Carrier Operations in Up-coming Pacific Theatre .

[jaydee]

Hi all ! I was just reading the Post by Mystic about the P47. There was a bit of discussion about Carriers, Multi-Player, Co-ops etc.

There were also some comparisons to 46.

If I can give my 2 cents worth.

(1) Regarding 46 : I think most of you (that Flew 46) will agree  that BOX has come on in Leaps and Bounds since. FM,EM etc have improved. My point is, It is going to be so much Harder to Fly from a Carrier. It wont be like 46. ( I loved my Seafire on SOV )  .. Its going to be Right or Crash ! Which is Great ! imho.

(2) 46 and Multi-Play . I remember the FRUSTRATION of waiting to enter the Server, being on the flight-deck and someone Lands on me. Sometimes it was chaos !

I would like to make some suggestions to Mission Designers (Servers) ?

 (a) Have a Land (Island) Base and the Carrier Group 25-50 KM  Further from the Front.....The Pilots who (maybe don't have much time to spare in RL) want a quick fix can fly from the Land Base. They  can also land back at the Land base quickly.... The Pilots who want to fly from the Carriers have time to Organise /Climb...They  have to Navigate back to the Carrier.

 (b) Have 2 Carriers. One for landing and one for take-off...with Triggers. ..In BOX Moscow map, if you keep flying East you will be "Turned Back" !.. Have a "NO Landing" Trigger around the take Off carrier ?

 

Lads, I know it early days and probably Pre-mature but if we give our opinions now, the Devs and Mission Designers will have our opinions... NOW...

I know they will deliver what they Can and tell us what they Cant.

Carrier Operations : How is it going to work ? Your Thoughts ?

j ~S~

 

[coconut]

Have 2 Carriers. One for landing and one for take-off...with Triggers. ..In BOX Moscow map, if you keep flying East you will be "Turned Back" !.. Have a "NO Landing" Trigger around the take Off carrier ?

 

You can't really prevent people from landing any place and any time they want. You can however control when and where people spawn.

Have 3 carriers, 2 of which are open for spawning / take off at any time, with the third one being available only for landing. I'm counting on only half the planes that take-off making it back to land, but obviously the ratio can be adjusted.

 

Another problem could be people not flying proper patterns. It's not a big problem on runways, but on carriers it becomes more important. Maybe the circuit should be drawn on the map, and the game should recognize when a player enters and follows the circuit. A sort of ATC, in other words.

 

Anyway, there will always be chaos on public servers open to everyone. I think carrier ops will shine in more organized sessions.

 

I mean, there's already chaos now. How many times have you flown back to base heavily damaged and found yourself swearing at the people entering the runway and speeding up right under your nose?

Edited May 25, 2017 by coconut

[Ribbon]

In RL when runway is busy you go on go-around and wait your turn to land. Maybe spawning could be time delayed by that or pilot on approach could get warning from control tower that runway is busy.

After all this is sim and we like immersion of that kind.

Or in MP you have two carriers in formation marked with numbers on deck so wgen you approach control tower point us to carrier for landings while other one is for spawning and takeoff

[216th_Jordan]

I actually think carrier landings will be easier in this sim than in old Il-2. Alone the ability to stall your plane and not enter a tipstall necessarily (Important for 3 point landing and not possible in 1946) helps greatly. Additionally the landinggears seem resonably stronger than in old Sturmovik.

 

I think it's going to be great fun!

[No145_Bunny]

I think there is an easy answer to this... I think (not being a developer of course) :-)

 

lets all have a Spawn Queue !

 

So if 10 people join a coop / mission and there are only 5 slots on the carrier, the 1st 5 to join get allocated the 5 slots and then everyone else gets a place in the queue. The game could even tells us our place in the queue..... "Dear pilot, please wait you are 3rd in the queue"...... " you are 2nd in the queue".............."start your engine, you are next !"  etc...

 

Im British and we are really great at queuing :-)

[Hoss]

Hayrake.................. don't forget to implement Hayrake for navigation back to the boat.  There are no landmarks to navigate from at sea...................  So don't forget the Hayrake.....................  and different channels for each Carrier, just like in Pacific Fighters...............

 

Cheers

 

Hoss

[Riderocket]

I don't mind chaos!.. As long as there's no noob sitting at the front of the carrier because he doesn't know how to start his engine!

[Fern]

 

Im British and we are really great at queuing :-)

 

[edited]

 

One more remark like that one and you will be facing a time in the thinking corner.

