kuban where are the ships?

[kaizerhund4]

i am flying the kuban career and i see plenty of ports and ship docks etc but no ships. are there suppose to be some? 

[migmadmarine]

Unfortunately there are no ambient or mission related ships in Kuban career mode currently.

[Yogiflight]

Yes, they are absolutely missing. Even with no anti ship missions, they would add a lot to the scenery with only being there in the harbours or off the shore. Like you never see any random trains or trucks or stuff like that. This makes the career mode missions very sterile.

[IckyATLAS]

If you want an Air - Sea - Land battle then I advise you try Mission Nr. 03 and Mission Nr. 08 of my scripted campaign The Kuban Wall.

You can download the independently of the whole campaign. One is a ship escort mission with destroyers cargo and tankers, the other is a more complex shore landing with air sea and land battle. Enjoy

[R33GZ]

Create a mission in the advanced quick mission generator, there are options there for convoy attack... But yes, the ports are still pretty bare. Having said that I wouldn't imagine the supply convoys just hung around in port, for obvious reasons ?

[Yogiflight]

On 6/10/2022 at 10:02 AM, IckyATLAS said:

If you want an Air - Sea - Land battle then I advise you try Mission Nr. 03 and Mission Nr. 08 of my scripted campaign The Kuban Wall.

You can download the independently of the whole campaign. One is a ship escort mission with destroyers cargo and tankers, the other is a more complex shore landing with air sea and land battle. Enjoy

 

11 hours ago, R33GZ said:

Create a mission in the advanced quick mission generator, there are options there for convoy attack

 

This is not my point. I am not looking for a mission with ships, I am a career mode player. I need a story to be told. This is exactly what a career mode is for. but the career mode we have in game looks empty. You fly a Kuban career, based at Anapa, flying over the harbor of Anapa, each mission, but you never see any ship. The same at Novorossiysk or Gelenzik or Kerch. The same on the Volga at Stalingrad or the lake in the north-east of the Moscow map.

 

11 hours ago, R33GZ said:

Having said that I wouldn't imagine the supply convoys just hung around in port, for obvious reasons ?

I hadn't even thought of that, what I meant was supply convoys on the roads, and trains moving on the tracks, on friendly and enemy side. The only convoys you get to see, are those you are ordered to destroy. Apart from your targets the map is completely lifeless.

But as you mentioned supply convoys in the ports, if there are ships, then there should also be trucks, which get loaded with the supply, deliverd by the ships.

[Eisenfaustus]

1 hour ago, Yogiflight said:

 

 

This is not my point. I am not looking for a mission with ships, I am a career mode player. I need a story to be told. This is exactly what a career mode is for. but the career mode we have in game looks empty. You fly a Kuban career, based at Anapa, flying over the harbor of Anapa, each mission, but you never see any ship. The same at Novorossiysk or Gelenzik or Kerch. The same on the Volga at Stalingrad or the lake in the north-east of the Moscow map.

 

I hadn't even thought of that, what I meant was supply convoys on the roads, and trains moving on the tracks, on friendly and enemy side. The only convoys you get to see, are those you are ordered to destroy. Apart from your targets the map is completely lifeless.

But as you mentioned supply convoys in the ports, if there are ships, then there should also be trucks, which get loaded with the supply, deliverd by the ships.

All very true - random vehicle columns and trains in the area of your mission - as well as shipping would be very immersive - right now guns are the only target of opportunity when you return with ammo left. 
 

Also I‘d like a little more active frontlines. In scripted campaigns tracers show you that you are passing the frontlines. In career only occasionally flak bursts. But the Armies are surprisingly peaceful. 

[Yogiflight]

3 hours ago, Eisenfaustus said:

Also I‘d like a little more active frontlines. In scripted campaigns tracers show you that you are passing the frontlines. In career only occasionally flak bursts. But the Armies are surprisingly peaceful. 

Absolutely agreed. It is strange, even on high frontline density, with plenty of frontline positions, there is no war going on. But, what you can see is anti tank guns constantly shooting fire support, like artillery guns. You can see the tracers climbing up in the sky.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Let me ask the question that hasn't seemed to be asked yet...  How frequent was shipping during the Kuban campaign in real life?  I'm guessing it was nothing like the Med, Battle of the Atlantic, or any of the Pacific campaigns, where we had large, frequent, escorted convoys.

[kaizerhund4]

hum, thats a question that holds merit, well done...i will research it

[LukeFF]

54 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Let me ask the question that hasn't seemed to be asked yet...  How frequent was shipping during the Kuban campaign in real life?  I'm guessing it was nothing like the Med, Battle of the Atlantic, or any of the Pacific campaigns, where we had large, frequent, escorted convoys.

