PWCG 11.0.0 Beta 2 Available (9/28/2020)

[PatrickAWlson]

I posted a beta of PWCG 11.0.0.  Get it from the PWCG site.  The Beta will install into PWCGBoSBeta or PWCGFCBeta so it will not overwrite your existing install.

 

The beta eliminates spawns for aircraft and uses a different activation mechanism.  The key advantage is that most of the things I could not do like formations are now possible.  Still high risk (thus the beta) but I ran a couple of missions and they seem OK.

 

Would be very curious (and quite disappointed) of any reports of bombers flying like fighters in the beta.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[DrDeath_MD]

Can we carry old campaigns into this save? Or do you want us to start fresh? 

[Yogiflight]

Something special, you want us to look for?

Is it more important to fly fighters, ground attackers or bombers for certain observations?

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, DrDeath_MD said:

Can we carry old campaigns into this save? Or do you want us to start fresh? 

 

Old campaigns can be used but you will have to copy  them into the beta directory.

 

1 hour ago, Yogiflight said:

Something special, you want us to look for?

Is it more important to fly fighters, ground attackers or bombers for certain observations?

 

AI flights flying in formation (impossible with spawns).  No dogfighting bombers.  Combat reports work properly.  Nothing messed up.

 

If this works out a follow up is escorts that really behave like escorts.

 

[rloh91]

Hey Patrick,

 

I have a problem with the 11.0.0 beta where once I am in the first mission of my configured campaign (Bodenplatte, 1/10/44, Attack, KG51, Me 262a) the flight leader in my squad takes off and then just circles the airfield indefinitely.  Prior to this, they report that they spot fighters and are engaging, but none are in the air.  I also use visible mission waypoints and those are not appearing as well.  I did not have these problems on 10.4.0.  Is there something I am doing wrong?  I can post a log if need be.  I am using the latest IL2 update 4.501.

 

Thanks you so much for this tool and your time.

[Stonehouse]

Not sure if it is because it is an old campaign carried over and haven't had time to set up a clone new one. SP campaign flying Tempests for 56 sqd out of Grimbergen. Seeing green debug (I think) text on the map when I check it shortly after take off. Also I'm tail end Charlie in the formation, leader and No2 take off and climb into a right hand turn as I take off. We circle the base and I head off on the mission heading but they stay orbiting the field. I put myself on auto level and time accel x8 and watched them in outside view. They continued to orbit and at some point probably 20 mins or so in real time into the mission my aircraft crashed and the mission ended without them leaving home airspace.

 

Wasn't quite sure what to give you as it wasn't an error as such so zipped up the msnbin (hoping that is ok)

1944-09-01.7zip

Edited September 21, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse
spelling

[PatrickAWlson]

Need to get rid of debug messages, although they might be useful for the beta.

 

Two reports of orbiting the field.  I did not see that but it looks like something.  Use the "Report Error"  to zip up the campaign.  I can try generating a mission to see if I can repeat the results.

 

What I am doing has some very definite unknowns.  What @rloh91 reports might could be bad.  If the AI is detecting disabled enemy planes then that's a very bad thing.  Don't know that is what is happening though.  Still early in the process though.  

 

 

[Stonehouse]

Ok here you go

202009211409654.zip

[PatrickAWlson]

Per the orbiting: what is weird is that your flight is the one thing that should not have changed  .  These changes are all around the AI flights.  I did see this one time with the older version as well.  With a bit of luck it is something that I can figure out and correct.  

[Stonehouse]

Ok for what it is worth I created a fresh basically identical campaign. 1st mission was a patrol instead of an intercept but got the same issue. So at least you have a comparison of an old campaign and a new one. If you need the mission let me know although its near midnight here so won't be checking the forum again until tomorrow morning. <edit> the thought occurs to me that to a certain extent my flight is an AI flight as I'm not the leader but no3 or 4...…...

test202009212309175.zip

Edited September 21, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse

[PatrickAWlson]

I think the campaign is the most important thing.  If you are consistently getting the same issue that is what I need.

[rloh91]

An update,

 

I started a new campaign, this time on the eastern front using the Ju87 and everything seems to work normally with my config; mission markers, flight path etc.  I can post my log later today as I don’t have access to my pc now.

[Varibraun]

Pat - Thank you for this beta...it will be great if it works out.  I am sorry I can't test it this time around, my Reverb went down and warranty replacement is on order, but appears to be a few weeks out (who knows, maybe the G2 will land before the replacement).  Anyway, I am grounded, but have my fingers crossed that when I am flying again I will be chased by escorts instead of bombers.  I appreciate all your hard work!  

