THE BUTCHER - SP scripted campaign [Fw190]

[Yogiflight]

I tried mission #1 and 2 one time each, #2 didn't work, in #1 the AI taxied really good, they needed much less time to reach their starting position. The only thing I saw from my perspective,was aircraft #3 having a short drift through the starting run, but tookoff without larger issues.

[Jade_Monkey]

I made some tiny progress. Removing all the airfield buildings seems to help, so I'll keep we orking on this.

[Chief_Mouser]

I just completed Mission 2. All of the planes taxied ok, but no.2 crashed into a searchlight when taking off. He was going slow so may have done something before that as well. It's a good mission though - I downed two Sturmoviks, one quite spectacularly in a ball of fire, picked up a fuel leak but still made it home.

Good stuff, cheers.

I may have misled you here. This was the second mission, not mission 02. In 02 the AI stayed sat on the runway. I taxied around them and completed the mission on my own - caused a mighty pile-up on the enemy runway as well - then landed back at base by hitting the deck well in front of these three stay-at-home johnnies!

Cheers.

[Jade_Monkey]

Hahaha I'm glad you were able to complete it anyways.

 

Regarding the order of the missions, I added the prologue at the very end (it was an afterthought) so i had to insert it there as mission 00 instead of 01.

 

I have submitted a request to review the AI because someone else seems to be having the same issues with takeoffs.

[Beazil]

What a great campaign this was. Very atmospheric and well done. I really enjoyed it. Thank you!

[Jade_Monkey]

Thanks Beazil!

 

Did you have any issues with AI taking off by any chance?

[Zippy-do-dar]

Did you have any issues with AI taking off by any chance?

I had a try last night mission 2, AI just sit on the runway I see all communications  and permissions to take-off 

I'll taxi around them next time

[Jade_Monkey]

Yes, thanks for reporting it.

 

The damn planes will take off if you strafe them though...

 

Hoping the next patch will fix it.

[Beazil]

Thanks Beazil!

 

Did you have any issues with AI taking off by any chance?

once in a while. I found the solution was simply to taxi a bit closer to the lead aircraft, then the ai would know to lift.

[Falcon41]

Jade,

     Just flew the first mission and loved having to taxi to the takeoff point, particularly with all the airfield equipment around.  Great work and I look forward to more of your missions.

[Redglyph]

Thanks for the campaign, Jade!

 

I was just flying the first mission against the IL2s, and it was really great. I was always a big friend of missions starting from the parking area and the airfield looks fantastic, with all those aircrafts, trucks, and goods. Taxiing behind the other 190s to the runway and starting together with them, and flying not as the leader, was an outstanding experience. Thank you very much, again, for sharing this, the first mission was really big fun, i am very much looking forward to the following missions.

One thing, I think I noticed, I think the No.4 skin for the player is different to the AI skins. I gotta look at this, when flying the next mission.

 

That's strange, perhaps there was an update but in my case I'm starting in the air, almost colliding with other airplanes which I think are my flight (no names though). After landing, just as the plane slows down, it quits immediately (once it said failure, don't know why, once it said success...). I didn't see the IL-2's either, only Ju-52's, but the start is a blast through the whole pack, that must be it

 

So it didn't wait a full stop as said in the OP - or perhaps I misunderstood, to me a full stop is after shutting down the engine.

 

Really enjoyed the bit of flying past the transporters, I think it would be even more immersive with a few tweaks:

- knowing what is our place in the first mission, which flight is it, name, are we leader, or what is our place in the flight?

- the flight should probably be a little further apart in a loose formation when accompanying much slower Ju-52's

- I'd put a bit more of the travel with the pack, instead of directly rushing to the approach

- the taxiing at the end would be nice, I definitely found the abrupt end a bit frustrating and unexpected. Not sure what the criterion for success/failure was either?

Edited December 22, 2017 by Redglyph

[Yogiflight]

Hi Redglyph, it is a little misunderstandable. What you were flying is not the first mission, but the prelude to the campaign. It might be that I already have an updated version, because in my campaign menue, it is mission '00 - Prologue - Arriving at the frontline'.

