Major Fenrirs P-38 Campaign - Testing

[Painless]

Sounds really good, and it’s on Sunday so Funflak and Friar can join in....... best sign up chaps 😉

[DD_Fenrir]

Hold your horses there boys, there are still some hurdles to cross:

1. The unit we have chosen, is, to the best of my knowledge still unavailable; there seems to be a way I can manually add units to the a campaign structure but for some reason it's not working currently with the USAAF squadrons. Pat Wilson is investigating. As soon as I have a solution I will let you know.

2. Need some volunteers to play flight commanders, ideally 3-4. These guys will start at Captain rank, and will, well, command flights!

3. Once the above are established I need to create a campaign and run a couple of test missions before we commit because there are bound to be teething troubles, and I suggest myself and the Captains do so in a private server whilst the rest of the Dogz play co-ops/DFs on the DDZ Dedicated GBS, to avoid the sucking off teeth, twiddiling of thumbs and the impatient exhales of frustration.

4. Once done we can go all in!

[fruitbat]

I'll be in for this

[Jabo]

19 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

2. Need some volunteers to play flight commanders, ideally 3-4. These guys will start at Captain rank, and will, well, command flights!

Well I'm glad that clears things up.

More seriously, I'm happy to take that role on Tom, unless there are more able and capable volunteers - it's quite a big pool

[DD_Fenrir]

Thanks, Nick, regard yourself a Captain! You'll be Leading White Flight

Note to others, if you don't like formation flying then volunteer for Blue or Green Flight Lead! That way you shouldn't have to do any tight formating!

 

1. Red Flight Leader - <insert name here> may lead the squadron if the Squadron CO is absent/deems appropriate; If CO leads, Red Flight leader takes the Red 3 position

2. White flight - Jabo

3. Blue Flight -  Painless

4. Green Flight - <insert name here>

[Jabo]

3 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

That way you shouldn't have to do any tight formating

Damn, rumbled

[DD_Fenrir]

UPDATE:

So as, it stands I have (through some devious deduction and defilement of the campaign generators file structure!) got a campaign generated flying P-38s with the 402nd Fighter Squadron (of the 370th Fighter Group) flying out of Florennes in October of 1944! Wh00t!

Cold starts are enabled! 

Furthermore - if I have made the edits correctly, we should move to the base of Ophoven in February of 1945 and thence switch to Mustangs come March. (Disclaimer, I have not tested this as yet, figuring out how to, so it might go Pete tong but we will have to wait and see...)

All those parties who signed up (shown in the first post of this list) as wishing to partake are currently assigned slots on the first mission, but if any further applicants wish to join they may - it does not take long to do the admin.

I propose a test run on an upcoming GBS night. I will host just to see if the form is viable. This will allow those not wanting to join the campaign to do Dogz Server co-ops as normal (ish - might have to use the premade 'good' co-op repository in rotation as I assume Ft will be flying the campaign tests?)

Missions may be quite long as Florennes is one of the more Westerly airfields so expect transit times to the Area of Operations to be in the 15-20 min range, similar on patrol/over target and then back again. Overall mission time could be in the range of 45min to 1hr for each mission.

[Pooka]

I felt sort of left out, then realized this all started before I came back to the Dogz.

I've added my name to the list and await any instructions.  Thanks Fen, now to practice with the split tailed devil.

[DD_Fenrir]

Good stuff Pook, glad to have you on board!

[wingflyr]

Sign me up Fen

[Crash]

Good work Fen, will we me mostly mud moving or patrol/intercept?

[Friar]

Just added my name  - I could do 1 hour missions on a Sunday (providing we start at a reasonable time).

Sounds like it will take our flying up a level.

 

[Painless]

Happy to lead a flight if required Skipper. Also happy to snuggle up nice and close in formation if required Skipper 😳

[DD_Fenrir]

Update 2:

Discovered a limitation in PWCG that means only 11 players can be in a squadron.

We have 13 participants. Doh!

My workaround has been to create a second Squadron of the 370th FG: the 485th Fighter Squadron.

This squadron will not fly the same mission as the 402nd but from some testing last night they do seem to go to the same rough area of operations. 

So that 485th don't get bundled off on their own mission with only one or two pilots and bump into half the Jagdwaffe whilst 11 members of 402 swan about and see little action on their own mission, I think it would be best to split the current roster and have 7/6 split between the 402nd and 485th.

