128 Segment...question about moving airbases

[WOLF-257]

Are the base locations fixed or can they be moved?I need to move Dong Hoi north of where it is now.I know how to move it but the question I have is this,if I do move it will it screw things up and make the base unusable?Thanks

WOLF

[Snake Man]

Just move it, nothing will be broken.

So how much is the base off the real coordinates, didnt the feature datas place it correctly?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

It looks like it's too far south.I'm trying to figure out how far but it could very well be in the right location and it's my eyes that are out of calibration.I was going by the apparent distance from Da Nang and by using the geographic features of the coastline as a reference.But one thing for sure,I'm not moving anything unless I'm absolutly certain it needs to be moved.

I think I figured out which airbase is Korat and which one is Takhli.I placed an F-4 Squadron at Korat and the campaign engine is assigning missions to it so that appears to be working right.The first mission up was a strike near Dong Hoi,I hope everybody has plenty of time and simply likes to fly for the joy of flying like I do,...it was almost 400 miles one way.I checked the distance on a map and it was pretty close to what was showing in the game.One thing I will say for it is this,if you don't want to walk home you'd better keep fuel usage in mind,stay out of burner as much as possible and don't hang around the target area long.True,you can always divert to Da Nang but that sort of takes the adventure out of it.

I ran across the areas that had not been tiled in detail but it really wasn't bad.To get the best fuel consumption rates you have to climb to around 30,000 feet anyway and from that altitude even what I assume was untiled areas looked like the photos of that area of the world from that height.The interior regions of Thailand,Cambodia and Laos are almost unbroken triple-canopy jungle and this sure did look like it.

SnakeMan,you were right.This is going to be a learning experience,I've got about 28 squadrons to place and when I get those up and running I'm going to move on to giving the campaign engine something to do.I'll probably have a lot of questions when I get to that point.

I did hit a snag as far as using the F-5 for the F-105 in this gameworld.I placed a squadron of them at Korat but they are not getting any missions.I think the range to any of the targets is beyound the range of the F-5 even with drop tanks so the campaign engine is ignoring them.I really don't know of a way to fix this so does anybody have any suggestions?

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
It looks like it's too far south.I'm trying to figure out how far but it could very well be in the right location and it's my eyes that are out of calibration.

Its taken from the terrain feature files which came from the DCW datas so it should be accurate, the link is here:
http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/

quote:I think I figured out which airbase is Korat and which one is Takhli.

Figured out? dont the airbase names state that? I'm not sure as I didnt check them myself but all bases/citys/etc has a name, some are "NoName" (villages mostly) but usually all airbases do have names.

quote:I ran across the areas that had not been tiled in detail but it really wasn't bad.

The non-tiled areas are tiled with auto-tiling-tool but yes they lack the features (roads/rivers/citys).

To me the auto tiling produces pretty nice effect.

quote:I'll probably have a lot of questions when I get to that point.

Just keep on posting the questions and well try to figure things out.

quote:I placed a squadron of them at Korat but they are not getting any missions.

Hmm korat... korat... I dont have Vietnam installed and my poor memory is like worst than my grandpas, but wasnt the Korat still in the 64 segment region, I mean its on the official Vietnam Theater too?

If so, thats very bad if the planes dont get missions EVEN on the default sized map. However you are right about the fuel load and such things on this aircraft... campaign engine most probably checks and sees that these aircrafs dont have the range to the enemy targets.

quote:I really don't know of a way to fix this so does anybody have any suggestions?

This is the problem I'm having with 128 ODS theater.

And now when eFalcon work has been crippled, we dont have any means to fix it, lets just hope this can be fixed from DATAfile editing. But I seriously think its campaign engine (meaning exe) limitation.

But lets keep the hope up and working on that issue.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

I'll go back and check but so far very few things have names,just numbers.That was the reason I asked in the email if those .cvs files needed to be imported.

WOLF

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
so far very few things have names,just numbers.

Okay so you did something wrong with Tacedit. My configuration usually is that the theater is installed and activated with F4Patch, the Tacedit properties points to falcondir\campaign\save directory. Now when I start tacedit, open save0.cam file it automatically reads the vlarge.idx and vlarge.wch files - those files are the ones it takes the names from. Also the vlarge.THR file can be found in this dir, which is essential for ground unit movement and so on.

If you see only numbers on object names, something is wrong...

