drop their ordnance over at around Folkstone.
Maybe I am mistaken, but they all seemed to just turn around after reaching English coast.

Having the bombers go for mission targets and knowing where they are is just great!

Wulf
Nov-30-2013, 00:42
Played it and enjoyed it a lot but noticed a significant FPS drop at various stages. Don't know if that's a typical experience or not but as I crossed the Channel I noticed my frame rate dropping alarmingly at times; sometimes into the high teens.

trademe900
Nov-30-2013, 00:47
Also of it's worth mentioning, it seems ii knocked out hawkinge in just one bombing run in the ju88, does that need looking at?

SoW Reddog
Nov-30-2013, 05:16
I doubt it's related to a bad spawn point. It's more likely that all spawn points are used at the time the player spawns in.

Player planes spawn randomly on airfield perimeter [airport.RField()] when all spawn points are 'full' at the time the player spawns. This result in players spawning in wheatfields or on hills etc. Bigin Hill has very few hard-coded spawn points, so this will often happen at this airfield. TF is working on providing more spawn points at Biggin Hill.

Check to make sure you have no objects covering spawn points & that the maximum possible number of spawn points are available to players.

Thanks Salmo, I've blocked some of the spawn points as they're notorious for being bad. More points would be great.

SoW Reddog
Nov-30-2013, 05:17
Great Mission - thoroughly enjoyed it.

The on screen messages saying the map was won, server restarting, etc, etc, (won by the Reds incidentally!) went berserk at the end - repeating extremely fast and scrolling like nuts untill the mission finally ended. Other than that didn't come across any other problems.

Ok, I'll have a look at that, thanks. Did the mission end properly on time do you think?

SoW Reddog
Nov-30-2013, 05:19
That mission was great fun, Redog. Congratsnfor doing it.

I noticed the bombers aren't getting past Hawkinge area. They don't go all the way to Biggin Hill, for example. Or any other target for that matter. I saw a raid for one of the farther targets (raid 8 I guess, one of the last) drop their ordnance over at around Folkstone.
Maybe I am mistaken, but they all seemed to just turn around after reaching English coast.

Having the bombers go for mission targets and knowing where they are is just great!

I think this is partly due to the ai settings I've used, and partly down to the ai issues in tf4. In all my tests the ai were flying fine, but then there weren't 100 people on the server.

SoW Reddog
Nov-30-2013, 05:21
Played it and enjoyed it a lot but noticed a significant FPS drop at various stages. Don't know if that's a typical experience or not but as I crossed the Channel I noticed my frame rate dropping alarmingly at times; sometimes into the high teens.

That could be down to two things I believe, the raids last night were big, 27 aircraft ish and so that might be a cause if you've got a weaker end PC. However, the ai bombers weren't landing and thereby despawning, just circling round so that would have contributed to the overall pressure on the server and also your frames if you were in sight.

SoW Reddog
Nov-30-2013, 05:23
Also of it's worth mentioning, it seems ii knocked out hawkinge in just one bombing run in the ju88, does that need looking at?

Can't remember what the threshold is off the top of my head. It could be that it had been hit previously by an ai raid and you just finished it off. I didn't even get a lightly damaged status on Manston when I dropped half my bombs on it. I'll check though.

EG14_Marcast
Nov-30-2013, 05:57
All the little issues I noticed have already been told. This is just to say thanks again for this great map. And thanks also to Bliss who found the time to give us a great night like yesterday with London Raids and Homeplate 2.0 together :thumbsup:

9./JG52_Meyer
Nov-30-2013, 06:12
I flew this last night (on your comms for first time) anyway i was Havana (RTB to you RAF types)
and when i got to the french coast it was realy laggy for me. On looking around it seemed half of Luftflotte 2 was in the air over calais just mooching around at heights from the deck up to 2k. I think that these bombers have returned to France at the end of their mission but instead of landing or doing what AI bombers are supposed to do at the end of their journey they just all gather and circle that area causing this massive lagg fest i was having.

ATAG_EvangelusE
Nov-30-2013, 11:05
Ok, I'll have a look at that, thanks. Did the mission end properly on time do you think?

Pretty sure it timed out as normal once the map was won.

SoW Reddog
Dec-01-2013, 09:36
Update 1/12/2013

The following issues have now been fixed.

Southend Spawn being lost with the first Reload of spawns after an airfield is knocked out -This was due to Southend being called "Sounthend" in the Airport collection. Note for anyone else having issues!
Blue AI Bombers not landing, and therefore just circling like lemons. - Thanks to Salmo for a point in the right direction, all AI bombers will AIR despawn once they transition past a line deep inland in France. Players are advised to stay clear of deep inland just in case but *should* be safe!
Spamming of messages at mission end - This was down to a cockup on my part, > sign in the wrong place. Should now only occur once!
AI Skill has been increased with a hope that it'll mean that the bomber raids make it further inland before breaking up. I'm using these settings. (1 0.11 0.84 0.84 0 0.53 1 1) If anyone knows better ones then please let me know.


It takes 10000kgs of bombs to knock out an airfield at present. This limit can be adjusted up if needed.


New Version sent to Bliss.

Kling
Dec-01-2013, 09:43
Very well done Reddog!! Im a big fan of your mission!!

spud3030
Dec-02-2013, 02:41
Great mission! really like it only thing I saw that was a bit faulty was these guys stuck on the ground in France
btw I thought the bombers circling was intentional ! it made the airspace in France seem atmospheric heeh

Thanks for making it!
spud

SoW Reddog
Dec-02-2013, 04:06
Just an observation: (Please do not take this as a Blue cheats or Red cheats thingy as I know that pretty-well all participants are in it for a good and honourable time.)

I noticed the other night that several Blue bombers exited the mission completely after either a) Being shot up before getting to the target or b) dropping on the target and getting attacked.

This did a couple of things - it denied the Red attacker points - but more importantly it prevented the Red side from gaining kills at the risk of the Blue side hitting the target and then leaving before crashing.

This is not a reflection on the Blue team but an observation that I witnessed take place three times within an hour of me being on the server and I couldn't help but ponder what was taking place.

I'm wondering if this is a position some might take because of the win parameters of aircraft downed versus airfields destroyed? A sort of victory by attrition?

I only saw this the one time and the server was very busy and lots of action taking place in the Limpne/Hawkinge area.

Perhaps someone else can verify?

Catseye,

I think you are confusing this mission with Operation Homeplate which is by Salmo. London Raids does not have any "downed aircraft" victory conditions.

SoW Reddog
Dec-02-2013, 04:07
Great mission! really like it only thing I saw that was a bit faulty was these guys stuck on the ground in France
btw I thought the bombers circling was intentional ! it made the airspace in France seem atmospheric heeh

Thanks for making it!
spud

Hmm, doesn't look like they are too happy does it :) I wonder if you could tell me, when you joined the server was it v2 or v2.1 that you saw this on? If it's the latter then we still have a problem, if the former then there's a new version which should eliminate the muppet AI bombers.

9./JG52_J-HAT
Dec-02-2013, 07:06
Thanks for the mission update, Reddog. I noticed the raids are going with more time apart. I only flew it on the red side yesterday and the bombers were going all the way to London, just great!

One thing I noticed was the bombers (He 111 in this case) were going fast. At angels 24 I was in a Spit Ia 100 Oct only slightly faster. After each pass it would take some 3 4 minutes to get to attack position next to the bombers again.

And the gunners are deadly if you don't watch out!

Catseye
Dec-02-2013, 17:39
Catseye,

I think you are confusing this mission with Operation Homeplate which is by Salmo. London Raids does not have any "downed aircraft" victory conditions.

Ah, correct Reddog, my mistake.

spud3030
Dec-03-2013, 06:50
I think it was 2.0 Reddog, it was on the weekend in Australia.
Thanks again for mission , it is real good
spud

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-04-2013, 16:10
Reddog, I would advise using ace for all AI settings in this version of TF. I had good feedback from both sides using those settings in the Kanalkampf campaign. The advanced flying ability no longer makes the bombers roll like an F16.

My one complaint about the mission was the bomber formations breaking up very badly in turns. I think part of this is because a raid was using 3 separate bomber flights of 6 or 9 planes each. I would suggest you designate the bombers as Stuka units which would allow you to put 24 bombers in a single cohesive flight. As you are probably aware the game limits flights designated Kampfgruppe to 9. I have sample missions I can show you if that was not clear.