What I need is a someone to lead 485th and some chaps to go with him.

Volunteers?

 

[DD_Fenrir]

As an aside, some generic 402nd Fighter Squadron Skins can be found here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/n8pc4a0ggyon99g/P38J25_402nd_Gen.zip/file

 

With a specific and very nice skin of a/c "T", Vivacious Virgin of the 402nd, here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/z15z4hnirnp7wrf/P38J25_402nd_E6_T.zip/file

 

For those of you who choose to fly with 485th Fighter Squadron, some of the default skins already cater for your squadron - look for a/c coded "7F-".

Otherwise, a nice fellow called Jaegermeister is working on a scripted campaign for the 485th and is creating a load of skins (~12) for it's P-38s based on historical reference. The campaign is not available yet but release should be coming soon and the skins with it. Info here:

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/56052-370th-p-38-skins/

 

[Painless]

Also happy to lead 485th if required Skipper...... 

.....we include in our list of services : domestic cleaning, a quick rub down with any number of leading tabloids and at no extra charge a coconut oil happy ending..... over...

[DD_Fenrir]

Good show Mick, or should I say, Major...

[DD_Fenrir]

Right then, here's a provisional OrBat for the campaign:

		402nd FS
CO	Maj.	Fenrir
FL1	Capt.	Jabo
	1.Lt.	Fruitbat
	1.Lt.	Arthur
	2.Lt	Perfesser
	2.Lt	Wingflyr
	2.Lt	FT
		485th FS
CO	Maj.	Painless
FL1	Capt.	Sid
	1.Lt.	Pooka
	1.Lt.	Crash
	2.Lt	Friar
	2.Lt	Delta

 

Anybody deeply offended by my choices can bugger orf. 😁

 

[DD_Arthur]

1st. Lt?  Commissioned at last.......

[Friar]

so, need to take a P38 master class then - hopefully be flying tonight if anyone fancies taking me under their wing  (thats not in the book by the way).....

 

[DD_Fenrir]

On 4/20/2020 at 1:51 PM, Crash said:

Good work Fen, will we me mostly mud moving or patrol/intercept?

Hi Dave, sorry for the tardy response on this matter, got distracted with the admin.

To answer your question, I have set up the generator to give us a 50/50 mix. This can be tweaked on the fly though so if anyone feels it's not quite right, then it can be opened up for discussion.

[rox]

On 4/21/2020 at 5:50 PM, Friar said:

so, need to take a P38 master class then - hopefully be flying tonight if anyone fancies taking me under their wing  (thats not in the book by the way).....

 

I just did the same 5 min ago, I have the plane now so I'm in on anything concerning this campaign as long as I'm home (usually away on or around the weekends for 2-3 days, but flexible).

[Painless]

Excellent practice run last night chaps, thanks for all the work Tom !

[DD_Fenrir]

Status update:

I have been having issues spawning a max attendance (8+) mission without having P-38s spawned inside each other. I did some messing about in one of the files and generated a new mission based on this edit and lo and behold I have 16 P-38s evenly split between the two squadrons and airframes are tightly arranged but importantly no occlusions between aircraft whatsoever. I am reluctant to claim victory as yet because this could be a fluke - so this requires further testing.

The test mission ran last week also brought up a critical issue. Whilst performance and behaviour in mission was excellent, when attempting to generate the next days mission after doing the requisite admin in PWCG, it crapped out and created an error. Naturally, if we cannot get events to log and the progression of time to occur it kind of nullifies the 'campaign' aspect of this effort. I bundled an error report off to Pat Wilson but as yet have had no explanation as to what is causing the error or whether it can be fixed.

What I have discovered is that in attempting to spawn two user squadrons of 7+ aircraft at the same airfield I am pushing PWCG beyond it's envelope and am butting heads with the limits of the program and in some regard GBS also.

[DD_Arthur]

25 minutes ago, DD_Fenrir said:

Status update:

I have been having issues spawning a max attendance (8+) mission without having P-38s spawned inside each other. I did some messing about in one of the files and generated a new mission based on this edit and lo and behold I have 16 P-38s evenly split between the two squadrons and airframes are tightly arranged but importantly no occlusions between aircraft whatsoever. I am reluctant to claim victory as yet because this could be a fluke - so this requires further testing.

Wow!  Well done Fen! Been watching your thread over at the GBS forum.