Suggested Fixes for P-40B Single Missions
 

I’ve noticed that the P-40B mission 20_PHW1 ‘Pearl Harbor Defense 2’ in the US Navy Single Mission folder has become sadly broken at some point. I know this isn’t uncommon, but maybe I can help in this case by sharing some suggested fixes that I’ve worked out.

I’ll list the issues, then my suggested fixes.

These are the issues:

1. If the player actually manages to get off the ground and make enough of a fight of it that his AI buddies live to complete their waypoints there is a problem. The current automatic landing circuit for AI aircraft at the selected end of Bellows airfield places waypoints for the P-40s inside the mountains. So any AI P-40 fortunate enough to still have wings at that point will simply fly around until it runs out of fuel or otherwise crashes, even if previously undamaged (I tested with no enemies).
2. The player will automatically be awarded a successful completion of the mission even if they do nothing but walk out of the room to watch their favourite re-run of “Baywatch” for ten minutes while the clock ticks over and the P-40s get blown to pieces! This is because the mission defined Target radius is too small, and the vehicles the enemy are set to target move outside the Target radius before they can be destroyed. The amount of destruction required is also set too high.
3. Both P-40B missions in the US Navy folder should actually be in the US Air Force folder, as the mission briefs clearly identify them as relating to the historical Air Force squadrons, not Navy. In fact I’m pretty sure the P-40 was never in squadron service with the Navy. The Air Force ones transported on aircraft carriers don’t count! :)

These are my suggested fixes:

1. In the .mis file for 20_PHW1, change the Landing Waypoint coordinates for both P-40 Wings from 288446.72 32682.60 to 289215.09 34013.48. This makes them land in the opposite runway direction, but I think that’s better than crashing.
2. In the .mis file for 20_PHW1, change the Target text from 6 0 1 10 750 288807 33316 800 to 6 0 1 11 250 288807 33316 3000. This will do three things; greatly decrease the amount of destruction the enemy is required to do at your airfield, slightly increase the time they have to do it, and keep your moving vehicles in the target radius for longer. This gives the best balance I can find which generally forces the player to do something to win the mission while still keeping it winnable.
3. If it’s not too much trouble to get the two US P-40B missions permanently moved from the UN folder to the US folder in the next patch that would tidy things up nicely!

Of course all these changes can be done by individuals without a patch. I’ve already done so with mine. But if they can be easily included in a patch I feel that would be better for everyone.

It's not the only mission that has some issues
http://www.mission4today.com/index.p...wtopic&t=22312
but any user with a little knowledge can fix them. For example, I don't like flights appearing in airfields from nothing, as in, start time not zero, so instead, I change the takeoff delay times.

And if, instead, the flight starts in air after the start of the mission, I just make them take off from an airfield, and make them be at the corresponding waypoint at the specific time they should be.

Agreed, as I said. We have a wealth of players with the knowledge to provide fixes as I have done, but it all takes work. The point is, by sharing this fix here Daidalos now has the option to fix this broken mission for everyone with presumably minimal effort to themselves. Maybe there should be more of this. I think it's a reasonable expectation that the provided Single Missions should work in a way that makes reasonable sense, without user editing. I'd be interested to hear what Daidalos think about it.

I super agree with you in regards of having good single player missions. Like for example, the He-162 mission in which almost all your squadron hits a hill that's near your airstrip. You have to take off in pairs in order to make your mates not exploding. But while DT doesn't patch those missions one can do it without much effort. I may sound like a conformist, but I'd prefer DT making new maps before changing missions.
Everyone can change missions. Not many can make mod planes or maps. Maybe we could check for every mission that has issues and upload them in M4T or something like that, and hope DT makes them official and whatnot.
There is the P-40B mission, the soviet P-47D mission and the He-162. I don't know if there are more.

I agree that the heavy time should go into other things. That's why I'm offering the fixes ready made. I think with the fixes already worked out they should only take minutes to add to a patch, and then everyone has them. Am I wrong?

I'm agreeing with you.
Now the issue is distributing the fixes via official patch or via 3rd party. If official patch is the way, then the developers would still need to troubleshoot them, if we screw something and we don't know, or there is a distribution trouble or anything. 3rd party means that someone scans for viruses and maybe makes sure that there is a .mis file inside, so there is less stuff for DT to do. In time, these fixes may be made official, even.

