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#4464012 - 03/05/19 12:42 AM BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!'  
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33lima Offline
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33lima  Offline
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It's (still!) 20th July 1940, in my RAF campaign in Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory. The 'victory' bit is looking elusive. My coastal fighter bases are taking a pounding from raid after raid. Dover has been blitzed more than once. From my vantage point in BoB2's animated Ops Room, I opt to fly with 41 Squadron as it sights yet another raid. I could have picked any of the squadron's twelve scrambled Spitfires, but as usual opted to fly as the leader of Green Section's three aircraft, in EB-K.

And here is the sight that greets me as I look up at the incoming Huns. I use the R/T to call in the sighting, and hear myself reporting both some distant snappers (escorts) and these bombers. As often in BoB2, the latter are flying in three wedges of ten, so the raid is a full gruppe in strength.

[Linked Image]

The boss - Red 1, the squadron leader - comes up via BoB2's imaginative and pretty comprehensive and clever representation of R/T traffic, confirming he's seen the foes and then ordering us to take safeties off and select our own targets. I need no further bidding and lead Green Section off to make our own attack. Here we are, having curved up and around to come in below and behind the enemy. The raiders don't have a close fighter escort, so it's time to make hay, while the sun shines.

[Linked Image]

Although I can't see it from the cockpit, below us are some other aircraft - a squadron of Hurricanes, I think - jockeying for position.

[Linked Image]

My Numbers Two and Three have fallen behind a little but I know that they will attack the identified target without further bidding from me - such is the way the BoB2 unit AI operates.

[Linked Image]

Here's the view from my cockpit as we begin to overhaul the Huns. Pilot memoirs I've read recently - Tom Neill's 'Gun Button to Fire' and (at long last!) Richard Hillary's 'The Last Enemy' - express dislike of frontal or beam attacks and I too am finding I prefer attacking from astern. Provided you pick an outlier, the return fire isn't too bad and you don't need any fancy deflection shooting. Incidentally, the grassy area with two grey rectangles which you can see just ahead of my leading edge I later identified as Ford naval air station - not the target this time.

[Linked Image]

The actual target of this mob could be the airfield whose grey crossed runways you can make out in the pic below - Tangmere, possibly, and as a fighter base, a much more valuable target for an air force bent on achieving air superiority. [EDIT - a later look at sources online and on the bookshelf indicates the airfield under my Spit more closely resembles the nearby satellite station of Westhampnett]

[Linked Image]

I'm still closing in on my own chosen target - the bomber on the left rear of the bunch - when battle is joined and the tracers start to fly in various directions. The first Heinkel is already falling out of formation as the leading Spitfires press home their attacks. The tension is palpable.

[Linked Image]

Coming in from slightly below and to the left, I begin to line up my chosen victim, hoping that the bomber slipping across from my right will not get in the way and trying not to be distracted by the spectacle as Spits and Heinkels slog it out right in front of me. Any second now...!

[Linked Image]

...to be continued!

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Last edited by 33lima; 03/05/19 10:28 AM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

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#4464065 - 03/05/19 03:43 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima Offline
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Just to put you in the bigger picture, this is the tactical situation as seen in the Ops Room just before I joined 41 Squadron. The raid I'm about to engage is Hostile 752, whose marker is coming in over the south coast to the east of Portsmouth which is near the left edge of the map. Largely obscured underneath are markers for two intercepting squadrons (blue & while markers), 601 whose yellow flag is visible and 41, whose isn't. The green circle with the red ring is Tangmere fighter airfield, the ring colour indicating damage; its satellite station, Westhampnett, is a short way to the north-west. Way off to the east, another yellow, red and blue marker shows raid Hostile 752 withdrawing after blasting Manston airfield, also ringed red.

[Linked Image]

My first firing pass gets somewhat messed up because just as I am about to let fly, the Heinkels start to turn left, presumably having bombed.

[Linked Image]

As a result I end up letting the left hand wedge slip underneath and go for the leading staffel, which has not yet begun to turn.

