On the question of Pat's awesome generator versus the seemingly not less awesome official one to be, I wonder if the new career will also only work in online mode? That has always been the nice thing about Pat's tool that it does not require an active connection to generate the next mission.

Thank you kindly Pat! It is indeed awesome that you listen, post, and for the most part are very amenable to our suggested input, even when we go overboard.

EDIT: I hope that came across in the best way possible, the way it was intended.



@ Colonel: yes, I believe the 'official campaign' is supposed to have internet connection for you to advance in missions, just like current "career mode".
We are indeed a very lucky community to have the choice of two career systems.

Jason confirmed this (online requirement) in his most recent posting in the career thread. So yes, looks like I'll be very happily keep using Pat's system.

The aces skins don't work. I pasted the skin's name in the Aces file, still they keep flying the default squad skin. What did I do wrong? Thanks!

Give us a sample of the file and we can give you an opinion.

Thanks.

I figured it out. I had to set it in the Campaigns folder -> xy campaign.aces, instead of the main aces file, plus I had to use the skin name without the .dds extension.

After some more testing:

The biggest issue with the new version is that there are a lot of enemy flights circling just above ground level, way out of my flight path only eating up CPU power, and the ones I'm supposed to meet turn back and land before I get there on autopilot. (Opposition odds are 100%, max opposing flights =4, base flights=1, random =1 )

@ Reflected. Perhaps you've just had an unlucky string of missions. I never have trouble finding trouble with a Pat Wilson generated mission. Sometimes you have to wait, but that just adds to the tension, and then you make a mistake and forget to check 6, and then... My favourite pilot was brought down exactly that way.

I do admit that on rare occasions I hit Ctrl-2 to see what the NME is up to, and at times they are pretty far away, but as Pat says, at some point of their flight path those far-off AI are within the set range of your flight path. So try adjusting that variable down a bit.

@ Pat: I did notice that several AI flights (both central & entente) were well over the off-map area to the north (striped terrain), so hopefully there is a way to correct them going over there. I was flying out of the Arras area at the time, so that was pretty far away.

Just a quick note: 9.0 is in progress. It is a major rewrite of the mission algorithm so it is taking a bit of time. I actually abandoned two attempts entirely before finally getting it right this time. The major points are in place but there is still lots to do, so it will be some time.

The major restructuring is intended to allow for more interesting missions. Until version 6 there were only individual flights. With the addition of new mission types I realized that some missions didn't make sense without a related flight - i.e. a balloon bust mission has to have a balloon defense. Those were added for version 6.

Now I am taking the concept one step further - I call it flight packages. For any given mission there may be any number of related entities. For instance, artillery spot missions used to carve circles over a point in space. Now I intend them to have a ground target, an escort, and a friendly artillery unit that will fire on the enemy. Bombing missions are intended to have a richer target set. All two seater missions may or may not have an escort.

The restructuring is done and I am creating viable missions. Lot of details remain. Lots of testing and debugging to do. The richer target set is not yet in place. All of the pieces of the arty spot are there but I want to put in a trigger tomake the friendly artillery fire when the spotting ,ission arrived on station.

In addition I will try to add suggestions and fix issues.

Wow Pat! 9.0 sounds wonderful!! Thanks for your continued efforts with this game.