Butzzell

S! All There was a report that planes were not returning to service at southern German Airfield. This is unsolved. BH_Loopy and myself tested this after the map rolled over. Nothing was touched, so it was all the same. We took off and landed from all bases and had no problem with planes being returned to service. Also landed at other non active dromes and received ditched messages in logs. Could it be that scout planes landed at the 2 seater drome? That way you get a landed message in logs and not get plane returned to service?

I bid 25.1 25.2 if he will deliver.

S! all We are going to start FiF 2017 this Saturday 14, January, 2017 at 1900 UTC or 2:00 pm Eastern North American Time. Try and be on your teams TS about 30 minutes before the start. This will be a "Dry Run". Planes will be limited but there is no death penalty other than the usual five minute wait. We want people to be able to see as much as possible. There is a practice map running on the JG1 server. People can use this to learn landmarks and practice the 2 seater missions. The server always starts with the in game clock at 10:45. If you get on the server and there is not enough time to do the mission you want, you can restart the server. There is a Balloon at the 2 seater base. Killing the balloon resets the server. S! and gl

S! All Things have changed a bit over the past year. We went to a two week session and then swap sides for another two weeks. This four week total was called a "Phase". We then swapped back to our starting sides but had a new plane set. This next two weeks and swap was another phase. We were still using a mission total to determine the winner. The use of phases offers another possibility in scoring. We use each set of two phases to make a campaign as a part of a larger event. Looking at the calendar we schedule two phases before "Bloody April"( Winter Campaign ) and two phases after ( Spring campaign ). We break for July and August. We come back into action for "Black September" and then two phases before the year end holidays ( Fall Campaign ). That gives us 3 campaigns total. The winner of the most campaigns is the winner of FiF 2017. We have ribbons for each campaign and a huge ostentatious medal for the total. The rules area has not been updated on this at this time. We would like to present "Flanders in Flames 2017" Info and registration at JG1,org. If you have participated in previous Flanders in Flames events, you are still registered. Please visit the Red or Blue team areas for your team info and assignments.

S! Found a bug where the Entente Front line Recon was completing the objective when the Recon plane spawned on the field. After 2 hours of examining and duplicating the objective logic, I found that my logic is undeniable. The fault was in an object name that had been changed and a typo was causing the error. I had Sonny change the object name and everything is fine.

S! Great !! that is the point of FiF. Your life is more important than your score. Dead man do not have scores ...... only graves.

S! The hijack enemy plane was a lot of fun. The channel map has plenty of airfields. It would work here. The problem is that it is very computer resource hungry. Wreath drop is very resource friendly. Subtitles on wreath drop were checked and adjusted. should be fine now.

S! Yes, sort of. The prison is an Icon labeled target. There are four. You have to kill an AAA truck. This puts it on par with bridge and now the Aerodrome. After you kill the AAA an Ambulance spawns and runs to the airfield. Once there, he signals ready to be picked up by shooting two flares. When he is close to the airfield he gets out of the ambulance and runs to the hangars to hide. Enemy at the airfield run to the ambulance to see what is going on. After he is picked up you must return to an active friendly air base. If you die on the way home, there is a second plane that can do the mission. A second attempt just has to land at the airfield if the AAA truck has been killed. The only notice to the enemy is the two flares. That is the same as the spy and the general. The enemy ace is not a hijack enemy plane objective. The enemy ace starts the wreath drop mission.

S! All We have been working on FiF XXVI. The start date is not set in stone. It looks like we will have a server dry run on 14 January 2017 with the official start on 21 January 2017. Plane set will probably start with FiF XXV phase C planes and be progressive. We are using the Ypres area of the Channel Map. New missions have been added. There will be 16 possible objectives. The maximum score is 12. The extra objectives help make up for any glitches. Waldo and Otto have been severely disciplined. General Patton is in charge. If they fail to give out info, they get slapped. Objectives: Central Entente HQ Recon HQ recon Strategic recon Front line recon Espion (Spy) Capture General Train Train Ship on a river Ship on a river Bridge Bridge Factory Factory Aerodrome Aerodrome Arty spot Arty spot Arty secondary (Front line unit) Arty secondary (Front line unit) HQ Recon secondary HQ Recon secondary Reserve unit Reserve unit Espion target Trench attack Bomb HQ Bomb HQ Rescue Rescue Wreath drop Wreath drop Objective changes and additions: The Aerodrome target has a change. In the past, you had to bomb the oil drums. An AAA truck has been placed among the oil drums. The AAA truck is the actual target. This adds some danger to the objective. It also decreases the number of computer resources needed. The rescue objective is a combination bomb and then land scenario. At game start a subtitle will display the prison location of the objective. An old castle is being used as a prison. Outside the prison is a tent camp. It has a AAA truck. You bomb the AAA truck. The prison sends out an ambulance. A prisoner has disguised himself as a medic. In the confusion, the prisoner takes the ambulance to a local airfield. He fires two flares to signal he is ready to be picked up. Only the special plane named "Rescue" can perform the pick up. Any plane can bomb the AAA truck. After the pick up, the rescue plane must land at one of the three active friendly airfields. It can not crash. Break the plane on landing and it does not complete the objective. The Wreath drop is a two part Objective, There is a randomly spawning enemy ace over your friendly area. When spotted, his location will be given out on a subtitle. He will stay in that area. You do not need to kill him at that time. You can send a group of fighters to go after him. When he dies it will activate the Wreath Drop mission. Only the plane labeled "Wreath" can complete this objective. The wreath plane must fly over the enemy 2 seater base below 300 meters. A Strategic recon objective has been added to the Central list. This is a regular recon. Any recon plane can do it. It takes four pictures. It will be either a Factory, a Bridge or an Aerodrome. This may or may not be an active bomber target as well. The Strategic recon target will be named at the beginning of the session.