 

Busy enough to be signifanct and relevant, yes. 

Edited June 11, 2022 by LukeFF

[BlitzPig_EL]

Thanks Luke.  

[tattywelshie]

Just out of interest, are there anti shipping missions as part of PWCG? Surely as part of the Normandy career there will be an element of anti shipping missions? 

[Yogiflight]

23 minutes ago, tattywelshie said:

Just out of interest, are there anti shipping missions as part of PWCG?

Yes, there are.

 

24 minutes ago, tattywelshie said:

Surely as part of the Normandy career there will be an element of anti shipping missions? 

Let me make the BlitzPig, how frequent were anti shipping missions in the map region? Not a lot to attack for Allied aircrafts and not a lot doable for the Luftwaffe, I would guess.

[R33GZ]

20 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

 

 

This is not my point. I am not looking for a mission with ships, I am a career mode player. I need a story to be told.  

 

Ahhh, I see. Sorry, misread that bit ? I haven't played career mode for a while - no Internet - but I do remember it being quite bland and subsequently found the missions to essentially be nearly the same, identical in some cases, as the quick mission generator.

 

Hope you get somewhere with this, it would make a great diverse campaign/career if you could experience the war going on around you. 

 

This is why I make my own missions. In '46 I used to make 3hr missions with multiple different things going on all over the map and play as an offline dogfight server. Land, rearm and take on a different part of the map action. Loads of fun ? don't think this can be done in IL2GB? 

[Zooropa_Fly]

2 hours ago, R33GZ said:

This is why I make my own missions. In '46 I used to make 3hr missions with multiple different things going on all over the map and play as an offline dogfight server. Land, rearm and take on a different part of the map action. Loads of fun ? don't think this can be done in IL2GB?

 

I cant think of a reason why this wouldn't be possible.

 

 

One issue behind lack of peripheral action, is probably game performance.

I think GB is much heavier on resources than IL2 was.

 

Career mode has to cater to all players, and we don't all have top of the range PC's - so I expect that's why missions are scripted to be lean.

And even the best PC's still have limits, with the current game engine at least.

As a ww1 map maker, I'd love to have a full on war going on below me - but resources just don't allow it.

 

Objects can be, and are often, activated in / out of the game relative to your proximity to it, one way to restrict resource usage.

But to flesh out wide areas of a map, given the number of scenarios likely to be in the career modes - would be a lot of work.

 

It's worth remembering that this game is all-in on FM's, it was always about the flying.

 

S!

 

 

 

 

[Yogiflight]

1 hour ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

Career mode has to cater to all players, and we don't all have top of the range PC's - so I expect that's why missions are scripted to be lean.

This is what career mode has the 'Frontline Density' setting for.

 

Apart from that, what I forgot to mention in my previous post is the length of trains. We have pretty long supply and armored columns, but still those short, ten wagon, trains. In a former version of PWCG, the player had a setting for maximum number of train wagons. With set it to 25 or 30, I had trains which looked much more realistic than the short trains we have in game. What I would like to see are trains with 20-30 wagons and two AA gun-wagons, for AA protection.

[BlitzPig_EL]

I regularly fly my multiplayer missions on my own in the manner you described.  I host them on the multiplayer lobby, with a password, so only my squad mates can surprise me by popping in.  Mind you, as my missions are built for my friends to play as well, the can get pretty challenging for me alone, but no reason you couldn't set them up to work better for a single player.

[IckyATLAS]

On 6/11/2022 at 1:24 PM, Yogiflight said:

This is not my point. I am not looking for a mission with ships, I am a career mode player. I need a story to be told. This is exactly what a career mode is for. but the career mode we have in game looks empty. You fly a Kuban career, based at Anapa, flying over the harbor of Anapa, each mission, but you never see any ship. The same at Novorossiysk or Gelenzik or Kerch. The same on the Volga at Stalingrad or the lake in the north-east of the Moscow map.

I understand your point. When you say that you need a story. In a scripted campaign like mine you have one just read the story and its chronology unfold in each mission, and the missions are not empty at all as you can play on the whole map with action everywhere land and sea, and each mission has a main objective but multiple others and is open in terms of time. But you do not have the pilot career system. Only the devs can do that type of campaign.

 

The problem with those missions is that they will be repetitive and with little variation and yes they feel empty because they are so. I do not play the career because of that, after a few missions I get generally bored. But there is a very good reason to that. Time and Money.

