PWCG for BOS Discussion

[CobraPower]

Hi Everyone,

 

I am currently flying an AR-234 campaign and sometimes get “Contact Patrol” missions. For realism, should I be equipping the recon camera for these missions or is this intended to be visual ID of ground forces only? Thanks!

[Gil57]

11 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Changing the squadron name is simple.  PWCG keys on the squadron code, so changing the name has no negative impact on anything.  

Thanks a lot  

[Gil57]

Just one more question: If I create .json files for the new squadrons (340sqn, 341sqn and 342sqn) with suitable data, and add them in the 'squadron' directory, will it be enough to have them available to begin a usable coop. campaign with them?

[Stonehouse]

It's possible to do. Few things you should know though. Pat understandably doesn't support such custom installs of PWCG and also - based on my own experience - once you begin a campaign with a custom squadron you must continue to keep it available or else you won't be able to load the campaign. So, if Pat updates PWCG and for whatever reason you can't get your custom squadron working under the new version you won't be able to continue your campaign. 

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, Gil57 said:

Just one more question: If I create .json files for the new squadrons (340sqn, 341sqn and 342sqn) with suitable data, and add them in the 'squadron' directory, will it be enough to have them available to begin a usable coop. campaign with them?

 

What @Stonehouse said.  In the case of squadron files PWCG will pick up whatever is there, so it is possible.  I do not support modified PWCG installs, so any issues will not be addressed by me.  There is also a risk of something going wrong with each new PWCG release if you choose to update.  Finally, there are balance issues based on how PWCG calculates out of mission events.  Still, others have done it.  Probably best not to update PWCG in the  middle of your campaign.  If you can get it working as you like then leave it alone.  

 

One thing about PWCG is that you can have as many installs as you want.  So you can keep the normal PWCG install and then just copy the whole folder to PWCGBoSMyCampaign and wallah - you now have your own sandbox.  

[Gil57]

Okay, thx a lot for the answers 

 

I think that 326sqn should actually be replaced by 340sqn or 341sqn as it was in fact in another theater of operation at that time...

The 342sqn (Lorraine) which was stationed at Hartford Bridge (Blackbushe - 02-09 on the Normandy map) between 10-43 and 10/44 using A20 bombers could also be an interesting addition as a bomber squadron in the free french service...

 

Fortunately, the cooperative campaign I plan to do has not yet begun, so I think I shall try to make it with the 341sqn (the most successful free french squadron on the Channel war) with a possible sequel on the Rhine map as both Antwerp, B85 and B105 (existing on that map) were the airfields it used after november 44 until the end of the war!

Edited January 13, 2023 by Gil57

[JG4_Moltke1871]

I have a question for the Bombing missions. I enjoyed to start from parking position (yes it works good on Kuban Map) with a large He111 squad.

But unfortunately the targets aren’t useful for level Bombing. For example when the target is a train station the only destructible target is a train in the station, if I remember right it’s also moving away when the Bombers arrive. Also if the target is an airfield destroyed buildings on it not counts as  a success ground target.

So i never had a good experience with Bomber Missions.

Is it possible overwork the Bomber Missions to give it more logical area Bombing targets like Factory’s or depots?

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

I have a question for the Bombing missions. I enjoyed to start from parking position (yes it works good on Kuban Map) with a large He111 squad.

But unfortunately the targets aren’t useful for level Bombing. For example when the target is a train station the only destructible target is a train in the station, if I remember right it’s also moving away when the Bombers arrive. Also if the target is an airfield destroyed buildings on it not counts as  a success ground target.

So i never had a good experience with Bomber Missions.

Is it possible overwork the Bomber Missions to give it more logical area Bombing targets like Factory’s or depots?

 

Key objects like hangars, industrial, transport, port, etc. should be recorded as destroyed.  They should count as success.  If you have a mission where you believe that you destroyed a target but it was not counted please press "Report Error" and post the zip.  Having the zip would help me to understand any errors that might be there.

[Artfactial]

I'm coming freshly into IL2 Great battles(have a decent amount of hours in IL2 1946 careers).
Damn, this sounds incredible, thank you for your hard and continuous work!<3

 

Edit: Am I correct that we aren't able to use the FW 190 A-3 in the Battle for Moscow that it came with?:\
I see that the wiki mentions that it only entered Easter Front service during the Battle of Stalingrad so I guess that's correct and the collector plane a bit of an anachronism.
Edit 2: Derp. the A-3 was part of BoS, ignore me.>.<

Edited January 15, 2023 by Artfactial

[PatrickAWlson]

6 hours ago, Artfactial said:

I'm coming freshly into IL2 Great battles(have a decent amount of hours in IL2 1946 careers).
Damn, this sounds incredible, thank you for your hard and continuous work!<3

 

Edit: Am I correct that we aren't able to use the FW 190 A-3 in the Battle for Moscow that it came with?:\
I see that the wiki mentions that it only entered Easter Front service during the Battle of Stalingrad so I guess that's correct and the collector plane a bit of an anachronism.
Edit 2: Derp. the A-3 was part of BoS, ignore me.>.<

 

The A3 did not appear until Moscow was over.  Early/mid 1942.  It makes a non-historical appearance after Moscow (the GW-190 was not really at Stalingrad).  I/JG51 is the only unit in the east flying the 190 as a fighter.  JG 54, of course, flew the 190 but they were stationed in areas not represented by GB.