 

No start up sequence...Spawn in with engines running. Create an artificial hold back system so idiots that spawn in with engines full power dont run into the rear of their mates or off deck unintended. Display techno chat on side "holdback engaged, release to take off"....then let the chaos ensue.

 

Or servers will have to create a team deathmatch style map with rounds where everyone goes up at once and there's no takeoffs after the initial takeoffs. Then the survivors return to land. Round/Wave 2 starts...takeoff, assault, land, repeat. Stragglers that didnt make the takeoff are force to become gunners or anti aircraft gunners aboard ships or certain roles on deck or airstarts. 5 Rounds/Waves and done. I dont see a WoL style match working well with carriers...

Edited May 25, 2017 by SYN_Haashashin

[Riderocket]

[edited]

 

No start up sequence...Spawn in with engines running. Create an artificial hold back system so idiots that spawn in with engines full power dont run into the rear of their mates or off deck unintended. Display techno chat on side "holdback engaged, release to take off"....then let the chaos ensue.

 

Or servers will have to create a team deathmatch style map with rounds where everyone goes up at once and there's no takeoffs after the initial takeoffs. Then the survivors return to land. Round/Wave 2 starts...takeoff, assault, land, repeat. Stragglers that didnt make the takeoff are force to become gunners or anti aircraft gunners aboard ships or certain roles on deck or airstarts. 5 Rounds/Waves and done. I dont see a WoL style match working well with carriers...

There is already a hold back system, If you spawn in with engine running and 100% throttle, it'll stay at 0% until you move your throttle down or up.

 

Edit: If you want round based game play, go play WT.

IMO round based game play in a sim is very unrealistic.

Edited May 25, 2017 by SYN_Haashashin

[coconut]

 

 

Or servers will have to create a team deathmatch style map with rounds where everyone goes up at once and there's no takeoffs after the initial takeoffs. Then the survivors return to land. Round/Wave 2 starts...takeoff, assault, land, repeat. Stragglers that didnt make the takeoff are force to become gunners or anti aircraft gunners aboard ships or certain roles on deck or airstarts. 5 Rounds/Waves and done. I dont see a WoL style match working well with carriers...

 

Depends on what you mean by survivor. If people who were shot down but survived can continue, that's OK. Otherwise it's just a race to whoever loses all their planes first, which is the system WarThunder uses. Because of that, most rounds end not because of objectives being achieved, but because one side ran out of pilots first. In other words: air quake.

[Fern]

IMO round based game play in a sim is very unrealistic.

 

I dont think it would be realistic having random planes taking off from a carrier. It's more air quakey if you Puhdrinkin it and then respawn again, which in turn could screw up someones landing. Squadrons at a time took off right? 

 

I like the idea of a squadron leaving together, returning together. I'm just thinking of ideas to ease frustration we will have with carrier ops is all.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Fern

[Jade_Monkey]

Another arcadey solution that most won't like is disabling collision with other planes while on deck. Everyone floating around like a ghost.

[Mesha44]

You could discourage landing by rigging a landing barricade. That would prevent aircraft from landing and plowing into those waiting to take off.

 

Techno chat should give it warnings, Lexington is now conducting aircraft launching. LSO should wave off any aircraft trying to land.

 

Once all players have spawned and taken off the deck is clear for landing operations, a message is sent out, the landing barricade comes down. Players can then land

[[DBS]Tx_Tip]

Anyway, there will always be chaos on public servers open to everyone. I think carrier ops will shine in more organized sessions.

 

 

Word.

 

Hayrake.................. don't forget to implement Hayrake for navigation back to the boat.  There are no landmarks to navigate from at sea...................  So don't forget the Hayrake.....................  and different channels for each Carrier, just like in Pacific Fighters...............

 

Cheers

 

Hoss

Could very well be mistaken but thought Hayrake wasn't implemented until after Midway. Additionally on some operations such as the Feb. 17-18 1944 raid by the 5th Fleet on Truk Lagoon. Hayrake and all communications were prohibited due to the close proximity of the fleet to the atoll. 

Probably a very good idea to have something for the casual player or DF servers with regards to locating their home carrier though. Otherwise folks will just have to "View the Briefing" for ships course and speed after launch and do the calculations to and from the target. 

Now where's those old WWII copies of the Naval Aviation News which always had at least one of Granpa' Pettibones navigation exercises included.

 

You could discourage landing by rigging a landing barricade. That would prevent aircraft from landing and plowing into those waiting to take off.

