Wingwalker's 30-year Anniversary and Public WW1 and WW2 Servers

[WWGeezer]

We posted this on the Il2 forum but wanted to post here as well.  JG1 has been a great partner over the years and we wanted to make sure you took the opportunity to try out these missions on our servers.

The Wing Walkers are celebrating our 30-year anniversary.

This flight sim squadron was formed in 1992, using the original Sierra/Dynamic "Red Baron" World War 1 based flight sim. The sim used Sierra's own "The Sierra Network" as the portal for flying on a TSN. Networks were all dial-up and beset with all manner of issues. Noisy phone lines often caused serious connectivity issues and the term "warping" came into existence. Technology improved and so did the sims we flew, with Red Baron giving over to Il Sturmovik Forgotten Battles,  Il Sturmovik 1946, Rise of Flight and now IL Sturmovik Great Battles. 

We were one of many new units to form, and battled members of JG1, RAF74, Arabian Knights, Knights of the Northern Star, and many, many other virtual squadrons. New friendships were made in the process, strengthened through shared simulated combat and competition. Over time our passing interest in early aviation combat turned players into avid historians with expert knowledge of WW1 and WW2 history, accomplished graphic artists who created skins for the aircraft and self-taught programmers who built complex missions within a historical context.

We look back fondly at those 30 years, the bonds that formed and the friendships we made.

The original members discovered that "lone wolf" flying was ineffective at best. Team flying in flights or wingman pairs guaranteed better survivability and overall fun. WW membership stressed honor and fun as a squad over rank and glory as an individual flyer. As part of our 30-year anniversary we wanted to give something back to the flight sim community, so with that in mind we introduce the Wing Walker’s WW1 and WW2 dedicated public servers. The servers are typically open to the public unless we have a special squad event and the missions in rotation are specifically designed to support team flying.

Over 25 missions in rotation, these dogfight missions designed by WWCephas and WWBiker are a sandbox style with some unique features that support squads or individuals flying in a cooperative environment.

Here is a brief summary of some of the mission features.

1.       The missions dynamically adjust according to the number of players from as low as 1 to as many as 24 (current server limit) in the number of AI planes generated, mission difficulty, and enemy capabilities/experience. A subtitle in the lower right-hand corner indicates the current AI strength level on a scale of 1-6. 

2.       Missions are either “sandbox” style, with multiple possible objectives to freely choose from, or a or set piece battle style with either dynamic scoring or a series of objectives to complete.  Based on the historical plane sets, you decide if you are flying bomber, fighter or jabo missions.

3.       Missions are designed around live pilots flying in one nationality, fighting against AI, but an enemy base is provided for limited human OPFOR if desired on some maps.

4.       SRS auto join enabled for visitors to coordinate on comm’s.

5.       The Mission Map is used extensively to update the current active objectives and give status updates on whether they are damaged or not. Based on the mission you may see an indication of movement of troops or patrols. As targets are destroyed you may see % of destruction indicating the condition of the target. Icons come off the map for destroyed targets.

6.       Dynamic AI patrols. AI CAP patrols fly no regular patterns, each CAP flight has dozens of possible waypoints which are randomly generated in time, altitude, and direction, so the missions fly differently every time you fly them. 

7.       Enemy airfields that are "ACTIVE" will actively launch fighters to protect their area of control. If an Active Airfield is attacked and loses too many planes it becomes "SUPPRESSED" and no longer can launch aircraft but can still call for reinforcements from nearby patrol aircraft. If enough damage is done to an airfield it will become "DESTROYED" and will no longer defend itself at all. The damage required to Suppress and Destroy enemy airfields is also dynamically adjusted by the current map difficulty level.

8.       AI performance:  The AI behavior has been modified to be much more realistic manner as a wingman making them much more lethal when flying together. No longer will AI pilots fly in perfect formation (all the time) with the lead and then in combat fight independently. AI wingmen will actively protect their Lead and often fly in very loose formation to where you may not notice their wingman until you have been dragged and bagged.

9.       Anti-Vulching routines built into mission logic, if you hang out over the primary base trying to vulch live players as they take off, you will be warned to retreat ASAP or be taken out by massive AAA volleys.

Our mission builders continue to add and modify missions, but if you want to read more about the current mission set, follow the links below and visit our website.

https://www.wingwalkers.org/topic/9054-ww1-sandbox-missions/

https://www.wingwalkers.org/topic/9045-ww2-sandbox-missions/

We have really enjoyed building, fine tuning and flying these missions, so we are excited for others who like flying as a team to try them out.

Thanks so much to the flight sim community that has provided so much entertainment and enjoyment to our squad over the last 30 years

Salute

WWGeezer

Wing Walkers

“Once and Always”

Communications Officer

 

[Klaiber]

Happy 30th to all of the Wing Walkers!  We're extremely honored to be entering our third decade with such amazing friends.

These missions look amazing, Geezer!

If you guys were ever interested in running them with us, we'd definitely be game.

 

 

[WWGeezer]

yupyup....for how these missions are built, we should pick a mission and all fly together on the German side.  At this point do you guys prefer Teamspeak or are you using SRS?

On a side note, I visited the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, Ca in April.  Along with a lot of Peanuts stuff they have some hand inked original vintage comic strips.  I took a random picture on my cell phone one that got my attention, and it looks almost like the next frame in your signature line.

 

 

 

[Barton]

Happy 30th WW!   We are integrating both Teamspeak and SRS in our comms to try to minimize cross-talk.  It's a work-in-progress.

[Klaiber]

1 hour ago, WWGeezer said:

On a side note, I visited the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, Ca in April.  Along with a lot of Peanuts stuff they have some hand inked original vintage comic strips.  I took a random picture on my cell phone one that got my attention, and it looks almost like the next frame in your signature line.

