A bunch of questions on aircraft

[gap]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

It seems that airplane radars can detect AI units without problems. They managed to attack and sink German freighter in the middle of the night and in extreme weather conditions with visibility no more than 300m and I set their WP significantly off course...

That's good news

Among the other things, that means that we can get Tempest fighters equipped with air-to-air radar to intercept and destroy V-1 flying bombs in late '44

For that to work, TDW's "dogfight" patch should be enabled. Do you have any experience with that?

BTW, I think you should equip your air raid sirens with radar for them to work at night as well as during daytime.

Originally Posted by vdr1981

But I just couldn't make TDW patches for AC to work again from some reason.

Please read my comment on this subject in the post below

Originally Posted by vdr1981

...and I can confirm that regular catapult ship can be cloned to AC and it may launch airplane, outside of 3D rendering area of course...

Did you set that CAM ship as a carrier?
If possible I would prefer not messing with ship types. CAM and MAC ships can be set as escort carriers with little consequences on generic traffic composition, as far as they are given historically plausible start end dates, but scout plane-equipped battleships and cruisers spawning in place of carriers woudn't be right

Originally Posted by vdr1981

We dont have in SH5 appropriate plane type for this purpose though.

Aircraft units and 3D models are the least problem. We cam extract that biplane from the ship unit and make it in an air unit or, if need be, we can create a more detailed 3D model for the same use

[vdr1981]

For that to work, TDW's "dogfight" patch should be enabled. Do you have any experience with that?

Dogfights look a bit silly but they work more or less OK in general. Can't be compared with DCS or Il-2 AI dogfights though...

BTW, I think you should equip your air raid sirens with radar for them to work at night as well as during daytime.

Good idea, although they already have reflectors but with radar, sirens will start somewhat earlier I guess...I'll add them.

Did you set that CAM ship as a carrier?
If possible I would prefer not messing with ship types. CAM and MAC ships can be set as escort carriers with little consequences on generic traffic composition, as far as they are given historically plausible start end dates, but scout plane-equipped battleships and cruisers spawning in place of carriers woudn't be right

Yes, it would be tricky definitively...I'd have to specify the exact ship classes in all taskforce layers for all campaigns although with N++ notepad it wouldn't be so complicated and time consuming...

[gap]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

I tried with two types only, maybe some other AC type is capable of planes spawning by default...I'll test this when I have time...

Accorting to propbeanie, in SHIV all the carrier/escort carrier unit types are able to spawn aircraft. Hopefully this is also the case for SH5.

Originally Posted by vdr1981

You were talking about airbase cfg file?? Aaaah ok then...Sry IIRC everything will be OK until we don't have inactive airbase in our current campaign due to not yet reached or passed activation date...

Do you mean that gaps between an air group and the next one are not problematic?

For example:

[Unit]
ClassName=RAFNortholt		;-50087.640000	6186482.280000
3DModelFileName=data/Land/LAB_LargeAirBaseGB/LAB_LargeAirBaseGB
UnitType=406
MaxSpeed=0.000000
MinSpeed=0.000000
Length=1
Width=1

[AirGroup 1]
StartDate=19400618
EndDate=19400622
Squadron1Class=FHurricaneMkI	;No. 1 Sqn. RAF (fighter squadron, No. 11 Group - Battle of Britain)
Squadron1No=5

[AirGroup 2]
StartDate=19400801
EndDate=19400908
Squadron1Class=FHurricaneMkI	;No. 1 Sqn. RAF (fighter squadron, No. 11 Group - Battle of Britain)
Squadron1No=6

BTW, I have noticed that in OHII (as I said, I right now I can't check stock game) there is always a day of difference between the end of an air group and the beginning of the next one, whereas I would have expected them to use the same date. According to your experience, is that the correct way to set up two consecutive air groups, i.e. without end/start dates overlapping?

Originally Posted by vdr1981

In my signature

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Dogfights look a bit silly but they work more or less OK in general. Can't be compared with DCS or Il-2 AI dogfights though...

Indeed they are. SH aircraft AI is barely able to carry out attacks on naval targets, I would have been surprised if they could perform complex dogfight maneuvers, yet a poor fighter response against port bombing raids would be much more realistic than no response at all

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Good idea, although they already have reflectors but with radar, sirens will start somewhat earlier I guess...I'll add them

.

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Yes, it would be tricky definitively...I'd have to specify the exact ship classes in all taskforce layers for all campaigns although with N++ notepad it wouldn't be so complicated and time consuming...

It is not only the fact that editing taskforce layers would be a tedious work, but also that generic entries add a nice randomness to the game.

On a side note, I have checked the Wikepedia article on CAM ships, and it states that those vessels were armed with a single 'Hurricat' fighter. The biplane in your screenshot is definitely not a navalized Hurricane, so either the modder who created that ship equipped her with the plane that looked more plausible to him ignoring the real historic armament, or Wikipedia is wrong and more than one aircraft type could be launched by those catapults