GT!
Nice to see you. Hope I've done you proud. To answer your question, here's some more of the readme:
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Be warned! As most of the missions are night missions, they are very dark. They need to be dark enough to make picking out a target very, very difficult, but light enough to make the external views interesting. Once your eyes adjust, the instruments and map are readable as are most of the markings on the planes. Nevertheless, you will probably need to be in a dark room with only a small light on your keyboard to play! If you find them too dark or too light for your liking, feel free to open them in the mission editor and tweak them to suit.
About this revamp: BOMBING THE REICH was originally created in the early days of FS-SDOE when night missions were only achievable through a specific 'night' terrain called Dover Night and tweaking the lighting settings in a text editor. It was very difficult and cumbersome. Also, the planes available at the time were very limited in number. Time and a pool of very talented patch and plane builders have changed both situations dramatically. To bring the missions up to date and give them a new lease on life in a world where 'Dover Night' is completely obsolete, several changes have been made:
- The terrain was changed, through a text editor, to the stock Dover terrain. This was viable as the only difference between Dover Night and Dover was their colors.
- The time settings were modified through the Mission Editor to change night missions back into night missions, but now everything is automatic and shaded appropriately, the effect being much more consistent and visually appealing.
- The planes involved were evaluated and changed in some cases to more historically appropriate planes and to add some further variety. The number of planes was also reduced in some cases to try and avoid over taxing lesser PCs. In general, no more than nine planes appear in any one scenario, but great effort was made to retain the original balance.
- For the most part, all airfields, on both sides, were given a single super anti-aircraft weapon for defense to deter the other side from flying where they shouldn't!
- The mission mechanics themselves were tweaked to better achieve what was intended in the original missions, in light of experience gained since the early days of FS-SDOE of just what makes a good mission.
As for in game aids, here are some recommendations:
- In Flight Map: Consider this your navigator. If you want a real challenge, try to navigate without it and use a printed map!
- Show Enemy Aircraft: Off. While this may simulate some things, it generally offers too much information to be realistic. Unfortunately, seeing ground units cannot be disabled, but since one cannot tell the difference between a harmless Klaxon (which are peppered throughout the target areas) and an 88-mm flak gun via the map, the info it imparts is not too precise, which is good.
- ID Tags: Off. This is way too much of an aid to aircraft location to have any realistic value. Use it if you're 'training' or just find life without it too hard in night scenarios, but it's certainly not realistic!
- Target Map: If you are flying a bomber, consider this the ground mapping H2S radar. Since it also shows planes, it should only be turned on during the bomb run. Also, since it shows all targets, it can be confusing, which is good. Ground-mapping radar during WW2 was very rudimentary. For fighters, this is a mixture of ground control instruction and your own aircraft's radar. Generally, only two seaters should use it. Single seat 'Wild Sau' fighters should hunt by looking for bomber silhouettes against searchlights and clouds in their patrol area.
Of course, for variety and challenge, you can mix and match any of the above aids for any level of realism or fun you desire. You can justify just about anything! H2S for instance did not come into wide use until 1943, and not every plane was eventually equipped with it (Pathfinders had first dibs), so flying without it at any stage of the war is realistic. Similarly, there were things like the tail warning Monica radar that bombers could use to detect an approaching fighter, so knowing where enemy fighters are via the Target Map isn't always unrealistic, etc., etc. The deadly move/countermove electronic game in the night skies over Germany only ended when the war itself did!
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Also see this thread . . .
http://openplanesim.com/modules.php?name...3fdc89dff592ac5 . . . as the Interim BP Update makes BTR much more enjoyable (and the 'The Big City' teaser too!).
. What are the major changes?