[CIPPOZ]

hello congratulations for PWCGTC I'm starting to understand how to use it, I want to understand and see how the level increases, ie degrees during the campaigns that I will do! are you thinking of putting the stug and the churchill in the PWCGTC? And I saw it's an ALPHA release, does that mean you're still working on it? anyway you are great a great job, thank you so much!

[Gil57]

Once again, thanks a lot for your great work 

 

I finally could add and set up 3 more squadrons in the free french service, 340sqn, 341sqn and 342sqn.

A few remarks and questions:

 

1-The 340sqn "Ile de France"  entered in service on the Channel during year 1942 (it was very active during Jubilee operation over Dieppe - 08/1942) with Spitfires mkVb

   But it seems impossible to begin a career before 1943. Is it possible to enable it for 1942?

 

2-I found that british A20b on the Channel carried most often red code letters instead of "sky" color. It seems to work well but it appears to carry a russian skin (default british camo but with red stars) as a default one instead of a british skin even if I specify "country": "BRITAIN", at the beginning.
Should I have to specify skins in the  "skins": [] part?

 

3-As most of RAF squadrons, they had rest times between combat times (usually in Scotland or in Cornwall stations)

Is there a way to have such 'jump' times in a campaign ?

 

4-What is   "conversionPeriods": [] (always empty) ?

[PatrickAWlson]

@Gil57

1. I can look into Free French.

2. 329 squadron is missing a skin assignment.  Thanks for reporting.

3. You can take leave at any time to skip time.

4. Conversion periods are time off when a squadron converts from one type to another.  They are still used for AI squadron availability, but most of their use has been removed for playability purposes.  Short version is that juggling key events, coop needs, etc. made it too complicated to just pull a unit with a player out of the line for a period of time.  Single player you can simulate a conversion period by taking leave.

@CIPPOZ

I probably do not have the bandwidth to continue development on PWCG TC.   I also do not have what I need (detailed information on terrain) in a usable form to turn it into what I want.  I will get around to including new vehicles, but beyond that I am probably not going to go forward with further development.

[Gil57]

Thank you for the answers 

 

While I was trying to setup skins for the A20s of 342sqn, I searched in your a20b.json file in order to have the correct skins settings and I found a little error that could have bad results in missions, here :

**************

"a20b_blank_03": {
            "skinName": "a20b_blank_03",
            "planeType": "a20b",
            "startDate": "19430101",
            "endDate": "19440601",
            "squadId": -2,
            "country": "Britain",
            "category": "Configured",
            "definedInGame": true,
            "useTacticalCodes": true,
            "tacticalCodeColor": "WHITE",
            "winter": false
        },

*************
Despite carrying a british camo, this skin also carries soviet red stars and should probably been setup as "country": "Russia"

After a few tests, I found that the correct british one for this period could be "a20b_blank_04"

"a20b_blank_05" which carries early british markings and camo would suit well for "startDate": "19390901" and "endDate": "19430301", I suppose 
 

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Gil57

[Mtnbiker1998]

Hey Pat, are there 109E-7s in Normandy during the "BoB?" I've only ever seen F2s, and they put up one hell of a fight against our poor old Hurricanes! Seems like the E-7 would be a staple of "1940" air combat in GB

[PatrickAWlson]

15 hours ago, Mtnbiker1998 said:

Hey Pat, are there 109E-7s in Normandy during the "BoB?" I've only ever seen F2s, and they put up one hell of a fight against our poor old Hurricanes! Seems like the E-7 would be a staple of "1940" air combat in GB

 

BoB in PWCG happens in 1941.  If you think you have it bad in Hurricanes, just think of the poor He-111s facing cannon armed Spitfires  

 

The plane set is 1941 with Spitfire Vs, Hurricane IIs, Stuka Ds, Me 109Fs, etc.  Not that I wouldn't like to do 1940, but the planes don't exist.

[Mtnbiker1998]

58 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

BoB in PWCG happens in 1941.  If you think you have it bad in Hurricanes, just think of the poor He-111s facing cannon armed Spitfires  

 

The plane set is 1941 with Spitfire Vs, Hurricane IIs, Stuka Ds, Me 109Fs, etc.  Not that I wouldn't like to do 1940, but the planes don't exist.