 

Techno chat should give it warnings, Lexington is now conducting aircraft launching. LSO should wave off any aircraft trying to land.

 

Once all players have spawned and taken off the deck is clear for landing operations, a message is sent out, the landing barricade comes down. Players can then land

We can discourage spawning by deactivating the Carrier(Airfield) when certain events happen now using anyone of several different MCU to trigger it. So your not far off. Not sure folks would see a barrier unless they correctly entered the abeam portion on their circuit prior to picking up the LSO on turn. So perhaps having some type of lighting system could be implemented. Thinking HUD message rather than Tecno as that is often overlooked whereas a message in your face waving you off would perhaps get the message across.

 

Thinking the Carrier (Airfield) would need to have some type of the Complex Trigger MCU built in so perhaps the Mission Designers would be able to regulate any number of things required to assist in limiting Deck chaos so to speak. Will be very interesting in seeing how this whole thing pans out.

 

Sounds like fun to me...

[Hoss]

Hayrake

 

"ZB/YE, also known by some as "The Hayrake" because of the shape of the transmitting antenna on the ship. As I recall, ZB was the receiver in the airplane, and YE was the low-frequency over-the-horizon ship's transmitter."

 

Over-water navigation was always one of the most difficult challenges that Navy pilots faced. Combined with weather which might change rapidly, navigational errors probably killed as many naval pilots as did the enemy. When flying from carriers, pilots were briefed on what courses to fly both outbound and inbound, and were advised of a "Point Option", which was the location the carrier expected to be at the time the pilots returned from their mission.

Things sometimes happened to cause the carrier to alter it's plans and in that case it wouldn't be at "Point Option". In that case, the pilot had two options; conduct a search for the carrier with what fuel it had remaining, or hope to pick up the homing beacon each carrier operated.

All US carriers were equipped at the start of the war with a device called the YE-ZB. This was a UHF (line of sight) transmitter which transmitted a Morse code letter denoting 15 degrees of a circle. If the pilot picked up a Morse "M" for instance and homed on it, then started picking up another letter, he would know he was moving an a tangential course in relation to the carrier; he would then turn and home on the strongest signal. Since this was a UHF device it worked better at higher altitudes. It wasn't extremely reliable and some pilots were better at using it than others, so pilots had differing levels of confidence in it.

Planes with multiple crew members, like SBD's and TBM's had an advantage in that the pilot could concentrate on flying while a crew member was delegated to attend to navigation. Fighter pilots, of course, were most likely to become a victim of faulty navigation because they were by themselves, and air combat with enemy fighters would often cause them to become disoriented as to their location. My father once said he felt that perhaps as many as a quarter of all losses of carrier aircraft were due to the pilot becoming lost, but this, I think, was just a guess. In some exceptional cases, like Mitscher's command at the Battle of Philippine Sea, carriers might display lights at night to help lost pilots. In fact, Mitscher's task Groups not only displayed lights, they directed search lights straight upward, fired star shells, and turned on all deck lights on all ships, escorts included. This confused at least some of the returning pilots, at least one of whom made a landing approach on a destroyer.

 

"Two ways, the old way and the new way.

The old way: USN carrier pilots were generally pretty skilled at navigation. One took into account the mission parameters - - - go so far at such and so speed and on such and so bearing, do whatever you supposed to do, then go back on this or that bearing to find the ship. Each pilot had a plotting board for keeping track of where he was based on the mission parameters. Before taking off, with some notable historical exceptions, he would be given the location of "Point Option" - the location of where the ship expected to be at the end of the time allotted for the mission. So starting from a known point, time, bearing, and distance navigation to another point, do your business, and time, bearing, and distance to a pre-plotted point.