[Linked Image]

Whack! Return fire cracks my armour glass windshield!

[Linked Image]

And that's not the only hit I have taken.

[Linked Image]

I end up breaking away underneath the bomber I'm attacking, my aim somewhat spoiled by the poor forward view through the damaged glass.

[Linked Image]

The net result is I knock the Hun out of formation, but at the added cost of engine damage which leaves my Merlin's revs surging and falling away, up and down again, and trailing dark smoke, just like my target.

[Linked Image]

Up and away I go, my confidence somewhat the worse for the experience.

[Linked Image]

From my vantage point high and left of the bombers, I can see on the ground what I now know to be Ford naval air station; it's a bit closer to the coast than the two nearby fighter bases. It's a pity that if they had to bomb something, they didn't bomb Ford, as it would have been less of a loss to our defences against raids such as this. No offence to the Coastal Command types down there; I'm sure they would understand perfectly my partisan viewpoint.

[Linked Image]

I make another pass at the bombers, again pulling up afterwards. By this time, the Huns are headed roughly north west, I think.

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

I've still ammo left and come in again. Slowly, because my engine is still running roughly. I'm not too unhappy to see the Hurricanes of 601 Squadron beat me to it, as they go sailing in to hit the Heinkels from astern.

[Linked Image]

As I watch, one of the bombers blows up!

[Linked Image]

The Huns make another turn to the left, which will take them back out to sea and home. Whatever else I'm going to do on this mission, I had better get on and do it quickly!

[Linked Image]

...to be continued!

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Last edited by 33lima; 03/08/19 10:18 PM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

#4464074 - 03/05/19 04:41 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima Offline
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33lima  Offline
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I cut across the retreating bomber formation. In my reduced circumstances, I have no hesitation in going for a lone straggler this time, when I see the Spitfire in front of me is letting him go.

[Linked Image]

Despite the poor view ahead I manage to finish off the damaged Heinkel. Confirmation comes in the unmistakeable form of the crew starting to bail out, as I flash past.

[Linked Image]

I extend away again. Meanwhile, the German formation is nearing the coast, harried all the way by our fighters who are snapping angrily at the enemy's heels.

[Linked Image]

I still have enough power left to come in for yet another pass.

[Linked Image]

You can see two things from the next pic. Firstly, from the tracers, how bad was my aim, partly thanks to that cracked glass obscuring the target. Secondly, that I still managed to set the Heinkel smoking. Or maybe he already was!

[Linked Image]

As I pull off the target, the others are still whittling away at the enemy.

[Linked Image]

Looking down, the sun glints on the wings of the leading Heinkels as they gain the comparative safety of the coast.

[Linked Image]

Using the height built up, I come in for a final pass. This doesn't go well. I just about manage to see in time that a Spitfire in front is also attacking my chosen target, so I have to wait till he clears the line of fire.

[Linked Image]

This leaves me too close to my target for more than a short burst. In an unwise effort to prolong it, I delay the break until it's too late. Collision! The world goes red as my Spit begins to roll wildly. The wing damage effect is a bit dodgy but from the outside, it's obvious enough that both fighter and bomber are going no-where but down.

[Linked Image]

The consolation is that I actually manage to bail out.

[Linked Image]

The bigger reward is my increasing conviction that I have never had the immersive pleasure of playing (or even seeing) a better air combat sim. Certainly not one that recreates even nearly so well the experience of flying and fighting in the air battles over southern England in the summer of 1940. Kudos to the original developers, Rowan; to the Shockwave/A2A team that brought BoB back to life as Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory; and to the dedication and talents of the BDG members who have graced BoB and BoB2 with a likely unique level of historical detail and accuracy, from aircraft markings and camouflage schemes (in enough varieties to fill the pages of several books on the subject), to the accurate portrayal of bases and other locations in a theatre that's reproduced with true care to history. Super stuff, and I'm loving it.

