A bunch of questions on aircraft
 

As the title says, here are some long-standing doubts of mine that I never managed resolving:

1. Are aircraft (or any other AI units) able to use their non-visual sensors for spotting other AI units, or they are only effective against player's boat?
   
   
2. For airbase-spawned aircraft, do they need to be in the same base and/or airgroup to act coordinately (i.e. a group of bombers with their fighter escort)?
   
   
3. For airbase/carrier-spawned aircraft, is there any way to make some classes not to spawn at night or - conversely - to only spawn in night time?
   
   
4. For airbase/carrier-spawned aircraft, do they inherit their veterancy level from the unit they spawn from, or how else is their veterancy level determined?
   
   
5. For airbase/carrier-spawned aircraft with multiple armament loadouts, is there any way to predict which loadout will be actually used in different circumstances? Is that random, or how else the game is assigning them?
   
   
6. For airbases and carriers with multiple airgroups, do their airgroups need to be sorted sequentially according to their start date? Can an airgroup start before the previous airgroup is ended? In other words, can an airgroup have a start date which is earlier than previous group's end date?
   
   
7. Has anyone tried adding one or more airgroup(s) to any non-carrier sea unit? That would be useful for simulating CAM/MAC ships and scout planes aboard cruisers and battleships.

Any hint by some knowledgeable subsim mate would be much appreciated :)

From an SH4 perspective, but I am reasonably certain the SH5 uses the same type configuration, though it might add script-based configurations, so be sure and check for that, gap. In order of your list:

1. 1. Have not attempted to observe that. Interesting question, though they do seem to be capable
2. A strange set of circumstances, this one is (yoda-speak)... If you create a group with waypoints, they "follow" the leader of the group, just like ships, yet they do act somewhat independently after the initial phase of attack. As for the "spawned" planes, I have seen what appears to be a group of two planes act independently, with one (the closer plane) of the two attacking a ship, while the second does not (distance or "visual"). So again, They act like a "group", but they will seemingly act independently of each other, though if the one plane doesn't attack, the one that does will generally only do one "run", and then rejoin its companion and continue on its course. If both planes attack, then both will continue to attack until they run out of "ammunition", or get shot down. Short answer: I do not know... lol
3. Using independent "AirBases" with different AirGroups might be one way, but in SH4, the AirStrike config is the only file controlling what the percentage chance of a night attack is... I don't know if maybe a script in SH5 is available for that??
4. Yes. You want to set the spawning "AirBase", whether carrier or land-based to "Expert" (4) in order to have "Expert" planes. Anything less than an "Expert" plane usually results in crashes with dive bombers, or with turns. Even at "Expert" level, planes do not fly very well... but they can drop a bomb down an open hatch at 500 foot altitude while flying at 312 knots while flying upside-down... Luke Skywalker style...
5. The easy way to "predict" which loadout will be used is the "Default" designation in the config and equipment files. Again though, I don't know if SH5 scripts can change that?
6. The game expects one group to end before the other starts, and that they are sequentially set in all manner.
7. In SH4 this works, and I'm sure it does in SH5 also, in that anything with a "carrier" designation can "launch" or spawn an airplane, which generally takes roughly 20 minutes to occur (20km). So Type=8 and Type=9, as well as Type=18 and Type=19 can spawn airplanes. You do have to have properly configured AirGroups for them, with valid air platforms.

I am 99.9% certain there are more / better replies that will be forthcoming, and from SH5 people... :salute:

Wow, I wasn't expecting so many answers that soon!
Thank you very much propbeanie, your wisdom places you on the ligh side of the Force, Yoda appreciates that :yeah:

That said he (Yoda) still has some doubts regarding your replies that I would like to ask in his behalf, if you don't mind...


Well, my question was more elementary than your answer seems to imply; I will give you an example. Let's say that I have an enemy airbase in range of an U-boat bunker, for it to spawn airstrikes at random intervals. If the airbase has bombers and fighters in the same airgroup, will they attack all together? If the answer is no, I am afraid that the only way to simulated raids with escorted bombers would be by scripting them, but that would be a more "expensive" solution (both in therms of pc resources usage and of work require by the modder in order to set up the attacks) and not as random as the airbase-spawned strikes thing.