S!
9./JG52 Hans Gruber

SoW Reddog
Dec-05-2013, 04:05
Gruber,

Bit surprised you're advocating Ace for everything. I'll have a look and see what it looks like.

There's a couple of reasons I don't like the Stuka group and why I didn't go that route in the first place.

1) It looks crap. The planes are ridiculously spread out. With 3 flights behind each other, the raid looks like a raid, not a bunch of air cadets trying formation flying for the first time.

2) With three flights, the ability is there for one flight to get hammered and bug out, leaving the rest of the raid to head on. With only one flight, that doesn't happen, it's all or nothing

The only turns that bombers should be doing is at the RV point which is designed to be a low angle turn which in my testing they had no issues with, and then the turn for home which will be quite extreme I accept but there's a realism issue here anyway, British pilots liked to attack when a formation was making a turn as they were hard to keep in formation, besides, if the bombs are gone in one sense it doesn't really matter to the Blues if the raid falls apart at that point do they?!

trademe900
Dec-05-2013, 05:11
I really like this mission. Great to get in the level bombers for once and try knock out the coastal airfields. On a separate note however, on a matter of team behavior, I do not like the way so few reds spawn from Hawkinge (hurricanes) and are all way back up at London after the spitfires. At times, despite good player numbers, when I am flying RAF it feels as if I am the only pilot left in the royal air force.

I wish people could see that the Hurricane is now much more realistic and better. It's disappointing to see people far back at London just for a spitfire.

trademe900
Dec-05-2013, 05:12
Reddog, I would advise using ace for all AI settings in this version of TF. I had good feedback from both sides using those settings in the Kanalkampf campaign. The advanced flying ability no longer makes the bombers roll like an F16.

My one complaint about the mission was the bomber formations breaking up very badly in turns. I think part of this is because a raid was using 3 separate bomber flights of 6 or 9 planes each. I would suggest you designate the bombers as Stuka units which would allow you to put 24 bombers in a single cohesive flight. As you are probably aware the game limits flights designated Kampfgruppe to 9. I have sample missions I can show you if that was not clear.

S!
9./JG52 Hans Gruber


You can not have ace settings for ai bombers as they will collide with each other. This is a well known bug. The ai bombers will swing like pendulums from side to side and knock each other out of the sky.

SoW Reddog
Dec-05-2013, 05:36
I really like this mission. Great to get in the level bombers for once and try knock out the coastal airfields. On a separate note however, on a matter of team behavior, I do not like the way so few reds spawn from Hawkinge (hurricanes) and are all way back up at London after the spitfires. At times, despite good player numbers, when I am flying RAF it feels as if I am the only pilot left in the royal air force.

I wish people could see that the Hurricane is now much more realistic and better. It's disappointing to see people far back at London just for a spitfire.

Problem is if I put Spitfires at Manston and Hawkinge, then the map just becomes another Hawkinge circle dogfight...

EG14_Marcast
Dec-05-2013, 05:50
I really like this mission. Great to get in the level bombers for once and try knock out the coastal airfields. On a separate note however, on a matter of team behavior, I do not like the way so few reds spawn from Hawkinge (hurricanes) and are all way back up at London after the spitfires. At times, despite good player numbers, when I am flying RAF it feels as if I am the only pilot left in the royal air force.

I wish people could see that the Hurricane is now much more realistic and better. It's disappointing to see people far back at London just for a spitfire.

When I fly Red in this map I use to spawn in Hornchurch (as I did yesterday). Not just to get a Spit, but because this airfield is close to all the targets for the Blues, and above all because the coastal airfields are used in all the other maps. This is the only map where we can have a variation in the landscape. Regarding the plane, I love the Hurricane. But this is again the only map where you have more chances to have high altitude fights, so I prefer the Spit's higher rate of climb

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-05-2013, 09:35
Gruber,

Bit surprised you're advocating Ace for everything. I'll have a look and see what it looks like.

There's a couple of reasons I don't like the Stuka group and why I didn't go that route in the first place.

1) It looks crap. The planes are ridiculously spread out. With 3 flights behind each other, the raid looks like a raid, not a bunch of air cadets trying formation flying for the first time.

2) With three flights, the ability is there for one flight to get hammered and bug out, leaving the rest of the raid to head on. With only one flight, that doesn't happen, it's all or nothing

The only turns that bombers should be doing is at the RV point which is designed to be a low angle turn which in my testing they had no issues with, and then the turn for home which will be quite extreme I accept but there's a realism issue here anyway, British pilots liked to attack when a formation was making a turn as they were hard to keep in formation, besides, if the bombs are gone in one sense it doesn't really matter to the Blues if the raid falls apart at that point do they?!

I have found everything on ace is much better. Gunnery skill is a personal preference. The He 111 is better with veteran gunnery skill but Do 17 & Ju 88 are much better suited to ace. An enemy can't just sit in the bombers six and blast away then. I can't remember all the properties from memory but flying skill, vision, bravery, tactics, etc.. are maxed to keep the formations together and able to put up some defense on their own.

I'm not sure why you think the formation looks like crap. 3 flights of 8 under a Stuka group in vic makes a nice vee formation. Personally, I find it much easier to work with one formation than trying to get three separate flights to look as one. Just my opinion, best of luck with the mission.

One other thing, not sure if it was reported but the blue bomber locater was showing all flights in meters instead of kilometers i.e. raids at 6m instead of 6km.


You can not have ace settings for ai bombers as they will collide with each other. This is a well known bug. The ai bombers will swing like pendulums from side to side and knock each other out of the sky.

I'm going to disagree with you on this. Do you have any first hand evidence of this? I have designed many missions for campaigns and can say for certain Ace skill does not cause AI bombers to collide with each other. In fact ace flying ability and slower speeds are needed to keep them from doing the pendulum in TF4.0. AI bombers will collide with each other if using a ground attack - target and a vic formation. When they approach their bomb release they move from vic to line abreast and very often there is a collision. I'm fairly certain Reddog is using area attacks with his bombers so this is not a concern.

SoW Reddog
Dec-05-2013, 11:54
I'm not sure why you think the formation looks like crap. 3 flights of 8 under a Stuka group in vic makes a nice vee formation. Personally, I find it much easier to work with one formation than trying to get three separate flights to look as one. Just my opinion, best of luck with the mission.


Because one huge VIC just is poor from a historical perspective. 1 the bombers can't mutually support, heard of the bomber box? They flew like that for a reason. 2, the bombers on the end of the line are going to miss the target by some distance when we're talking 27 bombers, and 3, in theory there should only be 9 aircraft's ordinance going off at any one time. I HAVE thought about this honest!




One other thing, not sure if it was reported but the blue bomber locater was showing all flights in meters instead of kilometers i.e. raids at 6m instead of 6km.


Nah mate, they're just flying reeeeealllly low. :) *facepalm - will fix for next version release.

ATAG_Snapper
Dec-05-2013, 12:53
I flew London Raids v. 2 and loved it! The radar worked perfectly (TAB 4 1 2) and gave me some great intercepts!!! :thumbsup: I flew as a "lone wolf" last night since I was busy adjusting video settings on a new PC, and found the action suited me fine. I'm looking forward to flying it lots more in the company of fellow RAF.

:)

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-05-2013, 13:31
Because one huge VIC just is poor from a historical perspective. 1 the bombers can't mutually support, heard of the bomber box? They flew like that for a reason. 2, the bombers on the end of the line are going to miss the target by some distance when we're talking 27 bombers, and 3, in theory there should only be 9 aircraft's ordinance going off at any one time. I HAVE thought about this honest!

I don't want to harp on it but based on your comments I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. Maybe I'll post a pic later of the formation I am talking about. I can't wait till the reds have to defend bombers, then you'll want them in tight formations. :devilish:

But seriously, I'm really glad to see others getting their hands dirty in the FMB.

trademe900
Dec-05-2013, 14:30
I'm going to disagree with you on this. Do you have any first hand evidence of this? I have designed many missions for campaigns and can say for certain Ace skill does not cause AI bombers to collide with each other. In fact ace flying ability and slower speeds are needed to keep them from doing the pendulum in TF4.0. AI bombers will collide with each other if using a ground attack - target and a vic formation. When they approach their bomb release they move from vic to line abreast and very often there is a collision. I'm fairly certain Reddog is using area attacks with his bombers so this is not a concern.

