Request for a new Airfield/Fakefield object in the Mission Editor

[357th_KW]

Currently, in a multiplayer game the SDS file contains an option labeled "Finish mission if landed".  If this option isn't selected, players can finish their mission at any time while flying (this can be seen on Berloga).  If the option is selected (as seen on most other servers), then players must land (or crash) their aircraft and come to a stop in order to finish their mission.

 

I'd like to see a new airfield object that has an option to allow friendly aircraft to be considered as landed (and thus able to finish their mission successfully) if they are inside a zone around the airfield (preferably mission designers could adjust the size of the zone and choose between a cylinder or sphere), even if they are still flying.   Additionally it would be helpful if there was a selectable option to not allow the player to finish their mission if there are enemies within the zone.  This would allow for an aerial "de-spawn". 

 

Currently we can use air-spawns  where they are necessary, but there is then no way to de-spawn these aircraft successfully.  As an example, one of the common mission types I use on my server involves 8th AF fighters escorting bombers across the Rhineland map.  Obviously they would have been based in the UK, and I can airspawn them easily enough to accommodate this.  But then in order to recover them I need to use some sort of airfield on the continent which just doesn't make much sense in many scenarios and really takes away from the flavor of the missions.  The only other alternative it to uncheck that "Finish mission if landed" box in the SDS, but if I do that, then any player can end their mission mid air at any time and inevitably this gets abused to escape from dogfights etc.  This also creates the issue that any aircraft which ends its mission mid-flight is scored as a kill if it's taken any damage, even minor superficial damage.

 

On some other servers, there are cases where there just aren't any airfields in a part of the map that they want to use, and people have tried building an airfield on rough terrain - this comes with huge problems of players generally dying in crash landings due to the rough terrain.  So this would be another scenario where this "aerial despawn" would be useful.

 

I suggest this be made as an additional, different type of fakefield object so that there's no possibility that changes here would break any existing missions.

 

Thanks!

 

@LukeFF

[Stonehouse]

3 hours ago, 357th_KW said:

This would allow for an aerial "de-spawn". 

........which would allow the concept of off map bombing raids etc to spawn, fly their mission and go back to the despawn location to exit the map........this was a concept heavily used in IL2 1946 days. Particularly in Lowengrins DCG campaigns.