Yes you are right, you have to watch out, not to crash with the other members of your flight. That you don't travel with the pack is ,because you are not the escort of it. There are some Mc 202 fighters escorting the Ju52s. When you are at the east end of your airfield, look to the east and see the nav lights of the whole bunch circling at Surovikino airfield, waiting for their permission to land.

The missions end, as soon as your aircraft stops, so keep it moving, until you reach your parking area. It should be a success, as soon as you land on your airfield, so might have been a bug.

There is currently a bug with starting in mission '02 - Morning Surprise'. I tried it yesterday, but my sqadmates didn't start. So I passed them and flew the mission without them.

The coming missions start in the parking area with engine off, so have fun.

 

Greetings Yogi

[Redglyph]

Ah, that explains it, thanks!

[Redglyph]

Very fun so far!

 

In mission "01" (so to avoid confusion, the 2nd mission), 3 times out of 4 the 3rd FW190 has some issues while taking off, at some point he stops accelerating, steers left and is quite slow, then he eventually goes out of the runway and gives up. I almost hit him 2 times... It's safer to wait until the 3 wingmen have taken off before starting down the runway. That's most obviously an AI bug, but perhaps worth mentioning in the briefing.

 

Naming the wingmen so we know they belong to the same flight would be nice.

 

The end is very frustrating again, it would be great to be able to taxi but it forces the mission end even if the airplane is still rolling. It would be so much better to keep the standard way of ending (which also allows to see the log and debrief).

[Yogiflight]

In mission "01" (so to avoid confusion, the 2nd mission), 3 times out of 4 the 3rd FW190 has some issues while taking off, at some point he stops accelerating, steers left and is quite slow, then he eventually goes out of the runway and gives up. I almost hit him 2 times... It's safer to wait until the 3 wingmen have taken off before starting down the runway. That's most obviously an AI bug, but perhaps worth mentioning in the briefing.

Yes happened to me, too. But I am used to it, as it quite often happens in my PWCG missions with the 190, too. If you stay on the runway, there shouldn't be a problem, I never hit one of those AIs. Of course, now that I wrote this, it surely will happen.

EDIT: I already made a bug report about this issue.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Yogiflight

[Redglyph]

At least they are lining up for take-off fast enough 

 

In another campaign I tested, it takes one of them more than 10 minutes to taxi and take position on the runway, with more than 5 minutes just crawling on the runway to its take-off spot! I don't know why they advance by little jumps, surely it's quite bad for the engine when they give such surges of power when it's still cold.

 

It seems the problem is often with the last AI aircraft, the others also move strangely by little jumps, but they're faster and take off normally. AI has always been a difficult part to program.

 

Another issue I had with mission "01" - when I hit the IL-2's at some point they don't seem to either react or even get any damage!! Is that on purpose? If so, I must re-iterate this: please let the user keep their freedom of choice, don't force their action (end of mission, cease fire, ...) as in an arcade game, because that's what it seems to look like :/

 

EDIT: found the offending Mission End Translator, just edit the timer trigger before and add 15 or 30 minutes, or delete it entirely

Edited December 23, 2017 by Redglyph

[Yogiflight]

 

 

In another campaign I tested, it takes one of them more than 10 minutes to taxi and take position on the runway, with more than 5 minutes just crawling on the runway to its take-off spot! I don't know why they advance by little jumps, surely it's quite bad for the engine when they give such surges of power when it's still cold

This issue was in the 'Butcher' campaign aswell, but it completely changed with the last update.

 

 

Another issue I had with mission "01" - when I hit the IL-2's at some point they don't seem to either react or even get any damage!! Is that on purpose? If so, I must re-iterate this: please let the user keep their freedom of choice, don't force their action (end of mission, cease fire, ...) as in an arcade game, because that's what it seems to look like :/

I never noticed something like that. Sounds very strange. Even when I attacked the singleseater IL-2s, northern of our position, it worked pretty well.

[Jade_Monkey]

There are a few bugs right now, mostly concerning taxiing and takeoff.

