hi Ray,

the main point was that the Gunpods did work for very long time, not that it already did work in EAW1.2.

I did clarify later, that the presence of the working gunpods was so normal to me, that i got the impression, they always was there.
Iam still confused, how this very important option could get ignored and forgotten.


Tony,

do you had a look for the Ai routines regarding the gunpods? Are they Weapon type related or Weapon slot related??

As far as i can see while playing, some Ai routines somehow got corrupted.

1. The Ai´s rather often lose the ability to land. I dont know why, but they somehow stop to follow the normal landing routine, where they fly toward a point in a good altitude, some km away, in one line with the runway. From this point they start the approach to the touch down point. Instead they fly very low near the homebase, always turning tight. Sometimes they crash, only by luck sometimes they land, but not in a line with the runway.
For now i have no idea why they do this sometimes and sometimes they land normal. This might be related to the mission result, or how the command to return to base was given.

2. Another problem are the last meters while landing. as soon as the Ai´s get close to the ground, the sinkrate minimize, so the Ai´s sometimes push the stick forward, resulting in a rather steep nose down landing, or, on higher altitude bases (DAW for example), they dont land at all, but raise the power and retake the undercarriage to try again.
Could it be that the density table or the ground effect got changed by mistake?? Maybe while trying to get the catapult take off going?

3. When intercepting bombers, sometimes the escort is flying incredible high, maybe 1500m, above the Bombers. From that position they are not good able to protect the bombers. I know there is a routine, to let the escort climb high above the Bombers, to be able to reach them fast in a flat dive, when the Enemys arrive suddely, while the Escort is far behind the bombers, but once the enemys are close, the mission altitude got set back to around 100m above the bombers. This have a shallow dive as result and brings the escort fast into a position, from where they can protect the bombers in a good way.

Greetings,

Knegel

"the main point was that the Gunpods did work for very long time, not that it already did work in EAW1.2."

I don't want to belabor the issue but that is NOT the point. The point was that you declared the gunpods working in 1.2 with an exclamation point (!), inferring that I was seriously misinformed.

Turns out I was correct.

So MY point is that we all need to show each other the respect we deserve for all our years here. We each have our areas of expertise, ALL are necessary to keep the game alive.

In addition, we each have our recollections about the development history of EAW and each one of us is probably wrong on some aspects of that history...........especially since most of us are close to or past retirement age and CRS syndrome rears it's ugly head. (CRS = Can't Remember Sh*t)

Now then.

Since there seems to be some landing problems you guys should check out carrier landings too.

Originally the AI planes landed helter skelter on the deck with some of them falling over the side. Ralf was able to modify the exec so that they lined up on the fore end of the flight deck. You should see if that's still the case. I'm just thinking out loud here but maybe there's a hint in that programming.

Your point was, that the gunpods never did work! My main point was, that your point isnt true! The gunpods work at least12 years now, they was very long time a normal feature in EAW. So you was seriously misinformed.


But anyway, the carrier landing seems to work normal, though, i tested this only a few times, but will keep an eye.

For the Tempest you would need a other gunpod than for the Hurricane. They used total different 40mm guns. The Tempest gun was much longer and very ugly. Similar like the Ju87 Gunpods, on both planes the gunpods couldnt get removed, but both planes got the other weapons removed.

The Hurri IID FM and Skins (DAW and ETO) is already included in the Planes_ETO Folder.

Afaik there wasnt many WWII planes where the gunpods could get added and removed in the field.

That's not an issue really. If some 109G-2 planes had gunpods fitted and others did not then the player is making a valid choice between individual planes when he selects the loadout

1 - Yeah, I'm done with the debate. I said what I had to say, and without a single exclamation point! (oops)

2 - In 3dz Studio the length difference between the two guns is minimal and I doubt the average user would have a problem using the same model for both planes. Of course, a player could always choose one of the planes in the inventory that have the static gun pods if they are sticklers for authenticity. And that leads me to my main point.......

3 - You fail to understand EAW 2021 is far beyond the game you left a number of years ago. Back then a few scenario designers, myself included, held all of the game play in their hands. Each of us determined the 30 plane selection for every scenario and which terrain to use. No exceptions.

Now, with the flexibility I envisioned and Jel's ability to make that flexibility a reality, the players have almost total control of how they choose to play the game. That is the Libertarian view. We offer as many options as we can think of and allow the players to make up their own minds how they set up the game. That is the way to keep this 23 year old game vibrant.

So, when you nit pick over the fact that historically only a few planes had gun pods, you are exhibiting the old, elitist attitude that YOU are in control of how others play the game. That is the way to steady decline.

The community's response to our efforts has shown they agree with us.

Hi Tony,

the Bf109F/G actually was one of the few planes where the Gunpods could get added or removed in the field and since the Bf109 is an very important plane in WWII, the selectable gunpods are very good.

Most other planes with gunpods, specially when big guns got mounted, was somewhat new planes, where in most cases the other guns or loadout options got removed.

For example the Hurri IId got all guns but (sometimes) two MG´s removed, the 20mm´s of the Tempest also got removed, the FW190F8 with MK103 also got most other guns removed and still was horrible flyable.
The Ju87G lost the other loadout and dive brakes.

But there are still other planes where the gunpods can get used: The P39 flew with them, If i remember right the Mig3 had them, the Gloster Gladitor and probably more.


