How to Vs Coop with PWCG

[Highwayman]

I've seen quite a few posts asking how to use PWCG in a vs scenario so that a group can fly a full campaign career on opposing sides, and if this is supported in PWCG. The answer is that yes it is supported and works very well, but there are some quirks that you need to work with. Once you understand these, it's actually very simple to create. I don't want to steal any of @PatrickAWlson's thunder here, merely to offer a step by step guide for what appears to be a niche use of the tool as it works as of version 12.3.1.

 

This will be a fairly long explanation, but I will illustrate each of the points and what needs to be done to get you up and running as quickly as possible, and add to them as required. I'll start this tutorial on the basis that you have no pilots to choose from and you're starting from scratch, but you can of course select any pre-existing pilots to import into the campaign if you choose.

 

Step 1. Create a new campaign. The Campaign name needs to be unique, and must not contain any special characters, such as apostrophe (') or quotes ("), and you should select the side that the 'reference pilot' will be flying for. The reference pilot is simply the primary pilot that the campaign uses, and creates the chalkboard and is used for claiming kills at the end of a mission. The only other thing to bear in mind is that the reference player MUST participate in the mission, but that player can be changed if needed, so don't worry too much about it.

 

Next, fill in the details for your 'reference pilot'. If you already have PWCG pilots that you wish to use, select them in the drop down box next to "Coop User:", if not, just type a name for the player in the box to the right.

 

Important note, the "Player Name" is for game purposes only and it can be thought of as your avatar, or character for the campaign. the "Coop user" references the players name in your squad, so if for example you wanted to play the campaign with a character name of "Timothy Hampton" but your callsign in your virtual squadron is "Biff", you would enter "Timothy Hampton in the Player Name field, and add or select "Biff" as the real person flying that character. you would then see Timothy Hampton on the chalkboard.

 

Another important note here that can be confusing for some is that you do not say "I want to fly a Spitfire, show me the squadrons" more, you select the squadron that fits the role that you wish to fly. Click through the available squadrons to find the fighter that you wish to fly if that is your wish. It can be tricky to find a particular plane that you wish to fly, and there are references in this forums subsection for PWCG to tell you where you can find them.

 

After filling in all of the details, such as the character name, Which map you wish to fly in, what role you'd like for them to pursue, their rank and squadron, you can click "Create Campaign" on the top left.

 

 

Now you are presented with the chalkboard and you will see the reference player. Next you should setup the campaign preferences. Select "Configuration" on the left and then "Simple Config" to set your basic preferences for the amount of units that will be generated in a given mission.

 

 

Once complete, select "Accept, and then move on to the "Advanced Config" where you can fine tune things like the consequences of being wounded, the AI skill level, your preferences for weather conditions, etc. There are an awful lot of settings here to work through, and most can be left at the defaults, but you should set the consequences of being shot down and the AI skill level as a minimum.

 

Important Note: A lot of people are confused by what many of the values mean, or what they can enter into each field. Pat has built tool tips into the interface, so hover your mouse over the text next to the box to see a description or range of values available for each setting.

 

Note that "Death" (Setting 4) is sometimes referred to as "Ironman mode". What this means is that a players avatar, or character will be dead, and can no longer participate in missions, or claim kills. You can however create a new character for your squad mate to fly with, and they start fresh on the board.

 

 

After setting all of your preferences, you now need to create your additional players. Click on the "Personnel" button on the left, then on "Administer Pilots"

 

 

On the right side, select "Add Pilot", and as for the reference pilot, complete the side the pilot will fight for, and the remaining entries for that pilot. In this example, I've selected another RAF pilot to complete the Allied side of my 2 vs 2 scenario.

 

 

Next, add the opposition. This is the same process as adding the second allied pilot, just for the other team of course.

 

 

Important note: You can add as many pilots as you may potentially need here. For example, if you have a squad of 8 players, but you wont all be flying all the time, that's OK. Add all 8 players, and when you create each mission, you simply select the ones that will fly on this particular mission.

 

Once you have all of the players added that you need, Select "Finished" on the left.

 

 

Now that you have all of the potential players configured, Select "Mission", and then "Mission" again to start the mission creation process, and you will be presented with a list containing all of the available pilots that you can add. This is as mentioned before, if you have a squad of 8, but only 4 are available to fly, select only the ones that you need for this mission. Check the boxes next to the pilots names, and press "Accept" to add them, then on "Coop Mission". Be patient, this may take a little while to generate.

 

Important Note: The 'Reference pilot' MUST fly in the mission, so if you know that pilot is not going to be available to fly in the upcoming mission, simply change the reference pilot before generating the mission. See later in the guide for how to do this *.

 

 

Once the basic mission parameters have been calculated, the random roll of the dice so to speak, the mission will be presented for the team that the reference player is on, in this case the RAF.