The new way, as DA noted, was utilization of the YE-ZB homing system, developed by Frank Akers, which all USN carriers had at the start of the war. Without going into the boring details, this system used a morse code transmission of a particular letter for a particular bearing, a different letter for each 15 degree sector. This was a UHF line-of-sight system, so the higher you were the better. If the letter you were receiving changed, then you knew you were moving tangentially to the transmission point. You simply found the strongest signal and followed it back to the ship. In the early days of the war it was a fairly new system and some pilots were more proficient with it than others and those less proficient tended to be less believing. For example on the 4 May 42 Yorktown strike on Tulagi, there were 4 F4Fs very hurriedly sent off to deal with some F1Ms that were bothering the SBD and TBD strike planes. After performing their mission, shooting down 3 of the F1Ms, and shooting up a destroyer they happened upon, they started to head back to the ship. The division leader signaled for an increase in altitude to pick up the YE-ZB signal, but his section leader did not see the signal (although the section leader's wingman did). So the division leader and his wingman pulled up through the cloud layer, picked up the signal, and, after milling about a bit waiting for the other two, proceeded back to the ship. The section leader left behind had a problem, his radio did not work. His wingman's did. Eventually they came up through the clouds and the wingman picked up the YE-ZB signal. He also made radio contact with the ship and started flying a box pattern so the ship could get a good radio fix so to tell him which letter he should be listening for. Well, as far as the section leader was concerned, his wingman was flying in all sorts of odd directions for no apparent reason and finally signaled him to knock it off and then led the way back to Guadalcanal where they bellied in on Cape Henslow - - - with the wingman keeping a running commentary with the ship the whole time. Result was two of the ship's 18 F4Fs were lost for no apparent reason. The two pilots were rescued the next day through some extraordinary efforts by the crew of USS Hammann. Apropos of nothing else, I have the original flight instructions for this mission carried by the division leader. It clearly indicates the ship's location relative to Tulagi and the Point Option for the return. The division leader was clear in his recounting that the instructions would have gotten him back to the ship, but the YE-ZB was easier.

Even worse happened at Midway when the VF-8 strike escort improperly used their YE-ZB and all 10 of them ended up ditched at various locations. Fortunately for some of them some rather diligent PBY crews managed to find and rescue 8 as I recall. This was a combination screw up in that the flight was not given a Point Option and their own unfamiliarity with the YE-ZB system sealed their fate. They actually saw the smoke of the US task group off to their north as they headed off into the expanse of the Pacific, but were so screwed up in their navigation that the leader presumed he was looking at the Japanese."

 

Cheers

 

Hoss

[Gambit21]

I have to say everyone, I'm loving the spirit of problem solving and "more than one way to skin the cat" in this thread. Much better than the whiny "it will never work!" attitude we've witnessed from a few.

 

The take away is - one way or another we don't have any real worries. Great bunch of peeps all of you.

 

(touch of smug superiority added for Opcode)

Edited May 25, 2017 by Gambit21

[Tomsk]

I have to say everyone, I'm loving the spirit of problem solving and "more than one way to skin the cat" in this thread. Much better than the whiny "it will never work!" attitude we've witnessed from a few.

The take away is - one way or another we don't have any real worries. Great bunch of peeps all of you.

(touch of smug superiority added for Opcode)

Well you know us Luftwhiners Gambit, we're only *really* happy when we're complaining. And you know there was no 190 in the Pacific, so we've got to scratch the itch somehow

 

More seriously, I'm still kinda sceptical. Mostly because airfields are already a bit chaotic at times, and carriers seem an entirely different kettle of fish. But I guess we'll see

[Gambit21]

There's going to be crashes, just like there are now...more no doubt, but that comes with the territory.

Some servers/rooms will be worse than others, some will have it dialed.

 

I have no doubt that we'll have online maps with land bases to mitigate much of this concern as well, just like we did in 46.

I remember having issues with carriers here and there (when not in CoOps) as I said before, but these instances didn't ruin my experience of the sim/Pacific.

 

As I said I spent most of my online time flying in my own CoOps, or those created by Seahawk89 and a few others - CoOps is where things came alive and any carrier problems

become a non-issue. (falling off the edge of a carrier and into the drink in a Corsair with a full load-out including TinyTim's notwithstanding)

 

Edit: Which reminds me...what is actually preventing BoX from being supported by Hyperlobby? Anyone know?

Is there something intrinsic with this sim that makes it more difficult or impossible?

Edited May 26, 2017 by Gambit21

[JG13_opcode]

There's no "launch game and autoconnect to server" function in this game, which is how HL worked.

[Gambit21]

There's no "launch game and autoconnect to server" function in this game, which is how HL worked.

Thank you

[Fern]

Here's another proposition:

 

The devs will need to start developing F-14s and the USS Nimitz also.

 

Edited May 27, 2017 by Fern

[TG-55Panthercules]

Here's another proposition:

 

The devs will need to start developing F-14s and the USS Nimitz also.

 

 

Although weather and cloud effects in BoS/BoM are pretty awesome, I believe that properly rendering time travel-inducing mega-storm clouds is beyond the capabilities of the Digital Nature engine using today's commercially-available computing platforms, so there's probably no rush for developing the Nimitz and F-14s just yet.