[Stonehouse]

Tried changing to another new campaign flying for the Luftwaffe as an attack pilot in FW190s still on the Bodenplatte map. Again a SP campaign and generated 1 mission with near full sqd so scrubbed that one and next was a 4 ship attack on a truck convoy with me in the 4th slot. Flew that with same results - leader does a endless right hand orbit over the field. So whatever it is - it does seem consistent.

Edited September 22, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse

[PatrickAWlson]

Been looking at it.  If I remove the enemy flights it flies properly, so it's not specific to the players flight.  Friendly flights do not seem to impact things.  No linkage that I can see between the players flight and the enemy flights.  No idea what in the enemy flights might be causing it at this point.  Might take awhile.

 

Thanks for posting all that you did.  It recreated the problem on the first try.

[Stonehouse]

Glad to help in some small way. I used to do coding for DCS community scripts like the flak script and original GCI scripts so I know it can be difficult at times.

[Columbar]

Hi Pete,

after take off flight only circled over airfield and didn´t start mission route.

 

Also never seen massage in PWCG poped up few times. See attached image in red box.

USAAF202009221309417.zip

Edited September 22, 2020 by Columbar

[PatrickAWlson]

I made progress on the circling issue.  That lead to other breakages so I'm working them out.  going to take a little while.

[Guest deleted@188321]

Can't wait to see some real formations!

Less line! More V!

[PatrickAWlson]

Made a lot of progress on this over the weekend.  I have planes spawning and flying routes.  Virtual flights can have an escort.  The escort will actually cover the flight and not just be a fighter patrol flying the same route as the bombers.  Your flight circling and not flying the mission was fixed awhile back.

 

Probably will have another beta version out some time this week.

 

 

On 9/23/2020 at 2:18 PM, randybutternubs said:

Can't wait to see some real formations!

Less line! More V!

 

Right now everything is echelon right, but at least now I can change it up a bit.  

[Stonehouse]

That's great news. Thank you for the update.

 

[PatrickAWlson]

10 hours ago, No457_Stonehouse said:

That's great news. Thank you for the update.

 

 

Appreciate the sample campaign.  Still using it for my testing.  You put a hell of a lot of planes in the air.  I had to scale that back a bit.

[PatrickAWlson]

I posted Beta 2.  Give it a look.  In addition to fixing the circling and generally getting planes moving in the right direction I also made some performance improvements and added virtual escorts.

 

Virtual Escort: Added true escorts to virtual flights.  Limited the usage because otherwise it would put too many planes in the air, but you will see escorted missions.  The virtual escorts will actually cover their flights an behave as escorts.  Escorts are prioritized for the other side.  For competitive coop there is no prioritization.

 

New configs around virtual escorts in advanced config mission limits:

 

A little lower in the list is max virtual escorts.  Defaults to 2, so no more than 2 escort flights will be generated.  Be careful.  Jacking up max escort flights will quickly put a lot of planes in the air and could turn the sim into a slide show.

 

[Stonehouse]

Getting it now, will try it out over the next few days. Thanks!

[vonGraf]

Sounds good, I'll try it out tomorrow. Many thanks!

[Stonehouse]

Can confirm the circling issue appears resolved for me in a new test SP campaign. Will try an old one plus a MP one as well when I get a sec.

Edited September 29, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse

[LF_Juanitkm]

Hi, I think you do a fantastic job. I wanted to ask you if in the future you plan to translate the PWCG into other languages, such as Spanish.
Thank you...

[PatrickAWlson]

5 minutes ago, juanitkm said:

Hi, I think you do a fantastic job. I wanted to ask you if in the future you plan to translate the PWCG into other languages, such as Spanish.
Thank you...

 

Not on the radar but possible.  I have to pull all of the text out of the code and put it into a file.  That's a lot of stuff.  Not sure what would have to happen inside the code to move beyond ascii - maybe nothing.

 

One of the biggest issues is what gets put in the mission language files.  The game is very unforgiving in this regard.  Add a non English character to the eng file and it folds up. Since I have not played with other mission language files I do not know what issues there might be but that could get ugly.

Any feedback on the beta?  

[Guest deleted@188321]

Hey pat, no significant issues here so far. Ran 3 missions in a ju88, seems to be working. Havent met enemy fighters yet so cant comment on bomber/fighter behavior. will follow up on that. One thing ive noticed is that it seems heavier on the cpu than the previous method you used for generating ai flights. the flight leader is still 1km+ ahead of the formation most of the time. player takes about an extra 5-10 seconds to take off and lags a bit behind everyone else at the start of the flight.

 

any chance on testing a different default formation in v3? would be good to see how everyone sticks together

[LF_Juanitkm]

46 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Not on the radar but possible.  I have to pull all of the text out of the code and put it into a file.  That's a lot of stuff.  Not sure what would have to happen inside the code to move beyond ascii - maybe nothing.