The ambulance fires 2 flares when it gets to the airfield to signal he is ready to be picked up. After you land it takes about 30 seconds to get the picked up message. It feels a lot longer. The mission will be running on the JG1 server for the next several weeks. Each side has a balloon at their 2 seater base. If you get on the server and ther is not enough time to do a mission, you can kill the balloon. Killing the balloon resets the server. Please ask other players if it is ok before killing the balloon.

Ok, latest iteration. You come in near the prison. outside is a tent city with an AAA truck. Kill the truck. It spawns an ambulance that runs to the closest field and fires two flares. You can then land the Rescue plane to save the prisoner. The ambulance has to get to the airfield. The distance is under 1 km. The ambulance runs at 30 Kph. so it is under 2 minutes. Adds some danger.

The flare idea is nice. We use that for the General and the spy. Easy to do and lets you know you have killed the target. Alerts people in visual range. Creates some danger. And, it does not have to be way back in enemy area. It depends on the map and the availability.

S! Joker Uhmm RoF has a prison. Have you seen the castle. It looks like an old time prison Well, it has high walls and towers. There are only 2 special planes that can do the rescue. So they can be part of the package or they can come in later. We have not done announcements of enemy positions or achievements. There is no message to the enemy that the spy has been picked up or the General captured. This keeps the fog of war very thick. There are enough people in the air that a random encounter is very possible. The map has enough areas of interest for offense and defense that the only direct route is flown by the arty spot planes. Pretty sure everyone else is trying to avoid everyone else except for some of the fighter patrols. The present system uses complex triggers. They take up some computer time. Adding a building as a target is very expensive. The program does not like live objects. We get away with having a huge number of available objects in FiF because most of them are turned off and only turned on when needed. Buildings are a different problem. They can not be turned off. That is why there are so few building targets. While we only have one factory as an active target, the other three are all alive taking up computer resources. We get away with the bridges because the actual target is the AAA gun. The Aerodrome target started out as four actual planes on the field. It was a real resource hog. It was changed to the oil drums. Like the factories, all four are alive. When it was switched to oil drums the AAA was changed to high and low level in an effort to make the Aerodrome a high level bombing target. Most people do on the deck bombing. Is it time to make it more resource friendly and put an AAA truck in the middle of the oil drums and make that the real target. That would get rid of 6 live targets. Leave all the other AAA as well so that it is still very dangerous. Two of those six objects that we just eliminated could be converted into the prison bombing. You add a small building to the prison.Inside is an automobile. Very easy to turn off or on and uses minimal computer resources. The avoid bombing thingie has been looked at. Specifically we looked at trains. Bombing a train with red crosses on it would be a horrendous criminal act prompting a revenge raid. We had trouble picking a revenge target. A convent, a hospital, a school. All of these looked to be just as evil as bombing a red cross train. The original General Capture mission was an avoidance thing as well. He had 2 escorts that must be destroyed and then he would signal a surrender. Unfortunately he died a lot in the attack. We went straight for the surrender.

S! Joker Very nice scenario. The havoc confusion idea is nice. At this point our rescue mission starts at beginning of session. It just says go to this spot and land. You get prisoner and have to return to friendly lines. Should we make a bombed target a trigger for the rescue mission? We have three icon targets, one of which is an aerodrome. Should we bomb the aero and then rescue our prisoner who was working there as forced labor? During the confusion of the attack, they would never notice an enemy plane landing, would they?

Maybe there is hope.

wow! great pics.

S! Yes on the sub. It would be hidden under water and then triggered to surface. Actually the missions could be randomized. On another idea though, What if there were 16 missions but only 12 would count? The max score is set at 12. The commander could pick which ones to do. If all your recons were shot down, you still have other missions that you could do. It would mean that one team could not rack up a super high score and that there was still a way for a team to get some missions done?