Oh ok? I resolved the TF4.0 bomber swinging issue for myself by lowering the advanced flying skill but you are saying you also found a way by lowering the speed but also increasing this slider? Sorry, I didn't know this.

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-05-2013, 15:54
Oh ok? I resolved the TF4.0 bomber swinging issue for myself by lowering the advanced flying skill but you are saying you also found a way by lowering the speed but also increasing this slider? Sorry, I didn't know this.

Interesting. I had found in the past that anything less than max for basic flying skills led to silly AI behavior. Advanced flying had to be near 0 or they would snap roll but in newest release they don't seem to do that anymore even with both flight skills at 1. The pendulum swinging I think was due to the new control surface behavior and the AI just could not deal with being above a certain speed and their ailerons not responding like they do in vanilla clod. For some good entertainment watch an AI He 111 try to land. It's a scary, scary thing. :)

trademe900
Dec-05-2013, 16:50
Ok good, so lower speed (how low?) and skill set to 1. Can they land with full skill?

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-05-2013, 18:38
Ok good, so lower speed (how low?) and skill set to 1. Can they land with full skill?

No, in fact after testing some more I see almost no difference between 0 & 1 for flying skills with the AI bombers. I can make any skill He 111 group pendulum simply by decreasing altitude between waypoints @ 300kmh. :ind:

Salmo
Dec-05-2013, 23:08
You can not have ace settings for ai bombers as they will collide with each other. This is a well known bug. The ai bombers will swing like pendulums from side to side and knock each other out of the sky.

I didn't know this. I've had this issue when I increased Ai skills (not all aces though). Is this a bug from the 'stock' game?

EG14_Marcast
Dec-10-2013, 03:38
Reddog,

Is there surface wind in London Raids? And if so, what's the speed? Just a curiosity because I seem to have some strange behaviour at take off sometimes, I don't know if I'm making something wrong.

SoW Reddog
Dec-10-2013, 04:11
???? I have no idea. (I haven't touched the weather "stuff" so it's probably not on/default). I will have to take a look.

I am working on a new version of the spawn script to send to Bliss this weekend, notable changes are:
1) German messages will no longer reference meters, rather km.... *facepalm
2) Bombers will spawn higher for lower player numbers than currently. 3+km instead of the 1-2km they seem to be doing.
3) A limit of 4 AI bomber raids "active" at any time, just incase the AI is overloading the server.
4) More varied and "lifelike" AI bomber flightpaths. What I mean here is there will be doglegs, and less "fly straight to target".

If there are any more unfixed bugs, please let me know about them.

Kling
Dec-10-2013, 04:56
Sounds great Reddog!! Im a big fan! But you know that already! ;)

ATAG_Lolsav
Dec-10-2013, 11:18
Thank you for the work. Welcoming the changes :thumbsup:

ATAG_NakedSquirrel
Dec-16-2013, 17:16
Played it today, great mission.

:salute:

Only annoying issue is the radar script keeps calling out contacts taking off from airfields. Otherwise FPS was great and it played well, probably the best mission on the rotation

9./JG52_J-HAT
Dec-16-2013, 17:46
Played it today, great mission.

:salute:

Only annoying issue is the radar script keeps calling out contacts taking off from airfields. Otherwise FPS was great and it played well, probably the best mission on the rotation

:thumbsup:

I just missed more reds intercepting the London Docks raid after we passed Hawkinge. It started being less and less until we were alone with some 5 or 6 109s and the bombers over Rochester. None came from Southend or Eastchurch. One of those is active, isn't it?

Maybe make Hurris only at the coastal fields and Spits around London?

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-16-2013, 21:20
???? I have no idea. (I haven't touched the weather "stuff" so it's probably not on/default). I will have to take a look.

I am working on a new version of the spawn script to send to Bliss this weekend, notable changes are:
1) German messages will no longer reference meters, rather km.... *facepalm
2) Bombers will spawn higher for lower player numbers than currently. 3+km instead of the 1-2km they seem to be doing.
3) A limit of 4 AI bomber raids "active" at any time, just incase the AI is overloading the server.
4) More varied and "lifelike" AI bomber flightpaths. What I mean here is there will be doglegs, and less "fly straight to target".

If there are any more unfixed bugs, please let me know about them.

Per the enter screen this is for V2.1. So not sure if some of this has been corrected already or not.

- Mission does not end. Currently at -5:00:00 hours remaining, past 1800 in game.
- Blue bomber raids do not go to their stated targets. (i.e. raids supposed to go to RAF Croydon, goes straight across from Boulogne and drop bombs on Hawkinge).
- As a blue pilot I want to protect the bombers but their routes make it near impossible with reds also having the benefit of RDF. Anything between Dungeness & Manston is going to get chewed up, they don't even make it halfway across the Channel before they are intercepted. These deep raids need to go west of Dungeness and then cut North or up around Manston to have any chance of reaching target. Maybe you have already addressed this as stated in item 4 and this is an older version.

Osprey
Dec-17-2013, 06:59
Spawning at Biggin Hill occasionally puts your a little way outside the airfield, in a valley, up to your neck in wheat.

Love this mission though - great fun - thanks! :D
Do you have a rough area of the airfield that occurs in? I can try and block the spawn point that's doing it.

I have a decent solution to this which I will publish for all when I find the time to write it up as a guide properly - it'll be this week I hope. The mission designer can use the FMB to set players to spawn anywhere he wants them to, even in a finger four right on the runway.

Which RDF is installed into the mission? Is it Salmo's one?


I wouldn't use Ace on gunners apart from the pilot because the gunners will butcher anybody who comes near them, there wouldn't be a need for an escort.

From a mission designers perspective I would love a tool where you can easily set gunners vs pilot as rookie/novice/vet/ace, as a group for all in the flight - perhaps something that edits the .mis directly because in the FMB it's a real PITA. If there's a dev out there who fancies such a project it would be a popular one I think!

Kling
Dec-17-2013, 07:20
I have a decent solution to this which I will publish for all when I find the time to write it up as a guide properly - it'll be this week I hope. The mission designer can use the FMB to set players to spawn anywhere he wants them to, even in a finger four right on the runway.

Which RDF is installed into the mission? Is it Salmo's one?


I wouldn't use Ace on gunners apart from the pilot because the gunners will butcher anybody who comes near them, there wouldn't be a need for an escort.

From a mission designers perspective I would love a tool where you can easily set gunners vs pilot as rookie/novice/vet/ace, as a group for all in the flight - perhaps something that edits the .mis directly because in the FMB it's a real PITA. If there's a dev out there who fancies such a project it would be a popular one I think!

It SHOULD be dangerous to get close to a formation of bombers. I think gunner at ACE level is a good solution to the otherwise uselss gunners..

9./JG52 Ziegler
Dec-17-2013, 08:38
Agree Kling, In reality it was dangerous business to approach bomber formations from a six position. It should remain so for anyone who tries it.
There is already radar to intercept (as reality) and just sitting in the six of bombers to pick them off should not be possible without some inherent danger.

I'm in agreement with Gruber about the "deep raids need to go west of Dungeness and then cut North or up around Manston to have any chance of reaching target."

Flying the mission a couple of times now, we spent 2 out of 3 sorties mid channel (versus getting into British territory) defending these formations that hardly made Hawkinge.

Thanks for the mission and effort RD. :thumbsup:

EG14_Marcast
Dec-17-2013, 09:05
It SHOULD be dangerous to get close to a formation of bombers. I think gunner at ACE level is a good solution to the otherwise uselss gunners..

In my single missions I use to set the gunners' skill in bombers' formations a bit less than veteran, and I get shot maybe 40% of the times if I attack with other fighters, 90% if I arrive alone. This is the right solution for me. If you set it as ace, there will be no fight at all.

Kling
Dec-17-2013, 09:21
Well, two spitfires working together can easily prevent 10bombers from reaching their target. I little squirt of 303s and the bombers engines will be gone with 1-2mins. No matter how good the gunners are. We also need to compensste for the fact that our raids in Clod are max 15 bomber raids while irl they would come in 100s.
As was mentioned, most bomber formations dont even get acoss the channel. Thats hardly fun nor realistic.

Of course a well coordinated attack by 4-5 spits/hurries should be able to down a few bombers but it should come to a cost.

Attacking bombers should be done with caution, which I currently dont need.
Saying that, He111s seem to shoot better than ju88s and Do17s for some reason...