 

One of the biggest issues is what gets put in the mission language files.  The game is very unforgiving in this regard.  Add a non English character to the eng file and it folds up. Since I have not played with other mission language files I do not know what issues there might be but that could get ugly.

Any feedback on the beta?  

OK thank you very much. I have not tried the beta yet, sorry. Thanks again

[PatrickAWlson]

8 minutes ago, juanitkm said:

OK thank you very much. I have not tried the beta yet, sorry. Thanks again

Sorry - that was not meant for you specifically.  The board merged two separate posts  

 

Only the top part was meant to be a reply to your post.

 

Trying the beta is entirely optional.  I was hoping to get some feedback before posting it as a new version.  Any time you see the major number advance (from 10 to 11) it means that some very disruptive changes happened.  Smaller changes I frequently put out without a beta, but things like version 11 need some level of user test before being distributed to a larger  audience.

Edited September 30, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[Azdack]

Hello Patrick,

Feed back Beta 11.0.0

Plaid three missions up yet off line in a german campaign flyin a 109 G-14

Your tool works great.

"accept mission" together with "start" take around six minutes without binary activated.

First mission : patrol as leader with three wingmen at about 5000m. Met no ennemy. Landed safely. 

Second mission : intercept as leader with three wingmen at very high altitude about 8000m . Met a flight of A20 without escort. Got two of them. Belly landed cause I got a piece of A20 in my propeller. 

Third mission : ground attack on a train. I took the second position in a flight of three planes to see if the leader would circle above the base but he followed the waypoints to the target. Missed the train and got a AAA bullet. Engine damaged. Back home. Landed safely. 

Thanks for your work.

 

Forgot a question : there is an information poping up at the bottom of the screen from time to time but I d'ont understand what it is exactly ?

[PatrickAWlson]

The popups are subtitles that I use for debugging.  They will be removed before the release.  What they tell you is that a flight spawned.  

 

My own play testing has not shown major issues.  I wanted to get confirmation from others that this is working.  So far I like the results.  The AI flights actually use formation and cover.  I have high hopes that this will stop most of the bombers acting like fighters among other things.

 

Forgot to say thanks for posting feedback

Edited September 30, 2020 by PatrickAWlson

[Columbar]

Hi Pat,

7 mission on western front flown with no significant problems. Minor issue - in one mission there were no ground targets in target area - flight few times circled and than returned back home.

Also cruising speed seems to be slow, but this can be adjusted in mission creation. (On my quite old PC takes really long when I click until I can edit waypoints, but this can be only problem of my machine.)

 

But what I personally don´t like is how the planes are distributed to squadrons - on Kuban in 1/4/1943 you have 4(!) types of YAK in one squadron or Spitfire 5 and 9 together... That is for me very unrealistic and immersion braking - you have always newest airplanes to your disposal (or obsolete ones on the other hand - like FW 190 A5 on September 1944).

 

I am continuing in testing.

 

Yes, I almost forget: Do have AI spawn bombers their targets/missions? Or they just fly and circles across player´s path? ?

 

 

[migmadmarine]

Some squadrons did fly mixed aircraft types though, especially second rate squadrons which had to make due with older aircraft for longer. 

[PatrickAWlson]

Some time ago I implemented a resupply system.  In doing so the squadrons do not necessarily receive the exact subtype that they might have had historically.  Depending how the campaign plays out any given squadron may have newer or older subtypes.  Squadrons will rarely fly two completely distinct types unless they really did.

 

That has been true for many versions and is not new to version 11.

[Stonehouse]

Sorry Pat - late to the party due to r/l work being a PITA. Flew a second mission without issue on the beta and used external views to have a look at flights when the debug messages popped up and couldn't see any issue. I see you've released the new version so will get that now. Thanks again for your continued work on this!

[Columbar]

hi Pat,

problem with taxiing.

Luftwaffe Ost202010011810386.zip

[vonGraf]

I flew some (5 -7) Bf-109 fighter missions in a new campaign on the Kuban map and had no recognizable issues. Nice! 

Edited October 1, 2020 by vonGraf

[Columbar]

Hi Pat,

some messes in AAR.

I (Vladimir Otypka) shooted down two BF109, but did not claim them (they crashed in enemy teritory). That was in AAR:

than Lt Davidovich credited one kill (which was probbably mine - that is all right, it is like in older verisons of PWCG), but it was not mentioned in AAR

Or maybe that locomotive  is actually Bf 109 G2 ?

 

here is my campaign

VVS202010022110264.zip

Correction: her air victory is still locomotive in her diary.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Columbar