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Last edited by 33lima; 03/05/19 05:14 PM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

#4464097 - 03/05/19 07:15 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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Blade_Meister Offline
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33lima, where did you purchase this? Online download or packaged? Recently? What updates/ addons are required/ are you using?

S!Blade<><

#4464107 - 03/05/19 07:55 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima Offline
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33lima  Offline
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Hi Blademeister.

I got this years back instore, on CD (or was it DVD???), when it was released, having also bought the original Rowan version in 'big box' format complete with huge printed manual, as they were in those days.

You can probably pick up copies on Amazon or Ebay but it's apparently also available from the developers, A2A simulations, I'm guessing as a digital download:

https://a2asimulations.com/product-category/standalone/

Big thing to know is that with later updates, it doesn't much like Windows 10 (or 8), my experiences being recounted here:

https://combatace.com/forums/topic/92753-battle-of-britain-2-wings-of-victoryand-windows-10/

In short I could play the many single (historical and training) missions fine except for no debriefing due to a CTD when exiting the mission. Campaign missions can sometimes crash earlier. No cure yet known. Fix for me was Windows 7.

Versions up to about 2.01 are reported to be ok with 8 and possibly 10, but they lack desirable features.

Apart from a beta 2.14, the latest version is BDG 2.13 which I think includes the 'multiskin' feature which in its latest version gives just about every plane authentic unit (and in many cases, individual aircraft) markings, thought there are no A and B scheme variants for RAF fighters and I reckon the yellow noses on some 109s appear a few weeks before they really did.

That's the only thing I use, and it's available here:

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=51298

I think the only other thing I did was activate autogen trees which makes a significant difference and is simple a text edit in the bdg.txt file (the equivalent of IL2's conf.ini).

There's a lot of mostly scenery mods, and some extra missions, available, unsorted, in a long 'subscriber mods' thread on the BoB2 forums here, none of which I have used, including some skins derived from those in Cliffs of Dover:

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12021


SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

#4464178 - 03/06/19 01:58 AM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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Rick_Rawlings Offline
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Nice work, lima! You bail out a few more times and you might have a chance at my record! hahaha


The older I get, the more I realize I don't need to be Han, Luke or Leia. I'm just happy to be rebel scum...
#4464179 - 03/06/19 01:59 AM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima, do you know if i bought a UK version of BOB2 limited addition will it work for any computer? I am assuming yes? Thanks for the earlier information Mate.

S!Blade<><

Last edited by Blade_Meister; 03/06/19 06:41 AM.
#4464277 - 03/06/19 06:49 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima Offline
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Thanks Rick - I think if the results of all my mission pilots were added together, I would be that rare bird, an ace in two opposing air forces, at the same time!


Blade, the Limited Edition is the one I have and it's 'system requirements' (i) only go as far as XP and also say P-III 800MHz, 256Mb RAM, 500Mb HD space, 128Mb RAM GPU, and Direct X 9.0 or later and (ii) are very considerably lower than what BDG 2.13 needs. This is from 2.13's installation manual:

Note 3: You will need the latest DirectX 9.0c to run 2.13. Higher version numbers of DirectX do not include DX9.0c extensions - if you have DX10 and 11 you must still have the latest DX9.0c. You will get a missing .dll error if you do not. When the 2.13 installation update finishes, it will offer the opportunity of running the official online Microsoft DirectX installer (Internet connection needed). You may also update to DirectX9.0c (June version) by yourself. Unfortunately, there are multiple versions of 9.0c so if in any doubt, update.
Note 4: The MultiSkin files needs a graphic card with at least 1GB RAM to be sure to run without issues.
Note 5: How to manually back up your existing settings from earlier BoBII updates. Buddye's installation guide in this thread Back up your file and folders: Bdg.txt (files) 2dGauge (folder) keyboard (folder) these files/folders contain all your settings and joystick buttons.
Note 6: If you have a low end system and experience a crash once into 3D, go to your bdg.txt file and set LANDSCAPE_TEXTURE_SIZE = 1024 (the default is 2048). This will reduce the landscape texture resolution by a factor of 4 and should help users with low system memory.
Note 7: The minimum requirements for BoBII have changed very significantly since initial release. To run 2.13 successfully we recommend Win XP/7, 2Gb RAM, 1Gb Video card, strong Dual or Quad Core processor. Alas, BoBII is still unable to run reliably on Win8/8.1. It has been reported that it works OK with Win10. Investigation of Win10 is ongoing, please check the forum, both General and Tech Supt, for the latest.
Note 8: Vista and Windows 7 (and later) users may need to apply (or reapply) the 'Vista/Windows 7 fix' to your desktop shortcut as a fresh 2.13 install will overwrite the previous shortcut.
 Right click on shortcut and go to properties.
 Go to the compatibility tab.
 Check "disable desktop composition" and check the privilege level, run this program as an administrator.
Note 9: Currently, Windows screen text size must be set to 96 DPI. We will try to address this for 2.14. (in Win7 this is found under Screen Resolution by right clicking the desktop background, or under Control Panel>Display)


I now have a 3.4GHz i3 4300 dual core, 8 GB of RAM and a 1.5GB Nvidia GTX 580 so hardly a hot rig; and apart from particle density have everything maxed out and playing smoothly - how much lower spec one could go with the same performance and settings, I do not know. Before that I had Vista 64 on an old Intel 2.33 GHz Quad core, 6GB of slower RAM and a 512Mb 8800GT and BoB2 worked on that but not at such high settings IIRC - only started really playing it recently. BoB2 is on a cheap 120GB SSD I got specially for a legit, cheap OEM copy of Win 7 64 bit. Which in turn I got specially so I could play BoB2 without the Win 10 end of mission CTDs. As Win 7 is in support for a while yet, I have the system set to boot straight into Win 7 and can play BoB2 and all my other current sims from that. It was little more hassle to set up than re-installing an OS and getting drivers and cards all working right again.

My main beef with BoB2 is that close escorts operate a 'one threat, one staffel' response and if you bypass that staffel, any others hold their station - even if they or their charges are attacked by a plane from the first attacker, which the responding staffel is supposed to be dealing with. Apart from that, it's for me a vastly better SP sim, and representation of air combat in the Battle, than CloD. Like Tim Stone said in an early review, Cliffs (I have the Blitz Edition) is sort of ok if you can regard it as a great bunch of FSX-type addon flyables with the added benefit of a wartime theatre to fly them in and a functionally and quantitatively limited air combat capability. Illustrated here by the very small bomber formation. Which breaks up too readily, complete with fully-laden Heinkels pulling some rather extraordinary manoeuvres. And at intervals, you are regaled with inaudible R/T chatter which causes a gameplay pause when it starts and includes trite, repetitive and pointless gibberish which would have been embarrassing enough in Top Gun the Movie, like 'I've got your six!' and 'I'll fly your wing', generally played several times one after the other, phrases which are as out-of-place in 1940s Fighter Command as break dancing in the officers mess (or the sergeants mess, for that matter).

[Linked Image]

Claims that under TF, CloD's a completely different sim from release may well be very true; but statements that it's now the best air combat sim available are wildly premature and may or may not ever be approximated let alone realised - for SP anyhow. Which is all I care about. WoTR I have not picked up - for me it still has just too many negatives, several of them unacceptable, which opinion adding more flyable and/or AI aircraft and additional theatres are unlikely to balance out. In short the Battle of Britain without default raids of at least 20-30 reasonably closely-formated bombers (with escorts in addition to that, operating also in gruppe not staffel strength or less, and all that playable on min spec at decent FPS without dropping the sliders to the wrong side) and no ground control is NOT the Battle of Britain. Which will apply about as much to the 1941-42 ETO air war, and even more to the era of 'the Mighty Eighth'. The sim of that name got away with small formations because its primary focus was inside your bomber, like great actors performing on stage with few props and a minimal backdrop. Il-2 can get away with it because it's Ostfront and can do tactical air ops including MTO and at a push PTO, and - with limitations - can do just about big enough bomber formations for a respectable ETO bomber interception experience. And without unduly demanding system requirements, in relation to the quality of the visuals (including formation sizes) produced.