In the career system you can choose the squadron you want to fly.  The map has all the squadrons set on the airfields where they were based. For each squadron you have the type of plane you can fly and you can choose the side axis or allied. This means that the devs should create as many stories as they are squadrons be it axis or allied. In the Kuban career you have 20 airfields and they are either Axis or Allied according to the date on which the career takes place. In each airfield you can choose the squadron that is connected to a type of plane that you will fly. There are in average three squadrons per airfield. This makes it for 60 "Stories". Each story has at least a chronology with at least 20 missions (each new day is a new mission). And you would like to have 1200 Missions all completely original with a map where you can fly all over and that should be full of "stuff" you can interact with and change according to the chronology of the story.

 

This is the objective I did pursue in my campaign. It's a personal project, (shared free) no time constraints, no budget, no selling price, and it must run well on my super-computer. And this is only ONE story with only 11 Missions and I do not have pilot personality choice, squadron story, and the medals and all the rest as it adds up. I focused on just one pilot story. It took me years (thousands of objects on the map interacting etc..) and I still was not able to do what I wanted to do and had to simplify certain things.  And for the type of missions I built you need a powerful tower to run it. The work is just enormous for those 11 missions more or less of the type you would like to have. Now multiply that by 1200 and you see that it is just an impossible task.

 

You could argue that the devs are much better than me to design the mission as these are professionals and should be quicker. I agree but still the differential will not compensate. How many people in Jason team are fully dedicated to build a career? Two? and they do have tight time constraints related also to the budget. There is also another very big constraint which is related to CPU/GPU requirements. The career missions must be able to run on any machines, laptops included to attract the highest possible number of paying customers. This means that the maps have to be very lightly loaded, not too many planes, not too many vehicles etc. etc.

And the biggest constraint of all is the final product price. What is the maximum price you are ready to pay? you have the answer.

 

This is why the career missions will be built around a few standard mission frames (ex. interception, bombing, escort etc.) where some randomness will be built in and where the map will be "enriched" according to which standard frame you have. Some goodies here and there, but it cannot mask the feel you have when playing. There is no other way around this.

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[Yogiflight]

@IckyATLAS you got me wrong mate. Of course it would be nice to have, what you read into my post, but it is far from what I asked for. I know, I won't get a scripted campaign, like Desastersoft did them for the old IL-2 and CloD. But that is not, what I am expecting from the career mode here. All I was asking for are some ships in the harbors, maybe even shipping in the Black Sea and on the Volga, and some random trains and truck convoys every now and then, and longer trains.

And for the frontline, to have the positions of Axis and Allied ground troops at the same part of the frontline, so they do some ground war, which they do, when they have enemy facing them. (OK and tanks attacking enemy positions)

[CountZero]

On 6/10/2022 at 2:00 AM, kaizerhund4 said:

i am flying the kuban career and i see plenty of ports and ship docks etc but no ships. are there suppose to be some? 

just wait for normandy career, they took all the ships for invasion, no more left

[PatrickAWlson]

On 6/11/2022 at 5:38 PM, tattywelshie said:

Just out of interest, are there anti shipping missions as part of PWCG? Surely as part of the Normandy career there will be an element of anti shipping missions? 

 

Yes.  Especially just before and during the Kerch landings - Sept - Dev 1943. There is a two month period where the Germans and Russians are on opposite sides of the straight, kind of similar to the channel front in the west.  

[R33GZ]

On 6/13/2022 at 12:00 AM, BlitzPig_EL said:

I regularly fly my multiplayer missions on my own in the manner you described.  I host them on the multiplayer lobby, with a password, so only my squad mates can surprise me by popping in.  Mind you, as my missions are built for my friends to play as well, the can get pretty challenging for me alone, but no reason you couldn't set them up to work better for a single player.

This is going to confuse you... Mostly because I'm a special case ?

 

In '46 you could host and play a multiplyaer dogfight without Internet connection, obviously the only person who could join was the host. For most/nearly all people, this is completely pointless.... But I don't have Internet. Being able to design and play a large mission in this manner let me have multiple spawn points over the map with multiple different battle/skirmish areas, all contained within one mission file

On 6/13/2022 at 8:17 AM, Yogiflight said:

@IckyATLAS you got me wrong mate. Of course it would be nice to have, what you read into my post, but it is far from what I asked for. I know, I won't get a scripted campaign, like Desastersoft did them for the old IL-2 and CloD. But that is not, what I am expecting from the career mode here. All I was asking for are some ships in the harbors, maybe even shipping in the Black Sea and on the Volga, and some random trains and truck convoys every now and then, and longer trains.

