TWC Operation Jubilee Campaign relaunched with updates

[TWC_Flug]

Pilots,

You will have noticed a number of updates to the TWC Operation Jubilee Server - which is generally running 24/7 in the multiplayer section of Cliffs of Dover Blitz.

Overall, this is a multi-month campaign where each side has the goal of pushing their front line across the Channel in order to initiate an invasion of the other side. You fly high-altitude recon missions to identify objectives and their locations - many of which are constantly on the move or frequently relocate to stymie enemy attacks - lead large bomber formations to take out enemy assets, lead smaller "sturmovik" low-level ground attack missions to take out moving convoys and other objectives, defend against enemy bombing raids, engage enemy fighters, and fly repair and resupply missions.

An extensive statistics and promotion system tracks literally every shot, bomb, damage, and kill - whether air, ground, AA, or naval.

The campaign features very long mission times, generally 8 hours, runs sunup to sundown, and runs in "real time" - meaning, for example, that if an airport or aircraft repair takes two days, then it will be repaired in two days real time, not just game time. 

Objectives and damage are real and persistent - for example, if you drop a bomb an an airfield runway, then the crater will obstruct runway operations until it is repaired, generally a few hours.  If you sufficiently damage an airport or other military asset, repairs may take several days or even weeks.

Your damage takes a real toll on the enemy - for example, if you take an an airport, the enemy can no longer use it. If you reduce the enemy's fuel supply, they begin to face real limits on the amount of fuel they can use.  If you take out the enemy's radar installations, they will be blind on that part of the map.  If you destroy the enemy's aircraft, their supply of that type of aircraft becomes limited - until they can produce more. If you crash your aircraft, or it is shot down, supply is reduced - and both sides have run out of vital aircraft types at times.  If your aircraft is damaged, repairs may take many hours before it is returned to the available supply. And so on.

At the same time, your side can work to repair objectives by flying in squadrons of up to 10 aircraft with supplies and repair crews.  And you can resupply aircraft to forward bases by ferrying new aircraft from distant, safer parts of the map to forward, operational sectors.

The campaign takes place over the entire Channel map, though with a concentration around the French Point/English Point area.

The highly customized map features literally tens of thousands of individual ground objectives, hundreds of customized and constantly changing objectives for each side, use of all airfields on the map plus a few additional special "provisional" airfields, and much more.

It is designed to be fun and engaging to fly whether there are just one or two people online, or twenty, or 120, whether you enjoy flying fighters, bombers, or ground-attack Sturmovik type aircraft, and whether you enjoy flying alone or with a coordinated group. There is always something important to do, something important to defend, something important to recon, and something important to repair or resupply.

Here are the most recent updates to the campaign:
 

• #1. Restarted the campaign and though it has been running for a fair while, is still quite near the zero point. (Looks like Blue is up 608 points just at the moment.)
• #2. It is possible to switch sides as you like - so you might consider choosing your side to even up the sides more, either on that particular day or over the campaign as a whole. (Red has won the past several campaigns in a row - I know a number of pilots choosing Blue this campaign just for that reason.)
  • Note that there are secrets you can learn by joining one team and then quickly switching to the other etc etc etc. That is why in the past we made your decision to fly one side or the other permanent for that campaign.
    
    For now we are depending on your honor as pilots to NOT take advantage of these things when you switch sides - so we'll see how that goes, and make adjustments as necessary.
• #3. A bunch of bug fixes & tweaks - most prominently, individual points are now awarded correctly for flying a successful repair or ferry mission. Also a bug that prevented proper repair of an objective if it was not completely destroyed was fixed. It should be easier to repair radar installations esp. if they are closely surrounded by AA batteries (though you still need pinpoint accuracy on your drop for these).
• #4. HQ on both sides have made the decision to step up routine fighter patrols and bombing missions.
  • Fighter pilots: Do whatever you can to stop those incoming bomber squadrons. They WILL be attacking your key military assets - destroying airports, fuel storage, and all the rest.
  • Bomber pilots, recon pilots: You'll need to be even more vigilant to avoid fighter patrols whenever you fly.
• #5. HQ on both sides have stepped up AA defenses quite considerably. Fly accordingly! Flying low, slow, and straight over enemy strongpoints is guaranteed to be a fatal error . . .
• #6. HQ on both sides have noticed ongoing fuel shortages, and have implemented a policy of creating hidden, highly fortified fuel dumps in a number of secret locations across the countryside. A big part of your assignment this campaign is to locate and destroy these vital fuel storage sites on enemy ground, while protecting your own. The status of these fuel storage sites has a direct impact on fuel availability for your aircraft.
• #7. HQ now directs only a relatively few primary objectives, leaving the remainder to be determined by local initiative.

