Beeing new, have some questions

[Friendly_flyer]

Salute Gents!

Friendly flyer here, some of you may know me from the IL2-forum. I'm also utterly green when it comes to SEOW from the builders side, though I have had the pleasure of flying a few.

I'm flying with an on-line squadron, and would like to be able to make a campaign for them, based on the Burma (Imphal) map. My aim is to make a mission that reflects the battle of Arakan, 1942-4, which actually took place on and around the map area. This was a fairly isolated campaign and turned in to a war of attrition for the air forces, making it an ideal SEOW subject. One of our more technically minded members minds the server and such, but making the map is my job. I do have a few questions:

- I want a ground action based campaign. How many ground units relative to air units (bombers and ground attack planes) would be suitable? 2 units per bomber, 10 per bomber? More? Less?

- How many mannable fighters should I put in compared to non-mannable bombers? Equal numbers? More bombers? More fighters?

- The historical battle was mostly fought with infantry and artillery, but very little tanks. Do I need to put in lorries to ferry all cannons, or do they "turn to lorries" themselves when moving?

- How do I put in re-enforcements? Is it agreed between commanders ("in round 5 we bout get 10 extra light bombers") or is it automated in some way?

- I quite enjoy decorating targets and airbases, but have learned that I should limit number of different objects in use. How many different types of objects will be suitable for an on-line campaign without bogging down the slower systems? Palm trees are bad for frame-rates, are there any objects that makes low impact?

- What is suitable ack-ack defence for 1942-43? Would two AA-canons and two .50 AA MGs per airfield be suitable?

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hello Friendly_flyer, and welcome!

These are all good campaign design questions. There are some excellent designers around here, hopefully they will add their expertise to this thread.

A couple of pieces of information are very important. These are:

1/ How many human pilots will be taking part in each mission?
2/ How many missions do you want the campaign to run for?

Question 1 will determine how many aircraft must be planned for each mission. Because of the re-arming time for aircraft, this will in turn help determine how many aircraft you need in the campaign even before combat losses are taken into account.

Question 2 cuts to whether reinforcements will be required. E.g. a quick 5 mission campaign may not need reinforcements, while a 30 mission campaign certainly will. If this is your first attempt with SEOW, I would recommend a simple and short campaign.

In the following I will assume you have 15 pilots per mission and 30 airframes plotted per mission. In my experience, SEOW beginners tend to yield a high airframe attrition rate, e.g. 50% per mission. That means that on average you can count on losing 15 aircraft per mission, i.e. 75 after 5 missions. I could be wrong here, it may be substantially more, especially if the action is focussed on only one or two strategic locations. To keep flying for 5 missions you will need something like 200 airframes to start with.

Choosing the mix of fighters vs bombers is up to you. Personally, I find it a lot more interesting to encounter a variety of aircraft performing their own roles. In the IL-2 community we often overestimate the proportion of fighters. Bombers, recons and transports were very common in the skies.

Ground unit numbers are interesting. Depending on your host machine's capability, I would suggest something like 200-400 ground units. The artillery engagement range setting in the DCS is very useful at modulating the FPS hit from ground unit combat. Limit the number of platoon movements per mission, say to 25-30 platoons per side.

By default, all artillery pieces in SEOW automatically morph into trucks when moving in a mission, and then back to guns when stationary in the next mission. If you want to freight guns around with lorries you can set the Range field for the guns to 0 in Object_Specifications table, making them permanently immobile, forcing the use of lorries for transportation.

Unless you have factories on the map, there is no automated reinforcement mechanism. I would suggest that reinforcement availability be tied to capture of specified control points on the map. E.g. if you capture Control Point A, then you get 24 fighters and 18 bombers, etc.

Scenery is wonderful, but try to limit the number of scenery objects to under 500. Remember, SEOW also optionally generates airbase lights, balloons, searchlights, so things can rapidly get out of hand. Fences, sandbags etc are OK. You don't need much to add some interest, but some people go way over the top. Never use vehicles, flak, tanks etc as scenery.