In my defense, I choose not to fly the spits for that very reason haha!

 

Your reasoning makes sense though, and I suppose they didn't have any hanging around in France as Fighter bombers like on the Eastern front

[PatrickAWlson]

3 hours ago, Mtnbiker1998 said:

In my defense, I choose not to fly the spits for that very reason haha!

 

Your reasoning makes sense though, and I suppose they didn't have any hanging around in France as Fighter bombers like on the Eastern front

 

Agree that the Hurricane is more fun during the BoB time frame, even if you do have to face off with F2s.  The Hurricane does become more of a fighter bomber when PWCG reverts to the real timeline (Oct 1941).

[21.Gr.CT.Ludovisi]

Hi, I found some post about editing the name of the squadron (e.g. give a custom name), but I really don't understand if 1) it is possible and 2) how to do that. Thanks for help.

[Picchio]

On 03/10/1941 near Mjatlevo.
A Bf 109 F-2 of II./JG52 crashed.
Hptm Gunther Rall was killed in action

 

Uh-oh...

[TheSNAFU]

2 hours ago, Picchio said:

On 03/10/1941 near Mjatlevo.
A Bf 109 F-2 of II./JG52 crashed.
Hptm Gunther Rall was killed in action

 

Uh-oh...

Yikes, there goes some history lol! 

[Patricks]

On 1/16/2023 at 4:05 PM, PatrickAWlson said:

I probably do not have the bandwidth to continue development on PWCG TC.   I also do not have what I need (detailed information on terrain) in a usable form to turn it into what I want.  I will get around to including new vehicles, but beyond that I am probably not going to go forward with further development.

Sad that the developers don't seem to see the value of creating proper consistent links/exports for 3rd party developers. You offer us a great expansion of the series that expands it's life and helps keep the community growing. Same goes for IL2 Dials exporter, he has to dig deep to pull data that should be available, and every update breaks something new. Truth is, if not for PWCG for offline and Flugpark/Combatbox online I would likely be playing something else more..

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

On 1/13/2023 at 5:04 PM, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

I have a question for the Bombing missions. I enjoyed to start from parking position (yes it works good on Kuban Map) with a large He111 squad.

But unfortunately the targets aren’t useful for level Bombing. For example when the target is a train station the only destructible target is a train in the station, if I remember right it’s also moving away when the Bombers arrive. Also if the target is an airfield destroyed buildings on it not counts as  a success ground target.

So i never had a good experience with Bomber Missions.

Is it possible overwork the Bomber Missions to give it more logical area Bombing targets like Factory’s or depots?

 

I also had the problem on Normandy map, I bombed an airfield, which was the target but the airfield buildings even when hit were not destroyed and not recorded as destroyed. I even created a test mission flew to the airfield with invincibility and unlimited ammunition, but all buildings (hangars, fuel tanks, tower) and objects (trucks) at the target airfield were indestructible, no aircraft were there. Patrick could you check that there is not a problem with airfield attack mission template? Thanks for all your work. 

[PatrickAWlson]

@Rudolph Same response: press "Report Error" and post the zip file.  The contents of the zip will contain the mission file, your campaign, and the output logs for the mission.  With that I have a chance at figuring out what happened.

 

These issues where the user flies a mission and does not get the results that they believe they should are impossible to track without data.  Maybe the issue is in game. Maybe the issue is in PWCG.  Maybe I can't do anything about it.  Maybe there is no issue at all and your perception is wrong (shocking thought, I know, but it does happen   ).  Without the data I can't tell.  

[Varibraun]

5 hours ago, Patricks said:

Sad that the developers don't seem to see the value of creating proper consistent links/exports for 3rd party developers. You offer us a great expansion of the series that expands it's life and helps keep the community growing. Same goes for IL2 Dials exporter, he has to dig deep to pull data that should be available, and every update breaks something new. Truth is, if not for PWCG for offline and Flugpark/Combatbox online I would likely be playing something else more..

 

100% agree!  Anything the Devs can do to make life easier for @PatrickAWlson would seem to be a no-brainer from a business perspective for them.  IMO - Pat has nailed the Dynamic Career Campaign better than anything available in the ENTIRE flight sim market right now.  He has only done this for the BoX/FC franchise most recently within just a month of release he single handily managed to expand the 1C BoN to include a full 1941 -1945 war career taking advantage of the A/C already in our hangers (and he gave us the option to complete the war in the east through 1945 long ago).  PWCG STILL remains the only way to have a WWI career.  PWCG options & immersion is what will keep many in the SP community in BoX vs. their increasing strong WWII competitors.

