Greetings, fellow CFS enthusiast, and thank you for downloading this mission.
This is a CFS1 stock mission originally titled Back to Bremen. It has been converted and modified to play in CFS2.
You will be flying from the American side, so the mission will be found under the American section in the mission setup screen.
The objective in this one is to escort the bombers safely out of the danger area. You must make sure at least 75% of the bomber groups make it to the coast, where they will presumably be able to manage on their own.
You also must not be lured below 15000 feet altitude. Remember, the goal is to protect the bombers, not go flying off after enemy fighters.
Just extract the contents of the zip file into a temp folder and then cut and paste or drop and drag the .mis and the .dyn files into your CFS2 mission folder.
You will also need to copy a few sound files from your Cfs2 Sound folder into your Cfs2 Sound/Action folder, if you'd like to have some status messages while flying. (Specific files listed in the sound.txt file included in this package)
You will need the VW Fw190D9bt "Brown 4 of 7/JG26" from Virtual Wings. The folder name the mission is calling for is Fw190D9bt.
You will also need the P-47D-23 from Netwings. The mission is calling for 1US_P-47D-23 to be the folder name.
***If these links are dead or inaccurate, try getting help on one of the CFS forums out there for updated locations.***
This is a standard bomber escort style mission. The altitude is high up there in the thin air, and the attackers are relentless. This is what CFS1 was all about right here. Sadly, these style missions are nowhere near as good in CFS2 as they were in CFS1 (at least in my mind), but they can be made acceptable, with a whole lot of hard work.
The allied plane called for was a P-47, so I chose to use the 1% P-47D-23. It is a better ground attack aircraft as an ai unit, but all you really need to do is scare the defenders off the bombers, so it is usable in this role.
I've had the Virtual Wings "Dora" on my hard drive for a long time, but I've never had a call for using it in a mission until now. I haven't really fooled much with late-war scenario's in CFS2.
Upon testing it, I found that it would indeed attack bombers. Not only that, it would flat out annihilate them. This may sound all fine and good, except that I was running four, two-bomber formations. This was proving an easy victory for the home team (we are in Europe after all).
The VW "Dora" was not only blowing the bombers out of the sky, they had a particular affinity for blowing me out of the sky as well. These suckers will dogfight your drawers off. If one of these guys gets on you, you may as well just bail out, and hope the Germans don't execute you. Either way, it's a bad end to a bad day.
To compensate for this, I upped the bombers to three per formation, (12 total), and I downed the number of "Dora's" from 6 to 4. I also lessened their skill and aggressiveness levels. Believe me, you do not want 4 of these guys with a skill level of 3 or more.
Still, even these guys would really rather spar with other fighters than bombers, so I spent no small amount of time toying with waypoints, and spawn times and locations. I think what I ended up with is pretty good. At least it is acceptable to me. If you play this mission several times or more, I think you'll find it has various results. I can live with that, what I can't live with is a mission that doesn't work properly ever. And the potential for that is inherent in all these bomber escort style missions. I really wish MS had used more resources on better ai performance. The wingman commands are great and all, but better ai performance would have been nice.
The mission text had a bit about not flying below 18000 feet altitude, so I went with that. After a few test runs in early development though, I decided that dropping it to 15000 was way more acceptable. Sometimes you just need to take a good dive to evade those hostiles, and with the 18000 limit, it just wasn't proving enough of a dive in some cases.
All in all what I have delivered here is the best I can do, with what I have to work with. Take that as you will, as it certainly could have gone much worse. I estimate that I spent over 30 hours on this mission. It became my bane (a little Lord of the Rings reference there folks), and I did in fact become somewhat obsessed with finishing it, despite its many and varied shortcomings. The VW Dora was certainly a great find, as I probably would have just otherwise deleted the whole mess long ago. What with the effort it was giving me though, I just couldn't give up. So a great big WAY TO GO! to all those who worked on that plane. It may be aged a little, but it out-performed the rest in the ai role.
Then there was the little programming blunders.......
Just when you think you have your craft down to a science, you run right smack-dab into a wall that you could have sworn you had already scaled. This whole series of missions has really tested my abilities, and forced me to really push the limits of my imagination and intelligence (what is left of it anyway).
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Enjoy and definitely watch your 6!
Here are a few tips, but you'll have your most fun experimenting for yourself.
As always it was designed to be played at 100%. It should play fine on other settings as well, but it was not tested on any.
This mission was designed and tested using warping, I can make no guarantees how it will play in real time.
****If you modify this mission, make a backup copy first. Some hand edits were done to the mission and
dynamic files. I eliminated the automatic "you must survive goal", and I also adjusted the ai skill levels. These things will
be overwritten if you run this mission through the mission builder.***
I would suggest either editing by hand or using Keith Bedford's mission editor to make most adjustments.
I'd also recommend installing some form of European CFS1 runways. During testing I just used an old set of bare runways that have NDB's included. I believe I got them at the Sim-Outhouse. They are called European Runways for CFS2 ~ Mk. II. These match up to the european runways listed in the airbases.dat file, so there is none of that annoying adding runways to the airbases.dat file. It is fine to check your advanced info screen in other words.
I deleted all objects from the mission files that were at or around the runways. Mainly because it takes longer to load when they're all there, and secondly because some of you are probably using other scenery packs anyway, and this would just cause a bunch of overlapping and altogether sloppy looking scenery. If you don't have any of the CFS1 runways installed, you'll just be taking off from bare land (no runways). If you don't mind that, then neither do I.
I have included ditching (like C. Burgess uses in his missions) in these missions, as I like it, and find it helpful in the cases where you just can't make it home. You just need to be outside the base area (about 1 mile from base or less) and come to a stop, then cut off your engine. I have found that doing this inside enemy territory miraculously let's you evade capture. At least it has every time I've done it so far.
There are several more of these CFS1 stock converted missions also available, and possibly more on the way. It just depends on the potential of each one. If I discover some aspect of them I like, then I will invest the time necessary to complete some more.
I also have other "experiments" sitting on my hard drive if I can get around to completing them, stay tuned...
Well, time's a wasting and those "Big Friends" need escorts, so get off yer keyster and chop chop.
This package is freeware and cannot be sold for any reason. You may post it where you like, just so long as all original documentation (this HTML file!) is included as well.
If it blows up your pc, it weren't me that caused it. If my puny, ancient, much neglected pc will run it, then yours should too.
Use at your own risk, no warranty implied or offered. It plays fine on mine own system.
I can be reached at the address below.
Designed and tested on a PIII 600, windows 98 SE, 128 RAM, Voodoo 3 2000 system. (You can stop laughing now, I can hear you!!!) The same system I was playing the original versions of these CFS1 converted missions on. As the saying goes, "She ain't much, but she's mine".
All HTML on this page was done by hand using wordpad and tested on Internet Explorer 6.0. Not sure what it'll look like on anything else, but it looks ok with IE 6.6.
All grammatical errors are solely the fault of the author and cannot be blamed on anyone, or thing, excepting himself.
FvB missions are made under the influence of rock and roll (mostly the classic type). Play it loud!
LONG LIVE ROCK!!!
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