The best AAA to use is normally a mix of large-calibre (85mm) and small-calibre (.50, 20 mm, 37mm). The engagement range feature will minimize FPS hit. Large-calibre AAA is also an effective antitank defence. Two 85mm + two 20mm is a solid defence for an airbase, but can be whittled away by concerted air attacks. Be prepared to replace your defences, or move your aircraft to a safer place! .50 cal are very light and usually won't scratch a decent dive bomber.

Cheers,
4Shades

[Friendly_flyer]

Thanks for the reply! It seems I need waaaay more ground units and planes than I had planned.

Our squadron server is quite capable, but some of the machines on the pilots side are less than perfect, and connection to those overseas (the server is in Norway) is sometimes a bit slow.

When we fly SEOW campaigns, we usually invite another squadron to fly the opposition, so that it is from 15 to 30 pilots in the air in each mission. I would ideally like a campaign of about 10 missions.

The reason I was thinking about light airbase defence is the planes I intend to use. The Arakan campaign (the real one) was flown almost exclusively with Hurricanes and Blenheims on the Allied side, and Oscars, Ki-21 and Ki-48 (I'll use DB-3 as the latter) on the Japanese side. It was very much a backwater campaign. A lot of our pilots enjoy flying bombers, but unfortunately no comparable bomber is flyable.

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Interesting. I could be wrong on the airframe and ground unit estimates. Keep us posted on what you try and how it works.

Cheers,
4Shades

[Friendly_flyer]

I will!

A question: Can I use "Test runway 1" (a stationary ship) as an improvised airbase in a SEOW campaign? When I dry-run the mission, the planes I set to land there simply disappear.

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Yes you can, but you need to define the test runway as an airbase in the SEDB Airbases table BEFORE you initialize your template. See the SEOW_Airbases.pdf file for details on defining a new airbase.

Cheers,
4Shades

[Friendly_flyer]

Right, now we come to the complicated part I see

I have read about the tables and whatnot. Is there an anotated axample of such a document? Where does it go? Is it supposed to be in the mission file or in the description file etc?

[102nd-HR-cmirko]

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=531476

you can get the airbases pdf on upper link, also consider reading
http://seowwiki.swil.fr/index.php?title=Main_Page

its a wealth of information about SEOW in general

S!

[Friendly_flyer]

Not bein very computer savvy, I'll have to get this in by teaspoons:

What is a "template"? Is it the map with objects and waypoints, or is it something more?

The table I have to make, where does it go? Is it part of the .mis files that are made in FMB, or is it a document I have to make separately?

The "How to make a template" artivle is missing in the Wiki, so I feel a bit helpless.

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi Flyer,

Good questions!

A template is a Full Mission Builder file or, more accurately, the two files that are created by FMB (.mis and .properties). The idea is that you use FMB to put some units on the map of your choice (i.e. one of the 34 supported SEOW maps), save your mission file, then use that as your template.

What this means is that you have enormous flexibility in setting the scenario for your campaigns. Basically anything you can do in FMB is allowable inside SEOW as a template. You can specify starting time for the first mission of your campaign, the weather conditions etc.

The SEOWiki pages for templates have been updated now, too.

To add an airbase, you need to add a line (a record) to the Airbases table. Before doing anything like this make sure you are familiar with the DB, how to edit it, and get comfortable with the structure and insides of the Airbases table. Read that SEOW_Airbases.pdf file.

Cheers,
4Shades

[Friendly_flyer]

Thanks Shades, I'm very thankful for you taking your time to answer my pedestrian questions. Things are getting a bit clearer now!

The Airbase table essential to adding airfields is a part of the server-side SEOW program itself, is that right? It seems I better lay off that for the time being, there's really enough airbases on the Imphal map as it is.

I read through the airbase PDF, and saw a few airbases without runway, simply flat pieces of land with fuel dumps and aircraft netts on them. Is it possible to make an airfield out of a stretch of road or flat land, without adding a test runway? Would a "non-runway" runway be as bumpy as any piece of flat land?

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi Flyer,

All airbases in the PDF are either standard permanent airbases defined on the maps, or temporary airbases constructed from runway objects. There are four such runway objects available, at least one of these is transparent. Using these objects smooths out the bumpy ground to make taxying easier.

Cheers,
4Shades