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

I'm getting good at doing re-installs,took about an hour to completely reinstall Falcon along with all the goodies.I had two installs of Falcon and it's possible that even though I was changing the reg data to switch between them,Tacedit was getting confused.Now I'm running one install and have both the Vietnam theaters loaded into it.I tested them and both are working properly so this should cut down on any possible problems.

I'm now seeing the names like I should.I'm gonna pat myself on the back here,what I thought were Takhli and Korat actually were the right ones.Dong Hoi isn't there,what I'm seeing is Hue and it's in the right place.I thought it was Dong Hoi and that's what confused me about the location.Is it possible to manually add Dong Hoi airbase if I get the location data from the 64 segment gameworld?

I also wanted to double check something before I make any sort of edits to the save0.cam file.If I have the Vlarge add-on loaded and edit the save0.cam file to add a squadron,then try to switch to the Standard Vietnam Add-on will it destroy the Vlarge edits or create a problem with the theater not wanting un-install?I have found that F4Patch is very touchy about file mismatches.

WOLF

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
I'm running one install and have both the Vietnam theaters loaded into it.I tested them and both are working properly so this should cut down on any possible problems.

Ok very good. I was not sure about the TE/Campaign maps (filenames), but its nice to hear everything works fine.

quote:I'm now seeing the names like I should.

Even better

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Snake Man]

Mmm actually I was thinking of making a "cutter" for csv file.

- Export 128 objects (vlarge)
- Export 64 objects (official vietnam)
- cut 64 region from vlarge
- import cutted 128 objects back
- import 64 objects

The cutter is not hard to do, just gotta figure out the coordinates for the 64 region. Hmmm...

(mumbeling again)

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[87th_striker]

Seems to there is a lot of tutorial stuff here..
Maybe someone could put it into a document..

[WOLF-257]

Sounded pretty clear to me SnakeMan,but I have two young children so I can speak "Mumble".I see what you mean about it might be easier to just add Dong Hoi instead of trying to import it.
My wife picked up some books at the library that should come in handy.
"Air War-Vietnam
And two volumns from "The Vietnam Experience"
"Rain of Fire"
"Thunder from Above"
They have some good breakdowns as to which aircraft types were at which bases and the number of planes per base for the US/SVNAF but I still need to get info on the NVAF squadrons.

[WOLF-257]

Ok,got another question.When I open the save0.cam file in Tacedit,go to map view and double click on one of the airbases the owner and control are showing the default Falcon names ROK,DPRK ect. You can open the teams and the correct names for the Vietnam theater are there,I haven't edited anything so I don't think I screwed anything up.Any idea what's wrong?

WOLF

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by WOLF-257:
the owner and control are showing the default Falcon names ROK,DPRK ect.
Any idea what's wrong?

Hmm nothing really. You can change the names in the Teams part which you mentioned and other place is strings.wch file. You need the TheaterMaker software package (from our downloads) where you'll find WitchFix util, it will convert strings.wch into text file. Then you need to edit this text file and change DPRK to NVNAM for example, ROK to SVNAM and so on, after its edited you simply convert the text file back to strings.wch and thats it.

I snooped my hd and found this teams definition file from Vietnam dir.

ROK 2 = svnam
Japan 3 = cambodia
CIS 4 = Laos
PRC 5 = thailand
DPRK 6 = nvnam

I was just thinking that if you are deeply going to edit the campaign, it might be useful to combine our efforts. For example... I'll try to build (I will hire someone to code it if I cant do it hehe) the .csv file cutter. We always add stuff to the 64 segment vietnam official campaign and when OFFICIAL - STANDARD version works ok, we will import the stuff to VLARGE theater.

This way both the official and VLARGE will benefit from it and we are not doing overlapping work. Also its much easier to test/debug stuff on standard version and then import crap to the larger more "unstable" theater.

And for starters we can get all official vietnam theater objects imported to the VLARGE.

Hows that sounds?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

A combined effort sounds fine to me.Email me with some details as to how you want to proceed.

[Snake Man]

Lets see how easy the csv cutter is to make.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[WOLF-257]

I'm going to go ahead and place the squadrons that I have the information on.I'm just going to place the Phantom Squadrons right now,I don't quite know what to do about the F-105 squads because the F-5 isn't getting tasked,I could go ahead and place them and try to come up with a solution later.

WOLF