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

WoTR looks in too many ways like a port from WoFF/WW1 to WW2 and to the least suitable type of operations, to boot (really large-scale ops, and, for one side anyway, as part of a sophisticated air defence system) and would probably work a whole lot better if set in something smaller scale and more tactical, like the Western Desert 1940-43, or in the Spanish Civil War.

Anyway enough rambling, there are Huns to be shot down (or rammed!) in my current BoB2 campaign smile

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Last edited by 33lima; 03/07/19 09:55 PM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

#4464346 - 03/07/19 01:30 AM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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I agree with the Western Desert comment. Luv to see that area treated with a WOTR treatment or the Cactus AF on Guadalcanal.

#4464355 - 03/07/19 03:41 AM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima, thank you for all of the information. I ordered BOB II WOV Limited Edition today for 21.99. It is the Brand new boxed version, so it should be like the good old days with the map and manual. I will have to start reading up on it. I have always heard that BOB II had the best AI and Dynamic Campaign for SP of any CBFS. I am using an AMD Penom II 965BE @ 3.4gb and have 16gb of DDR3 @ 2100, a EVGA GTX770 4gb and Windows 7 on 7200rpm HDD. I am really looking forward to this as I am playing and enjoying WOTR right now. WOTR may not put up as many planes in the air, although there is a setting for "large bomber formations" in their settings, as BOB II, but it is still a very good sim recreation of the BOB. I enjoy it a lot. One question, does the 2.13 patch cover all cumulative patches? Is that all I need to install to be up to the latest release? Thanks again for your information. Anything that you can think of to help me get started in BOB II WOV would be most appreciated. Great pictures and AARs SIr. Thanks for sharing them.

S!Blade<><

#4464456 - 03/07/19 09:08 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
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33lima Offline
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33lima  Offline
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Re WoTR, I can only too well understand the attraction of what the devs want to achieve and offer, which to me would be the long-awaited 'European Air War 2'. For any with an interest in the ETO, that would be the Holy Grail of the genre. However, Holy Grails seem notoriously difficult to come by, especially if the reaction of spoilsports like me is more along the lines of 'Fetchez la vache' smile A port to the MTO, the SCW or the like would I think have been a more realistic 'quest'. PTO too probably, as Carrick says.

Anyway Blade, to answer your question, yes BDG 2.13 is cumulative and needs no previous updates.

I mentioned having turned on tree autogen - these are the autogen lines in my bdg.ini file, which aren't exactly self-explanatory, but it will be one or more of these lines, probably in the second block, that turns trees on - just in case you have diffs finding the ref to how to do this:

# AutoGen stuff (experimental):
ENABLE_AUTO_GEN=ON
TEMP_AG_SN[15,2]=1192
TEMP_AG_SN[15,3]=62

# AutoGen TreeLine stuff (experimental):
TEMP_AGTL_SN[0]=1192
TEMP_AGTL_SN[1]=63
TEMP_AGTL_SN[2]=62

I also have AI spins turned on in this file.

You can also autogen sheep (which may also 'fetchez la vache' ie add other farm animals like cows, and maybe haystacks) but I don't have that turned on and have forgotten where I saw how to do that. I'm not sure I like the idea of exposing even virtual farm animals to the horrors of modern warfare wink

I've just pulled my CD cased BoB2 - WoV from the shelf behind me which it's currently sharing with most of my modest library on the Battle and apart from a flier on G2 Games, the only enclosures are a half-decent fold-out A4 colour map which includes some useful campaign-playing tips and should actually accompany me when I'm playing. There is another colour A4 fold out, the top a keyboard map and the lower a stock key tabular listing. all in a font so small I can barely read even with glasses. It's the Rowan BoB(1) that has the big printed manual. At any rate for BoB2 the softcopy manual that BDG 2.13 will install into your game's docs/ folder is more up-to-date and while based on the original Rowan manual has some extra stuff.

