My rough tweak on Kurile mod.

[Sherlock]

uh uuh, but with autoflag you can also mess the whole thing up... that was also my experience..

What exactly has been your experience in "mess the whole thing up"?

I use autoflag all the time and don't have problems with it.....?

[Snake Man]

After I run my TCL scripts and are ready to save the campaign file, I run the auto stuff also, never had any problems.

Of course I don't claim that there absolutely is no problems, its just that I never seen any errors ingame with these features.

[toonces]

Snakeman,
Are ccc's tweaks referenced in this thread incorporated into the Kuriles download available on this site?

[Snake Man]

No, I believe that stuff came after the release.

[toonces]

If you feel inclined, I'd like to wrap up that tweak I did into a release using ccc's tweaks. I'm testing it now and it seems fairly solid with FF5.3. However, I'm getting an error "cannot open the terrain.l0" error when I run lxnormalfix.exe. This stuff is always so much easier for you than for me...

Anyway, I'm trying to get closure on all my little projects. You could probably wrap this up into an installer in a few minutes...it would make it a lot easier to release as a one click package rather than me trying to tell people how to run those utilities.

What do you think?

[Snake Man]

If you send me the campaign files in the directory structure they are meant to be installed, I can make installer for you. But since I don't have FF5.3 installed, don't even have the installer here anymore (my "almost" hdd crash month or so ago), you have to do all the install testing until the installer is tweaked OK.

[toonces]

SM,
The files are still the original ones I did forever ago located here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/tmnvmynuxzj/Kuriles version 1.zip

They're not in "cut and paste" format, but you know where everything is supposed to go- it's your theater. All I really need is your v.1 Kurile theater, as is, but with the ccc terrain tweaks. Then I can import my .cam into it and playtest it. I mean, the OOB hasn't really been playtested so I don't know if the campaign is even any good...and for that matter, I haven't tried it with FF5.3 beyond a quick "crash test" to see if it would even run. I might need to rebuild the OOB based on the new DB if there are conflicts.

I just need the working terrain so I can properly playtest it. If it works, great. If not, then it's another campaign for the trash bin. I'm trying to clear my HD of all these half-finished projects while I still have time to do so. I'm about to get very busy with real life and my modding time is rapidly coming to an end.

If you can help with this new terrain, great. If not, then I'll just have to post what I have and be done with it. It might work better with the terrain tweak though.

Thanks,
Toonces

[Snake Man]

Okay downloaded the spaces in file names zip... took a look at it and did installer for it.

I have NOT tested this, please test so it runs good, then report back to me in this topic so we can release this theater bit more officially. This is now called v0.2 and like said, if it runs good then why not just release it normally, heck its been while since last theater release

Please, test & report back to me. Thanks.

Download PMC_Kurile_Theater_v0.2.rar - 3.5mb.

[toonces]

Will do today into this weekend and I will report back.

-Toonces

[toonces]

It installed fine. Seemed to run well, except for the typical FF5.3 conflicts in the UI screen and stuff like that.

The OOB I made needs to be fixed up- it has some errors in it. Also, the unit flags for all the ground vehicles need to be fixed for FF5 compatibility.

I'm in the process of a reinstall right now. Once I get FF5.3 up and running, along with getting my theaters back in order, I'll re-do the OOB with the tips Sherlock said above to see if I can fix that weird pop-up error tacedit is giving me. If that doesn't work, I may just have to bag it as it's too hard to have to rebuild the OOB from scratch for each edit. We'll see.

[toonces]

I took this up for a spin yesterday in FF5.3. Fun campaign.

Khronik put a seasonswitcher utility in the FF5.3 utilities folder that allows one to switch Korea-tiled theaters to different seasons at a click of a button. I converted Kuriles to winter after it was installed without having to do that painful process I described previously. It really is immersive with the winter tiles.

I had some issues with the Tomcat squadrons not spawing correctly when "I" was in them, but they worked fine for the AI.

Lot's of Fencers flying around, I think I have like 8 kills so far of them.

Ground war is moving somewhat; need way more playtesting to determine if it is "working". With the new DB that Hustler has built, I suspect that things will work much better in this theater in FF5.5...we'll have to see.

[toonces]

I was able to get ccc's Kuriles tweak, with my edited .cam, installed into FF5.5. In my opinion, Kuriles is the best PMC package currently available. It really needs almost no work to be "complete" and not "beta".

My .cam tweak edits the OOB somewhat, adding what I perceive to be a more realistic Russian OOB and altering the US/Japanese OOB somewhat as well. I also beefed up the Russian IADS based on playtesting.

A recurring "problem" is that the Russians are repeatedly successful in sinking the US CVBGs everytime I play the campaign. To partially offset this, I added a few USMC Hornet squadrons to land bases to allow folks to fly the Hornet even after the carriers go down.

The ground war certainly develops, but I don't know if it "works" as ccc demonstrated. More testing is required.

I'd really like to see this one finished up. I have some ideas of how we can take this to the next level. I'm working on them.

My intent would be to send everything to SM to build into a OCI for FF5.5 Kuriles. I would also hope that and AF developer would be willing to make the minor edits to make the theater compatible for AF as well.

[ccc]

A recurring "problem" is that the Russians are repeatedly successful in sinking the US CVBGs everytime I play the campaign. To partially offset this, I added a few USMC Hornet squadrons to land bases to allow folks to fly the Hornet even after the carriers go down.

hmm.. you may:
- add few more CG ticonderoga units far in fornt of CVBG, for first line AD.
- move CVBG to far corner areas of map, or closer to japan, give all CAPs better chance to intercept CIS attackers.
- add more CAP fighter sq on carrier.
- add more CVBG units, let them show up later, one by one, as reinforcement.

honestly, i don't think US CVBG want staying in sea of japan ( the west side of Hokkido ), they perfer open sea/Pacific ocean side, Right lower corner or upper corner.

[toonces]

ccc,
I considered moving the CVBG's further away from their current location.

First, I didn't want to alter the original files too much. Mostly I want to stick with the "spirit" of the campaigns as developed by SM et al.

Second, to move them and have the sorties work properly, we'd have to have working tankers. That might be worth looking into- adding some KA-6s to the campaign. I do believe that the FF5.5 DB supports that. I'll look into it.

Finally, adding the Tico's is a great idea. I'll look at that. I prefer that solution to the others listed.

It's easy enough to write the overview of the campaign such that the US CVBGs were caught by surprise at the outbreak of hostilities...put there as a show of force not expecting the war to break out as rapidly as it did. Also, we could change the dest x, dest y to some place far away from their current location; sort of a fighting withdrawal scenario. I looked at writing a mini-campaign in Europe like that, based on a scenario from the game Harpoon.

At any rate, this theater is very nice. It isn't my preferred area to fight; I'm really, really heavily into Panama right now, but Kuriles could be wrapped up pretty quickly. The FF5.5 DB really supports this theater well. FF5.5 has two different Japanese F-4E's, the F-1, the F-15J, and even an F-104J. And, all 4 of those jets have dedicated pits in FF5.5

I've figured out how to edit the campaigns by changing the extension to .tac. This eliminates that objective error for the most part.

I'll keep you updated.