Shooting Range - Practice Missions with Stationary Targets

[MackStones]

I am pleased to announce that I have issued "The Shooting Range" series of missions, which provide a shooting range filled with stationary targets on which players can practice ground attacks.  They can be used to work upon your strafing, bombing, and rocketing skills.  Like most shooting ranges in real life, the targets are stationary ones and it's a "one-way range" (in other words, there's no AAA shooting back at you).  There is a separate mission for every Il-2 Great Battles aircraft (except the Ju-52). 

 

Each mission is on the Lapino map.  The player has an airstart a few kilometers from the target area (lined up with the target area).  The target area has a large factory with smokestack (easy to spot from a distance).  The targets consist of various types of vehicles, half-tracks, self-propelled artillery, artillery, tanks, and railcars (although not on an actual railroad line), all of which are considered "enemy" despite nation of origin.  Most importantly, they are all static targets.  Most are in the open, but some are within the trees.  Some targets are by themselves, and others are lined up in a formation.  In short, there's a wide variety of target types and positions to suit whatever type of ground attack practice you want.  The spacing is such that you can get lined up on at least some target on almost every run.  You are not going to be able to destroy all targets (there are probably too many), but you should pick-and-choose your preferred targets for that playthrough or that particular strafing run.  To be clear, the target locations or set-up are not supposed to be realistic, instead they are intended to provide some relatively easy opportunities.  "Headquarters is results-oriented", so mission success is achieved so long as any target is destroyed, regardless of what happens to the pilot or plane.

 

A .rar file for the missions is found at the following link:  Shooting File.rar

 

By way of background, with the original Il-2 (I actually bought the first one within a month of its release), I flew single-player for many years, I later became an administrator and one of the main mapmakers for the Warbirds of Prey family of servers (Spits vs 109s and Zekes vs Wildcats) - which were the premier "full real" a/k/a "expert" servers in the Il-2 1946 heyday, and I also made about 18 single-player campaigns for Il-2 1946 under a different moniker (unfortunately, most are based on obsolete modpacks which won't run now unless you still have the exact modpack version in question).

 

Although I owned Il-2 BOS since the beginning and would purchase each new version (BOM, BOK, etc.) as it came along (I always felt the need to support the flight sim community), I have not been "flying" for a few years for a variety of real life, hardware/technological obsolescence, and other reasons.  Any simulated flying was often with Rise of Flight.  Recently, I spent the time and effort to upgrade and reconfigure everything to Il-2 BOS, and started flying again.  I am pretty rusty, and the flight models and engine management are different from Il-2 1946. 

 

I was generally a ground pounder online in the old Il-2 1946 days, with strafing being my specialty.  With Il-2 BOS, one of the hardest things I have encountered are the new damage models for vehicles, trains, tanks, and similar objects.  They are much different from the original Il-2.  The objects are much harder to damage and destroy (similar to Rise of Flight, which is understandable in the circumstances).  I estimate that Il-2 BOS vehicles absorb two to three times as much damage as in the old game.  No more strafing runs for me that would destroy 8-10 vehicles or railcars in a single pass (of course, the increased difficulty is probably more realistic). In addition, the typical tree-lined roads in Il-2 BOS (although often realistic) are a major change from most roads in the original Il-2.  Many of the missions I have been flying as part of my retraining do have objects to strafe, but they are moving targets.  With those additional "variables", I found it much more difficult to focus on the target.  Consequently, I was having problem getting my "shooting eye" back as a result.  

 

I'm also a firearms shooter in real life, and realized that I need the equivalent of a shooting range on which I could practice ground pounding with a wide variety of targets that should just "still for once" (ha ha).  Although the community has developed a number of tools and missions to help would-be ground attack players, and Quick Mission can at least provide stationary artillery targets, I was unable to find something that exactly fit my needs. 

 

Therefore, I decided to make my own ground-pounder mission.  I did so, focusing initially on the P-47.  After a half-dozen runs, my strafing and rocketing skills in the P-47 improved significantly.  And later, I made identical missions for each of the other aircraft I was utilizing in single-player for ground-pounding, since (like different firearms) each one has unique characteristics and requires different aim-points.  Flying these practice missions really helped my strafing, bombing, and rocket accuracy.   

 

I realize that others (whether new pilots or experienced ones desiring a refresher) might also find value in these missions.  I then decided to be comprehensive, make a version for every in-game aircraft (other than the Ju-52 transport), and then publish them for benefit of the community. 

 

Of course, I recognize that many in-game targets are moving targets, and the Shooting Range missions do not provide practice on moving targets.  However, as in real life, practice at static targets provides good training in fundamentals before going after moving targets.  For example, it is generally better to practice at a shooting range with stationary targets before moving on to hunting (or, as the case may be, martial) shooting.  After playing these practice missions, my ground attack skills in Il-2 BOS on moving targets improved significantly, too.  I suspect that others might have similar results.

 

I also wish to give special thanks to forum member Utopioneer.   I knew I would need to make the ground-pounder mission myself.  Unfortunately, the Mission Builder program for Il-2 BOS is much more difficult to use than with Il-2 1946 program (although has many advantages as well).  I therefore used a ground attack mission of Utopioneer in his well-regarded and well-recommended Flight Campaign series ( https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/58501-flight-school-campaigns-english-german-french-italian-spanish/ ) as a basic template for my first mission.  His mission involved an attack on a single vehicle.  Using the triggers, timers, etc. from his mission, though, it allowed me to create a much-expanded mission with many dozens of stationary targets.  Utopioneer graciously gave me permission to use his underlying work to form the basic template from which I created these series of Shooting Range missions, and to publish mine.  He also answered some questions I had.  Thanks again to him.  Of course, any errors are my own, and not his.