There's a link to some printable maps here, if you scroll down a bit: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6525

You might like me find the very different nested radio commands hard to get used to, especially the apparent absence of the sort of commands to wingmen one gets used to from the likes of EAW and Il-2. But BoB2 seems to rely instead on built-in AI acting on 'SOPs' rather than specific commands. For example, 'auto-vectoring' is an option you set in the game's Options menu and as the manual explains, left ON, your squadron mates will react more autonomously according to the situation. Leave it OFF. and the manual says '...you will be offered a range of sensible choices'. All very different and I still have not got the hang of it, one reason at present I'm opting to fly as Green 1 in charge of just a 3-plane vic with little to do except try to stay with the squadron and follow the boss's orders, and then lead Green 2 and 3 into the fray. Makes me realise how ambitious and relatively successful Rowan were. I can't think of many sims of any kind which tried to implement a real-time, dynamic level of command and control above the player, as opposed to the usual method of scripting it into the mission or forcing the player to be the commander at the top of the food chain. Remarkable they managed it so well, apart from the aforementioned 'unresponsive escorts' effect and probably some other limitations. Anyway the ambition is admirable and the delivery is mostly nearly as good.

There's some new player tips here, from one of the BDG old hands: http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11406

Flying campaigns, the RAF 'commander' one is the place to start, probably. The BDG 2.13 manual has soon good advice on playing this. My experience confirms that it's generally ok to accept the defauls in the pop-up 'Directives' and scramble recommendations which you get when you start a campaign. So you basically let the wargame AI play the campaign and just accept offers to fly a mission whenever you like. Offers seem to come by default when a squadron is scrambled (a ground start) and then later, when a squadron is in sight of the enemy (an air start). You can also 'frag' which in BoB2 seems to mean click on a friendly flight's marker in the Ops Room/2d (or use one of the dialog boxes) and opt to join it in the 3d world. At that point you get a screen which offers you a sort of plan view of the formation and you can click on any aircraft in the formation and then fly. It's a good idea to select 'Pause on entering 3d' - not sure if that's in the Options menu, or has o be done by hand-editing bdg.ini - so you can orient yourself - but you can always just hit P to pause instead.

I have friendly collisions turned off. A good idea unless you have lightning-like reflexes and the formation flying skills of an especially good display team member.

I would start with gunnery ('target size') set to the smallest (hardest) setting in game Options as otherwise it is a bit too easy. And only then can you aim for and hit specific bits of a target instead of having your hits auto-distributed, I gather.

The Ops Room screen below (the 2 dimensional wargame-level interface) illustrates just some of the many boxes you can pull up using the icons at the bottom. I have recently realised that the partly-obscured 'Mission Folder' has buttons at the bottom you can use to do stuff like order a squadron to return to base, or if airborne, re-vector them to (say) attack an incoming raid rather than just carry on with a patrol or whatever else I or the campaign AI had assigned them to do.

[Linked Image]

I've left complex engine stuff off - if you accept a mission when you scramble/ground start, with it turned on, I expect the others will have left you well behind by the time you have mouse-clicked your way through the cockpit drills. Unless you are the leader and everyone waits for you - by which time the Huns may have flattened somewhere important and be on their way home for Schnapps. I don't usually like air starts but that's how I'm mostly flying and I'm now fine with that. Sometimes I land, sometimes I just quit after the action so I get the next fight faster. I do think though that BoB2 actually looks like a more than respectable warbird flight sim and it would be fun - never mind the fighting - with the clicakable cockpit fully on and just learning to do takeoffs, circuits and bumps in Spits, Hurris and Messerschmitts while following the real drills - BCTFUR was one I recall (an old friend's dad flew with 616 Squadron and I saw some of his stuff), darned if I can remember what that stands for now. Probably need to collect a few sets of Pilot's Notes - I'd prefer the originals to the sort of things the display pilots list in the likes of the excellent Haynes 'workshop manuals' (I have those for Spit and Hurri so far).

