Operation TORCH information

[RAF74_Bimmer]

In conjunction with II./JG1 and Wingwalkers, we will be hosting a two-day event covering the air battles over Casablanca, Morocco on 8 Nov 1942. It will run in two hour sessions on Saturdays 16 and 23 Jan at 9.00pm EST, with the sides switching in the second run-through. The mission has been built with careful attention to the actual timeline (though it is compressed a bit), events, and objectives of the battle and the forces engaged.

A full set of skins has been put together as well, available for download here: http://www.4shared.com/file/192479007/8193fa7e/RAF74_Torch_Skins.html Just unzip into your "jsgmemods" folder and activate via JSGME.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Beyond achieving air superiority, Allied objectives for this mission are to:

1) Sink or disable the incomplete French battleship Jean Bart, moored in Casablanca harbor but with at least some of her guns active.



2) Destroy Vichy airpower based at Camp Cazes airfield southwest of Casablanca.



Vichy French objectives are to prevent the destruction of these vital assets.

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Salute

What aircraft are we going to be flying, what is the plan, and are we going to have a practice server up?

[RAF74_Winger]

S! Buzz,

The aircraft will be as follows:

U.S.
F4F-4
SBD-3
TBF

Vichy France
P-36A-3
Morko Morane
Douglas DB-7

The plan is: Turn up in your best party frock on Saturday night.

W.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

No plans for a practice server. Just jump on TS a little before 9.00pmEST and we'll sort out who's doing what. The objectives and map are pretty straight-forward, so it shouldn't be too complicated.

[WWSandMan]

Barring any last minute interventions from CinC-House, I'll be there. :)

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Victory conditions for Operation TORCH:

There are two objectives (depicted in the recon photos above and detailed in the briefings):

- The battleship Jean Bart (requires 100% damage to complete)

- Camp Cazes airfield (requires 75% damage to complete)

The Allies win a decisive victory if both of the above targets are damaged beyond the listed thresholds. The Axis win a decisive victory if neither is so damaged. In the event that one target is completed but the other is not, victory will be considered partial and will be decided on points.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Sorry for all the technical issues tonight. There are some settings regarding the carriers in Zuti that are not well-documented.

Apparently the number of spawn points on the carrier is also the total number that are able to use that carrier as a Home Base. Thus Red was limited to 7 pilots at any one time. I think (hope) that I have solved this by adding another carrier and building in an air start overflow for both carrier home bases. I'm not entirely certain this will work properly, but I can't test it without enough people to cause an overflow.

I'm also not sure why the death kick wasn't working. I had it set in IL2SC, but it wasn't functioning. I'm going to see if Zuti will do this as well.

I thin there might have been other issues as well. If there were, please post them here and I'll try to sort them out. As to going forward, I think perhaps we should treat this one as a test since Red couldn't get all its pilots on at once and the DK wasn't working as intended. We would then run the next two weeks for score (I'm having trouble figuring out how to parse the logs, but that's another problem I hope to have sorted soon).

Nonetheless, I hope everyone enjoyed the mission in spite of all the difficulties.

[RAF74_Winger]

Certainly did enjoy it! Thanks Bimmer.

W.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

FYI, we will be using the other TS server for next week: 209.11.246.179:8767 p/w tiger

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Salute Bimmer

One other issue:

Ships placed in shallow water cannot be sunk. Doesn't matter how many times you hit them, they won't sink. The bigger the ship, the deeper the water required.

Wondering if you checked the French Battleship to confirm it can be sunk? It is placed in quite shallow water. I noticed that even with all the damage, it did not sink.

Usually when I am designing a war with shipping targets in harbour, I makes sure the Jettys and Wharfs jut out into deeper water so the ships can be placed in a position where they can actually sink. Sometimes this means the harbour construction needs to be right out in the bay. Or alternately, you can place the ship out clear of the harbour as if they are anchored.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

I will certainly look into it, Buzz. Thanks for the heads-up.

