Thanks very much for your expressions of support, chaps. There are so many new aircraft suitable for a later chapter of MAW it would be a crime not to facilitate their use in the Mediterranian theatre.
I am using a modified version of MAW to support a campaign centered on Sicily in August 1943.
My 1943 install is simply the original instal, simplified down to 5 nationalities (Britain, Britain_FAA, USA, Germany, Italy), with a selection of vehicles and ships to support a campaign based around Sicily in August, after the Allies had taken Sicily. Usually the campaign works quite well. If the Allies are doing well, the campaign moves up the toe of Italy. Some German missions get flown from places like Crete and Corsica, and the terrain is fabulous - parts of the theatre that I have not seen before. Crete is particularly stunning with the choices of landclasses and autogen trees.
The aircraft I have utilised include Fulmar, Barracuda, Martlet, Beauforts, Hudsons, Kittyhawks, Spit VIII, early Typhoons, and MAW skinned 190A4, 109 F4, 109 G2 and G6s skinned by Ndicki.
The campaign works best with a modified stock spawn set. The country.xml is set up for Britain_FAA to be the Allied default spawning nation for ships and aircraft (to take advantage of the Britain_FAA ships). As a readme from the original MAW explains, facilities including airfields and factories tend to spawn with random nationalities for the appropriate Alliance. Hence a full suite of vehicles for each country are needed to populate the facilities.
As mentioned, the main bug is that spawned ship formations are sometimes inert - it happens at random, and when it is the campaign mission objective it is a real immersion killer. The Barracuda is a stable platform for torpedos, and the AI wingmen in Barracudas are usually devasting in torpedo attacks. I use a Ju88 A 14 for the Germans, and the AI seem to fly it pretty well in torpedo attacks.
If it is possible to "unpack" the spawn selector to activate the 1942 and 1943 aspects, I could also set up spawn sets for Tunisia 1942 and Italy 1943. Does anyone know if this is possible?