 

• The main one that I haven't been able to fix so far is that in mission 02 other planes are not taking off. It was introduced in the last game patch and I hope it's gone with the next one. Otherwise I might have to trash the missions and start from scratch.
• The slow moving planes are part of the AI taxiing logic. It's a bit annoying but at least in SP you can fast forward at x8 speed.

[Yogiflight]

The taxiing is since the last patch no issue anymore. The slow moving is during takeoff in FW190. Sometimes AI try to takeoff with less power, it seems like half power. They leave the runway to the left and make their takeoff run with very low speed. You have to pass them during your run and when you are in the air, you can see them still on the ground with their nav lights on. Sometimes they crash, but most times they make it in the air a few hundred meters behind the end of the runway.

[Redglyph]

The taxiing is since the last patch no issue anymore. The slow moving is during takeoff in FW190. Sometimes AI try to takeoff with less power, it seems like half power. They leave the runway to the left and make their takeoff run with very low speed. You have to pass them during your run and when you are in the air, you can see them still on the ground with their nav lights on. Sometimes they crash, but most times they make it in the air a few hundred meters behind the end of the runway.

 

The taxiing is still a problem, and probably with all the planes (and I'm not even talking about the irrealistic taxi behaviour of some of the flight models).

 

It's obviously a problem with the FW190, they are advancing by giving big surges of throttle, as said before, then they wait to stop until the lest "leg", doing a few meters at a time.

 

With the Ju-87 it's even worse, they can take as much as 10-15 minutes to taxi and get to their take-off position.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Redglyph

[Redglyph]

Mission 04, there's a strange issue when the engine fails, it shows "You have been killed".

 

The events connected to that are only "OnKilled" so I'm not sure why this is happening, perhaps when there is no OnDamaged event handler?

 

As usual, there's also the issue of the sim terminating when the airplane slows down on landing, just the matter of removing the Translator mission end (or slowing down the timer).

 

Not an easy mission, AI doesn't seem much interested in the bombers, nor in combat in general  

[Jade_Monkey]

If your engine is hit badly enough, the game will consider you are dead, you meaning the plane as an object and not just the pilot.

[Yogiflight]

That is, unfortunately, the way the game handles this. As soon as your aircraft is damaged seriously enough, that you won't be able to make it back to your airfield, you count as lost. This also means, that AI won't take notice of you anymore, so enemies stop attacking you, friendlies don't fly with you anymore. It works the same way, when an AI aircraft is that seriously damaged.

[Redglyph]

Well, I just had the situation in which I was about to land, I could have done it even without power, and the game quit on me because of the engine state. They should definitely not do that.

 

Anyway, mission 05, I have massive stuttering over the battlefield. I think there are too many units on the ground since I'm still experiencing a bit of stuttering once the enemy fighters have been dispatched and the Ju-87 are back home. That's with my configuration of course.

 

The flight keeps performing circles over the battlefield after the fight, it could come back to the airfield sooner, if there's any control over that in the mission editor. I went back on my own and left the others turning in circles ;-)

 

Finally, I couldn't see any waypoints on the mission map at the briefing. Not a big deal, all I had to do was follow the others. The heading to the pocket and the landmarks (the river and town, for ex), make it easy for the way back.

 

Another "funny" event, I was in the pattern for landing, two other stukas as number 1 & 2. Number 1 was leaking oil and fuel, at some point after 1 and a half circuit over the airfield he radioed "out of fuel" and made an emergency landing in a field, not sure why he didn't land before, he had plenty of time. He could also have shortened the last downwind and land safely. AI's a bit too rigid when landing, and they are following one another too closely, I think, which forces them to make more loops before landing. I'm wondering how they used to do that, back then.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Redglyph

[spamRoast]

So I too am another person experiencing the problem with takeoffs on the morning bombing run (2nd mission I think).
 

The first time I played it the AI did the takeoff just fine but I had to leave the game before I finished. Now, no matter what I do, they just don't takeoff. I've gotten in the proper formation each time as far as I can tell.

