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Originally Posted by propbeanie

The game "intelligence" will send airplanes out randomly, and bases the amount sent as response, apparently on the type of target, such that a submarine usually "qualifies" for what seems to eventually be 7 airplanes. An "enemy" corvette might get a 1 or 2 plane response, a DD gets 2 or 3, etc.

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

Originally Posted by propbeanie

What Fifi, s7rikeback and I discovered in Fifi's SH4 Dark Waters was that Brest "qualified" for a near-continuous air attack, which would commence shortly (roughly 20 minutes) after the player spawned into the game and was leaving port.

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?

Originally Posted by propbeanie

I do not remember what he did to minimize that... About the only way to "fix" that is to alter the AirStrike.cfg, make the nearby enemy airbases with smaller, shorter-ranged planes, and to script with either Groups / Units and / or RGG / Random Units, with what you do want to show and when.

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.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Yes, it would have been nice, and I do not know of anyway to control that either. As you mention, perhaps someone else has an idea about this. The "tag" for that could be "is this plane equipped with flight radar?"...

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

Originally Posted by propbeanie

That is correct. The game will use the "default" loadout, found listed first in the eqp file in SH4, usually with a "; Basic Loadout" comment. The cfg file will not list that loadout, but only the additional ones built for the plane.

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...

Originally Posted by propbeanie

One way to counter that behavior is to do small clones, with the cloned plane having a different basic load-out (and name, of course), and then place both planes in the base's AirGroup.

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

Originally Posted by propbeanie

However, it is still a "chance" thing in that the game chooses which plane(s) to send based upon chance also... You might get a PBY plane one time, a Mustang the next, and then a B-24, all dependent upon what is in the AirGroup at that time, and a roll of the dice, in conjunction with plane range. This is SH4 behavior...I wonder how SH5 handles GR2 planes, as well as their load-outs?

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

Originally Posted by propbeanie

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".

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