Thanks Jel. It's eye candy for AITW, German paras taking Belgian/Dutch airfields.

Crosswinds has been a bit "irregular" over the last few days. Probably soon sorted.

LOL

Very cool stuff..At least to read and see the progress you gents are making...Just amazing to a code illiterate like me

BTW in my 140 versions I have allowed F11 to be used to view the dropping of droptanks.
Ray codes all sorts of things as droptanks, and now we can see them drop if we want to

Hi Tony.

Great you found the correct result! So Cargo was the key? Love the screens of the Parafrags dropping! So Cool!

Jel,

Have you got AI aircraft dropping "cargo" okay in an escort mission?

PS ... the Coders folders seem operative again.

I have not tried AI drops yet.
I will have to make a dummy loadout with just cargo to try.

This was a real fiddle

SPAW escort mission in a Corsair with a rigged "weapons.dat" in the theatre folder and rigged loadout files for the A20-G.

The HVAR is being used as the cargo, with the parabomb graphic. But it needs to be coded 17 to make it both a bomb and cargo:


Loadout seems to need a dummy bomb to be carried, so there is one in the second location, but with a count of zero:


With these settings the AI A20-Gs released the parachutes


Make the code 16 or take away the 1000lb bomb from loadout and nothing is released by the A20-Gs.


The 140 code is in your folder in a 7-zip named "140BNV88(1stMay2016).exe"
Have fun

Thanks Jel.

Hi Tony.

Is there an aircraft type "Transport" in the code?

No

A little light came on.

Indeed first you have to drop anything assigned as a drop tank. This is from the SPAW readme file -

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The weapons loadouts are set up differently than in the default EAW world. SPAW combines the 1.28a ability to fire each loadout twice rather than once with the MODSquad modification that performed the same function. The result is that SPAW has the ability to drop multiple separate weapons.

There are 3 loadout labels, LO-1, LO-2 and LO-3.

LO-1 is released by the drop tank key which requires no activation.
LO-2 is activated by the bomb key and then released by the "FIRE SELECTED WEAPONS" key.
LO-3 is activated by the rocket key and then released by the "FIRE SELECTED WEAPONS" key.

It is imperative that the pilot read the armament screen carefully because there is no in-game indication for what weapons are assigned to which loadout.

If a plane is carrying any weapon or drop tank defined as LO-1 then that weapon must be released first no matter what it is.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It also makes sense that you'd need a dummy bomb to drop. What's actually happening is that the AI pilot drops the bomb and since the drop tanks haven't been release before hand they drop with the bomb.

Moggy the other thing is the second part of the loadout

In this rigged version the A20-G has only the default empty loadout and the one with the HVARs.



So I have set loadout L1 as 1 for the first choice for all six mission types in the "loadmis.dat".
This should force the exe to use it.

With the freedom of 140 It would be possible to copy the FM folder for a bomber and name it to indicate a transport mission plane at I just did with the A20-G here:



Then in a new version of a planeset the transport version would be used in an escort mission carrying cargo.
The exe assumes that when you escort or intercept the bombers are going to drop bombs, and chooses the "bombing" loadout for the aircraft. So if a bomber is occasionally to used as a transport aircraft it makes sense to have the second FM available

Along the same line I have some FM folders with (AI) in the title. In "plane.dat" they are set as non-flyable. This is especially useful in conversions of old theatres where because of the "picpln" system the aircraft in the bomber slots were not selectable, and therefore not flyable. Often they did not have proper cockpit graphics files.

But, it seems we have now?

John
There are only three basic types of plane in EAW. The fighter, the attack plane and the bomber.
In these last tests I was simulating a transport by running an escort mission in a Corsair. The bombers were A20-Gs carrying loadout which is coded 17 and therefore classified bitwise as a bomb (1) and as cargo (16).
The cargo classification means that it does not explode when it hits the ground.
The bomb classification means that it gets dropped at the target.

Ray in this special "weapons.dat" file created for the experiment the "1000lb bmb L-2" is coded 1 so it is a pure bomb.
In any case the number is zero so technically there are none to be dropped.
There are no droptanks involved at all.

I would have thought that the coding of 17 would have made the exe believe that the plane is carrying bombs to drop, but it never seems to in the tests, unless we have that second entry of zero items of "1000lb bmb L-2".

However, I think we have enough material for Moggy to get his German paratroopers to drop on Holland from AI planes

Thanks for explaining it in plain English. I go mind blank when I see you screen-shot replies, a I don't have your programs, or knowledge to understand what your doing.

At least the Ju52's, Fw 200, and C47's can see some action.

Jel,

When I said drop tanks I meant any object the flies back from the plane not down.

What I found when working with the weapons.dat file was that anything coded to drop back, not down had to be released first or it would drop with one of the other two choices (bomb or rocket)

So if you have a bomb (even a zero load bomb) when you get over the target the AI will release it and the drop tank load ( whatever it is ) drops at the same time.

BTW, you couldn't use this modification on a fighter because when they encounter enemy aircraft they drop their tanks ( no matter what that ordinance is ).

I have some rockets set up on the drop tank key. You should see the pyrotechnics when those guys encounter enemy aircraft. Once or twice I even saw an enemy get hit from the barrage of rockets coming at them.

Thanks for this. Fascinating avenues my little problem took us down.

Yeah and we saved the Bools from further trepidations too.