Ray, in point 3 you are wrong again.
in EAW1.28e we can select up to 7 Planesets from the game config screen and with OAW we could load any wanted theatre and plane combination we wanted, just by some clicks. The user even could generate his own Planeset on the fly. I dont see many diffrents, but the possibility to switch between planesets from within the game and the ability switch planes inside a planeset on the fly got lost. With Stab or OAW the player already had the total controll of all addon, long before we had the code. The UAW160 Filemanager is a very much simplyfied version of OAW., without the extraordanarry possibilitys.

There is no problems when what if planes get released, but to add weapons to historically correct modelt planes, that never used them, damage the simulation character of EAW, cause the usage of this gunpods is not determined only by the player, the Ai´s will use them without to ask the player.


btw. the Tempest got tested with the 47mm class P gun, not with the Vickers S gun 40mm. The 47mm P gun was way bigger, that would make a nice Tank hunter what if plane.

You simply don't get it. The players get to decide how they want to experience the game, not YOU. There is no comparison between Stab, OAW or the 1.28e exec and what we've developed in the intervening years. They were important steps along the way but they pale in comparison to the flexibility of 1.6 and the accompanying utilities.

Going forward it would be best if you keep in mind that YOUR idea of how the game is to be played is just that, one man's opinion and that opinion does not line up with the vast majority of players. They LIKE the way we do things now.

You are correct, though, the Tempest was tested with the 47mm gun, not the 40mm and I did set it up that way when I built the flight model. See, like I said, CRS hits at the most inopportune times.

Where do i tell the players how to play?? As i wrote, we made it possible to do what ever the Player wanted already 15 yaers ago. We was able to produce single planes to be placed in any Phantasy-plane-setup, long before we splitted the Planes- and Weapons.dat, after we got used to the code and coding.

You dont seems to have much knowledge about the EAW gameplay and the AI related problems. If you add 40mm Gunpods to the default Tempest, you will damage the gameplay with that plane, cause in most cases, the Tempest will get the gunpods, if the order is Intercept, but a Tempest with an additional load of 500kg is a sitting duck and that gun, with the few rounds is worthless in an Air to Air combat anyway. Thats why its better to add another Tankhunter Tempest, instead of selectable 47mm gunpods for the normal Tempest. Of course the player then still can choose that Tankhunter Tempest for an Intercept, but then he not always get it.

All over it looks to me you project your habbit to do do what you want, no matter how much you restrict others, onto me. I can safly say that iam always looking for the widest spectrum of possibilitys. Thats why we made OAW and thats why we splitted the Planesets into single planes and thats why we made all Planeslots equal (and it was very much work to find all Ai related routines that was linked to a planeslot and to program it to a plane or weapontype).

While you still was looking just for your own theatre, we already splitted them and made all parts available for all planes and possibilitys, to make the player able to do all he want. For now i dont saw anything new, appart from some good things Tony added to the Exe.

When i left we already had the Planes splitted and we could play every available plane in any theatre we wanted.

Is there anything else new, that iam not aware of??

"You dont seems to have much "knowledge about the EAW gameplay and the AI related problems. If you add 40mm Gunpods to the default Tempest..........................."

You are stuck with your usual ideological purity. The reality is it doesn't affect you in any way when we add various things to the mix, it merely affronts your feelings.

Look, you can choose to be purely historical if that is what you desire while other players decide how they want to play the game. If an individual wants to add inappropriate guns.....YOU....don't....get.....a.....say.

You've done this your entire time in EAW and it caused a lot of hard feelings back in the day. It's only taken a week for you to start doing it again.

Stop it.

As I said, you get one opinion. Learn to live with other opinions.

Now let's put this argument to rest, and move forward with a new attitude OK?
========================================================================================

I have a question for you.

Jack is back in the mix and he's going to work on cockpit upgrades. I seem to recall you worked on adding some action codes so we could add graphics to the cockpits for oil spray and bullet holes.

Is that something you recall doing or was it merely in the discussion mode?

It's a fact that we have more or less always had speculative setups in EAW for those that want them, from Jan Tuma's Czech Cold War up to and including Von Beerhoven's Mars Air War.

And we have had strict historical and technical accuracy (well, as close as we can get) for those who want that.

Let a thousand flowers bloom, as the Chinese despot said.

But let's seize the current opportunity to get the old gang going again on stuff we all want, for all our projects and scenarios. Be a shame to waste this moment.

Hi,

for now i even dont have access to the code, cause my old WinXP HD long time ago went into the lala land. As such i cant work on code things. Afaik it was Sydbod or Tony who was working in adding graphics, my part was the Ai´s, Weapons and Flight/Damagemodel related coding.

Right now iam still trying to find back the complete Planesfolder, including the Pacific planes, Spanish and the lot of ETO planes that are missing in the current setup iam using.

And i still need the tools to be able to edit the related files.

Here is a new exe installation. In yet another branch I had created an exe which could use an external file to set bullet and tracer colours and effects.
I have found the routine, and added it to what was the very latest exe, and complied a new one

The link is here: Tracer effect installation

Run the downloaded "TracerSet.exe" in your 160 folder. It will add the new exe to the "EAW Versions" folder, and put the external file "TracerSet.mpf" in the root folder.



Jel

Because of changes to the eaw.exe, and experiments with files in the V2 version I have made V3
Here is the link:

Downloadthe "Reduced UAW160V3" installation