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Dec-17-2013, 09:26
It SHOULD be dangerous to get close to a formation of bombers. I think gunner at ACE level is a good solution to the otherwise uselss gunners..

Agree 100%. Players on both sides have gotten very lazy in their attacks on bombers. It's always a stern attack followed by an overshoot where they will loop back in again even slower or they chop throttle and just camp. Ace gunners at least have a chance of inflicting some damage on the attacker before half the formation is wiped by a single suicidal pilot.

Mission designers can use different tricks such as changing the belting on the bombers so that 2/3 of the return fire is less lethal beobachtung (observer) rounds so the attacking aircraft is still getting pummeled for slow stern chases but high speed hit and run attacks are less likely to take damage.

ATAG_Snapper
Dec-17-2013, 09:57
Agree 100%. Players on both sides have gotten very lazy in their attacks on bombers. It's always a stern attack followed by an overshoot where they will loop back in again even slower or they chop throttle and just camp. Ace gunners at least have a chance of inflicting some damage on the attacker before half the formation is wiped by a single suicidal pilot.

Mission designers can use different tricks such as changing the belting on the bombers so that 2/3 of the return fire is less lethal beobachtung (observer) rounds so the attacking aircraft is still getting pummeled for slow stern chases but high speed hit and run attacks are less likely to take damage.


Using a tailored mixture of Observer rounds to Ace AI gunners is a brilliant solution. :thumbsup:

It's interesting how different bomber types are vastly different in AI gunnery effectiveness (assuming them to be set all the same skill level by the mission designers). For instance, Dornier 17's and 110's score relatively few, if any hits, on RAF fighters attacking from the rear, Ju88's marginally better. By contrast, He111's are robotically-deadly. I've done high speed diving passes from various angles to both formations and individual He111's and invariably get tagged -- enough to force me to withdraw immediately if I haven't already been PK'd. Br.20's are almost as deadly, with FW200's falling somewhere in between.

I don't know how well Blenheims or Wellingtons compare to the above. I agree fully that it should be foolhardy to approach any bomber(s) from behind without suffering dire consequences; parking should be suicidal.

I like the idea of the ammo mix to adjust lethality. If you do execute a high speed quartering attack requiring skill and timing on a high deflection shot, then it should be less likely that you'll get picked off by "the golden BB", yet the ammo is still lethal enough to knock out the lazy approaches. (hey, I'm "lazy" if I figure I'll get away with it! :D ).

This would add an interesting challenge to Cliffs of Dover IMHO.

Osprey
Dec-17-2013, 10:25
I never said put them on rookie, I said to not put them all on ace. One has to strike a balance or there's no point in even approaching them. Anybody flying the Hurricane knows that 'up there' the closing top speed is so low ** that unless you have thousands of feet on them (which you'll lose following a pass or two) then you are left with more exposure than you'd like if you want to stand any chance of stopping them.

On SOWC the missions had them ace'd right up and we ended up just not attacking them because it was a nightmare climbing up just to get the governor shot out from 300 yards away. And it's no good assuming that it's all ok if you attack in squadron strength - sure, that works, but it's a dogfight server where you're lucky to get 25% of the players over 10kft let alone flying together to mash them up - this isn't a campaign, you have to be realistic about it.

** @ any TF testers here, for TF4.01 please properly check the IAS /TAS of the Hurricane @the FTH because my test after release found it to be quite a lot of mph too slow. IIRC it should reach 325mph TAS @ 18kft ish

SoW Reddog
Dec-17-2013, 16:40
Played it today, great mission.

:salute:

Only annoying issue is the radar script keeps calling out contacts taking off from airfields. Otherwise FPS was great and it played well, probably the best mission on the rotation

Hi NakedSquirrel, I am not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you mean when you manually contact the RDF?

SoW Reddog
Dec-17-2013, 16:41
:thumbsup:

I just missed more reds intercepting the London Docks raid after we passed Hawkinge. It started being less and less until we were alone with some 5 or 6 109s and the bombers over Rochester. None came from Southend or Eastchurch. One of those is active, isn't it?

Maybe make Hurris only at the coastal fields and Spits around London?

J-HAT, that's exactly what we've done. Unfortunately TF making the Hurricane more flyable has lead to more Hurri's being flown I guess.

SoW Reddog
Dec-17-2013, 16:44
Per the enter screen this is for V2.1. So not sure if some of this has been corrected already or not.

- Mission does not end. Currently at -5:00:00 hours remaining, past 1800 in game.
- Blue bomber raids do not go to their stated targets. (i.e. raids supposed to go to RAF Croydon, goes straight across from Boulogne and drop bombs on Hawkinge).
- As a blue pilot I want to protect the bombers but their routes make it near impossible with reds also having the benefit of RDF. Anything between Dungeness & Manston is going to get chewed up, they don't even make it halfway across the Channel before they are intercepted. These deep raids need to go west of Dungeness and then cut North or up around Manston to have any chance of reaching target. Maybe you have already addressed this as stated in item 4 and this is an older version.

Hey Gruber,

The Mission ending bug has happened before, I take it the targets were still not destroyed?
I noticed myself last night that the LW bomber raids are not working correctly for some reason, the Stuka raid on Hawkinge I saw should never have been sent as Hawkinge had been knocked out an hour before so I need to look at this specifically.
I've run into a few issues with my alternate script method so I can't update it right now which would give more doglegged routes. However, I can add some more spawn points and RV's in different locations to make the ingress runs a little less "Manston-Dover-Hawkinge"

9./JG52_J-HAT
Dec-18-2013, 06:31
Great, Reddog! Thanks for the updates and answers!

I always have a blast with your mission. It actually makes sense escorting AI bombers (and a lot of them!!!) when there are no human raids around.

Kling
Dec-18-2013, 06:33
Reddog what is the gunner skill set in your missions? Just wondering...

AKA_Recon
Dec-18-2013, 07:17
I'm going to disagree with you on this. Do you have any first hand evidence of this? I have designed many missions for campaigns and can say for certain Ace skill does not cause AI bombers to collide with each other. In fact ace flying ability and slower speeds are needed to keep them from doing the pendulum in TF4.0. AI bombers will collide with each other if using a ground attack - target and a vic formation. When they approach their bomb release they move from vic to line abreast and very often there is a collision. I'm fairly certain Reddog is using area attacks with his bombers so this is not a concern.

(just FYI - I believe I witnessed this last night - we were following a group of bombers over the Isle of White and two bombers flying in formation turned toward each other and collided)

SoW Reddog
Dec-30-2013, 10:43
Version 2.2 sent to Bliss

Notable changes include :
- incorporation of the Voting system, if you want to skip the mission then type !VoteSkip (cap sensitive) into the chat bar and you'll register your vote.
- Mission log file, and historic mission stats when you join showing how many times each side has won.
- No more than 4 AI raids at a time
- Added a couple more AI RV points which spread raids out a bit further.
- Hopefully fixed the "end" bug
- Upped the AI skills so hopefully less likely to turn back too soon
- Fixed the "Hawkinge" issue, whereby bombers bound for one target decide the target Hawkinge instead. (I blame bad maps :) )

Known issues:
- Blue "Current Bomber Location" messages repeat when using the menu. Can't figure out how to stop them
- Airfield damage messages every 5 minutes aren't working right. Again, can't figure out why not as they were working before.

Unless there's any game breaking bugs I'm going to consider this a Final release version and move onto developing a new mission.

ATAG_Freya
Dec-30-2013, 12:00
Thanks for your time on this RedDog! This is one of my favorites. Looking forward to the new version. Can't wait to see what you come up with next! :salute:

92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Jan-03-2014, 15:44
@Reddog, just after you left tonight, the mission started to slow right down. The serve didn't crash though, just the mission. It righted itself after a 15 minute hang, and the mission continued where it had left off.

Now I think the issue relates to too many A.I being present. Some suggested changes;

1. AI raids should spawn less frequently. Maybe 45 minutes apart.
2. Slightly fewer A.UI aircraft per raid. Say, reduce by 10%.
3. AI raids should NOT attack coastal airfields between Ramsgate and Littlestone. Their flight-path back to the wall-of-death is too short. Not enough of them get knocked down and subsequently there are too many AI in play, as the next lot spawns in.

And yes, the next set of raids attacked Biggin Hill, after you left! They are changing targets. More reason to increase time between raids though, to reduce chance of them being assigned a target that is about to be destroyed by a previous raid.