 

Pat is an amazingly talented software engineer who very rarely lets his frustration come through in the forums in dealing with the code, but his unsuccessful efforts to really tame TC into a reasonable career product show where the Devs could probably really help him out if they were willing to communicate with him directly on occasion.  From what I can tell, this doesn't happen and he is left to experiment in his own free time.  Seeing him likely throw in the towel on TC hurts the franchise...I hope the Devs see that and can appreciate his value if they are willing to really consider it.

 

Maybe your idea of exploring a direct communication link/tool is something @Wardog5711 could add to his (long) to-do list to mention up the chain of command?

[Wardog5711]

@Varibraun

Done. I've dropped that off with the CM team. Lets see what happens..

[Patricks]

Just now, Wardog5711 said:

@Varibraun

Done. I've dropped that off with the CM team. Lets see what happens..

 

Thank you @Wardog5711! 

 

[Varibraun]

3 minutes ago, Wardog5711 said:

Done. I've dropped that off with the CM team. Lets see what happens..

 

REALLY appreciate the great job you are doing here...S/F! 

[Patricks]

17 hours ago, Varibraun said:

 

REALLY appreciate the great job you are doing here...S/F! 

Yes, if it were the "old guy" it would be "Thread CLOSED!"....

[Jasper859]

Is there a way to do campaigns with lend-lease/captured aircraft? As in doing P51s with the British or P47s with the Germans, etc. It seems that the equipment request only allows you to select aircraft from the same nationality as the campaign.

 

I couldn't find any posts about this, so sorry if it has already been discussed.

[Robi89]

5 hours ago, Jasper859 said:

Is there a way to do campaigns with lend-lease/captured aircraft? As in doing P51s with the British or P47s with the Germans, etc. It seems that the equipment request only allows you to select aircraft from the same nationality as the campaign.

 

I couldn't find any posts about this, so sorry if it has already been discussed.

It's theoretically possible, but involves editing the .json files in the Input folder. Do this at your own risk.

[Jasper859]

15 hours ago, Robi89 said:

It's theoretically possible, but involves editing the .json files in the Input folder. Do this at your own risk.

I appreciate that info. I seem to have it pretty figured out and working okay. The only issue I am running into is that you can only set the squadron to use official skins and not custom ones. Except of course going through and manually doing it for each pilot in the campaign and not the .json

 

**Edit: I just had to change the skins to not be defined in the game for it to be custom ones

Edited January 26, 2023 by Jasper859

[PatrickAWlson]

5 hours ago, Jasper859 said:

I appreciate that info. I seem to have it pretty figured out and working okay. The only issue I am running into is that you can only set the squadron to use official skins and not custom ones. Except of course going through and manually doing it for each pilot in the campaign and not the .json

 

**Edit: I just had to change the skins to not be defined in the game for it to be custom ones

 

You can configure the squadron to use a custom skin.  PWCG does it constantly.  Most of the squadron skins are my own creation based on the templates.  Only the British use the raw templates because they really didn't have squadron symbols painted on their planes.

[JG4_Moltke1871]

I hope with the next upcoming patch you can continue your work on Flying Circus Western Front map.

Here a list of things maybe you like to change/improve/ fix/I request:

 

-please remove WW2 AA. Especially soviet 61k on trains … It’s like shoot a chicken in the face with a shotgun.  ?

 

-can’t reduce the fuel load, please fix.

 

-Airco not change the Bomb load for the squad if change in the mission menu (other planes not checked yet)

 

-please check the attacker’s cruise speed, seems too slow right now.

 

-is it possible to extend the rendezvous point for the escort pick up? So far sometimes it’s hard to hit that point if it’s generated in the maps nowhere.

 

-is it possible to implement the rearm/refuel system ?

 

My best regards and thanks for your great campaign generator so far. ??

[JG4_Moltke1871]

Ooops, please ignore the big letters, I just copied from my notes ?

[Guest deleted@219798]

Will there be a later version of PWCG FC that uses the Western Front map?

[PatrickAWlson]

12 hours ago, kestrel444x500 said:

Will there be a later version of PWCG FC that uses the Western Front map?

 

For FC II?  Yes. 

For FC III?  TBD, but probably.

[Guest deleted@219798]

5 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

For FC II?  Yes. 

For FC III?  TBD, but probably.

Thanks, looking forward to it. Thank you for making PWGC for Il-2 and RoF.

[Przemro]

Are V1 rockets intercept missions still planned for PWCG BOS? I remeber it being mentioned as far away plan, but I dont recall seeing it, and I never got it while flying if its in there.

[PatrickAWlson]

17 hours ago, Przemro said:

Are V1 rockets intercept missions still planned for PWCG BOS? I remeber it being mentioned as far away plan, but I dont recall seeing it, and I never got it while flying if its in there.

 

Yes in the brain but no ETA.  There are several aspects that do not fit into PWCG's current structure that have to be resolved.