[Ribbon]

Here's another proposition:

 

The devs will need to start developing F-14s and the USS Nimitz also.

 

Martin Sheen?

[TG-55Panthercules]

Martin Sheen?

 

Well, personally I'd probably have gone with Kirk Douglas, but Sheen had a pretty major role in it too.

[Ribbon]

Well, personally I'd probably have gone with Kirk Douglas, but Sheen had a pretty major role in it too.

Ahahaha i forgot that movie exist!

 

And firefox as collector plane will do good job.

Edited May 27, 2017 by redribbon

[TG-55Panthercules]

Besides, the Nimitz and F-14s can wait until either (a) the devs do a prequel expansion for Pearl Harbor, or (b) Hollywood produces a sequel to the movie to cover Midway (perhaps "Final Countdown 2: we'll really accomplish something this time")

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

How do good threads devolve into this nonsense?

[Fern]

HerrMurf, dont knock the mega storm idea just yet. FW190s might be able to come out of it...strictly business in these forums...geez

Edited May 28, 2017 by Fern

[Ribbon]

A bit of humor is always welcome in my opinion!

Back to the topic;

-landing on carriers could be hard? I hope so! That's why we play sims and il2, but eventually we will master it till perfection and those landings with damaged aircraft will provide enjoyment and challenge same as dogfight. At least for me that is great part of this game.

Also missions i hope for either in SP or MP is that we will takeoff from carrier and have area of operations not showing objective (enemy ship/carrier) on the map so it will involve searching it while giving equal oportunity for both sides no matter on players ratio.

Also it could shorten distances between fight areas in MP where time acceleration is not possible.

As a matter of spawning and landing problem in RL sqadrons were taking off and landing together and since it is impossible in MP we can have one carrier for takeoff and another one for landing marked with numbers on deck and flight co trol pointing us to traffic free runway.

If we don't strictly follow historical events in MP i don't see any problem that PTO may cause, same in SP.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Didn't Zekes V Wildcats or Skies solves this in '46 by putting red lights on the fantail of the departure ships and green ones on the recovery ships?

 

And by solve I mean make simple rules for everyone to understand......and simply ignore.

Edited May 28, 2017 by II/JG17_HerrMurf

[Ribbon]

Didn't Zekes V Wildcats or Skies solves this in '46 by putting red lights on the fantail of the departure ships and green ones on the recovery ships?

 

And by solve I mean make simple rules for everyone to understand......and simply ignore.

That will do the job......and there will be always those who ignore rules or simply don't know them //in newbie situation//, that's why alongside green/red light control tower voice/chat message leading pilots on correct carrier could help a lot.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Didn't Zekes V Wildcats or Skies solves this in '46 by putting red lights on the fantail of the departure ships and green ones on the recovery ships?

 

And by solve I mean make simple rules for everyone to understand......and simply ignore.

 

We did that on Battle-field UK servers as well. It worked semi-reasonably. Regulars knew what it was all about (having heard about it or read it in the mission brief) and some new players figured it out intuitively. Other's never did... And never would.

[Sgt_Joch]

Hoss, Post #15, excellent summary.

 

This site has photos of the equipment used by USN pilots, including the Radio homing adapter and the plotting board.

 

 

https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/innovations/148

 

Not sure how the devs will handle navigation since there was no visual homing display, unlike what the Luftwaffe/VVS used in BOS and I would think modeling the actual audio clues would overly complex.

[TheElf]

Hoss, Post #15, excellent summary.

 

This site has photos of the equipment used by USN pilots, including the Radio homing adapter and the plotting board.

 

 

https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/innovations/148

 

Not sure how the devs will handle navigation since there was no visual homing display, unlike what the Luftwaffe/VVS used in BOS and I would think modeling the actual audio clues would overly complex.

 

Better Start learning Morse code!

[Gort]

Plotting boards. Model the pull out plotting board and disable all map functions in the sim. Make this a real Naval Sim, so that poor navigation or SA puts you in the drink. 

 

Then model sitting in a raft for three weeks hoping that a submarine picks you up. If so, then spend another month standing watch on said submarine. Link this baby up with one of the excellent WWII sub sims...

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Fortunately the game is scalable and that won't be the only option available.

 

Fortunately, as well, these Devs are bright folk, experienced game designers and, under Jason's leadership, are pretty receptive to ideas and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. I'm pretty confident they'll figure it out and improve it, as necessary, as we go.

Edited June 17, 2017 by II/JG17_HerrMurf