This is minutes, not hours ... if the fixes work. If they don't work they give us a kick in the toosh and ask us to fix it properly this time! :) I really think my method (requiring a simple cut and paste of two lines in this case) is more direct and time efficient than the M4T upload option, but hopefully someone from the team will read this thread soon and share their wishes in this regard.

The way the patches are created moving the P-40B folder from the UN to US folder is somewhat problematic. DT uses WinRAR for their update patches but I have never seen them or the Maddox team for that matter use the remove feature of that program. The existing file is just overwrote to update it.

Updating the mission and leaving it in the same folder wouldn't be much of a problem and I suspect any fixes would be along those lines although I do agree the missions should have always been in the US folder.


Wheels

Wheels, I think I understand what you're saying.

A normal patch would overwrite an existing file in an existing location, or create a new file in a new location.

So I think you're saying that a patch could easily place the amended mission file in the US folder but the old faulty mission would still exist unchanged in the UN folder as well because they can't delete it.

If that is the case I would get around that by having a prominent note in the Readme file of the patch asking players to delete the old file in the UN folder manually. And if players don't read that note, well, no harm done. Those people just have two versions of the mission ... one which works the way it did before, and the other that is fixed ... and the rest of us have the fixed one in the correct folder! :-)

Same for the other US P-40B mission.

Your assesement on both counts is correct.

I know that WinRAR is capable of deleting the folder and files but I have never seen it done by DT or Maddox. Any and all files and folders that need to be deleted must be deleted first by the program and then any files being added must follow after those deletions.

You are also correct that there would be two version of the missions under current patch conditions if the corrected missions were to be placed in the US folder. The old unaltered missions would still be in the UN folder and the updated versions would be in the US folder.

--------------------------------------------------------

I suspect another reason they only update the files in their current locations is that they only need to have the updated file in the patch and not all the associated files. Updating the .mis file and putting it in the US folder will also require having the .properties files added to the US folder. For this update that would require having one .mis file and the three .properties files for each mission.

A fix to the UN folder would only require this file.

• 20_PHW1.mis

(141 KB)

A fix adding a P40B folder to the US folder would require these 8 files and one folder.

• P-40B folder
• 19_PHW1.mis
• 19_PHW1.properties
• 19_PHW1_de.properties
• 19_PHW1_fr.properties
• 20_PHW1.mis
• 20_PHW1.properties
• 20_PHW1_de.properties
• 20_PHW1_fr.properties

(287 kb)

I know from a file size comparison this fix is not that bad but if you start doing multiple fixes the same way it could add a lot of bloat to what are already, in most instances, pretty large patches.


I like what I see and I am definitely not trying to discourage input since I want the Single missions to work better also. I am just pointing out what I think might be hindrances to a total fix versus a partial fix.


Wheels

Hmmm ... 141kb or so of download per fixed mission ... I can live with that.

And the extra 146kb for the folder fix is a one-off issue I think, so I can live with that too.

Anyway, the fix is there if TD want to use it. If they consider it to be bloat that's ok too. Individuals can still cut and paste from here as a half-fix if they want to.

Now I have a Chinese I-16 mission waiting for me to fly so I'll be off! :)

Then again, for some patches you have a separate download for skins. So, you could have a separate download for these missions. In this way, you could also have those missions available for people who don't want to upgrade to the latest patch; for example, most people who have mods. And now that' I think of it, troubleshooting wouldn't take too much time, so you're right in that regard, but we'll still need to test balance. For example, for correcting the Soviet P-47 mission I had to change delayed start time of a flight to a delayed take-off, so now this flight is a sitting duck for like 8 minutes. And the corrected He-162 mission now has some taxiing. So, you could have planes crashing during taxi under certain circumstances. Is that better than the original take-off in pairs solution I provided at the beginning? That would need a balance check.

Besides, deleting files may be counterproductive, because people may have done modifications to their own files and that would mean loosing those changes. You could have a readme file, but there is a chance people wouldn't read it.

By the way, you making this post means that you care enough about the community that you are willing to offer some fixes, so kudos to you. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I could send you my missions or you could send me yours, in order to upload them to M4T. If I send them to you, you could check for balance for the taxiing and taking off in pairs versions of the He-162 mission. We could also upload them here as in a separate post, so people can test the balance of every mission that has issues and other missions both of us hadn't notice. So we make a big pack before uploading it somewhere.