 

 

For my Squad, this is where I will copy the briefing text and paste it into our Discord mission channel so that the team can see what the upcoming mission is. If you're unhappy with the generated mission, simply click "Scrub Mission" and generate a new one, otherwise, select "Next:Map"

 

 

Here you can choose to take a screenshot of the map and show it to the team, or as we do, simply create, delete or adjust any waypoints as needed, and then click on the "Next:Waypoint" button. This is so that the opposing team cannot see the route they their adversaries will be taking and presents more of a fair faight.

 

 

The altitude and speeds of waypoints can be modified here if desired by clicking the "Edit Waypoint Details" button, otherwise just click "Next:Pilots"

 

 

You can adjust the pilots that you wish to fly the mission here, as you can see, I've removed the two AI pilots from this mission that were shown in the initial briefing. You can change the aircraft if there are alternatives to choose from, such as a P-47D-22 for players that own Normandy, and a P-47D-28 for those that only have Bodenplatte. You can also modify the loadout and modifications if available too. Once you have completed your configuration of this screen, we will then go back to the mission briefing, but this time for the opposing team. Select them on the left side (I./JG77 in this example) then select the Back button repeatedly until your back at the briefing screen, and you should see the mission brief for the Luftwaffe team.

 

 

As with the RAF team, I'll copy the text of the mission briefing and paste it into our discord servers IL2 Mission briefing section so that both teams now know what their objectives for the mission are going to be. Select "Next:Map" and continue with the modifying the waypoints for this team if required

 

 

Press "Next:Waypoint" to continue onto the waypoint screen where you can edit the speeds and altitudes of the waypoints if required

 

 

Finally, you will be presented with the pilots screen where you can change the roster, modify the airframes, loadouts and modifications as desired, then select "Accept Mission" and wait for the PWCG to do it's magic.

 

 

For a Vs campaign, you will really want to host this mission on a server. In our case, I generate the missions on my computer, and then copy the mission file up to the server into the IL-2\data\Multiplayer\Cooperative folder, then use the Dserver tool to set the difficulty options, and host the mission. You could of course just run the PWCG on the server itself if you choose depending on your setup and how easy it is to access the interface, discord and other tools.

 

You can register for and download a free Dedicated server by following the instructions from Chapter 11 of the official guide found here: 

 

 

Important note: make sure that you have enabled logging on the server so that you get the required files to compile your results! This is done in the IL-2\data\startup.cfg file by setting the highlighted value to 1

 

 

Once the mission is over, shut down the server, and from the IL-2\data directory, copy all of the log files MissionReportYYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS[x].txt that were generated for this mission. We cut these from the server, and paste them to the same folder on the computer that generates the PWCG missions as they are no longer needed on the server.

 

Once this is complete, open up the PWCG again, and this time select "Mission" and then "Combat Report". If the files are in the correct place, it will progress to the claims screen.

 

Important note: this is where you have to work around some limitations with claiming kills. Although all players from both teams will be presented, you will only be able to select planes from the side opposite to the reference player. For example, if your reference player is in the RAF as per this guide, and the opposing team was the Luftwaffe, you will only be able to choose Luftwaffe planes for any claims. In practice we've found that as long as you select a similar airframe to what you shot down, you'll be credited with the correct kills. For example, if one of your Luftwaffe pilots shot down a spitfire, selecting an equivalent "Light" aircraft that was present in the mission, such as a bf-109G14, would grant a kill for a spitfire. Where this causes issues is if there are no comparable airframes, such as if the Luftwaffe pilot shot down a C-47, and there were no transports on the Luftwaffe side to select, selecting a "light" fighter sized aircraft, as that was all that was present in that particular mission, will result in the claim being denied. Pat is aware of this and I believe he's looking for a solution.

 

* Finally, bragging rights!

We post up the chalkboard after every sortie, but as mentioned earlier, the Chalkboard is only presented for the "Reference Pilot". To show the chalkboard for the opposing team, simply select "Personnel" on the left and then "Reference Pilot" to chose one of the pilots on the other team to make them the new 'Reference Pilot'. As mentioned earlier, this can also be performed if you wish to fly a mission and the "Reference Pilot" is not able to participate. Simply switch to another player that can.

 

 

After selecting the pilot, the Chalkboard will update to their team, and you can take a screenshot of that board

 

 

We've flown several vs campaigns this way on our dedicated server, and had an absolute ball doing it. For the most part the claims board works perfectly, but there are of course the odd occasions that you simply cant claim a kill as there is nothing comparable on the other side to claim. To mitigate this, we switch the reference pilot after each mission to get the chalkboard, but the next mission is then generated from that side, meaning that the claims board will be viewed from the opposite side at the end of this next mission, and the chances of not finding a comparable airframe to claim are on the shoulders of the other team this time, so it balances out.

 

Thanks again to Pat for this amazing tool and the hours and hours of fun that it's brought us. If anybody has questions, I'd be happy to answer them below, or via PM if you don't want to share

 

 

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Highwayman