I doubt that, but let's see if someone pops up with some idea. I know there is a global paparameter controlling the chance of aircraft spawning at night, but I don't see anything that might tell the game which aircraft should fly at night and which ones not. I am actually surprised that devs didn't think to add such a basic feature; a simple flag in aircraft cfg or sim file would have been enough :hmmm:

Roger that lol :haha:

Indeed f you script aircraft in campaign you can specify whatever loadout you want, but from your answer I get that airbase/carrier-spawned aircraft will only use the default loadout. Is that correct?

What about other sea unit types? I am mostly interested in types 6, 7, 10, 11 (capital ships other than carriers), 101, 102 and 108 (freighters and tankers)....

Unfortunately in SH4, if it is NOT a CV-type, it will not generate an airplane, whether you have an AirGroup attached or not. So our cat ship and one of the aux cruisers with an airplane to launch are set to either Type=8 or Type=18 in FotRSU, and you will "see" a plane spawn after the player's sub is detected. The plane will not spawn within the "spawn range" though, but like all things 3D in the game, will do so beyond the "horizon".
:salute:

Interesting, that's the first time I hear about such a feature. Makes me wonder whether the type of response is hardcoded in the game or rather if it can be modified via AI scripts

I see. That is obviously a major problem. Constant air strikes at each patrol start would be utterly unrelaistic and they might render the game unplayable. Your reply doens't entirely answer my original question though: what happens if a base/airgroup has more than one type of aircraft and all of them have a a range long enough for attacking a player base? Will they perform combined attacks, or they will come separately, maybe due to their different max speeds?

AirStrike.cfg parameters being global, I would let their editing for fine-tuning, once all the airbases/airgroups are set up. Playing with aircraft MaxRadius as the first task, seems to me the best approach. In SH5, as in SHIV, we can create as many "shallow clones" of the same unit as we want, so a valid startegy might be creating many copies of the same aircraft, each copy having a different radius and ammo loadout depending on the different roles that the said plane played in reality.

If "long-range" bombers and fighters are assigned to airbases with moderation and if, at the same time, we place in Allied territory many airbases with "short-ranged" aircraft, one might play with the global Air Strike Probability factor so that the chances of a bombing raid on player bases will be acceptably low (due to the small number of squadrons equipped with long-range aircraft) while the chances of an air attack against the player, when he nears enemy territory, will still be relatively high (due do the comparatively large number of airgroups which have short-range aircraft assigned).

I hope I made myself clear, but I am probably rephrasing the workaround that you, Fifi, s7rikeback, etc. have laready applied to SHIV and that you have summarized in your reply to me. I am wondering if Vecko has devided something similar for TWoS.

Indeed that would have been the cleanest implementation of such a feature...

Thank you for confirming that. In other words, additional loadouts are not applied except for the planes that are scripted in campaign layers. A bit odd, but as you said there are workarounds to that...

That is something I already had in mind, but my (long-therm) plan is more ambitious.

With all the information on RAF squadrons we have available from books and websites, we have the possibility to replicate in game a (simplified) version of RAF's 1939-45 order of battle. My idea is to replace generic UK airbases currently featured in game with unique ones, each of them being placed on the SH5 map appropriately for representing one specific RAF station, with the squadrons and aircraft that in real WWII warfare are know to have been based there.

Of course not all the RAF bases and squadrons would be represented, but only the ones which were involved in anti-submarine and anti-shipping warfare, maritime patrol, coastal defense, etc. Each airgroup would represent a squadron or a combination of squadrons with the aicraft they actually operated with ranges, armament loadouts and sensors set to reflect as closely as possible the known duties of those squadrons.

That's a whole lot of work and I am not even sure that the game could handle so many airbases and air groups, but let me daydream of it :D

I am pretty confident that nothing major has changed on this respect from SHIV to SH5.

That's a shame. The game has too few unit types, and each type as too many limitations relative to what it can do and what not, but we must live with it.