I am able to accomplish the mission parameters about 60% to 65% of the time with the mission in the code box below. I set the level of destruction at 50%.
If I lower the destruction level to 25% I was unable to achieve the mission objective almost every time.

Changes:

• No user loadout enabled
• Altered all of the waypoints for the Red aircraft.
• Japanese aircraft no longer have parachutes
• altered Target Timeout to 12 minutes.
• Increased Target radius to 2500 meters
• Added a static camera near the action
• Altered vehicle waypoint paths to keep them on the roads
• Altered ship waypoint paths in .mis file (Reducing size of ships waypoint paths in the .mis file)

20_PHW1.mis

Thanks for making an effort with this Wheels. I did three full play throughs of your version and each time the surviving AI P-40s landed safely. So kudos to you that issue #1 appears solved in your version as well as mine. :)

Issue #2 needs some work though. I'll send you a PM on that.

This are my fixes for the USSR P-47N1 mission and for the German He-162 mission. I initially made a fix for the latest as taxi to take-off, but now it seems to not work. My flight doesn't start moving unless I tell them so. Weird, as it seemed to work earlier.
P-47
Changes

• For the IL_4_DB3T of r0132 and r0133 I changed a later start time to a delayed take-off. Used stationary aircraft as spawn points

Previous post
 

Please see previous post
He-162

• Take off is in pairs.

Mission didn't fit complete. [House] and [FrontMarkers] will be on next post

Please see prevoius post

Fhechene, I'll try to take a look at your missions sometime. I'm just tied up with other things at the moment.

As the leader you need to tell the other planes in your flight to start their engines unless you use the autopilot.


Wheels

Man, you always know what's wrong. You deserve a lemon pie. I mean it.
So, the taxi to take-off version of the
He-162
Changes

• All planes and most chiefs start a little far away from their original waypoints or sleep a couple of minutes, to compensate for the time the planes take in taxiing
• Added some runway objects, so planes don't have issues for taxiing
• Not related to the fix, but, the target convoy got separated in its individual vehicles, so if in the future DT introduces individual targeting for each plane of a flight, you can choose individual objects for each plane, like the M16 in the convoy.

For [Houses] and [Frontmarkers] see post 17 of this thread.

It would be nice if these fixes for the broken single missions were added to the next patches, as it can be a PITA to manually find the right place to put them.

Copy the raw texts and paste them in notepad. Save mission as whatevernameyouwant.mis.
Put the missions in their respective folders. You know /Il-2folder/'Missions'/army(DE, US, RU...)/plane(He-162, P-40...).
As a suggesntion, back up the original missions.

Sorry for the delay in replying to this. I have many competing interests.

Firstly, I’m not a recognized expert on any of this, so my opinion might not count for much. Secondly, regarding your P-47 mission fix, I would really strongly prefer to see this particular map error fixed rather than have mission fixes built around the map error. This is not just a case of map terrain causing issues with flight paths. It is actually an incorrectly located runway spawn point, which should definitely be fixed in the map, otherwise every mission designer wanting to start aircraft on this airfield will face the same problem of aircraft spawning in the sea. I’m not a mapper but hopefully someone has the skills and time to do it.

Having said that, your P-47 work around seems to work quite ok without any major dramas. :) It’s difficult to know if your mission combat timings match those of the original mission designer because the whole DB-3 flight is trashed in the original. So without time consuming testing I don’t know whether your version plays out the way that the original would (if it worked) or not. However, going by the scheduled arrival times at the attack waypoints in the FMB, I think the DB-3s are perhaps a little late to target compared to the original mission schedule. I would have to do more testing to confirm that though.

The only other minor criticism is that the DB-3s veer right slightly off the runway on takeoff, but this is only really significant for any would-be movie makers. I wouldn’t really worry about them being targets on the runway. The AI enemy isn’t likely to be attacking them.

In any case, you've fixed the serious glitch in this mission, and that’s what really counts!

That’s about all I have time for right now sorry. I haven’t checked the mission success balance for this one yet, as your mission text doesn't include the P-40 wings present in the original mission. I haven't looked at your He-162 mission yet either. Maybe another time.