That must be an amazing museum!

[WWGeezer]

Here it tis....the mouse appears to be able to throw bricks with both his left and right hand....very impressive.

 

[Klaiber]

That's a great one!

Honestly, Krazy Kat is a brilliant comic strip!  And George Herriman, the artist, was truly irreplaceable.  His impact on the field was massive.  And he influenced Charles Schultz (Peanuts),  Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Walt Disney, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Stan Lee, Dr. Seuss, R. Crumb, and even modern strips like Mutts and Pearls Before Swine.

The entire strip is just so stupidly clever.  Here is an excellent write up on George Herriman and Krazy Kat:

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/herriman.htm

[Flyboy]

I’ve gotten on the WW1 server a few times solo just to check it out and def think we should try it as a squad practice sometime. 

[Snaggle]

WW Happy 30th, special shout out to Zed and Sandman!!

[Lipfert]

Happy 30TH Wing Walkers !

[Vonrd]

Congrats to all Old Farts! 

Seriously, it's great to have been associated with the Walkers throughout the years. I just wish that I would have been there at the beginning.

[Vonrd]

On 5/7/2022 at 6:29 AM, WWGeezer said:

Our mission builders continue to add and modify missions, but if you want to read more about the current mission set, follow the links below and visit our website.

https://www.wingwalkers.org/topic/9054-ww1-sandbox-missions/

https://www.wingwalkers.org/topic/9045-ww2-sandbox-missions/

Seems that I don't have permission to view. Yes, I'm signed in to the website. 

[Etzel]

Hi Geezer,

thanks a lot for providing those servers to the WingWalkers!

=> We used the WW2 server for our EU training session yesterday and it was huge fun!

Only one point for optimization: We flew the fictional US vs USSR scenario on the kuban map which was a very interesting setting. In the end it became really challenging for us to end the training as we were continiously attacked from enemies spawning in directly next to our home base ... that became a little bid too much at then end. I think what would be helpful is to set a timer of maybe 5 Minutes before new enemy AIs spawning in after one wave was eliminated? Don't know if this is possible...

We look forward to many more flights on your servers in future

Salute

Etzel

[WWGeezer]

Etzel, will share this with the mission builder... occassionally we have had a spawning trigger get stuck in a loop and multiple bad guys spawn. 

[WWGeezer]

Vonrd, thanks for letting me know....having WWSandman confirm the permissions ( maybe I pointed to the wrong place!)

[WWCephas]

S! Etzel.

I really appreciate the comments to help me improve the missions.

I am glad to hear you had a good time on the Soviet War mission, given the invasion scenario that is a map that can see intense action near home base.

As an FYI:

One of the design features of this map is to NOT have enemy planes spawn or de-spawn anywhere near live players.  The nearest enemy AI CAP FIGHTER spawn to the base is 45 kilometers away, and there is a random 5-9 minute delay between respawning once an entire enemy patrol has been eliminated.  Looking at the logs it appears you were playing at difficulty level 3 with 7 JG players which would result in 2 CAP patrols being active over the entire combat zone.  Each patrol flies in completely random directions, altitudes and for random periods, but it appears that they must have kept choosing the WP near your homebase.

There is also a Jabo fighter contingent (Yak- 9T) than launches periodically to hit random targets (one of which being your home base), this group also spawns more than 50Km away from your base outside the combat area.

It does sometimes happen with all the randomness built into these missions that the stars align and it feels like the enemy is overwhelming, but then again war can be hell sometimes. 

 

Some missions you could use for training where the homebases are more away from enemy patrols include:
US - Northern Meuse River '44

DE - Caucasus Retreat '43

IT - Siege of Malta '41

DE - Stalingrad '42

DE - Bodenplatte '45

 

Also, if you want us to load any certain map at a certain date and time for you guys to fly please drop us a note over at the Wingwalkers forum.

 

[Etzel]

S! Cephas, many thanks for your reply... yes, with that explenation it makes sense, probably we just had a bad timing for cmoming home....  

And thanks a lot for your work again, really looking forward to check the other scenarios too 

[edit] btw.: Could you please place the link to the stats server directly here? We saw that you have one in the mission description, but didn't write it down. So having the link here in that thread would be very convenient 

  

[WWCraven]

Salute all, thanks for flying on our servers and provided feedback that will help us make the missions even more enjoyable for everyone.

@Etzel per your request here are the links to the stats servers, for WWII http://wingwalkers.game-host.org:8060/en/pilots/?tour=4 and for WWI http://50.92.159.132:8050/en/?

@Vonrd Sandy has fixed the permissions for the WW Multi-Players Servers/Operations Room https://www.wingwalkers.org/forum/214-operations-room/

[Vonrd]

7 minutes ago, WWCraven said:

Sandy has fixed the permissions for the WW Multi-Players Servers/Operations Room https://www.wingwalkers.org/forum/214-operations-room/

Thanks Craven! BTW, I think Moxy mentioned that he had the same issue.

[Klaiber]

Thanks Craven!

[WWSandMan]

My apologies for the forum view permissions mess... I had it set to WW squadron view only while we got things together, and completely forgot to open it up for public viewing. Was kinda wondering why we had so little activity in there. At least I know the view permissions really work!

For future reference, all things related to the two WW servers (WW1 and WW2) will be in this area of our forums: https://www.wingwalkers.org/forum/213-ww-multi-player-servers/

[Etzel]

Guys, need to say again: Your servers are a real pleasure.... we are using it pretty frequently meanwhile, for trainigs as well as for spontanous fun flights

FYI: Did also recordings of the action some days ago and posted some screens of the fun we had: 

 

https://forum.jg1.org/topic/8577-il-2-box-screenshot-thread/?do=findComment&comment=77248