CAM and MAC ships can be set as escort carriers. They would fly the naval ensign whereas in reality, being commanded by a civil captain they would have sailed under the merchant ensign. There are workarounds to this, so that's only a minor issue, but the lack of airgroup support for battleships and cruisers annoys me big time lol :O:

I have one more question that I forgot to asking at post #1

8. Do aircraft assigned to a base need to be in the same national roster as the base itself? In other words: can I assign to an UK base an aicraft which is only found in the US roster, or I need to have two bases (one British and the other American) in the same place?

So long as they are an Allied plane (SH4), and there are different small clones for the various nationalities (with non-conflicting node IDs), you should be fine. In the SoWesPac area in FotRSU, there are several GB AirBases with various US, GB, AU & NZ planes, even some with the same plane model in a small clone, and they seem to spawn just fine - sometimes too much... :roll:

But we need more opinion / fact here, gap. Surely someone with more knowledge than the two of us combined can chime in and help us out! :arrgh!: The more discussion, the more knowledge! :salute: Enquiring minds want to know (more)!

Good to know thanks :up:

Yes, sure! Hoepefully some fellow subsimmers will share their thougths with us. While we wait for them to chime in, let me thank you once more for your illuminating answers propbeanie! I owe you a favour or two :salute:

Lajes Aurbase (UK) has currently B-17 (only existing in US roster) asigned to its air wing in TWoS. If this actualy works in campaign ( someone with a savegame near Lajes after 10.1943 could confirm it) then yes, you can.

Thank you for confirming that kapuhy :up:

Just to clarify, I didn't test whether it really works - I'm too careless to ever survive in campaign to 1943 :)

Hahah, don't tell me... I think I never made it to January 1940 in campaign, but since I started modding SH5 I stopped actually playing it... :O:

By the way: Open Horizons II has only generic airfields, so the Lajes airbase in TWoS must have been an addition by Vecko himself. Maybe we should ask him whether he actually tested in game the spawning of (US) aicraft from that (British) base.

Work I am currently doing

https://i.imgur.com/Dq7ngNL.pngL

I am at squadron No. 31... Initially I thought that only Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm squadrons were of some interest for our game, but I came to realize that even other RAF commands had an involvement in WWII naval warfare. Still a whole lot of work is in front of me lol :doh:
Anyone wanting to help? :D

Wow :o Hats off to you, it's a lot of work but when complete, it will be a goldmine of info for any modder or developer working on WW2 naval warfare themed games.

I considered doing something just like this (though on a smaller scale) after I finish importing missing planes, so I'd be happy to help - but atm I have my hands full with trying to get those planes into game. I did however some research already and if you'd like, I can send it to you or post a summary here - maybe it will be of use.

Yes, mostly a compendium of data gathered from different sources and displayed on a chronogram. Hopefully my work will ease the usage of that data in SH5 or in any other WWII-themed simulation. I had planned it long ago, but your work on new aircraft gave me the incentive I needed to continue this project :up:

I agree on your choice of focusing on the 3D modelling / texturing work. Unfortunately it is easier for me proceeding with my own data-collection work squadron by squadron, so until I finish with it I won't be able telling all the locations (and timeframes) that your freshly created aircraft should be used on.

What I can do right away, is listing some of the planes relevant to SH5 but still missing from it that where most commonly used in the maritime patrol / reconnaissance / anti-shipping / convoy protection roles. Whenever you will be ready for working on a new set of aircraft, just get in touch if you feel that you need ideas on which models you should start from.

One last note: as you might have noticed, the sources I have available are detailed to the level of aircraft variants. In most cases, those variants differed externally from each other just for a few details (gun outfit, turrets, control surfaces' shape, cowling/nose shape, air intakes, exausts, etc). If it is not too much work for you, my advise is to keep your models as simple/generic as possible by keeping the "variable" parts - especially guns - separated from the main models. That would enable us to easily customize the new aicraft (even at a later stage) by adding/switching parts via eqp. files.

Yes sure, share it here please!