[Nocke]

Sounds good!

Question: How do I translate the coordinates given in the briefing to something on the map?

Like e.g. AZ18.8.1, or 1234567,1234567?
I can find AZ18, but what are the other 2 numbers? Tenths of the extent of the square in x,y direction, perhaps?

If so, where do x and y start?

And is there a temspeak or discord server perhaps for communication?

Thx!

[Dawson]

23 hours ago, Nocke said:

Sounds good!

Question: How do I translate the coordinates given in the briefing to something on the map?

Like e.g. AZ18.8.1, or 1234567,1234567?
I can find AZ18, but what are the other 2 numbers? Tenths of the extent of the square in x,y direction, perhaps?

If so, where do x and y start?

And is there a temspeak or discord server perhaps for communication?

Thx!

 

The other two numbers represent the location within the larger 10 km x 10 km square. It uses a number pad (or phone pad) style. Imagine the square superimposed with a 3x3 grid like on the number pad of your keyboard. "1" to the south west and "9" to the north east. The last digit is a second 3x3 grid within each of first grid's squares for a more precise location. This gives you a 1.1 km x 1.1 km (10 km /3 /3) square coordinate.

 

The number only coordinates are a more precise system. The first number is the X coordinate the second the Y. With experience you'll be able to figure the approximate alphanumeric coordinate.

 

The ATAG teamspeak server is the most likely place to find pilots flying this server.

[Amarok]

Moin Flug,

it seems to me that the flight behavior, especially of the Blenheims, has also been adjusted. As soon as you approach about 500 m, the most amazing aerobatic maneuvers are performed!
This is new, was not so before and completely unrealistic.

[Nocke]

Thx Dawson!

Another question: Is it possible to stay below radar? At what altitude?

Thx again!

[OBT-Eazy]

6 minutes ago, Nocke said:

Thx Dawson!

Another question: Is it possible to stay below radar? At what altitude?

Thx again!

During repair or restock mission, if I stay below 1000ft, seems I don't appear on the (online) radar.

[TWC_Flug]

On 12/16/2022 at 5:49 AM, OBT-Eazy said:

During repair or restock mission, if I stay below 1000ft, seems I don't appear on the (online) radar.

 

On 12/16/2022 at 5:41 AM, Nocke said:

Another question: Is it possible to stay below radar? At what altitude?

Generally if you fly below 200 ft (65m) above ground level you are pretty safe.

 

However . . . realistic radar & spotter network information is modeled.  If you're over enemy territory or straight in front of a radar installation, you might be detected no matter how low you fly.  (For example, the British had Chain Home Extra Low installed at ports - it could detect targets as low as 50 feet at fairly close-in distances.)  If you happen to fly straight over a spotter, they might see you no matter how low you are.

 

On the other hand, if the radar installation far distant, you might be under the radar horizon, which can be quite high if you are quite far away from it.

 

So general answer is, lower is better, 200ft/65m AGL is generally safest, nothing is completely safe.

[TWC_Flug]

I just posted an update to the TWC forums with recent news about the Operation Jubilee campaign server and some helpful info & advice for pilots.

 

I'll let you read all the details there, but the main point is to let all pilots know about the main goal of the current campaign:

 

Goal of the current TWC Operation Jubilee Campaign on our Cliffs of Dover server:

Your goal is to push front line all the way across the channel, and then further onto enemy ground, pushing it forward until you have captured the ground for at least one enemy airfield.  It might well be one of the provisional airfields you see on enemy territory right near the oceanfront.

We believe this will take about 15000 points - more or less.  It's not based so much on how many points, though, as how far the front line is pushed.

THEN to actually complete the campaign you must make an active "temporary landing ground" on the enemy's side of the Channel.

Instructions in-game with chat comment <lghelp.  But in short:

- push the front line COMPLETELY clear of a previously existing enemy airfield

- Take AT LEAST 3 different types of aircraft (ie, you and two or more of your pilot friends) and all land safely/alive at that currently vacant field

- Chat command <makelg

- This turns the previously unused/vacant airfield into an airfield/spawn point you can use, stocked with whatever aircraft you have flown to establish it.

- Take a screenshot or a few proving you have accomplished this - ie, your aircraft landed at the airport, the screen messages saying the landing ground was established, the new map showing the landing ground as active etc.

- Post to the forums and/or discord to establish your victory for everyone to see.

- You have completed this campaign and are now the victors!

- This might not be as easy to accomplish as you hope - the enemy will, if they have any sense - but doing their utmost to prevent this beachhead from being established and stocked with aircraft.