 

I hope you find these series of missions useful.   If you find any problems, just let me know so I can correct (and, for you experienced mission builders, I know there's better way to organize some of the logic, and I'm starting to learn how, my jury-rigged version still works.

 

P.S.- Incidentally, I also made alternative winter versions of some missions as a test, but, upon reflection, they didn't provide much additional assistance, so I didn't include them here.  

[DN308]

Many thanks for that from a real life shooter buddy

[Beanie]

Cheers Mack.  These missions will help me improve my over efficiency when trying to complete ground missions?

 

[Charlo-VRde]

I've really been enjoying these missions!  I was practicing bombing tanks in a U-2VS and for some reason the bombs would not detonate, whether I left the timing on "default", "contact", or "3 seconds". Is there something I don't understand about arming the bombs?

[MackStones]

Charlo-VR, there are a few threads on the forum about bombs not exploding, which might address your problem.  I think there was a recommendation on those to use 5 seconds on Soviet bombs, if I recall correctly.  However, I'll try to fly that particular mission again in the next day or so and see if I encounter a similar problem.  

Edited January 23, 2021 by MackStones
Additional follow-up comment.

[MackStones]

I ran a test with the U-2VS and the bombs worked.  I have 3-second delay.   

 

That being said, on occasion, I have had bombs not explode after dropping.  It's happened with different types of aircraft.  Oftentimes, it seemed to happened while doing low-level bombing.  I remember reading some forum threads on such problems, and still could not diagnosis the cause of the problem for me.  However, it doesn't happen very often.  

[Charlo-VRde]

Sounds good, I'll try 5 second timings on Soviet bombs.

 

(Off topic, I never could figure out what the "Default" setting does for any bomb, which is what I use for most German, American, and British bombs. Since I fly in VR so can't easily consult notes or cockpit guides and I don't understand Cyrillic script, I only recently created in-cockpit gauge guides for myself that allow me to figure out how to manage the engines on each Soviet plane)

[Deacon352nd]

Maybe you were too low and the delay you set was longer than it took for the bomb to hit the ground. Try the same delay but at a slightly higher altitude for the drop. 

[Charlo-VRde]

5 second delays work much better, thank you, @MackStones! I also agree with @Deacon352nd that very low altitude drops are a factor, too - a shame since that makes my accuracy harder, but is probably realistic. 

[DragonDaddy]

Thanks for these

Edited January 25, 2021 by DragonDaddy

[kraszus]

Do these no longer work? When I select any of the missions, it just says Mission description loading and if I hit start it just brings me back to mission select screen.

[EDIT] Tried to load it in the mission editor to re-save it and get

 

Error reading mission file!

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by kraszus

[Thad]

Salutations,

 

Attempt to Resave all missions in folder with the mission editor. Look under Tools in the editor for this option.. 

[Giggles]

is there any option to make a stationary shooting gallery..?    like leave the plane parked and propped up horizontal like a diagram for sight alignment shows, and just stick a target on a zip line to play with?

[mrflight107]

On 2/28/2022 at 10:08 AM, kraszus said:

Do these no longer work? When I select any of the missions, it just says Mission description loading and if I hit start it just brings me back to mission select screen.

[EDIT] Tried to load it in the mission editor to re-save it and get

 

Error reading mission file!

 

Hello,,

 

I'm getting the same symptoms & errors as you are when trying to load any of the Shooting Range missions. Also, I encountered the same reading error when trying to pass it thru the mission editor.

Have you been able to find any resolutions or workarounds to these issues? Hoping for the best, as I'd like to get some add'l practice in with these stationary targets.

 

Regards.

Edited June 5, 2022 by mrflight107

[56RAF_Stickz]

On 2/28/2022 at 4:57 PM, Thad said:

Attempt to Resave all missions in folder with the mission editor. Look under Tools in the editor for this option.. 

MrFlight107

i shamelesly copied this comment from Thad who replied to the post you placed. Almost every update to the game will invalidate previous generated missions files (.msnbin). The .mission file which is a text file will be ok but you need to regenerate the msnbin file via the tool listed.

[mrflight107]

Hello,

 

<Blushing> I have to apologize for not properly reading that message. For some reason I read it as going into the Mission Editor, and then simply resaving the mission. Just completed missed going to those distinct options and completing them.

Not quite sure where my mind was! Getting scary!

 

Thanks again,

Mike

 

[kraszus]

Would there be any chance of adding the Mosquito to this mission @MackStones

[Sgtslick952]

I know this is an old post but I just found the Shooting Missions and downloaded them. Got them installed but had the problem mentioned above; “ Mission description loading”.

So I tried the “Resave all missions in folder” under tools in the mission editor.

Went back into the game and had the same problem.

Mrflight107 said “The .mission file which is a text file will be ok but you need to regenerate the msnbin file via the tool listed.”

Being a NOOB with all this, how does one go about “regenerate the msnbin file” as suggested?

If not too much trouble can it be described via the steps I need to take? Would be greatly appreciated as I’d really like to sharpen my skills.

Thanks in advance!