So, a while ago I noted down from uboat.net two lists: one counting which aircraft were credited with U-Boat kills (including those sharing a credit) and second with aircraft killed by U-Boats while attempting to attack. Here's the result:

Kills and Losses

I used this to choose a list of planes to try to import. Of course, this doesn't give full picture, because it leaves out ASW/patrol missions that did not result in either aircraft or U-Boat being destroyed (for example, Avro Anson never sunk a U-Boat despite being commonly used for exactly that).

Many planes present in roster (and I mean TWoS roster because stock game is beyond repair) were not even used in theatre (Buffallo, Buccanneer) or would be unlikely to attack a U-Boat - this mostly concerns single-engined air superiority fighters (Mustang, Hurricane, Mig, Yak, La-5, P-47).

Only example I found of such planes attack on U-Boat is very telling:

"On 4 May 1945, U-155 was en route with U-680 and U-1233 from Germany to Norway through the Little Belt when they were strafed by Mustang fighters of 126 Squadron which were escorting Beaufighters of the North Coates Strike Wing. The flight broke off the attack after the leading Mustang was shot down, killing the CO of the squadron."

So it was unplanned attack on target of opportunity, which also failed - probably because attacking planes were not really trained or armed for ASW work. I think in game, such non-ASW planes, if present, should be relatively harmless and rarely attack.

Another thing - I don't know if TWoS already models this, but some some planes (USAAF-painted B-17, Avro Lancaster) would be more fitting doing air raids on ports than hunting subs at sea. Ideally, they should also behave differently: use "level bomber" AI setting and be set to fly very high. One could compensate for low aircraft numbers by making these "air raid only" planes carry more bombs (like, multiple "Bomb_Cluster" weapons) to really bring devastation to a port when player is unlucky enough to witness it.

Amazing!

I had a similar list in mind. Besides the uboat.net database, I had found an useful Wikipedia article listing all the WWII U-boats sunk by an aircraft, but found not time for summarizing their data. Thank you for sharing the results of your own research :yeah:

Once my work on British air squadrons will be finished, we will get a wider picture.

So far (only about 30 RAF squadrons alalyzed, 2 of them operating under Coastal Command), I have found roughly four types of "maritime" duties related with each other in various ways. Here are my observations about them, the aircraft used for carrying them out, and my suggestions on how they could be implemented in game.

Coastal reconnaissance: in early war, when the risk of an invasion from the sea was feared by the British, army cooperation squadrons equipped with Westland Lysanders were rushed into the coastal patrol role. Their instructions were to use their their Lysander's armament (composed of two forward-firing guns and light bombs) for bombing/strafing the invading troops on the beach. I doubt they would have attacked ships and submarines too if they had spotted them, but indeed they would have reported them calling for better suited aircraft.
In game, Lysanders covering this role should have a relatively small radius (just enough for patrolling a few miles off the coasts of Britain), and they should be equipped with a mix of bombs without controllers (so they won't be dropped), one or two cosmetic flares with bomb controller (so they will be dropped in place of the "dummy" bombs) and maybe a visual sensor with extra detection, though I am not sure how realistic the latter feature would be.

Anti-shipping/mine-laying: a number of bomber squadrons were assigned this task in different WWII theatres and timeframes. The aircraft they flew included Vickers Wellington, Fairey Battle, Martin Marauder, Bristol Blenheim, Bristol Beaufort and Bristol Beaufighter, but keep in mind that this is an incomplete list. It is my understanding that squadrons charged with this role had surface vessels as their main target, but I think they would have attacked submarines too, on spotting them. Besides bombs or mines, where/when applicable their armament included torpedoes and rockets as well.
On a side note, air-dropped mines are not featured neither in stock game nor in OHII/TWoS. They could be added to aircraft by equipping them with a particle generator that will spawn one mine every x seconds when the dropping aircraft is flying under a certain altitude. I think the spawned mines can be made to float too and to explode on contact with any unit, just like TWoS mines. The only obvious downsides inherent to this added feature would be that, unless we script mine-laying planes in campaign, we wouldn't have any control on where they would drop their mines, they would perform their task only when within rendering range, and the mines would disappear as soon as the player clears the area.