Anyway, good hunting, and enjoy your first flight through Tower Bridge - you know you want to!

[Linked Image]

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Last edited by 33lima; 03/07/19 10:13 PM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

#4464487 - 03/08/19 01:54 AM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 2,079
Blade_Meister Offline
Member
Blade_Meister  Offline
Member

Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 2,079
Atlanta, GA, USA
33lima, Thank you so much for all of the heads up info. You must be quite a good "Mucker"(I looked up some Belfast slang, OMG you have your own language, yep My Mom is of Irish descent, name of Kelso, yep know any of em??? hahaha ) in real life as you are so generous with your time. Your writing style and humorous antidotes make reading your posts entertaining while sharing your wealth of information about BOB II. I will be referring to what you have shared with me here when I start setting up BOB II next week. Thanks again. I will try not to hijack your AAR thread anymore Mucker, but in a WOTR mission on the way home from an early evening mission I peeled off from my flight at a spur of the moment impulse and did this flying up the river Thames(see pics). LOL, what a coincidence you should post that, "you know you want to". winkngrin Carry on Sir! salute I really enjoy reading your AARs.

S!Blade<><

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#4464572 - 03/08/19 06:35 PM Re: BoB2 - 'Select your own targets!' [Re: 33lima]  
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,712
33lima Offline
Senior Member
33lima  Offline
Senior Member

Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,712
Belfast, NI
Thanks for the feedback!

You're wiser that I am, doing your Tower Bridge stunt in relative darkness not broad daylight, and with your navigation lights turned off! No chance of them getting your number, followed by a spell in jankers (RAF slang that - 'mucker' tho still used here in NI is possibly Army slang and probably imported from the jolly old Empire, 'muckerjee' being the full version albeit probably mangled from Hindi).

Funny enough my boss in the office in the early '80's was a Kelso - Antrim direction, not far from RAF Aldergrove where 245 Squadron's Hurricanes were based at one point in 1940 - my long-gone Airfix 1/24 scale Hurricane was marked as one of these, DX-L, IIRC.

Nice pics but...arrgh! That external field of view! The CFS3 fisheye lens was always one of my pet hates and in CFS3 now, and in WoFF, I have this setting in d3d8.ini...

; 0 - Use default (which is 60 degrees); 1...180 - override FOV for external views.
ExternalFOV=30

...grateful ever since Ankor's most excellent DX mod enabled this to be adjusted along with its other many fine features, also now built into WoTR I presume.

These pics are from CFS3+ETO expansion which is as near as I can get at present to WoTR, here to illustrate the FoV set to 30, providing a more natural perspective:

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Maybe you like the field of view you have just fine! But one of the first things I do in BoB2 is Numpad minus, to zoom out, then Ctrl+Numpad plus, to zoom back in with a narrower FoV. Can probably set that permanently in one of the Options menus. Oh and that reminds me, if you find the BoB2 view will not zoom in close enough at all, leaving your aircraft looking 'small and insecure' then in bdg.ini change...

External_View_Starting_Distance = 3.100000

...to...

External_View_Starting_Distance = 1.500000

In Options I have the 'enemy position indicator' off (also the sort of radar/artificial horizon HUD thingy). It's undeniably useful in combat to have crosses or roundels floating around the edges of your display to represent peripheral vision, but they do look very artificial, like playing any flightsim with your screen filled with flying labels. Again there's no point disputing matters of taste, all this waffle is just mine smile

Attached Files Shot08-03-16-22-36-35.jpgShot09-14-18-21-45-06.jpgShot07-08-17-23-02-32.jpgShot07-19-16-23-11-57.jpgShot08-22-16-23-33-33.jpg
Last edited by 33lima; 03/08/19 07:08 PM.

SimHQ Battle of Britain II screenshots thread
CombatAce Mission Reports
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)


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