Moving the map, getting Takhli, Bangkok

[Snake Man]

Today I discovered a CD-R disc labeled "F4 Terrain Database", hmm. Popped the disc into the cdrom, browsed through the dirs. Interesting stuff... 150megs of DEM data, including the famous 40 by 40 degree middle east data (the one you cannot download these days anymore). About 120megs worth of features for all kinds of countries. Install Packages... heh that was very nice, there was VietnamTheaterBETA1 etc, Falklands installer, historical F4 terrain pieces. It had maps dir, large images and PDF files for interesting locations like middle east, asia, kosovo/balkans. It had also sorted original korean texture sets neatly in their own dirs. Also there was eRAZOR debug version... you know, cool stuff

But what really got my attention was in the images dir, one image was called 10by10_new_vietnam.jpg ... I was like, what hmm... new vietnam... lets see.

When I saw the image I got excited about it, immediately the forum search was active for this particular image but to my surprise it was not posted. I remember posting this... but I think it was on email to Brewskie then as there is no record of it in the forums

So what was in this image?

Let me show you...
http://www.pmctactical.org/f4/screensho ... ietnam.jpg


Didn't want to post it here as its 1024x1024 resolution.

Now that is interesting point of view for Vietnam Theater. So how does that look to you?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

That looks like we need 4 squadrons of 105's out of Takhli.This just gets better and better.

WOLF

[ccc]

Nice pic. but what it used for?

[Snake Man]

Only problem is, that image is Spherically converted using Miran "Warlord" Klemenc's nice DEM2L2 util. Official Vietnam is done with the old perl scripts, they are not combatible... if we would use that Takhli map, we would need to scrap the old tiling.

I'm not prepared to do that

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[brewskie]

You do have Korat, and that is good enough considering the difficulty of having Takhli. Out of curiosity, even if you didn't use the spherical converter could you get Takhli in? It would be nice to have the 10x10 map shifted over to get Takhli, less water, more thuds
Then you wouldn't loose all the tiling work and would only have to tile the new area, but maybe its just not possible. Anyway we have Korat.

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by brewskie:
Out of curiosity, even if you didn't use the spherical converter could you get Takhli in?

Didn't yet try to move the map on the perl conversion method, but lets try it now. Anyways I think it wont fit, we lose almost Da Nang if we want to get Takhli in... so not so good idea. I'll post screenshot when I get somethign done.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Snake Man]

I should have edited to my earlier post directly, heh.

old style perl converted NON spherical map.

http://www.pmctactical.org/f4/screensho ... ietnam.jpg

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Snake Man]

I just imported the existing vietnam segments into the new theater.L2 file.

If we are jumping to this now, we need to think, and think little more before we proceed.

The new tiling work would be 13x64 segments which comes to 832 segments. Now that is a lot, even though its the area where no war is fought, only some planes taking off and ingress/egress from the combat area, still eighthundredthirtytwo segments is LOT of tiling let me tell you.

Or maybe its just me, as been now tiling two theaters (well not alone of course, but I've done my share of tiling!) I have no wish to start tiling again. I had to fix some about 15 segments after the tiling was complete and I already felt like Michael Corleone in the Godfather "Just when I thought I was out... they PULL me back in!".

We can of course run all kinds of autotiling variations for the new terrain, but you always need to fix stuff by hand if you want it to be perfect.

Also I need to figure out how to import the existing campaign into the "new theater", we have the Object Mover which should work here as well.

Comments please, is the Takhli worth it? (after all the work, I'm afraid it is...).

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
That looks like we need 4 squadrons of 105's out of Takhli.

Can you do me a favour, add some aircrafts to Takhli in the Vietnam 128 VLARGE theater and test if they get flights scheduled in the campaign.

I'm wondering if the range from Takhli to the FLOT is short enough for the campaign engine to schedule flights.

I can do this myself no problems, but I need to install vlarge first, just a thought if you might have it installed already

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

I know the F-5 wasn't getting tasked from Takhli or Korat.I would assume that this was because the range on the F-5 is too short.The F-4 was getting tasked out of Korat,I'll add an F-4 squadron to Takhli and see what happens.