Convoy/shipping protection: for this role, a variety of aircraft was used, probably reflecting the most likely type of menace that they were going to face; according to the data I have processed so far, squadrons assigned with convoy escort duties could be equipped with fighters (Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, North American Mustang), light bombers (Bristol Blenheim) or torpedo bombers (Bristol Beaufort).
Starting from 1943, RP-3 rockets came in Costal Command and Fleet Air Arm as an air-to-surface weapon, and the Hurricane was one of those aircraft which could be armed with them. Nonetheless, it seems more logical to me for convoy-escorting fighters to have provided mainly air cover against enemy planes, strafing with their guns other types of targets only on occasions. Conversely, heavier escort aircraft might have carried bombs or torpedoes and so I would equip them in game, leaving aerial depth charges for specialized ASW squadrons.
For the sake of realism (and for more effective protection), convoy-escorting sqadrons should be scripted in campaign together with the convoys they are supposed to protect. That's only theoretical though. In practice, if air units are setup in game as convoy escorts, they will try to match their speed with the speed of the convoy leader, and they will collapse miserably in the water. Making them to spawn from airbases, like the majority of the SH5 planes, is the one option left, unless some complicated workaround is devised.

Anti submarine: I think this role does not require long explanations. As far as I can see from the data I have already analyzed, aircraft assigned with it included a mix of light, medium and torpedo bombers. Lockheed Hudson, Vickers Wellington, Martin Marauder and, until December 1940, Vickers Vildebeest. In game, their armament should consist mainly of depth bombs or - when/where appropriate - torpedoes and rockets.

Yes, for a long time I have had your same doubts and, as you can imagine from my notes above, I came to your same conclusions, reinforced now now by your findings.

Except maybe for carrierborne ones, the large majority of fighters in game should be armed just with "fake" bombs (i.e. harmless/invisible bombs), so that they will attack surface/ground targets only with their guns, or with no bombs at all, so to make them to only attack other aircraft if TDW's dogfight patch is enabled (otherwise they won't perform any attack).

Another important factor is aircraft max radius. Setting it up only according to real stats is a mistake. In game, that number should reflect the type of duties the plane is supposed to perform. If we subdivide fighter squadrons in "offensive" (performing bomber escorts, tactical strikers, etc.) and "defensive", the latter suqadrons should have rather short max radii so to that their fighters will show up only around ports and coastal installations.

I agree. Unfortunately I think there is no way to tell "air raid only" aircraft how to behave in game according to their supposed mission. Two possible workarounds come to my mind:

a) having a (very) small number of air groups whose fighters and bombers have long enough ranges to attack player bases, having a (very) high number of air groups with maritime patrol and home defense aircraft, and lowering the 'Air Strike Probability' parameter in AirStrike.cfg. That should compensate the high number of "short range" air groups and make the few "long range" airgroups to spawn rarely. Of course they would still attack the player if they spot him, but their small number should make that eveninece pretty rare.

b) removing "air raid only" from bases, and scripoting them in campaign. This way we would have full control on route and altitude of the attackers, on player bases to attacked and on the frequancy raids will happen. I am not an expert of campaign stuff, but I am confident that some randomness can be addeed to scripted events, so that they won't happen always on the same dates and with the same freqiuency...

Some thoughts:

- Lysanders: I doubt these would fly far out into the sea, especially if they were army pilots rushed to coastal defense. These could be scripted like current air patrols over Bay of Biscay, except they'd fly up and down the coast, able to spot an U-Boat and raise alarm if you sail within sight from shore.

- Hurricanes, Spitfires etc. in convoy protection: unless we're talking carrier-based, I strongly suspect that the convoys they were protecting were English Channel and South-East England coastal convoys, and "protection" in this case meant deterring Luftwaffe.

- Making convoy protection squadrons spawned from airbases in not that unrealistic. That's just my recollection from Clay Blair's book, but what seemed to happen is, because they didn't have aircraft to protect all convoys at all times (at least until late war), SOP was to saturate skies with aircraft over convoys that were under attack or expected imminent attack. More or less how spawning system works : when they learn you're in area, then they start sending planes.

