Anyone had any luck tweaking the DGEN ops files in Pacific Fighters to get more variety in missions, or to stop silly little things like F4F's being tasked to bomb while escorted by SBDs?

Right now I think Nimits is the top of the Pacific Fighters Dgen builders, I believe he has been working on some comprehensive changes to the standard setup. If so, thanks for all your hard work Nimits, its much appreciated.

Are those adapted ops files available somewhere?

When I finally get my mod finished (and I honestly have no idea when that will be unfortunately, I would be alot farther along except I loss half my work to a hard drive problem), the OPs files for most missions will have at least 5 variants (alot will have 8-10), although the number of variants will be at times determined by the historical reality of the campaign. For example, for the mini-campaign covering the Lexington's aborted raid on Rabaul in early 1942, there are only four types of missions for fighters: Recon Intercept, Scramble, ASW Recon, and most will have 2-3 variants, since in reality there where only 4 Japanese flight involved (2 single recon and 2 Shotais of Type 1 Bombers, i.e. G4M) and only a handful of distinctly different situations possible. On the other hand, in my May 1942 New Guinea campaign, every American mission has 8-10 variants, most based on the composition of actual combats.

Galanti, if you want to tweak the ops file for your own preferences, I recommend you go ahead; the DGEN Studies thread at the top of the forum has some excellent guides, and those of us that know will answer any questions you have.

To stop SBDs from being tasked with fighgter missions, you need to alter the file "PacificPlanes.dat." First step, if you have not done so, is to open the /DGEN folded, find the file "PacificPlanes.txt", and rename it "PacificPlanes.dat" (I would of course back it up first). In the third and fourth columns from the right, look for the entries

Fighter SBD3

and

Fighter SBD5

Delete those entire lines.

Similarly, if you want F4Fs to stop showing up as carrier bombers look for the lines

CBomber F4F3

and

CBomber F4F4

Deleting those lines will have F4Fs no longer used as carrier bombers in any Pacific campaign (so use with care, of course). On the other hand, with those two lines in the PacificPlanes.dat, F4Fs will be used as carrier bombers of the same type and frequency (modified only, of course, by the numbers in the .db files) as SBDs or TBFs.

Thanks Nimits, I have been doing this with the Guadal1 ops files, but I can't see much variety yet.

I had also changed the positioning of the 'N' group within the USNavyAttack and USNavyBomb macros like so; USN 4nB 4nB 4N 2nF so that I would tasked with escort rather than bombing, but that doesn't seem to work. I'll give the PacificPlanes.dat file a go. I'll also try creating a classesUN1.dat file with the Wildcat listed as FIGHTER only as well.

Good luck with your project, I'd be keenly interested in trying it out. There seems to be a few mods for spicing up the Eastern Front DGEN campaigns, but the PTO needs this kind of attention very badly as well.

Well, I've tried both tricks and I'm still getting F4F4's tasked with bombing (3 out of 3 missions tried).

I've got DGEN 4.0.0.9, and I've read there was an issue with earlier DGEN exe's not reading the pacificplanes.dat properley. Is there a newer DGEN beta that fixes this?

Okay, I tested this myself, and I'm seeing more or less what you are. Even with no bomber missions defined in Planes.dat, the player's F4F is still being assigned as a bomber . . . okay. Here's how to fix it. To keep the AI F4Fs from being spawned as bombers, it seems you need to delete the CBomber line for England as well. After doing that, I generated 5 escort missions, and they were all TBFs or SBDs.

If you don't want your player sqadron flying bombing missions, use the Classes.dat just like before. I'm not sure why it didn't work for you before, but I just tested it over several missions, and it is working fine for me. Just create UN1classes.dat, type the line

F4F4 FIGHTER

and voila. The downside, of course, is that now your F4F4 will never fly an ground attack mission for the Navy (and most of the time, they didn't IRL). Alternatively, one coulduse LIGHT instead of FIGHTER, since F4F4s did fly ground attack on occastion (VF-71 flew a few strike missions in the morning of August 7, for example). Its user preference.


You could delete all the attack missions in the Guadal1ops file (though this will mess up an SBD campaign . . .)


You have the newest DGen I'm aware of (if there's a new one for Ostfront, Starshoy ain't talking yet). There are still some mysteries (to me at least) concerng DGen and the Ops files and Planes.dat. For example, when naval fighters are generated as escorts, they use the CBomer (when its available) rather than the CFighter loudaut. Another: the DGen code that's supposed to generate an unsecorted airstart flight of bombers (xBr) always generates a pair of fighter escorts . . .

XXXXAttack missions are bombing/strike/CAS mission; the players flight (N) will always be the primary bomber flight; if no bomber loadouts are available, DGen will crash. Escort missions are the XXXBomb missions. The position of the N, nF, and nB in a mission merely determines who escorts who (as I understand it, fighter flight, ai or human, will escort the directly preceding bomber flight, again, either ai or human).

Great info there Nimits, thanks very much. Perhaps you could add your insight to a problem I've been having? It's as follows:

Stock DGEN will not generate a P-36 in the Pacific, a F4F over Normany, or a 2 Cannon Spitfire Vc over New Guinea. The problem in the first two instances can be solved with a XXXXXplanes.dat (eg. NormandyRAFplanes.dat) tailored to the aircraft in the DB.

In the case of a player controlled Spitfire (2 Cannon Vc) over New Guinea, DGEN Beeps out with a "can't pickup starting base" error. Never seen that before. So far I've thought to try a classesRA1.dat with a "SPITFIRE5C2 NewGuinea BASE" entry but had no luck. Do you have any ideas?

Just a thought: did you make sure to (1) add an RAF sqadron to the .db or (2) define the Spit5 as USAAF or RAAF in the PacificPlanes.dat? By default, it is only available to the RAAF.

The "can't pickup starting base" normally means DGen can't find an airfield carrier suitable to the player's plane (i.e. trying to generate a mission for a P-38 when only carriers are available for the US), so maybe DGen is confused, looking for an RAF land-based squadron (squadrons seem to play a role in DGen's determined of whether a plane is land or carrier based) and can't find it . . .