 

And a reply to Amarok's post upthread RE: AI bomber behavior:

 

On 12/15/2022 at 4:33 PM, Amarok said:

Moin Flug,

it seems to me that the flight behavior, especially of the Blenheims, has also been adjusted. As soon as you approach about 500 m, the most amazing aerobatic maneuvers are performed!
This is new, was not so before and completely unrealistic.

Say you're a fighter and you approach from the rear, when you get close they don't just fly straight and level for your convenience any more?

 

A lot of that is determined by the CloD Blitz AI programmers.  They have been changing and improving AI pilot behavior a lot over the past few years.

 

They also sometimes have changed things in ways that most of us didn't really think were improvement - but I feel like most of that has been ironed out at this point.  You might be right that the exact behavior you're describing here isn't 100% realistic, though.  Maybe the general idea is realistic but the exact outcome is too extreme.  Possible - though there are my thoughts on it:

 

We have put together training missions where we want the bomber formations to fly straight and level, for our gunnery practice, and to make that happen you have to really dumb down the AI pilots.  At very, very low settings that is what they do - fly kind of like robots.  They will just fly straight and follow the track you have given them, and never break formation or even jink and weave much within the formation.

 

I believe many of the single-player campaigns are set up that way.  The bomber formations are very nicely behaved and you can just fly straight in and shoot them up.

 

In our servers, all the AI is intended to be as close to real life as we can make it.  There are always some new/inexperienced/dumb pilots but by far the majority are battle hardened and very experienced.  If you came up behind a breather bomber pilot and started shooting them up, they wouldn't just hold still and let you finish the job. They are going to jink and roll and climb and dive in the most unpredictable way they can, hoping you'll waste all your ammo before you can kill them.

 

The AI pilots will do the same.

 

Apparently this was commonly used and even Luftwaffe doctrine.  Just one example:

 

Quote

Violent evasive action is frequently necessary both before and after a bombing run. In a raid on the submarine installations at Lorient on January 23, evasive action was the only thing that saved us at one or two stages of the mission.

That's from the Air Force Official Service Journal of July 1943, page 15. That same issue has several different accounts of bomber encounters with flak & fighters that has them implementing pretty strong evasive maneuvers of different types - see for example p. 32.

 

Whether or not these bomber formations fly EXACTLY in a historically accurate way I can't say - and that is more up to the sim programmers.  We haven't changed our code or AI pilot experience/ability levels any in a long time, maybe 5 years, but we've seen a lot of different behavior emerge in AI aircraft behavior due to changes made in the sim itself.

 

Also I will mention I have been flying quite a bit in the past week and have shot down literally dozens of enemy bombers regardless of their evasive behavior.  So it can be done but sometimes it requires different tactics - and equipment. Just for example, the Beaufighter packs a hell of a punch for those scenarios, and enough ammo to miss a lot and still kill a lot.  If you only have 10 seconds worth of ammo then it only takes a couple of jinks to put an end to your mission.

 

Also I will mention - one of your goals as a fighter pilot is to break up those formations and disrupt their coordinate progress towards their bombing objective.  Often when you get a formation scattering like a bunch of scared pigeons, as you describe, that is indeed the outcome. Often they will randomly drop their bomb load as part of their evasive maneuvers. Though if you don't continue to harass them they are sometimes able to re-form up and continue towards the target.

 

The description of fighter tactics attacking bomber formations found on p. 15 here is really interesting. You'll note that flying serenely straight up from behind while the bomber pilot holds it straight and level for your aiming convenience is not at all one of the tactics actually used in practice.

Edited December 19, 2022 by TWC_Flug

[Dawson]

Hi Flug, thanks for the update. I have a question. You said "a Landing Ground should persist in that location, with those same initial aircraft, until/unless destroyed by the enemy". Is this a recent change? Playing Jubilee in the spring or summer we established an LG at Oye Plage but it was lost when the day ended.

[TWC_Flug]

3 hours ago, Dawson said:

Hi Flug, thanks for the update. I have a question. You said "a Landing Ground should persist in that location, with those same initial aircraft, until/unless destroyed by the enemy". Is this a recent change? Playing Jubilee in the spring or summer we established an LG at Oye Plage but it was lost when the day ended.

Aha, thanks for the update.  They are supposed to persist, but maybe that part is not quite working yet.  So it's possible for now they will only persist for the duration of that session.

 

UPDATE: OK, I think everything is in place for the persistent Landing Grounds to work. They will not persist forever, but for something like 3 weeks.

 

If anyone wants to test this and make sure it is really working, I would appreciate it!

Edited December 19, 2022 by TWC_Flug