WOLF

[WOLF-257]

Ok,I placed an F-4 squadron at Takhli and it's getting missions,but I hope you got time to spare cause they're very long flights.The first waypoint is about half way between Takhli and the target and it's 360 some odd miles to the first waypoint.

Now I got a question,in the mission map the course and waypoints are in red before the flight even takes off.Does this mean the target is out of range or that it is doubtful that there will be enough fuel to return home?I accepted the default load-out of 370 gallon drop tanks and 6 Mk-82's.I should have changed it to 600 gallon tanks to see if this changed anything.I flew part of the mission and everything seemed to be as it should.

I had to change the ownership of Takhli to US to get the campaign engine to start assigning missions.The F-5 is still not getting any missions so I guess the range is just too far.

WOLF

WOLF

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
The first waypoint is about half way between Takhli and the target and it's 360 some odd miles to the first waypoint.

Heh talking about long flight in online multiplayer without time acceleration...

quote:waypoints are in red before the flight even takes off.Does this mean the target is out of range or that it is doubtful that there will be enough fuel to return home?

I'm not sure, this is more like generic falcon question. I think its just that the flight cannot meet the TOS (time on station?) which is for every waypoint. But, some falcon expert could give us better answer than mine.

quote:I had to change the ownership of Takhli to US to get the campaign engine to start assigning missions.

Yes U.S. (team 1) or SVNAM (team 2).

quote:The F-5 is still not getting any missions so I guess the range is just too far.

Yeah, but is it the fuel? It certainly is the most logical answer, why else would the planes be grounded... I wish Julian would lay down some technical source code facts here to straighten us out.

Anyways, if you got F-4E's to get flights from Takhli, its definitely doable in the 64 map too. Hmm come to think of it, is there any (historical) bases in the VLARGE that DONT schedule flights? Is Takhli the far most base from North Vietnam?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

Distance wise,Don Muang just north of Bangkok and U-Tapao,south-east of Bangkok are actually farther away but as far as I know,someone correct me if I'm wrong here,neither one were fighter bases.I think there was a MAC operation at Don Muang and B-52's were based out of U-Tapao.
There are some bases and/or airstrips that don't have normal operations.Air America and other "Black Ops" units were operating out of some of the fields in Thailand near the border with Laos and Cambodia.I'll have to do some reading but I think that there were several of these fields that could be used for emergency strips for damaged aircraft.

WOLF

[brewskie]

quote:Originally posted by Snake Man:
I had to fix some about 15 segments after the tiling was complete and I already felt like Michael Corleone in the Godfather "Just when I thought I was out... they PULL me back in!". is the Takhli worth it?

So GodFather is it worth it?



The kids today, they don't know about
Takhli, this way they will. May the sacrifices of the veterans always be remembered.

[brewskie]

snakeman, if you need a hand tiling, i'll help, although i'm a bit rusty. 800 segments is gonna take us a long time, probably till March, but it is doable. I think my rate was about 20 per week, Nam is tough to hand tile, but that autotiling kicks butt.

[WOLF-257]

Made a mistake on that range.I was looking at the wrong thing,the actual range to target from Takhli to Hue was just a little over 400 miles,but that's still a long haul online.

I placed a B-52 squadron at U-Tapao and it's getting tasked with missions.To me that's a good sign,as this particular base is about as far from enemy territory as you can get.

I also noticed that as soon as the flight takes off,the route colors on the mission planning map change from red back to the normal colors,this may have something to do with eFalcon rather than the game it's self.

[brewskie]

i think Andy Bush has a map of refueling routes used in Nam, the F-105's refueled up by Loas before heading to Thud Ridge and then Downtown. Interesting, in the Gulf war they called Baghdad "downtown" also.

[WOLF-257]

Is there a way to preset the refuel point or is it set by the game?

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
Is there a way to preset the refuel point or is it set by the game?

Well good question. If you look tacedit teams and air tasks... click on the Req number, then you get the Mission Requests screen. Here you can change the mission to Tanker and PAK to the area where you want it to fly.

PAK area?? Yeah, the cities that have priority 81 or above are PAK cities. in tacedit select View -> Show Primary and you will see the PAK cities.

Amm... umm.. . sigh.. zzz too sleepy, I'll try to explain better tomorrow.

PMC TFW
Snake Man