SoW Reddog
Jan-03-2014, 16:13
The ai should be spawning half an hour apart at least with that many players with a max of 4 raids at any one time. They should air despawn once they cross a line in France.

I'm not so sure from the comments on TS that it's not a player number issue rather than the mission itself. Personally I think it would be a good thing for the community at large to reduce the player limit on the server to 80 or 85. This would mean that there's still a goodly number of players but there would be the nucleus of players to seed another server. I think more servers the better with the increased numbers arriving at the moment.

Anyway, I had an awesome experience seeing 20+ bombers being engaged and defended by at least 20 players.

I'll have a tweak tomorrow and get a new version to Bliss. Nice to see that the stats and voting work though :)

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Jan-03-2014, 17:35
9./JG52 just escorted two large raids on this mission. Our observations:

1st raid - 24 x He 111's over Boulogne going to London Docks. The raid arrived at Boulogne about 2 minutes early, per the 5 & 10 minute warnings. As soon as they left France the server went unresponsive for ~15 minutes. More on that later. When it came back we spent awhile trying to find the raid again which we did and escorted them home. Can't be sure which target the hit as the server was in limbo at the time.

2nd raid - 14 x Ju 88's we met up with NE of Manston. Followed them up the Thames fending off multiple attacks, they bombed Biggen Hill, and then egress over Littlestone. This entire raid lasted more than an hour during which 2 other raids were announced. As we neared France on the return leg we saw another large group of 12+ returning and another group of 20+ were headed to England. There were probably over 40 AI active at once.

Server going unresponsive: I saw the discussion in the chatbox with Bliss, Snapper, Phil, & Reddog about the server not responding. In this case I would agree with Bliss there are too many AI active at once. However, I have seen this exact same behavior on other ATAG missions (Homeplate, Littlestone invasion) and with Storm of War server during some campaigns which had zero AI. Server would go unresponsive for ~5 minutes then come back with a flood of messages in chat. At the time custom skins were enabled which were then turned off and max players decreased to 80. That seemed to solve the problem. ATAG doesn't run custom skins and specs between the two servers & backhaul connections are very different, so not a perfect apples to apples comparison, but to me there is clearly an issue with the netcode above ~85 players. You might get away with 90-100 for awhile but sooner or later the server is going to go unresponsive. In today's example there were near 100 players on at the time and when it started responding again 40 were left. What to do? If max players were lowered would the overflow go to server #2 or just quit? An interesting experiment might be to cap server #1 & #2 at say 80 players for one weekend and see what happens.


@Reddog, just after you left tonight, the mission started to slow right down. The serve didn't crash though, just the mission. It righted itself after a 15 minute hang, and the mission continued where it had left off.

Now I think the issue relates to too many A.I being present. Some suggested changes;

1. AI raids should spawn less frequently. Maybe 45 minutes apart.
2. Slightly fewer A.UI aircraft per raid. Say, reduce by 10%.
3. AI raids should NOT attack coastal airfields between Ramsgate and Littlestone. Their flight-path back to the wall-of-death is too short. Not enough of them get knocked down and subsequently there are too many AI in play, as the next lot spawns in.

And yes, the next set of raids attacked Biggin Hill, after you left! They are changing targets. More reason to increase time between raids though, to reduce chance of them being assigned a target that is about to be destroyed by a previous raid.

I would think 75-90 minutes between raids with how deep they are going. Escorts need a chance to land and refuel. IMO a few large raids (~20 a/c) would be better than many smaller ones. The Thames and Hastings approaches of the bombers are welcome additions as it has certainly increased their chance of survival.

SoW Reddog
Jan-03-2014, 17:49
Cheers Hans Gruber. Glad you like the new spawn locations and the routes they give. So you think that bigger but much more infrequent raids would be better? You know better than I the demands on an escorting fighter! :)

As for the idea of lowering the player limit, I suggested as much earlier but doesn't look like Bliss wants to pursue that idea. I still believe that we have enough players to populate more than ATAG server no1. Where the players who can't get in go is a good question.

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-03-2014, 18:29
Cheers Hans Gruber. Glad you like the new spawn locations and the routes they give. So you think that bigger but much more infrequent raids would be better? You know better than I the demands on an escorting fighter! :)

As for the idea of lowering the player limit, I suggested as much earlier but doesn't look like Bliss wants to pursue that idea. I still believe that we have enough players to populate more than ATAG server no1. Where the players who can't get in go is a good question.

We can try both ways. I just know for 3.0 and the netcode stuff that we were able to have 100 players all the time with my missions. We actually used to have the server set to 125 if you remember, but steam didn't like that very well. 100 was not an issue though.

Either way we'll try it both ways. When 4.01 comes out, then we can setup the 2nd server full time as well. Something to think about anyhow.

92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Jan-04-2014, 04:50
You might get away with 90-100 for awhile but sooner or later the server is going to go unresponsive. In today's example there were near 100 players on at the time and when it started responding again 40 were left. .

I've noticed instability on many missions when players are above 90. It seems to be a combination of players+A.I. that does it. I think that reducing time between A.I. raids should be priority #1 for now.


What to do? If max players were lowered would the overflow go to server #2 or just quit? An interesting experiment might be to cap server #1 & #2 at say 80 players for one weekend and see what happens.
.

It really is a shame that players seem to give up if they cannot get into ATAG server 1. I'm sure we'd all love to see three different servers, each with 70 players in, rather than just one server with 95 in, and no others... But, players are players, it's hard to encourage behavior.

SoW Reddog
Jan-04-2014, 07:51
OK, have revised the script, so AI will spawn at max 3 not 4 raids concurrently, and the times have been massively increased as follows:
Under 20 players from 10 minutes to 20 minutes
Under 60 players from 20 minutes to 40 minutes
Over 60 players from 25 minutes to 80 minutes

Have also finally fixed the Hawkinge "bug", and removed the player number being posted all the time...

9./JG52_J-HAT
Jan-04-2014, 08:58
Good job, Reddog, thanks again!

Kling
Jan-04-2014, 10:29
OK, have revised the script, so AI will spawn at max 3 not 4 raids concurrently, and the times have been massively increased as follows:
Under 20 players from 10 minutes to 20 minutes
Under 60 players from 20 minutes to 40 minutes
Over 60 players from 25 minutes to 80 minutes

Have also finally fixed the Hawkinge "bug", and removed the player number being posted all the time...

Well done! Im thinnikg maybe the last change from 25-80mins is a bit excessive... hoe about from 25-50min?

Cheers

SoW Reddog
Jan-04-2014, 10:45
Well done! Im thinnikg maybe the last change from 25-80mins is a bit excessive... hoe about from 25-50min?

Cheers
I'm going from Hans Grubers suggestion that the blues need time to land and reorganize between raids, and also the need to make sure the ai are not spawning too frequently.

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-04-2014, 21:56
Updated mission is on the server.

Thanks Reddog! :salute:

Also check PM!

=vit_unit=
Jan-06-2014, 00:57
Hello.
Yesterday Werra and me bombed airbases at Hawking, Littlestone and Kently on ju-88/he-111. But nothing happened to these airbases. Though in briefing it says all red airfields are destroyable.
What can it be?

92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Jan-06-2014, 02:42
Hello.
Yesterday Werra and me bombed airbases at Hawking, Littlestone and Kently on ju-88/he-111. But nothing happened to these airbases. Though in briefing it says all red airfields are destroyable.
What can it be?

More bombs needed. It's not like the Home-plate mission.
You do not get "% destroyed" message in London Raids. You only get "light", "heavy" and "destroyed".

LuseKofte
Jan-06-2014, 04:05
I have flown these new missions for a whale as a luftwaffe bomber pilot. I love the challenge of finding the targets and hitting them from high altitude.

However I do not know if the one mission that is to kill 4 airfield vs 60 downed ac is one of these. I have a complaint about that particular mission. I have flown in it several times in my trusty old Heinkel loaded with 250 kg bombs. Now after two weeks I see that 8 250 kg bombs have little to none effect. It is the number of bombs not kilos that counts.
Is it possible to get the number of kilos to count more than the number of bombs.

=vit_unit=
Jan-06-2014, 05:08
More bombs needed. It's not like the Home-plate mission.
You do not get "% destroyed" message in London Raids. You only get "light", "heavy" and "destroyed".