- Re "air raid" planes: I'd choose the option of scripting them in campaign. Leave base air groups for what they do best (reacting to detected threats/targets in airbase's range), and add an air group for every U-Boat base flying regular high altitude air raids (might be good to check how often these bases were really bombed).

It's a bit more predictable (experienced player might learn never to dock at Brest on Mondays and never leave Lorient on Thursdays - unless you can randomize frequency that is), but allows to retain more control over how these "special events" unfold. Relying on air wings might end up requiring much more work time playtesting and finetuning to work well than scripting those groups in.

• No. 4 Squadron is known to have complemented its coastal patrol role with Air-Sea Recue duties.
  
  
• No. 16 Squadron is said by one of my sources to have "operated as a reconnaissance squadron, first around the British coast, guarding against a German landing, then further out to sea" (http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/16_wwII.html).
  
  
• Talking about another Lysander squadron, No. 26, the same website states: "After the fall of France the squadron flew coastal patrols, especially over the potential German invasion ports" (http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/26_wwII.html).

Scripting those squadrons might be a good idea: the circular range of activity of base-spawned aircraft is probably not the best way to imitate in game some patrol courses that, in reality, had to be nearly parallel to the coastline. Nonetheless, going by the impression I got from the aforementioned facts, I would move Lysander's courses more to the sea side than to the land side (but indeed not too much) and I would privilege the areas near the major British ports. How mutch the patrol area of each Lysander squadron stretched over the coastline, and which harbour areas were more guarded by them, is an information we will discover once we find all of those squadrons and we plot their stations on map but, indeed, I expect the southern British shore to be the most hravily guarded.

• In May-June 1940, No. 19 Squadron covered the Dunkirk Evacuation with its Spitfires.
  
  
• No. 6 Squadron was based in Edku when, between December '42 and February '43 it was appointed to the protection of Allied shipping (probably in-/out-bound to/from the near port of Alexandria) with its Hurricanes.
  
  
• Between July '43 and April '44, when it was carrying out convoy escort patrols, No. 26 Squadron was based in Yorkshire (First at RAF Church Fenton and then at RAF Hutton Cranswick, both close to Port of Hull), with a detachment flying from RAF Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland.

I am not 100% sure that those fighter squadrons would have ignored any other attacker than Axis aircraft, but I am reasonably confident that their primary mission was contrasting raids from the air.

Okay, good to know, I rather thought that they were following up and down the route of convoys they were supposed to protect, but that's probably more correct for US blimps.

Going by your account, the best way to simulate in game the activity of RAF convoy escorts, is giving them the maximum realistic number of aircraft (24 for fighter and 12 for bomber squadrons) and making their max radius relatively wide.

I totally agree with you that scripting is the best available method for simulating air raids against player bases. That would give us full control on air raids' aircraft composition, on their frequency, their altitude and the route they will follow. The scripted aircraft might still (irrealistically) divert from their mission and attack enemy vessels at sea if they meet with them, but that would be a much rarer eventuality than if the "U-boat bunker raiders" were left to spawn from air bases and to freely roam in the skies.

I wish we could randomize the frequency of recurring scripted (air) traffic, but I am a total ignorant on this respect. Is there any way to do that?

In my previous reports I overlooked an example of a fighter used in the anti-shipping role.

After having played a mostly defensive role in the first part of the conflict, from June '43 to June '44 No. 3 Squadron switched to the offensive, carrying out intruder missions over France and the Netherlands and anti-shipping attacks in the Channel area.
Sources:

http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/3_wwII.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._3_Squadron_RAF

At the time of its new appointment, the squadron was flying Hawker Typhoons and, from February '44, Hawker Tempest fighter-bombers. Both aircraft were fitted with four 20 mm cannons and they could carry two 500 lb or two 1,000 lb bombs. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, starting from September '43 Typhoons could be armed with eight RP-3 rockets, attaining a devastating firepower against any ground or surface target.