homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War ROF Campaign Released

The hun in the sun bit was an attempt at a joke. Sorry 'bout that

The sudden appearance from nowwhere is definitely possible but mathematically unusual. I looked at the code tonight and noticed that my speed calculations for start time were low. Increasing the travel speed will decrease the wait to activate time which in turn should cause enemyplanes to activate a bit sooner - hopefully before the player arrives.

In the meantime it should not happen very often.

lol, no worries.

It's not a big problem, this is the only time it's happened just though I'd let you know.

Really enjoying 10.3, many thanks again for a fine version. If I may, a few questions.

My flight was tasked with an escort mission (we are the blue triangle in screenshot). We picked up the escorted aircraft (RE8's, the blue shield) and they took us well off the waypoint path to the front, as seen below--click to enlarge image. The result was that for much of the mission we flew over villages and airfields without buildings (compare Cachy & its airfield on left side vs. Villers Bretonneux and airfield on right side of image).

I know within the mission generator there is a 'draw distance box' for ground objects surrounding the waypoint path beyond which buildings etc. don't get rendered. I believe it is set at 10 km as delivered, so I've increased that to 50 km, but are there any hidden ramifications??? I mean, if you aren't within a certain visual distance of a village it won't get rendered anyways, so is there a reason for the 10 km limit? Mission load times have drastically decreased (yeah!) with last patch, which I think was the concern if not mistaken.

Regards!

I think the concern is to simply improve performance, load times have always been faster for PWCG missions than career missions, even before 1.22

The config files contain all possible ground objects. Only those that might reasonably be encountered are included. That parameter is the distance outside the waypoints to include objects.

I have to check the code but the fact that it is an escort mission makes me think it might be a bug. Escort missions have always been odd (read pain in the a$$) because the actions of the escorted flight mean as much or more than your flight, which means a lot of non-standard logic. If I am only considering your unit's waypoints then not enough ground objects will be included. I have to make sure that I also consider the escorted flight's waypoints in the bounding box.

I'll look into it. Thanks for the report.

I wonder Pat if it would be possible to introduce attrition in PWCG? Example, player and allies kill 10 enemy planes on 1/1/1917, come 1/2/1917 no or very few enemy planes are in the sky?

I heard the same question voiced in Red Baron forums, and the answer was that losses were made good very quickly, at least in terms of getting another warm body. Empty seats were filled in very short order. It would be a pretty significant amount of record keeping for a situation that really only lasted a few days.

I do simulate replacements in your squadron. New pilots are generally lower in rank and skill. Your squadron mate's skill improves as they fly missions and even more so if they score. They will be promoted and, when they fly with you, will fly at a higher AI level. So it does pay to take care of your virtual squadron mates. Not too much though - if the get very good they are promoted out . Higher ranking (and therefore generally more skilled) pilots do get transferred into your squadron, but that is much more rare.

Oh okay, wasn't really sure if it would be a historically accurate thing to do or not but it popped in my head so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Thanks for the info about the squad mates though, I wasn't aware that they actually improved over time, I already try to take good care of them but maybe now I'll try doubly so.

Finally got a chance to fly 10.3 and It's great. Loving the new claims system although I'm not sure what criteria are used since my ghastly wingman refused to confirm two of my victories which were destroyed right in front of him.

Somebody is going to be getting grated soap in his porridge tomorrow morning.

Timer is excellent also, It takes me a while to get Facetrack sorted out usually so I've bumped it up to 60 seconds which gives me plenty of time to get settled.

Jimmy weren't claims historically only allowed to be confirmed by ground crews anyways?

Also I have another question Pat, if I kill an Ace will he be dead(such as Richtofen) or will he come back until he died on his historical date?

I just got a news clip of his death in my Se5 career because we passed the date of his historical death(04/21). If I kill him before that will I get the same news clip as well?

Lastly! I have another, "quirk?" to report, I got another escort mission, this time instead of the enemies spawning above me they were just there already harassing the squad I was meant to escort.

Although this was a fantastic mission, once I arrived there were five Pfalz D.IIIa's attacking a group of pups(couldn't figure out what kind of two seater) and then as the fight progressed two more squads of five Pfalz joined the fight. It was pretty intense.

I got three kills, one of which was denied(love the new claim system as well), but lost all my pilots somehow.

Hi, I'm still having problems with this. I've never been able to get the generator to work well. I've just installed 10.3 and created a career but it tells me that there is a BUFFER problem while it is trying to load and stops. Also I tried to run a career that I created before and it is very slow and when I look at the map there are a hell of a lot of aircraft and ground targets showing which I know is slowing things down. Help please. PS how do I delete earlier careers? Ta.

Jerry, if you first delete PW's campaign folder out of the RoF directory, then install a fresh copy of a 10.3 download, then there should be no old campaigns.

Also, click on the Low setting, do not edit the config file (other than the line that finds the mission results), and your problems should be solved.

BTW, System specs?

RedPiano: Aces who are killed stay dead. Same system as Red Baron. It is quite possible for somebody else to be the war's leading ace. Also, victories that they score with you count beyond their historical victories, so it is possible for an ace to end up with more victories than they really had. Given the fight to the death mentality of the AI and the ease of getting victories (relative to real life) early death is more common than greater than historical success.

As you have no doubt guessed, the issue that you encountered was no doubt a different version of the previous issue. Interesting that this seems to happen on escort missions. That gives mean an idea as to what might be happeining. What squadron are you flying for and what is the date?

JerryBoy: some time around 10.0 I put in simplified configs. Use "low" settings per Bandy's suggestion and you should be OK. Even on low there is plenty of action.

The escort mission was for No.56 squadron on April 18th 1918.

I'm also curious about the "top aces" menu, it only displays historical top ranking aces when in fact I have more kills than all but two on the list yet I'm not listed, is this just how it is or a bug?

You should be on the list.

OK, removed the CG and re-installed and removed all the old missions from the ROF mission file and created a mission and it worked but I have just noticed that I don't have the ARR choice, manual or auto. I'll keep fiddling and see what happens, at least I can fly now, thanks.

jerryboy: per the release notes you now set the reporting type via configuration. I felt that I had too many "AAR" buttons on the campaign screen. As of 10.3 there is only 1 AAR button. Your configuration determines whether RoFCampaign goes down the verified, automatic, or manual flow. I think verified = 1, automatic = 2, and manual = 3. It should tell you inthe config hints (the "?" next to the config).

- Change by going to configuration -> advanced configs -> user preferences

Ta Patrick, I will give it a go. (EDIT)I know I'm being dim but I've just flown a mission and managed to shoot down a dolphin but I still cannot find a way of claiming it. There is no AAR button and I've set it to auto. What the H*** am I doing wrong?????

Hey Pat, what does the "delete missions" option do in the config? I switched the value from 0 to 1 hoping it would delete missions after I finish them or something but it appears to do nothing.

That's what it should do. Let me get back to you on that.