It’s 5:30am on the morning of July 27th, the weather is misty and promises to be hot. Convoy Able is moving from Poole harbour to Southampton docks for loading.
Unfortunately for the pilots stationed of Tangmere, Westhampnett and Ford, the convoy has been spotted by a recon Condor out of Le Harve. It looks like its going to be a busy day…
Mission start time: 9:30pm, possibly earlier depending on numbers
Where: Launching from the CoD client list.
Server: EAF92_Keets, usual password.
Looking forward to it.
I’ve been thinking about the issue of killing off aircraft when they’re no longer needed in the mission. There are some scripts out there that will do the job but one simple way I found before I started looking at scripts is to give them a landing base.
In the missions I’ve been testing with, I’ve given the AI groups a route back and a landing airfield. What I’ve witnessed so far is that the AI will land at the base, taxi to a dispersal area then disappear after a couple of minutes. Maybe this will help?
Let me know if you want me to give you a hand with any testing.
Cheers,
WB.
Would be good to reduce their speed at certain waypoints so we can maul them, rearm and then go at them again, especailly as a group/pairs. Chasing them flat out can take an age and tends to split us up after the first attack. - Not sure this is possible with the current sim though?
I know what you mean. Where I want to get to is to be more historically accurate. Dowding would have had your guts for garters for chasing enemy a/c over the channel and risk losing a valuable pilot.
This mission might play slightly differently as we’ve got to patrol more and protect a convoy throughout the mission. Without giving too much away, there will be multiple attacks, but the convoy has to be protected. So going Rambo over the channel won’t work.
I’m still experimenting with “stuff” as there’s heaps of potential for mission design/perpetual coop as well as massive scope for tailored stats - which we all like to admire after the event.
Not sure this would be historically accurate. However, the multiplayer system in CoD allows for dogfight missions to behave like a mixed dogfight/coop mission in the old IL2FB. IE you can have AI flights and players can drop out and join in at will.
What’s nice about the missions like the one Keets has prepared is that for example: we could take off as a Sqn from Biggin Hill, meet an attack on the convoy, land at one of the forward bases like Tangmere, rearm/refuel (in reality generate another aircraft), scramble again to meet another raid and then return to Biggin. Rinse and repeat all night if desired.
It would take a little bit of organising between pilots so that we can form a cohesive unit between attacks instead of taking off again in ones and twos but it should be workable with a bit of effort.
The other nice thing is that each pilot can create some AI buddies to fly with. So for example, if there were four of us in the mission we could each ‘create’ a flight of 3 and therefore represent a Sqn of 12 aircraft. (Caveat - this is how I think it works, I’ve only tried this today in a server that I created. Though it shouldn’t be too hard to test out)
The more I get into the CoD FMB the more I find to like about it. (Cut and paste little vignettes for example).
Really looking forward to this mission on Thursday.
Cheers,
WB.
Yep, that’s pretty much how it works and worked last week. We had the mission going for around 2 hours with various attacks coming in. Another good thing with these coops is, if pilots join late, they’re not excluded.
As per my previous post, the convoy and having something to defend, should keep us near where we should be and repelling attacks.
The difficulty as you’ve said is staying together. Not sure how to do this as we get shot down at different times. What we may want to suggest is that a standing order is we only take off in a minimum of pairs. This too may make us less willing to throw away our virtual life.
hey fellas…btw…do you need a voulonteer to fly the rusty and horrible 109:bootyshk:???
Hey Seyou
Couldn’t you take a Fiat instead. It’ll make life for us a lot easier 
@Seeyou - I’ve not implemented the Axis side as flyable, as its more of an historical campaign. If I implement the axis side, then there would be less emphasis on coop and it would be easier to join the ATAG DF server.
There’s plenty of rusty allied aircraft for you to fly, so come on in.
We are an allied squad after all. :rolleyes:
Lol Somone won’t be happy of this 
He’s completly taken by the dark side, but he promised me that in official war missions he’ll fly with us
@whiskey on Atag2 they are experimenting the rearm/refuel but they have still some problems/bug
Ps i’m away till next week included but would really like to shoot down some stukas attacking convoys
Re: The battle area, I’m not sure if this has any impact on performance. I think its used so that the game AI ground controller can give positions of enemy formations. I just tried it in a d/f mission. Firstly I set up a group of bombers outside the battle area. The ground controller gave me the formation position in terms of a bearing and range but there was no coordinate info. I then altered the battle area to include the area where I spawned and where the enemy formation was flying. This time I got the usual range and bearing info as well as an ‘Enemy formation in G13’
I can’t see what other use the battle area has. The whole BoB map is loaded regardless of the size of the battle area selected so I don’t see that it will affect performance.
As per Jimmsi post having a standard battle area covering the whole map has its benefits.
For Keets: On a side note if you hold the A key in the FMB you can click and drag to create the battle area rather than having to enter the coordinates manually like we did a couple of weeks ago.
WB.
Quick reminder of tonight’s BoB mission in CoD. Details in first post.
I’ve updated with WB’s airfields template and I’m going to go with the full sector (battle area) map as a test.
If it goes tits up, we can revert to the previous version.
My batman is laying out my flying gear right now.
I’ll see you on the flight line 
If it goes tits up I was never here OK?!
WB.
With the Boss cracking down on paperwork, as long as tits up doesn’t create paper work I’m OK with it.
Dear all, sorry i came home really late yesterday due to my job.
As per fly allied off course…eaf is an allied squadron:o…and as Jimmy said in any official EAF partecipation off course I will fly allied plane:)
I just tought that’s is more immersive to have some human to fight against instead stupid roll ai as in COD.(ai fighter FM is really unreal)
Anyway I have to repair my trhottle before…
as per Brigstock, It will be lovely and an hnour for me to study and fly on the FIAT!!! :)
S!
Excellent fun last night. Seeing the large formations was awesome. Didn’t like the dastardly hun shooting me up at the very end though. Sneeky buggers!
WB.
Mission battle area made no difference on performance, so I’ve for the settings as per Jimmi’s post. (to the full area)
Mission log - http://92squadron.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bob-mission-stepping-it-up-to-cod.html
By co-incidence the mission we flew on Thursday was over the same place I went sea fishing the day after. The screenshot of Convoy Able in the blog is approximately where I took this picture looking back towards Poole Harbour.
Love the blog - shame I missed the mission, looked really good Keets.
Hope to spend a week in Swanage next year with the family - looks lovely
minus the stukas