homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation European Air War EAW 1.6+ Testing torpedoes

The combination that I tried in this host-only test was an escort mission of torpedo armed Avengers with a Japanese carrier as the target.
I wanted to check that the torpedo code was working OK.

There were no AI interceptors and the Avengers released their fish appropriately:



This will make a nice GameRanger mission with the Avengers set as the AI friendly planes but with Interceptors to be downed by the Allied escorts

Will be looking at torpedo missions for one of the Italy/Balkan scenarios.

I have a torpedo plane-set. The first loadout slot is supposed to be empty so that you get the unladen plane. However, in this plane-set the first slot has the torpedo loadout. There are no other slots, and this only applies to the torpedo carrying planes such as the Avenger and the B5N2 Kate.

Testing torpedo missions can be time consuming, especially if you are flying the plane with the torpedo.
Often the torpedo will sink when it is released, making the test a waste of time.

This routine in the UAW160 exe can help:



By default the torpedo will sink if it released at a height of more than 100 feet or a speed of more than 160 knots.
However, if you make a "Torpedo.mpf" file with two values of 2000, and put it in the root folder, then they will only sink if they are released at a height of more than 2000 feet or a speed of more than 2000 knots.

In the screenie the height of the AI Avenger was 98 feet and its speed was 138 mph which is 120 knots so the code for the AI torpedo run was working very well.
It was host-only multiplayer, so I can set the altitudes for all the planes to a low value. This uses less time for getting the AI plane down to the correct height on the release run.

Why not just make the settings in the torpedo.mpf default rather than have the player add the file to the root directory?

It is for the modder to add the file for testing purposes, not the player. I does not make sense for a plane to be able to release a torpedo from 500 feet at 300 mph.

My post was a reply to Moggy who wrote "Will be looking at torpedo missions for one of the Italy/Balkan scenarios."

Thanks, makes it easier to wrap my head around the torpedo side of things.

Seems to me there should be a 'happy medium" built into the game, balancing game play vs real life.

Truth is, default torpedo runs in EAW have always been very difficult to perform because of the limitations of the EAW virtual world. Keeping the plane under 100 feet and 160 knots isn't easy to do. many of the planes involved are rather sluggish at that speed, making it too easy to go over the 100 foot limit or hit the water. It's not like in the real world where the pilot could look out to the side to judge his height.

Why not make it a default of say 250 feet and 200 knots? Regular players won't notice the difference (except maybe they'll have more successful drops) yet modders can add the .mpf file for testing purposes.

Just a thought.