Career Night Landing

[SYN_Ricky]

Just started a Normandy Mosquito career. As expected, my first mission was at night, managed to find my target in the target, thanks to the german searchlights in helping me locate their airfield, and then flew back home. Didn't follow the exact flight plan, but when reaching England I was able to figure out where I was, then after ten minutes of looking around, finally found my airfield. I saw the flares coming up, but no communication from the ground and they didn't put any light on the airstrip, so as expected my landing went bad, but I luckily survived. I was wondering if this is normal, or if something didn't trigger? I was expecting it to be difficult at night, but with no navigation help from the ground or landing lights on the strip, it seems that it's evenh harder than irl....enjoyed the mission, but I was a bit bummed by the ending.

[IckyATLAS]

On 5/18/2023 at 3:23 PM, SYN_Ricky said:

Just started a Normandy Mosquito career. As expected, my first mission was at night, managed to find my target in the target, thanks to the german searchlights in helping me locate their airfield, and then flew back home. Didn't follow the exact flight plan, but when reaching England I was able to figure out where I was, then after ten minutes of looking around, finally found my airfield. I saw the flares coming up, but no communication from the ground and they didn't put any light on the airstrip, so as expected my landing went bad, but I luckily survived. I was wondering if this is normal, or if something didn't trigger? I was expecting it to be difficult at night, but with no navigation help from the ground or landing lights on the strip, it seems that it's evenh harder than irl....enjoyed the mission, but I was a bit bummed by the ending.

It boils down again to mission design. In night missions one can have the runway side fires lit up when you arrive in a vicinity of an airfield where they can hear you, or at a given time where it is planned that you will be back and so they lit up the runway. Many possibilities, depending on scenarios and mission design. 

[Yogiflight]

@SYN_Ricky, what about your flight? I guess they were not yet at your airfield, right? You said, you didn't follow the flight plan, so I guess you were flying the direct way back to your base and with higher speed than the missions cruising speed. So you were back some time before your squadmates. From my experiences, you don't get the radio communication if you are too early back at yout base. Then you have to wait for your flight until the landing routine starts. This isn't a big issue when flying in daylight, the main difference here, apart from the missing communication, is the missing landing cross, but at night it means, there is no illumination for the runway. So my advice is, follow your flight plan. It worked for me in my Me 410 night bombing missions. I always heard the radio communication before I reached my base and the runway illumination was there, too.

[SYN_Ricky]

12 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

It boils down again to mission design. In night missions one can have the runway side fires lit up when you arrive in a vicinity of an airfield where they can hear you, or at a given time where it is planned that you will be back and so they lit up the runway. Many possibilities, depending on scenarios and mission design. 

 

9 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

@SYN_Ricky, what about your flight? I guess they were not yet at your airfield, right? You said, you didn't follow the flight plan, so I guess you were flying the direct way back to your base and with higher speed than the missions cruising speed. So you were back some time before your squadmates. From my experiences, you don't get the radio communication if you are too early back at yout base. Then you have to wait for your flight until the landing routine starts. This isn't a big issue when flying in daylight, the main difference here, apart from the missing communication, is the missing landing cross, but at night it means, there is no illumination for the runway. So my advice is, follow your flight plan. It worked for me in my Me 410 night bombing missions. I always heard the radio communication before I reached my base and the runway illumination was there, too.

 

Thanks for your replies. Seems then I've might have missed the las waypoint which may trigger my airfield lights, or not. It was a solitaire intruder mission, so I didn't have a flight with me. After my attack I veered a bit out of course and can't remember in the end if I did see the message for the last waypoint. I remembre flying around traying to trigger it. I will try again with the next mission without missing any waypoint.

 

Anyway I always tried to avoid night flying because I thought it would be boring, turns out it's quite exciting.

[-TBC-AeroAce]

I heard that IRL bombers would get back to the vicinity of the field and then radio/signal for the lights to come on. There should be a radius around the field that triggers the lights.

[IckyATLAS]

3 hours ago, SYN_Ricky said:

Seems then I've might have missed the las waypoint which may trigger my airfield lights

If so then this is for me bad programming. In an open world environment using waypoints to activate events, actions etc. is for me a bad sim design, because it kills your freedom and makes you obliged to fly in a tunnel.

In my missions waypoints are just displayed on the map because players told me in a post long ago that they wanted them. So I display a path generally without detail and I do not make them a necessity. This means that you can automatically fly at least up to a point but you will never succeed the mission automatically and I take care of that. You must earn the success. And I have a mission or two where you do not have waypoints at all.

 

When the leader is the player ideally no waypoints. You have a map and mission indications and then up to you to plan your flight and go. Use the compass, the watch the visible ground references etc. The sim must be realistic so the waypoints should not be mandatory. There are different ways to do a mission. If you are a wingman then just follow your leader he knows the flight plan. There you need waypoints to guide your leader.

This makes the design of the mission a little different and more complex, because you may fly all over the map. So you need to think as a war theater where things may happen all over the place. And that is extremely time consuming and long to design.

This is why instead of waypoints it is areas that will activate things or proximity distances. In the case of light switching you can define an area around the airfield, or a distance. It is true that you can define a very large area around a waypoint, but this become bad waypoint usage. 

 

[Sgt_Joch]

I have been playing a Mosquito career on and off, it is mostly solo night intruder missions. The landing airfield is always lit when I come in, but I always make sure to hit all the mission waypoints.

 

Note that ‘lit’ just means a row of torches on either side of the runway, so still requires some practice, but night landings are easy enough when you the hang of it.
 

Make sure to turn on your landing lights, makes it easier to see the runway just before you touch down.

 

Note also that if the moon is out, you can usually make out the landing strip even if it is not lit up.

[Gambit21]

On 5/18/2023 at 6:23 AM, SYN_Ricky said:

Just started a Normandy Mosquito career. As expected, my first mission was at night, managed to find my target in the target, thanks to the german searchlights in helping me locate their airfield, and then flew back home. Didn't follow the exact flight plan, but when reaching England I was able to figure out where I was, then after ten minutes of looking around, finally found my airfield. I saw the flares coming up, but no communication from the ground and they didn't put any light on the airstrip, so as expected my landing went bad, but I luckily survived. I was wondering if this is normal, or if something didn't trigger? I was expecting it to be difficult at night, but with no navigation help from the ground or landing lights on the strip, it seems that it's evenh harder than irl....enjoyed the mission, but I was a bit bummed by the ending.

 

It's possible to have audio/radio morris codes or light beacons for individual fields. I created logic like this (along with a functioning German radar for the continent) for a Mossie campaign I'd started building a while back.

The editor has the capability, just takes the Devs/VikS etc putting in the time.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2023 by Gambit21

[IckyATLAS]

On 5/26/2023 at 3:45 AM, Gambit21 said:

The editor has the capability, just takes the Devs/VikS etc putting in the time.

So true. The editor can a lot, given enough development time.