And for the frontline, to have the positions of Axis and Allied ground troops at the same part of the frontline, so they do some ground war, which they do, when they have enemy facing them. (OK and tanks attacking enemy positions)

Just curious yogi. Have you tried opening one of the career missions in the editor to see if perhaps either the mission designer has just failed to include non target mission vehicles... Or maybe they are there, but you're not getting close enough to activate their spawn area? 

[Gambit21]

3 hours ago, R33GZ said: 

Just curious yogi. Have you tried opening one of the career missions in the editor to see if perhaps either the mission designer has just failed to include non target mission vehicles... Or maybe they are there, but you're not getting close enough to activate their spawn area? 

The generated mission files are relatively simplistic. There’s no spawn logic for harbors, shipping routes etc.

 

I’ve created randomized anything can be anywhere ( from the players perspective) vehicle, airbase and train logic - so this is very much possible within the sim. It would be a lot of work to create these logic groups, then incorporate them into the career mission templates - but doable. Maybe someday.

 

 

[R33GZ]

I imagine file size would become an issue then too, given that the career mode is online... Or could this be stored locally as some sort of base template that the mission is then built on? 

[Yogiflight]

3 hours ago, R33GZ said:

I imagine file size would become an issue then too, given that the career mode is online... Or could this be stored locally as some sort of base template that the mission is then built on? 

You only need the internet connection for login into the career mode. After that it doesn't matter if you are connected to internet, the missions are on your computer and get generated by it. What I would have thought is that there would be an issue with the statistics, but I lost internet connection during playing career mode about a week ago and everything was fine.

To your question, if I ever opened a career mission, no, I am quite a noob, when it is about any computer stuff.

[PatrickAWlson]

10 hours ago, R33GZ said:

I imagine file size would become an issue then too, given that the career mode is online... Or could this be stored locally as some sort of base template that the mission is then built on? 

 

They are text and binary files.  File size is in the 2-3 MB range, so not that big even if it is being transmitted over the wire.  Transmission is only at mission start so it is not that resource intensive.

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

On 6/10/2022 at 3:47 AM, Yogiflight said:

Yes, they are absolutely missing. Even with no anti ship missions, they would add a lot to the scenery with only being there in the harbours or off the shore. Like you never see any random trains or trucks or stuff like that. This makes the career mode missions very sterile.

 

I completely agree, I remember in the old IL2, you could see trains, vehicle columns here and there, the map was ALIVE. Now, unless its your actually target, there's nothing. A ghost map.

 

Also, have you ever noticed that if you strafe an airfield, it will barely be defended if its not your primary target? You can destroy a bunch of grounded aircrafts without any retaliation.

 

Making the maps overall more alive, more dynamic with ground objects should be a priority imo.

[tattywelshie]

2 hours ago, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

 

I completely agree, I remember in the old IL2, you could see trains, vehicle columns here and there, the map was ALIVE. Now, unless its your actually target, there's nothing. A ghost map.

 

Also, have you ever noticed that if you strafe an airfield, it will barely be defended if its not your primary target? You can destroy a bunch of grounded aircrafts without any retaliation.

 

Making the maps overall more alive, more dynamic with ground objects should be a priority imo.

Trouble is, if you make the maps more alive with ground objects, the CPU usage takes a massive hit. I try PWCG with everything on high and my 5600x slows down quite a bit.

[Yogiflight]

4 hours ago, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

Also, have you ever noticed that if you strafe an airfield, it will barely be defended if its not your primary target? You can destroy a bunch of grounded aircrafts without any retaliation.

Yes, I noticed that, too. Another thing about airfields, if you have fly airfield attack missions, it is almost everytime an airfield, which isn't used as a base by the enemy. Those airfields should be empty. You should be attacking airfields, which are active bases, with more than the usual four or five parked aircrafts, and not the well known four bombers with four trucks behind them, parked wing tip on wing tip. And some supply and fuel trucks standing on the airfield

 

2 hours ago, tattywelshie said:

Trouble is, if you make the maps more alive with ground objects, the CPU usage takes a massive hit. I try PWCG with everything on high and my 5600x slows down quite a bit.

There is the frontline density setting for this. According to the setting you select, there can be random trains, trucks and ships on the map. Just like it is with the positions along the frontline. And there are already ground targets, which are not shown on the map, at least friendly ones. They get often destroyed by enemy ground attack aircrafts.

I often see Panzer IV and light AA guns destroyed by IL-2s on the AAR-map, somewhere at the frontline, without a tactical sign, showing that there are ground troops.