 

One thing I noticed is that before I've gotten close to where I should be in formation, my player calls out that he's ready for takeoff. Basically, right after I enter the runway and when I've lined up behind #2 but when I'm still far back and still taxiing to the proper position. The AI even begins asking for takeoff permission while I'm still taxiing to the proper place. It's like the mission thinks I'm in position when I've lined up but when I'm still far back and taxiing forward.

 

Is there an update on this issue or a trick to it that I'm missing or something? I can't seem to get it to work.

PS - really like this campaign so far, the taxiing and airfields just make it that much more immersive.

 

EDIT:

My bad. I didn't see this post. Do you mean you hope it's gone with the 3.001 update or something else? I'm new here.

• The main one that I haven't been able to fix so far is that in mission 02 other planes are not taking off. It was introduced in the last game patch and I hope it's gone with the next one. Otherwise I might have to trash the missions and start from scratch.

Edited February 14, 2018 by ugh

[Jade_Monkey]

Yes, hopefully there is a fix in 3.001.

[sinned]

What a lazy way to not fix poorly designed missions. Just push off to devs. Wait for updates.

[Yogiflight]

The mission was designed pretty well and ran without any issues before the big FM-patch. So the mistake was not on Jade_Monkey's side. There were quite a few things in AI behaviour broken with this FM-patch.

[Jade_Monkey]

What a lazy way to not fix poorly designed missions. Just push off to devs. Wait for updates.

What a lazy way to criticize without reading the whole thread.

[THERION]

What a lazy way to not fix poorly designed missions. Just push off to devs. Wait for updates.

 

What a lazy jerk to blame someone's effort and good will - I guess you are one of those who want it all and for free.

And of course you won't do anything for others and for free. Why don't you make it better?

[spamRoast]

Yes, hopefully there is a fix in 3.001.

 

Cool thanks. I'll try taxiing around them and attempt the mission solo for now. If only I knew of this problem when they actually took off that first time lol.

 

I only recently got this sim and wasn't aware it allowed user generated content yet so that was a nice surprise and your missions add to an already great sim... so thanks! Inspired me to look into the mission building myself.

Edited February 16, 2018 by obit

[sinned]

What a lazy jerk to blame someone's effort and good will - I guess you are one of those who want it all and for free.

And of course you won't do anything for others and for free. Why don't you make it better?

I dont need free things. To support, i buy contents and campaigns that i dont even bother to fly or play.

 

Showcasing bugged missions yet having an attitue of "hopefully it will be fixed somehow" is just a complete waste of time.

 

I dont mind spending to support but i do mind wasting my time downloading bugged out campaigns.

[Jade_Monkey]

Cool thanks. I'll try taxiing around them and attempt the mission solo for now. If only I knew of this problem when they actually took off that first time lol.

 

I only recently got this sim and wasn't aware it allowed user generated content yet so that was a nice surprise and your missions add to an already great sim... so thanks! Inspired me to look into the mission building myself.

 

Definitely take a look at the guides an videos for the mission editor.

 

It really is a lot of fun once you master the basics.

[deimos256]

Does this work in 3.001 by chance?  

[Jade_Monkey]

1 hour ago, deimos256 said:

Does this work in 3.001 by chance?  

It will. Im going to include a series of improvements:

- Russian localization (thanks to community members)

- friendly/ enemy territory when bailing out

- increase unit counts on ground and air

- fixes to AI taxiing.

 

No ETA yet.

[deimos256]

Awesome can't wait!

[Hank]

Hello all from snowy Russia!

I'm also really looking forward to when I can play the campaign in version 3.001

Edited March 27, 2018 by 1/SG2_Hank

[Blitzen]

Jade Monkee - any chance of this being updated for 3.001?

[Jade_Monkey]

On 4/16/2018 at 11:18 AM, Blitzen said:

Jade Monkee - any chance of this being updated for 3.001?

Yes, i was about to release it when i found more bugs with new takeoff behavior. 

 

Unfortunately life got in the way and i have to deal with family matters first. Ill work on this when things settle down.

[BadBud]

Where do I download in BoS to enable it to play? So far no joy.

Badbud