And how do I know whether airbase get light/heavy damages or not?
How many are bombs needed to destroy an airbase? Or should I burn everything there including AA guns, buildings, statics and etc?

92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Jan-06-2014, 05:20
And how do I know whether airbase get light/heavy damages or not?
How many are bombs needed to destroy an airbase? Or should I burn everything there including AA guns, buildings, statics and etc?

You need "x" KG of bombs on the airfield (no need to destroy each building).

Reddog can tell you what "x" is... I don't know it.

LuseKofte
Jan-06-2014, 07:09
Tis is the bug it isn't x kg of bombs, it is x number of bombs You do more damage as is with 10 50 kg bombs than you do with 8 250 kg bombs. It

ATAG_Lolsav
Jan-06-2014, 07:28
Tis is the bug it isn't x kg of bombs, it is x number of bombs You do more damage as is with 10 50 kg bombs than you do with 8 250 kg bombs. It

I can understand why you were writting in this thread, since both missions, Homeplate and this one needs bombs on airfields, but you are typing in the wrong thread Jaeger.

Homeplate its a diffrent mission ;)

SoW Reddog
Jan-06-2014, 07:32
Hang on guys, Jaeger are you sure you're talking about London Raids and not Homeplate?

vit_unit - every 5 minutes or so there will be a message in the server info window which will say something like:
RAF Hawkinge Light Damage
RAF Manston Heavy Damage
RAF Kenley Critical Damage
RAF Biggin Hill Knocked Out.

It takes 10000kg's of bombs to knock out an airfield, and it definitely works from the weight of bombs, not the number of them. You don't have to destroy any buildings, statics, aircraft or anything like that, just drop the bombs within the airfield radius and them explode.

As Phil says there's no immediate feedback that the damage amount has increased like there is in Salmo's Homeplate mission although when the airfield IS knocked out there will be a HUD message across all players screens to that effect.

If the message isn't coming up in the server info window or across the screens, then there's something wrong however it worked perfectly in testing and previous versions and what I changed should have had zero impact on that aspect of it.

Please make sure that you're posting comments in the relevant mission's thread (unlike me yesterday lol) and give the version number of my mission (which is shown when you join the server and enter a plane).

=vit_unit=
Jan-06-2014, 08:19
Thank you, guys!
Maybe it is better to get such info via TAB menu.

LuseKofte
Jan-06-2014, 17:58
Shit sorry it is Homeplate not london mission, sorry. I like london Raids that is a keeper sorry again I will shut it right now.
Somewhere down the line I got this all wrong.

Like this picture here , it sure say more than a thousand words ever could. I am bad with English word
https://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/s403x403/526677_10150648012773386_950924910_n.jpg

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Jan-12-2014, 17:45
v2.3?

18 plane formation of Do 17's arrived over Calais with about 90 players on. We had a strong escort with the bombers, several JG4 & 9./JG52 109's as close escort. Then the server lagged out for about 10 minutes until mission recovered. By that time everything had dispersed and some red pilots got themselves some nice cheap AI kills. No sooner had the server recovered than another bomber raid spawned in with about 10+ bombers over Boulogne. Just my opinion still too many AI, too often. It is nice idea but the netcode cannot support it with all the AI.

One other thing is the time remaining in mission information was different. The scrolling objectives in chat console reported time remaining as 4 minutes but <tl reported 2 hours + remaining. The mission did not end after 4 minutes.

I hope that is helpful.

SoW Reddog
Jan-13-2014, 02:45
Thanks Gruber.

Can I ask a couple of questions:

1) the AI should be spawning in with that many players no faster than 80 minutes. Sounds like that's not the case?
2) There should be no more than 3 raids at any one time active. Do you know if that was right?

The <tl function is server side, and I believe hard coded to 6hrs. The mission is set for 4 hrs. That's why there's a discrepancy.

As for the mission not ending, I don't understand as it works perfectly on my machine.

I'm going to ask Bliss to pull it till I can rework it.

JG4_Widukind
Jan-13-2014, 07:20
v2.3?

18 plane formation of Do 17's arrived over Calais with about 90 players on. We had a strong escort with the bombers, several JG4 & 9./JG52 109's as close escort. Then the server lagged out for about 10 minutes until mission recovered. By that time everything had dispersed and some red pilots got themselves some nice cheap AI kills. No sooner had the server recovered than another bomber raid spawned in with about 10+ bombers over Boulogne. Just my opinion still too many AI, too often. It is nice idea but the netcode cannot support it with all the AI.

One other thing is the time remaining in mission information was different. The scrolling objectives in chat console reported time remaining as 4 minutes but <tl reported 2 hours + remaining. The mission did not end after 4 minutes.

I hope that is helpful.

aggree full with Gruber
...its boring when the Server crasht....stand still and come back.
pls stop or turn the Number of AI Planes down.

Thx

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-13-2014, 07:46
Thanks Gruber.

Can I ask a couple of questions:

1) the AI should be spawning in with that many players no faster than 80 minutes. Sounds like that's not the case?
2) There should be no more than 3 raids at any one time active. Do you know if that was right?

The <tl function is server side, and I believe hard coded to 6hrs. The mission is set for 4 hrs. That's why there's a discrepancy.

As for the mission not ending, I don't understand as it works perfectly on my machine.

I'm going to ask Bliss to pull it till I can rework it.

3 raids going on at the same time is way too much (assuming they have 18 planes per group). Think of an AI as a human in net code function. Realistically there are 126 network slots available in cliffs of Dover. So in that sense, if there's 100 players on you can only have 26 AI planes in the air at one time. (This is my rule of thumb as my missions with AI and 100 humans don't crash) Any more than that and it's bound to hang. But that is also the extreme end of the spectrum of what's possible - pushing it to the edge. That is why the timings of when current AI flights spawn /despawn and the number flying at once are so critical. It can't be guess work as I found out long ago watching the server do the same thing - crashing etc.

SoW Reddog
Jan-13-2014, 08:53
As I said Bliss, in the face of these issues and the other comments, just take it down.

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Jan-13-2014, 16:51
Thanks Gruber.

Can I ask a couple of questions:

1) the AI should be spawning in with that many players no faster than 80 minutes. Sounds like that's not the case?
2) There should be no more than 3 raids at any one time active. Do you know if that was right?

The <tl function is server side, and I believe hard coded to 6hrs. The mission is set for 4 hrs. That's why there's a discrepancy.

As for the mission not ending, I don't understand as it works perfectly on my machine.

I'm going to ask Bliss to pull it till I can rework it.

The bomber finder only showed one raid active. I think when the server lagged enough players dropped that the script thought it was OK to spawn a new wave.

I don't know if the mission was supposed to end or not but you can control the <tl response in your script with ticktime.

Don't let it get you down, mate. It's a fun mission but there is no way you can predict what will happen with 100 players. There's just no way to replicate that in testing. It would be interesting to try a version with no AI. Maybe on a future bomber night? ;;)

SoW Reddog
Jan-13-2014, 19:15
Well in that case, there is clearly an issue with the netcode. If its lagging with 100 players and ONE raid of 27, that's basically what Bliss says it can handle, but clearly can't.

I've reduced the AI to max of 9 per raid, and a max of 2 raids active at any one time. If that still causes issues then I really can't be bothered trying to fix it anymore. In my mind, there's not much point in me putting any more time into missions if we can't push the boundaries at all.

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-13-2014, 20:03
Well in that case, there is clearly an issue with the netcode. If its lagging with 100 players and ONE raid of 27, that's basically what Bliss says it can handle, but clearly can't.

I've reduced the AI to max of 9 per raid, and a max of 2 raids active at any one time. If that still causes issues then I really can't be bothered trying to fix it anymore. In my mind, there's not much point in me putting any more time into missions if we can't push the boundaries at all.

