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Cactus Missions Progress

bobhegf

Charter Member
:typing:Here are some pics of what I go through trying to get thies missions as historic as possible and to get the AI to be all they can be.:faint:
 
Ahh Yes, mission building, an all around exercise in self abuse...:ernae:

Lookin' Good Bob, lookin' good.
 
:amen: How many of you old hands remember the no fun rules? With some exceptions that is what we will be using when flying thies missions.Another thing is you won`t be leading any missions.All missions are in real time,and you can`t use lables accept on takeoffs and landings or night missions..No cones to point out the enemy, no tac display no map untill after you land and kill your engine and then only the stats part to get your kills.Most missions will take you up to between 15000FT and 25000FT but some will go up to 30000FT.Yore are going to have to navigate the way it was done in real life as well as being able to turn on insterments in clouds and make high side passes.alet me put it this way when you can go through thies missions using the no fun rules and live you will stand a good chance going after real people on line.
 
Bob,

One of my patients down here in New Bern just passed away about a year ago. "Pap" Beasley - flew Wildcats with Joe Foss on Cactus, and used to go hunting with him every year while Joe was still alive. remained good friends with Joe's widow until he died. A fine gentleman.

Ghostrider
 
I sure wish he was still alive I sure would have liked to have talked to him.Did he ever tell you about what he went through will ststioned at Cactus?
 
Not much, sadly - first time I met him, we were talking, and it was the usual - first, he was a marine, then I got him to admit he was a pilot, - oh a fighter pilot! In WWII! On "a little place called Guadalcanal"! Such a humble guy, I had to drag this much out of him! So I said to him "So you were in the Cactus air force?" He said "Wow - how did you know that? I haven't heard that in 60 years" I read a lot of books, I told him. The, he told me about this good friend of his named Joe Foss - I almost fainted. After some stateside duty, he flew Corsairs at Okinawa.

Wow - what a life. I'm also priveledged to have two other patients , one who sailed out of Pearl Harbor on 6 December 1941 on the CA Indianapolis, and went on to be the engineering officer on the Submarine USS Archerfish, which sunk the Shinano, (Paul Newlove) and another who won a Navy Cross on Peleliu (Now Rev. Clifford Dartt 3/5 Marines) They are all so kind and humble, and unassuming. Heroes in my book.

GR
 
I have been going back over the missions again and making some miner corrections. I have also tried out an idea and it seams to work out fine.The problem was getting the AI to brakeoff and head home insted of fighting to the death.It was causing to many kills on the US side when the AI are set at ace. I am still able to a great deal of the time turn inside the Zero. I have got to figure a way to correct this problem on the 1% F4F.:typing:
 
Howdy Bob;

That's been a long standing problem of getting the AI's to break off. While Triggers for bomb, rocket and torpedo count do work the AI's don't keep track of their gun/cannon ammo count. They are hardcoded with Unlimited Ammo. So you can't use this trigger with the AI's to force an event, like a WP Change or any other event for that matter.
 
Fellows I was looking at UTube and the ACM out of the box moves used to escape death.The one I like the most is called an inverted vertical reversment.What you do is snap the stick into your gut at the sametime hit bottom rudder then push the stick full foward then back to center.I tried it in the 1% F4F and it works but it is slower to do it than the P-51 that was being flown in real life.

Pen, I think I have found a combination of set ups that will let me controll that part of the mission. I changed the F4F and the Zero to a dive bombers and it seemed to work ok. They will fight like dogs but try to form back up as soon as possible.:typing:
 
Here is the last pic of me going down. WIA on Oct. 2nd 1942.Evac on Oct 3rd 1942. In the set of missions you will have 5 dive bombing mission,2 bombing missions using the P-400, 1TBF mission, 2 escort missions and 22 field defend missions for total of 32 missions.I will be supply the scenery for the time period as well as some hot new AI.You will not be leading any missions in this set but will be flying as the odd aircraft.I will also put in some good player aircraft to use with thies missions as well as some patched up player aircraft player aircrafter textures.You will also have a new airbase data file that will allow the pllanes to land and takeoff in the same direction into the wind.The X will be at the end of the runways insted of in the center, ths allows for a shorter run to a parking area with most of the AI aircraft.I will also supply some pics showing the player where to park so you won`t get hit be landing AI aircraft.If you do it right we can have some fun flying the missions and finding out who the top of the top gun is.You will be using no fun rules which means that you can`t use any CFS2 aids such as the tac display and no lables or cones accept where the mission briefing tells you that you can.Most of the time you can use lables on takeoff and once the mission is complete and apone returning to Henderson Field you can use the lables to help spot aircraft in the landing pattern or on night missions to help locat friendly aircraft only.Once you are in the air if the mission is durring the day the lables need to be turned off. While in combat no help from CFS2.The way I have the Zero set up I can promise you if you come up on an ace you are going to have a hard time of it.The Zero may be an easy kill once you bring your guns on it but that is the problem.Thies fellows won`t make it easy to do.:typing:
 
Howdy Bob;

That's been a long standing problem of getting the AI's to break off. While Triggers for bomb, rocket and torpedo count do work the AI's don't keep track of their gun/cannon ammo count. They are hardcoded with Unlimited Ammo. So you can't use this trigger with the AI's to force an event, like a WP Change or any other event for that matter.

I used an event, keyed to a couple of triggers in a mission I built. I had 2 flights of three dive bombers and 2 of three torpedo planes escorted by 2 of 3 Fighters. I set the event so when all dive bombers and all torpedo planes were destroyed, the fighters would "break off" and follow altenate waypoints back to base. It works fine. Perhaps in your mission(s) if you use one or 2 small formations so that when the strength=0, you could have others default to their alternate waypoints (ie: break off)?
 
Looking good bob.I,ve been working on the first weeks of the CAF myself,but nowhere near in the same league as yours.Looking forward to them.:ernae:
 
R C CAWTE, What kind of info have you found.I wasn`t able to find alot of detailed info on each seperate mission flown but did find that the enemy did come in ,in almost the same direction on every noon raid with between 27 to 35 bombers and about the same number of fighters as escort at an alt. of between 15000FT to 25000FT. The noon raids happened almost every day as well as Henderson Field being shelled almost every night.I found that the raids came in between 11:20 and 13:20 at about the same alt and same direction as the day before.I was able to find a list of the pilots that were WIA or KIA durring the time period of Aug. 20th 1942 through Oct 11 1942 as well as the evac dates of most of the pilots.:typing:
 
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