Uhmm Blue team is ahead by 2

S! The lost plane trigger can be done but it is complicated and there is a lot of room for error. Just have the mission ready from the start? I have been working on the next FIF. In the new area there are plenty of Rail Roads and Rivers. Objectives: Central Entente HQ Recon HQ recon Strategic recon Front line recon Espion (Spy) Capture General train Train Ship on a river Ship on a river Bridge Bridge Factory Factory Aerodrome Aerodrome Arty spot Arty spot Arty secondary Arty secondary HQ Recon secondary HQ Recon secondary Reserve unit Reserve unit Espion target Trench attack Bomb HQ Bomb HQ Rescue Rescue That brings both sides up to 15 objectives. Hopefully that is too many to do. Commanders will have to prioritize what they want done. If you loose all the planes for one mission, do something else. I would like to add the package drop for Entente. We can either drop one of the other Entente objectives or add package drop for Central as well. That would bring it up to 16 objectives per side. Very nice. Capture enemy plane is very nice mission but has a lot of problems with positioning of enemy bases. It gets computer AI heavy.

S! Trupobaw, Drop the package. After the Osten Memorial, I tried to make a "Drop the wreath mission". This is now the "Capture plane" mission. The trigger for both is the killing of the AI enemy ace. That is a random spawn somewhere along your friendly lines. You kill him and then you would drop a wreath over enemy 2 seater base at under 300 meters. Very low. The AAA around 2 seater bases is very heavy and set to highest AI level. After you drop wreath AAA is turned off. Everyone on the ground wants to see what you dropped. Some people thought it was too easy. That is where the Capture enemy plane came in. I still think it is a good mission with an appropriate trigger. I like the flare idea. It would be cool if the complex trigger function worked. The flares would actually trigger the mission complete. It would make it more interactive. So this mission is available now. Same question, is it too easy? Rescue a downed pilot: What is the trigger for the downed pilot to rescue? Does it have to be a pilot that is shot down over enemy lines and is able to land? Do we need a new trigger? The question becomes one of time. If this is about a real pilot shot down, it might not happen. There might not be a downed pilot. Enemy shooting you down now have an incentive to make sure you are dead. If it is in the second hour, do you have enough time to send out a special plane? Or this can be done by the game at the start. The game picks a location as you described. The 2 seater can land at any time and pick up the downed pilot. Not necessarily a real human but part of the mission. The 2 seater needs to land at a friendly field to complete mission. Yes, a special rescue plane would be needed to track the mission. The mechanics are the same as spy or general mission. It would count as a mission. After it is complete, the commander can pick a downed pilot (if any) to fly again. Actually you would be able to pick a downed pilot anytime after the mission is complete. You still get the mission point and you get a pilot back if available or when he becomes available. Say we complete the mission but no one is available. 20 minutes later someone is shot down behind enemy lines. The team leader could pick this pilot to fly again. Would a 5 minute wait be long enough? Unlike the spy that has an unknown location, you would know the location of the downed pilot for rescue. It makes the mission available from the start and faster to complete. The mission needs to be available to both sides because it involves a human pilot being able to fly again. JG1 uses a streak method for medals. I would think that a pilot shot down over enemy lines and later rescued would not loose his streak. hint hint, wink wink, Both the wreath and rescue mission are computer friendly. They use very little resources and can be adapted to many maps. There are some maps with very bad ground that make it hard to pick landing spots. An option on the spy mission. The spy is returning by submarine and has vital info. The spy plane must rendezvous with the submarine to pick up the spy. Originally the general was escorted by an AAA truck and 2 regular trucks. You killed all the other vehicles. The general got scared and fired the flare as a surrender message. Then you landed to pick him up. It was a higher difficulty than the spy. The extra vehicles were dropped to lighten the computer AI load and cycle time. RoF just does not like a lot of live things.

S! The "capture enemy plane" is working well. The "Strategic recon" works OK. It is just single point recon designated at the beginning, like any target. It does not trigger a secondary as both sides are balanced at 14 missions on the map I am working on. On another map with fewer rivers or railways, it could be used as a trigger just like the other recons. A suggestion by GenMarkof: When we have rivers or sea and can use the float planes for spy missions, we could have the spy be on a submarine. Verrrrrrry interesting.

Well that may be a nice video of you picking on a poor E3 but.... I let it roll into the next video and ended up watching "The Hunt for the Red Eagle" all over again. Dang that was good!! Thanks for doing those.

S! Vonrd, Best wishes for your mom.

S! Paying attention to what 4 speed said, I have been looking over the bomber strategic bomber mission. I have also talked with people online. There was the suggestion that the bombed target becomes a recon target and that you only get success when pictures come home. The basic consideration is the amount of resources and time needed for the goal to be achieved. The enemy plane capture uses few resources and can be done either early or late. Now for something completely different. At present the Central side does one recon and the Entente does two recons. Should we add another recon to the central side? An icon target, random, 6 pics needed. The icon would be one of the factories, bridges or aerodromes. Not necessarily an active target. In other words the bridge to be bombed today is Bridge 4 but the Designated Recon is bridge 2. Having 12 icons on the map ( Factory, Bridge, Aerodrome ) the game would pick one of those 12 for our designated recon. It would be a way to get a recon done early or late with few resources.

S! Guys, Well done and well deserved!