Working from the SO map above and I’m finding some interesting stuff in GoogleEarth.
The place names next to the symbols appear to be the nearest village to the base. Mostly they do not match up to the DCS town names, bit so far I have been able to search on them in GE and then do a visual search for the “signature” of a eastern block military base - walled enclosure with guard towers and standardized buildings in side. Obviously for a helicopter base (technically a base and not a FARP although I’ve been using FARP to designate them) you also need to see helipads.
I want to use the Structures available in the DCS mission editor to recreate these bases. The admin, maintenance and barracks buildings are a good enough fit. The single helipad also works if the ground is flat enough that you don’t get a huge “mesa”. I can even use something to establish a small fenced in area. The challenge is the underlying ground texture.
Before I jump down a google and DCS forum rabbit hole, is it even possible to change a bit of ground texture the way you can in FSX?
Way back in DCS v1.5 there was a utility called Witchcraft that allowed for real time adjustments to map objects. Don’t know if anything like it exists today. Here is my factory complex in the Back Of The Hand mission -
I think that it is still around. I have not tried it in a few years. If I remember right, it allowed you to call lua commands through a network connection to make changes on the server. Technically, you can just do that in a lua script attached to your mission but the feature of witchcraft that was so neat (for me) was using the lua commands to figure out what my mission was doing wrong
I am pretty sure that real time script debugging is still available through a browser window, by connecting to the right port (#?). There was talk that the editor would get map object manipulation …
I googled ‘dcs witchcraft’ and did not see anything new.
I’ve got a training/PVP Mission for the Channel Map which might be something fun and different for @schurem 's fight club this week. It features quite a few trains that you can hunt over in France while being shot at by Flak and AAA and a few targets that can be spawned in via the F10 menu: Some German Schnellboote that will patrol the channel and there are some ground targets in southern England if you can’t be bothered to cross the Channel. Requires the WWII Asset pack and The Channel Map. TF-51Ds are included but I have not set up any recon missions for them.
It’s designed primarily with the Mossie in mind so very focused on ground attack. There are a whole bunch of Fw 190 and Bf 109 slots available as well but I haven’t added any bomber raids yet. Antons are set to hotstart without fuel as they feature very long warmup times, the other WWII fighters are set to coldstart as they’ll be warmed up pretty quickly anyway.
First rough draft of a sort of training mission on the Normandy map. Not much there right now but I will be working on it over the next weeks whenever I have a couple of minutes to spare. It should already feature enough stuff for the Allies, not much there for Axis except the dogfight lanes.
Features:
Airstart slots that are setup head on at different altitudes for quick Dogfights - will be expanded in future to include parallel starts for butterfly setups at more altitude ranges and more aircraft types.
Ground Units that can be spawned and despawned via the F10 radio menu - currently there are only targets for the Allies set up at Carentan featuring five difficulty levels from EASY to INSANE.
A train that will leave Carentan when allied fighters get close to the town.
Planned:
More frontline fighter slots in France
Other ground objectives that I want to add are Falaise and Le Havre (more stuff for the Allies to shoot at), targets for the Axis players north of Carentan, around Bayeux near Caen and South-East of Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula and targets for both Allies and Axis around St.Lo, all accessible via the F10 radio menu.
Bomber raids with and without AI Escorts, activated via the F10 radio menu
AI fighter sweeps both for Axis and Allies, activated via the F10 radio menu
Naval targets for Axis as well as Allies, activated via the F10 radio menu
More trains
I will update you guys whenever I have made significant changes but that’s it for this weekend.
New version: Normandy_WWIITraining_v0.0.6_AlliedBombers.miz
Added P-51D Mustangs at Beuzeville ALG
Added Mosquito FB Mk.VI to Saint-Pierre-du-Mont ALG
Added two targets for the Germans: Allied troops south-east of the Azeville ALG and an artillery battery north-west of Carpiquet that is shelling the airfield
Added the first bombing raid: A formation of B-17Gs at 24000ft spawns over England and then heads south across the Channel to bomb Caen-Carpiquet Airport.
You can choose between two formations of four bombers, two formations of four bombers with two fighter escorts or four formations of four bombers with two escorts.
Added menu structure for German bombing raids. Non-functional of course - I need to set it up with Ju-88s in the editor first - Not sure if I do an airfield attack or a torpedo attack first - we’ll see.
New version of my WWII Multiplayer training map: Normandy_WWIITraining_v0.0.10_MoreBombers.miz
Requires the Normandy Map and the WWII Asset Pack
Added a Ju-88 bombing raid
Added another high altitude B-17 raid
Added a position update for bomber formations about 15min before they reach their targets
Added more A2G tasks for both sides (mainly around Cherbourg, Caen and Falaise plus two V1 launch sites)
Added TF-51Ds
Added a Game Master for both sides
Added ingame mission brief
Notes:
Trains are completely borked at the moment so instead of leaving Carentan it now sits in the rail yard waiting to be bombed. Hopefully this will be fixed soon because hunting trains in the Mosquito or P-47D is a lot of fun.
As the mission is approaching 1000 AI (currently around 800 AI units) I do not recommend having more than a few tasks active at the same time to keep performance manageable, especially for people with lower end systems.
The advantage of doing a multiplayer training map this way is that it allows for a huge variety of tasks without running into performance issues as you can spawn and despawn AI at will. Our modern day Syria training map can have over 2000 AI active if you want but of course at that point it will be a slide show for everyone.
I have also avoided placing moving ground units as the pathfinding for the ground AI is a huge issue in multiplayer. You can only have a very limited amount of groups that move before the server takes a dump and everyone starts warping around. You can of course start moving ground AI around if you are a game master, just be careful to limit this to one or two groups at a time.