It's the fact that all those AI are in one spot as well. But I don't understand the thing about pushing boundaries comment at all. Don't you realize what we are already doing in Clod can't be done by any other modern sim out there already? Clod has set the MP bar already. I mean, you can barely get 20 in a server in DCS and 70 in ROF is pushing it unless you have no objects. 46 servers are set at 90 players and have 0 AI in them and no scripting at all. The boundaries have long been pushed comparatively. That's why this whole thing is being modded in the 1st place. Nothing can compete with it in those regards. People are going to have a rude awakening playing MP in other sims in comparison. So don't worry m8. The boundary walls have been blown to bits with this already.

edit: so don't give up. I did the same thing and I try to tell the "what I've learned" to all mission builders in the game. You gotta realize, I've been fortunate to essentially have 3 years worth of beta testers on the server so I could see 1st hand what works and what doesn't. I've probably uploaded 1000 different versions of the same mission to finally get them to work properly (ie not worry about them with a full server). Unless you had experience mission building for 1946, no mission builder would know the limits in the 1st place. And 1946, for instance, couldn't even have AI in DF mode until only recently. The entire AI thing for this game came about just so, essentially, when there were hardly any players on people would always have something to shoot at, not to mention all the problems with the sim at the time. And because of that, I think, it stuck. In 1946 we never used AI. Everything was always 100% human flown. The only mission types allowing it was coop and SP for the longest time. So again, don't worry about it. What's going on already is astonishing in comparison to the other stuff on the market. And I highly doubt anything will be able to compete with it in ability anytime soon.

Kling
Jan-13-2014, 21:22
Maybe its really time to have two separate server with 60 players max instead?! Seems like we are getting more and more players every day...

RebelSqurl
Jan-13-2014, 21:43
Kling beat me to it. A second server might be worthwhile to invest in, not only due to the current limitations on number of players-plus-AI, but also from the standpoint of giving players more choice as to what missions to fly, if the rotations are staggered between servers. (Littlestone Seelowe on one, for instance, and London Raids v. 2 on another...)

92 Sqn. Philstyle (QJ-P)
Jan-14-2014, 01:48
Kling beat me to it. A second server might be worthwhile to invest in, not only due to the current limitations on number of players-plus-AI, but also from the standpoint of giving players more choice as to what missions to fly, if the rotations are staggered between servers. (Littlestone Seelowe on one, for instance, and London Raids v. 2 on another...)

There are already other servers. There is already a second (SOW) and a third (Spits v 109s) server.
It's just that nobody seems to use them. When ATAG is full, no one else seems to want to go online!

Kling
Jan-14-2014, 07:28
Yes its psychology.. they have to be named the same thing and there must be no difference between them. i.e running the same maps but a bit unsynchronised..

ATAG_Ribbs
Jan-14-2014, 13:57
Also..if the human numbers were capped at lets say 50-60, it might give the mission makers more leeway on objects and features to add to immersion..instead of tapping out the resources elsewhere? just a thought

ATAG_Lolsav
Jan-14-2014, 14:17
Also..if the human numbers were capped at lets say 50-60, it might give the mission makers more leeway on objects and features to add to immersion..instead of tapping out the resources elsewhere? just a thought


Ribbs, the solution now on the server is a mix compromise. I wouldnt go so down on human players, because, lets face it, its much more rewarding to face a human opponent. 100 players is a very round number and evryone can see thats a "wow" number when it comes to multiplayer games. CLOD will never be a mass game like theres warcraft and such, but to have 100 human pilot aircrafts its a hell of a show. The mission makers will have to keep in mind those numbers when designing, having to choose if they concentrate AI objetcs (moving ones) in one single and big wave (imagining bombers) or to split them.

Meaning, if there is room in the netcode for 26, the waves have to be split into 13 if there will be 2. Or there can be room for one single and much more impressive wave of 26.

Personnaly i would go for option 2. The size "counts". Plus it enhaces the hunt and simplifys the job for escorts.

Usualy, when flying on blue side, pilots tend to abandon the wave going home just because they know where will be one fresh with bombs, while the egressing wave has fullfilled their purpose.

Zisi
Jan-17-2014, 15:30
... but to have 100 human pilot aircrafts its a hell of a show ...
...
Personally i would go for option 2. The size "counts". Plus it enhances the hunt and simplifies the job for escorts ...


Agreed!

LuseKofte
Jan-17-2014, 18:31
If there was to be two servers one should be placed in europe. Many are like me having way too high ping

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-17-2014, 19:04
If there was to be two servers one should be placed in europe. Many are like me having way too high ping

Your ping doesn't matter that much. It's the consistency of your connection. People played on IL246 with 56k modems with 400 ping just fine. From Europe to the server, I highly doubt you even have over 150 ping.

Ping 216.52.148.29. You might be surprised.

vranac
Jan-17-2014, 19:21
It's just improve your shooting. I don't see any difference on ATAG where I have 180 ping and on AX with 80 ping.

Record tracks guys and watch them. DM in this sim is fantastic. It counts where you hit :)

LuseKofte
Jan-17-2014, 23:16
Well I have in my mind this bombing at 6000 mtrs with 160 in ping is not so good.
But I hit something so it cant be that bad. Also I get this every second time not result on bombing in a Heinkel witch I thought might be a ping thing since my computer is on the other side of the world bombing a computer on the oposit side of the world I guess I think wrongly about it then

ATAG_Bliss
Jan-17-2014, 23:43
Well I have in my mind this bombing at 6000 mtrs with 160 in ping is not so good.
But I hit something so it cant be that bad. Also I get this every second time not result on bombing in a Heinkel witch I thought might be a ping thing since my computer is on the other side of the world bombing a computer on the oposit side of the world I guess I think wrongly about it then

I'd say if you can hit anything at 6000m, you're doing something right. If you remember it wasn't till very late in the war where bombsites on the heavies even became remotely accurate. Even B17's had their fair share of misses. A Ju88 or He111 at the time of the BoB couldn't hit the broad side of a football field at that type of altitude. So I'd say you're doing quite alright :D

Atreides
Feb-08-2014, 17:25
About the mission: London Raids v2.

I flew this mission tonight and I just want to say it's easily my favorite. I love how you have to strategically plan if and which secondary airfields you should bomb. Also dogfighting Spitfires over London after a long flight towards it is just epic! I think you hit the ClOD experience just right with this one. It's a good mix of planning, endurance and action.
Thanks for having this in your server-rotation :thumbsup:

CanvasKnight
Feb-09-2014, 14:52
For the secondary objectives like the Radar stations, is there a way for us to check which ones have been destroyed? Or does the objective checking <obj command only list the primaries? I always hesitate when I am deciding which RDF station to attack since I'm not sure if it will display which ones have been knocked out, or if there will be a way for me to check if my strike destroyed it. Thanks in advance for any clarification!

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Feb-12-2014, 19:33
Reddog, I'm guessing you don't have any script to disable a/c abandoned by humans on this mission. Is that correct? I say this because when I land on this mission, turn off my engine, and then exit the a/c (either through alt+F2 or spawn new) the AI restarts the engine and begins to taxi around the airfield before the despawn timer removes the a/c. On Saturday this mission was running when a very long server timeout occurred, during which time many players quit the server yet their a/c already in air kept flying. We ran into several AI fighters just doing lazy circles over wherever they happened to be when the players quit. Just wondering if you have tested what happens if a player exits the server from an a/c already in flight on your mission when you are not using a script like this: http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8027

Also, I am 99.9% sure the server timeouts are caused by new AI waves spawning in. I witnessed a few this past weekend and every time they were proceeded immediately by HUD messages of a new bomber wave needing escort. One of them occurred on one of my missions which was a real :stunned:

SoW Reddog
Feb-13-2014, 03:30
Its funny because I have yet to see a timeout or a freeze or any sort of impact what so ever of spawning in AI bombers on my machine. In fact I stress tested spawning 60 bombers over Dover and Folkstone within 3 seconds of each other, flying to Hawkinge and then back to France with 12 squadmates on my locally hosted game. While frame rates for some were low, it was playable and clearly far in excess of what I'd attempt to do in mission. The AI in London Raids current version is now at max NINE aircraft. That's it. What were the player numbers when you saw these freezes? Everytime I've seen a freeze it's been with high player numbers. Every time.

As for the AI despawn/player exiting aircraft, I was under the impression that the despawn under such circumstances was handled by the server running some sort of dll behind the scenes, the same one that provides the <tl and <obj functionality. If I'm wrong then yes, we will have an issue with this. I will look into it.

SoW Reddog
Feb-13-2014, 03:36
For the secondary objectives like the Radar stations, is there a way for us to check which ones have been destroyed?
Not currently. I might work something up.


Or does the objective checking <obj command only list the primaries?

I don't know if <obj even works in London Raids. I am not sure how that works to begin with since it's server side not in the mission.


I always hesitate when I am deciding which RDF station to attack since I'm not sure if it will display which ones have been knocked out, or if there will be a way for me to check if my strike destroyed it.
There should be a message in the server window to confirm that a radar station has been destroyed.

