Request: Assign player to random squadron in Career mode

[Flashy]

Hi all,

 

I would like to suggest an option in career mode (or PWCG if you are reading this Pat 😉) to assign the player to a random squadron when you start a career. The game should look at which planes you have, and pick one at random, then assign you to a random squadron flying those planes. I don't think many new pilots would have had the option to pick and choose the plane they flew and the squadron they were assigned to, so this would be more realistic IMO. It also adds a fun bit of variability to a new career because you might get thrown into a plane you weren't necessarily planning on flying..

thoughts? 

[Avimimus]

Interesting as an option. Of course, one could also just flip a coin and do it manually.

 

I recall a similar suggestion that was once made to me: Every time you die, you get a new pilot assigned to a random squadron on your side... the date of the campaign as still progressed (so you can see later stages of the war) and you are forced to fly a new aircraft or fly in a new part of the theatre... it could be very engaging...

 

...a kind of 'iron man' mode that doesn't set you back to the start date of the campaign.

[Flashy]

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

Interesting as an option. Of course, one could also just flip a coin and do it manually.

 

I recall a similar suggestion that was once made to me: Every time you die, you get a new pilot assigned to a random squadron on your side... the date of the campaign as still progressed (so you can see later stages of the war) and you are forced to fly a new aircraft or fly in a new part of the theatre... it could be very engaging...

 

...a kind of 'iron man' mode that doesn't set you back to the start date of the campaign.

This is a great idea to have in combination with the random start.. I wonder how much work it is to implement.?

[Ghost666]

This is what I have been doing for some time now. For career mode, I randomly pick a theater, then nation. Then I pick a random plane from a list I keep for each theater. Once a plane has flown 5 missions, it is removed from the theater list. This way I will fly all planes in all theaters at least 5 times. Only have appx. 26 more to go. 

[garyrivera650]

Getting a random squadron sounds awesome, like how On-page SEO adds structure and surprise, plus discovering new planes would be a fun twist!

Edited April 27 by garyrivera650

[Dutch2]

I would like to see a career mode where you can make your own story text (no more that sportsman crap) and can use your own pilot’s photo (no Zombies anymore).  Further more it would be great if this career was more open to modders or give Pat Wilson the source so he could implement his PWCG better into BoX/FC/Korea, remember Ankors UI.  
I still do not get why 1C is so closed as an oyster at that aspect, complaining about limited sources/budget, but  spilling lots of labor on the career mode, while modders do this for free. 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 hours ago, Dutch2 said:

I still do not get why 1C is so closed as an oyster at that aspect, complaining about limited sources/budget, but  spilling lots of labor on the career mode, while modders do this for free. 

There are several very good reasons not to share your code, including the following:

• Intellectual property: you don't want someone else to use your code without getting some share in it.
• Maintainability: by keeping everything in-house, 1CGS ensures that any changes they make in the game don't break anything.
• Reliability: using their own employees, 1CGS can guarantee that issues are fixed within a certain time, depending on their severity. Modders work for free as a hobby, usually having a job and other hobbies at the same time. They fix issues whenever they have time for it, which may be months away or perhaps even never. They may drop support at any arbitrary point in time.
• Marketability: potential customers expect a certain amount of features in the base game. Requiring users to download huge packages of mods makes the base game less attractive to potential customers.
• Knowledge: about everything in game, there's at least someone at 1CGS who knows how it works and how it interfaces with other parts of the game. Outsourcing some parts of the code means that this can quickly become very complex and might slow down development.
• Quality control: 1CGS can ensure a certain quality level for their own products. Modded products might look good at first sight but turn out to be buggy as hell.

4 hours ago, Dutch2 said:

it would be great if this career was more open to modders

I don't understand why you think the career is not open to modders? None of the career files are locked, most are editable and a large portion of them are plain text files.

[Dutch2]

On 5/14/2025 at 9:07 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

There are several very good reasons not to share your code, including the following:

• Intellectual property: you don't want someone else to use your code without getting some share in it.
• Maintainability: by keeping everything in-house, 1CGS ensures that any changes they make in the game don't break anything.
• Reliability: using their own employees, 1CGS can guarantee that issues are fixed within a certain time, depending on their severity. Modders work for free as a hobby, usually having a job and other hobbies at the same time. They fix issues whenever they have time for it, which may be months away or perhaps even never. They may drop support at any arbitrary point in time.
• Marketability: potential customers expect a certain amount of features in the base game. Requiring users to download huge packages of mods makes the base game less attractive to potential customers.
• Knowledge: about everything in game, there's at least someone at 1CGS who knows how it works and how it interfaces with other parts of the game. Outsourcing some parts of the code means that this can quickly become very complex and might slow down development.
• Quality control: 1CGS can ensure a certain quality level for their own products. Modded products might look good at first sight but turn out to be buggy as hell.

 

First I think the developers that were involved with RoF knows what I wanting to say here, about the Ankor UI source, because that was already been done 10y ago and its proven, only for some reason it's here forgotten.  But It would be great if this ingame UI would be re-implemented, not only for PWCG but who knows others. Please keep in your mind not all the members have a good internet connection needed for the career mode and I can keep my VR head set on while using PWCG ingame without the need of additional Virtual-desktop software. 

 

Make the career more open to/for personalisation like your own photo, music, photoshots and make your own pilot text, without UNgtp or other (creative) tools, is in my opinion simple to include and there will not be any secret source code being exposed.  Think DIY personalisation around a career will give you more immersion and lesser work for 1C.      

        

On 5/14/2025 at 9:07 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I don't understand why you think the career is not open to modders? None of the career files are locked, most are editable and a large portion of them are plain text files.

About your career mode remarks "none of the files are locked" , interesting I did not know that. 

This "plain text file" modification please let me know how to change this in career mode or are you talking about the campaign/missions, while I did write down about open the career mode for an easy personalization? 

Edited May 16 by Dutch2

[LukeFF]

Guys, just wait to see what the new GUI is going to look like. It's an entire break from GB's interface. 🙂

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 5/16/2025 at 1:54 PM, Dutch2 said:

This "plain text file" modification please let me know how to change this in career mode or are you talking about the campaign/missions, while I did write down about open the career mode for an easy personalization? 

I don't have the time (or the ready knowledge, really) to make a comprehensive guide on how to do career editing, but it's all in the \data\scg folders (unpack first). All the folders there are one of the various Career and (A)QMB mission generation "environments," e.g. 14 is the Stalingrad career. The .cfg files there basically control the general picture, e.g. squadrons.cfg specifies for each squadron the aircraft, airfield, dates they're active, mission types with probabilities, mission times etc.

The blocks_career and templates folders contains the templates that are used by the mission generation code and some instructions for this code on how to fit the templates together. The i18n folder contains the briefings for all of the mission types.

 

Lastly, the locations and scene folders contain a list of locations where the mission generation code can potentially place targets and scenery. These are the only files that are not plain text. They are not locked, meaning they can be edited without getting any errors, but some are in a compressed format for faster loading times, and this compressed format cannot be directly loaded in the Mission Editor.

[Lord_Cool]

The random option could also give the aircraft types that might typically get looked over in favour of higher performance ones more of a look in, I can imagine many just gunning straight for the F-86 or MiG-15 if given the choice, so with the randomiser you could have a scenario whereby you were hoping for a MiG-15 but got assigned to a IL-10 instead.

Edited May 19 by Lord_Cool