Murleen/Pat - Adding Airfield Parking

[DD_Fenrir]

Hello chaps, I was wondering if you can help.

 

I'm having an issue with a competitive Co-op campaign I'm trying to initiate for my squad and hoping you can help.

 

It's not an error in PWCG per se, more a logistical limitation.

 

 I've created a new squadron: 402nd Fighter Squadron flying P-38s  based out of Florennes. It's generating missions so the new .json I created appears to work - yay!

 

So with the guys wanting to do Start from Parked and taxi to the runway I set to adminning the users.

 

I added Coop users and started to assign personas but as soon as I hit number 12 - BOOF! - error. Funny, but in the interest of working around it and getting going with the campaign I limited the squad to eleven pilots and created a new squadron the 485th, similarly based out of Florennes flying, you guessed - it P-38s.

 

PWCG also seemed ok with this and generated a mission with 14 pilots spilt evenly twixt the two squadrons. Great! Or so i thought....

 

However, spawning in parked I end up with the 485th & 402nd aircraft spawned inside each other. Game did not like this, engines would not start - no go.

 

Okay, I thought, shame but in the interest of cracking on, spawn hot on runway it is.

 

Nope, same happened again!

 

So my question is two-fold - is there any way to increase the number of start parked positions available at Florennes to allow for the all the users to not spawn occluded, or, if not, is there any way to make the hot start on runway give sufficient distance between the two units to avoid the same?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Fen

Edited April 22, 2020 by DD_Fenrir

[PatrickAWlson]

Nothing wrong with pushing the envelope, but I think you might be outside it at this point  .  

 

Put the two units on different fields.  That should eliminate them spawning on top of each other.  If that still present an issue then divide the players among more squadrons, but gut feel says two squadrons with seven human players each should be manageable.  IMHO four humans per squadron is ideal, but eight ... should be ok ... I think ... maybe ... 

 

PWCG is going to have issues with two player squadrons on the same field.  It's going to have bigger issues with 14 players across two squadrons starting from parked on the same field.  Only so much real estate and IMHO the game was never designed for this scenario (to be fair to the game, this is really pushing the limits of PWCG  as well).

 

 

 

 

[DD_Fenrir]

Okay, thanks Pat, not the news I was hoping for, but understandable and - if I'm honest - reluctantly expected.

 

Trying to think around the problem, is it possible to manually edit a mission file to force one unit to start hot on runway and the other from cold on ramp? This way I could generate the mission wth PWCG  then either open the generated mission file and edit a field, or open in the mission editor prior to hosting?

Edited April 22, 2020 by DD_Fenrir

[Murleen]

As Pat says, spreading across two airfields is the simplest solution - maybe pick one of the pairs (e.g. Le Culot) where two airfields are very close to each other.

 

I have wondered when people would notice planes spawning on top of each other. At the moment, the plane placer logic (whether on runway or parked) doesn't consider multiple flights, so plane 1 from each flight ends up in the same place, etc. In theory we could get the airfield to allocate slots, so that a second flight places its planes after the first rather than on top, but as Pat says above, with large numbers of planes you'll probably end up having the last few start to hit e.g. buildings, as when I laid out the airfields I only allowed a certain amount of space.

 

A better solution would be to have multiple parking areas, but the game doesn't support this well, and it would require replotting all of the airfields in the game, which I'm not in a hurry to do!

 

[DD_Fenrir]

Thanks for the clarification Murleen.

 

Still gonna push on this  a bit though! ?

 

I was looking through the AirfieldLocations.json and noticed under "Florennes" there was a series of "taxiToStart" coordinates  under three separate runway "parkinglocations".

 

Does this determine where the static cold start spawn points are when the game/generator decides which one of the three runways is in use?

Edited April 22, 2020 by DD_Fenrir

[PatrickAWlson]

PWCG decides which one to use, but I believe it is based on wind conditions, so it will probably choose the same one for every flight.  

 

Is there a reason why everybody has to start from the same airfield?

[DD_Fenrir]

Just me being an anal retentive!

 

I and the guys wanted to fly P-38s together as an historical unit out of the 'right' airfield - we'd gone with the 370th FG (and the 402nd FS in particular) because that gave us an opportunity to convert to Mustangs later, and putting up a group of 16 odd a/c all flying together out of (and back to) the same airfield looks and feels awesome - you get the morale boost and camaraderie of being on the same mission in the same piece of sky.

 

Regards those "taxiToStart" coordinates, I've cross referenced their coordinates and found them to be different areas for each runway. What I might do is experiment and have all of them available for each runway and see if that helps/breaks it/does nothing, and report back.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by DD_Fenrir

[Murleen]

On 4/22/2020 at 3:33 PM, DD_Fenrir said:

Just me being an anal retentive!

 

I and the guys wanted to fly P-38s together as an historical unit out of the 'right' airfield - we'd gone with the 370th FG (and the 402nd FS in particular) because that gave us an opportunity to convert to Mustangs later, and putting up a group of 16 odd a/c all flying together out of (and back to) the same airfield looks and feels awesome - you get the morale boost and camaraderie of being on the same mission in the same piece of sky.

 

Regards those "taxiToStart" coordinates, I've cross referenced their coordinates and found them to be different areas for each runway. What I might do is experiment and have all of them available for each runway and see if that helps/breaks it/does nothing, and report back.

 

 

 

The "parkingLocation" is what's used by PWCG to place places in cold start mode, and as Pat says, one runway is picked based on wind conditions, then all planes will be placed at that one parking location. For most airfields, all the runways use roughly the same parking location.