EG14_Marcast
Feb-13-2014, 04:05
I don't know if <obj even works in London Raids. I am not sure how that works to begin with since it's server side not in the mission.



It works, but not for the degree of damagement of the airfields.

SoW Reddog
Feb-13-2014, 04:15
Thanks mate. The script that shows that runs every 5 minutes I think so I guess that's often enough for people to know?

9./JG52_J-HAT
Feb-13-2014, 08:03
I miss the large raids from the beginning :ind:

Last time I played the 9 bombers were down to 1 before we could even get to them.

EG14_Marcast
Feb-13-2014, 09:18
Thanks mate. The script that shows that runs every 5 minutes I think so I guess that's often enough for people to know?

Yes, absolutely. Ah, I noticed that the script also gives the Hawkinge's damage. But I assume it's not a target, isn't it?

9./JG52_Meyer
Feb-24-2014, 16:03
Hello fellas i have a question about this mission, last night 4 times myself or one of my staffel had badly damaged an enemy plane only for it to dissapear in front of us. The name of the pilot would come up as left the server. So for example i had hit a spit just off France he was damaged and leaking so i had then hit him some more on other passes i then got behind him to fire some more when he just vanished ! . I have never seen this before is it a bug or a new script thing thats been added to get planes out of the server to ease up on server strain or so?.
This has just happened again tonight , im sorry if this has been brought up before and is being looked at

ATAG_Snapper
Feb-24-2014, 18:40
Hello fellas i have a question about this mission, last night 4 times myself or one of my staffel had badly damaged an enemy plane only for it to dissapear in front of us. The name of the pilot would come up as left the server. So for example i had hit a spit just off France he was damaged and leaking so i had then hit him some more on other passes i then got behind him to fire some more when he just vanished ! . I have never seen this before is it a bug or a new script thing thats been added to get planes out of the server to ease up on server strain or so?.
This has just happened again tonight , im sorry if this has been brought up before and is being looked at

Hmmm, sounds like the pilot(s) simply exited the game. If it was just one occurrence then I'd suspect a launcher.exe crash, but if it was four different guys then I'd say they "rage quit" on ya.

9./JG52 Ziegler
Feb-24-2014, 19:36
I saw it too. Was the weirdest thing. In one case I was behind Meyer as we pounced on a wounded contact and it just vanished right in front of us. Not like vanished against the sea or anything, it was there in the gunsight and then gone poof! Right after it vanished you do see a so and so left the server so maybe Snaps is right but it was irritating because you lose any credit for the bounce.

ATAG_Snapper
Feb-24-2014, 19:46
That's annoying, to be sure. When I get shot down (which is often) I like to at least see who got me before I sign off for the night -- which means the victor(s) get credit for the kill.

SoW Reddog
Feb-25-2014, 02:19
It could be that the Red player had strayed over the wall of death. Was it near the French coast?

Edit. Rereading Meyer's post, I can confirm there's nothing different in this mission to others (AFAIK) that would make someone "exit the server". I can only conclude that either
a) someone's found a way of deleting their plane when they rage quit instead of it being taken over by AI - This is highly unlikely IMO.
b) Someone quit the server, the aircraft was taken over by AI, then "cleaned up" by the usual despawn scripts that take care of left planes. - This is possible
c) Someone strayed over the wall of death, and ignored the messages. - Pretty sure I changed the current version to delete the plane. - This is pretty likely the situation if they're near France.

I can change it back, I can't remember why I changed it in the first place.

On another note, I see that the mission is still failing to end at the correct time. I'm now completely out of ideas, as there's absolutely nothing I understand about this situation!.

JG4_sKylon
Feb-25-2014, 04:20
Hi Reddog,

i hope i don´t mix the different maps and to be in the correct thread.
One target in London Raids is the Oil Power Plant at AP27.3 (i am not sure of the coordinates and can not check as i am not at home now).

We did several raids on it and i have to report an issue we all had with identifying the target.
When approaching the target location we all were not able to see the little black dots one usually sees from distance.
There was no marking at all indicating the targets position.

I then circled around the target, 2000 meters high, horizontal distance was less than 1 k.
I still was not able to see a black dot or the target at all when suddenly the buildings popped up... at first they had the same color as the weed, like Camouflage painting.
After some more seconds the regular textures showed up and the target was full visible.

Can u please have a look on this as it was not only me experiencing this strange behaviour.

Thanks alot for this great map and your time.... and next time u chase a bomber back to France.... :salute:

SoW Reddog
Feb-25-2014, 04:32
Hi Reddog,

i hope i don´t mix the different maps and to be in the correct thread.
One target in London Raids is the Oil Power Plant at AP27.3 (i am not sure of the coordinates and can not check as i am not at home now).

We did several raids on it and i have to report an issue we all had with identifying the target.
When approaching the target location we all were not able to see the little black dots one usually sees from distance.
There was no marking at all indicating the targets position.

I then circled around the target, 2000 meters high, horizontal distance was less than 1 k.
I still was not able to see a black dot or the target at all when suddenly the buildings popped up... at first they had the same color as the weed, like Camouflage painting.
After some more seconds the regular textures showed up and the target was full visible.

Can u please have a look on this as it was not only me experiencing this strange behaviour.

Thanks alot for this great map and your time.... and next time u chase a bomber back to France.... :salute:

sKylon, unfortunately this is a huge issue for me too. Many of the object buildings appear to be invisible when they first render at a distance as they seem to be transparent and take the base ground texture. It's annoying as hell, but it's nothing I've done. I'm not sure if there's anything TF can do about it at this stage, I have mentioned it a couple of times. I will see if I can find an object which does render as a dot, so you can find it.

About the other thing :-P:-P:-P

Not sure if the bomber was flying through trees or what, but it was seriously low so kudos to your mate. Should have been a dead duck, if only the Spitfire speed wasn't so borked currently.

JG4_sKylon
Feb-25-2014, 04:49
Reddog,

he was flying above tree top when over England as i escorted him all the way back after bombing the power plant.
I am wondering that u did not see me all the time.
Sorry for offtopic .

SoW Reddog
Feb-25-2014, 04:57
Reddog,

he was flying above tree top when over England as i escorted him all the way back after bombing the power plant.
I am wondering that u did not see me all the time.
Sorry for offtopic .

No worries. I did see you initially, but thought you were two bombers initially. Then I lost you over England, found you off the coast again. I'm guessing you were the higher contact? I presumed you were another bomber, right up until the point I realised you'd disappeared, and by then it was too late to worry about it to be honest.

Wouldn't mind, I only wanted to try my new convergence and loadout briefly. Got shot down on AX 5 times in a row without firing, then you kill me, then I spend half an hour chasing a 109 at ground level where I should be faster for my GF to get home and be locked out lol. Last night was NOT a good flying night lol.

9./JG52 Hans Gruber
Feb-25-2014, 12:24
The planes despawning too quickly was on Homeplate.

Salmo
Feb-25-2014, 19:13
Not sure if it's the London raids mission or another mission. But I'd like to report a possible bug. It's the mission with 3 blue airspawns south-east of Isle of Wight. I spawned in at Shroham & at Ford, and at both red bases there were Italian BR-20's available. Is this correct?

SoW Reddog
Feb-25-2014, 19:23
That's Gruber's mission, and it is by design - an attempt to even the bombing ability.

Salmo
Feb-25-2014, 20:30
That's Gruber's mission, and it is by design - an attempt to even the bombing ability.

thanks

ATAG_Deacon
Mar-01-2014, 14:56
Firstly, this is an awesome map/mission. However, the past two weekends it's failed to 'restart' the server at the end of the 4 or 6 hours. I'm not sure if it's a scripting issue or what he issue is, I just wanted to bring it to the authors attention. Hopefully it can be fixed.

SoW Reddog
Mar-01-2014, 15:29
Deacon, I've "fixed" that several times. It doesn't seem to work on ATAG and I don't understand why. I've asked bliss to send me the log file that the mission writes, it might give me some clues. Other than that all I can do is apologise.

ATAG_Deacon
Mar-01-2014, 18:31
Deacon, I've "fixed" that several times. It doesn't seem to work on ATAG and I don't understand why. I've asked bliss to send me the log file that the mission writes, it might give me some clues. Other than that all I can do is apologise.

~S~ Reddog,

No worries brother. I didn't know it had already been addressed. Just happy that you're aware :)

Deacon