EDIT: I just confirmed that the battleship can indeed be sunk in its current location, and that it correctly reports Primary Target Complete, so we're good to go on this one at least.

[WWSandMan]

Sorry for all the technical issues tonight.

...

As to going forward, I think perhaps we should treat this one as a test since Red couldn't get all its pilots on at once and the DK wasn't working as intended. We would then run the next two weeks for score (I'm having trouble figuring out how to parse the logs, but that's another problem I hope to have sorted soon).

Nonetheless, I hope everyone enjoyed the mission in spite of all the difficulties.

S!

I had fun, got hopelessly lost trying to find my home carrier (not used to having them move around in a d/f server -LOL) ... but the issues keeping more than 7 pilots from joining the Red side was a bugger. I didn't discover the death-kick thing until the very end when I was surprised at being able to re-fly after a collision death with one of the blue pilots making life interesting over our carriers.

I'll let the WW guys know this was an exercise and not the real deal, if that's the consensus.

FWIW, we can go ahead and score it as real if you like. From the best info I can gather the Blue side won as far as points (as long as we're not counting all those friendly kills they managed to inflict on themselves). Red failed to sink the battleship and also failed to neutralize the airfield, also resulting in a blue victory.

But if we're allowed to have another go at it, I'll be there. :)

[RAF74 Taipan]

Yes good fun- enjoyed my short time and actually had the opportunity for once to turn my gun switch to live. Always enjoy racing around the sky blasting away.

But seriously sounded like a couple of really good dogfights. Drummer sound like he had a real beauty. Love to hear more about that one.

[WWSandMan]

I'm trying to drum up a little WW activity for this Wednesday evening, the intent being to test the server with the Op. Torch mission to ensure enough slots are available for the required number of Allied pilots. I assume the mission is or will be in editing and will need to be tested before this weekend...

More info after our squad meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) evening.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

I can put the mission up on Wednesday for testing. Hopefully I'll have squashed most of the bugs by then.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

I have to go out around 7.30pm tonight, so I'll put the Torch mission up then on a 3 hour window. If you go on, please at least test the carriers before you move on to your preferred base/plane choice. If they are working as intended, they will allow 7 players each to launch from the deck, with any additional players starting in the air overhead.

EDIT: Up and running. Have at it.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Yeah, I'd suspect that's the kick. FYI, R/R/R should be enabled, so that's the preferred method for getting back in the air.

[RAF74_Drummer]

Bimmer, noticed a problem. When you bail, you can't refly. Your only option is disconnect. Probably the setting in the MDS.

[RAF74_Winger]

That may be the 15 minute kick. Or are you bailing over friendly territory?

W.

[RAF74_Drummer]

That is what I thought at first, although I was in friendly waters both times. The first time I forgot to use the catapult and landed in the water infront of the carrier. I hit esc and disconnect was my only option. So, I bailed and again, disconnect was the only option. I thought that maybe there was a bug and my pilot was getting "dragged along" by the carrier. I rejoined the server, reuped (used the catapult this time) got up to 200m and bailed. Hit esc and same thing.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

OK, I got rid of the kick/refly settings in MDS, as that's probably what was causing the issue. I'll use the DK setting in FBDj for Saturday, which hopefully will be more cooperative.

[II./JG1_Klaiber]

Hi all,

Just a quick question:

Will Operation Torch update to the new UP 2.0m Bug-Fix Patch for UP 2.0?

JG1 upgraded, as I'm sure most of you did, for FS on Tuesday.

As a result, we're currently unable to run the older UP 2.0 at this point (unless we have two installs).

Thanks!

[RAF74_Drummer]

S! Klai

Yes, the server is running the update now. You should have no problem joining

[II./JG1_Klaiber]

Awesome, thanks. :)

[RAF74_Bimmer]

FYI guys, I've added a second carrier for player use (there is one dedicated only to AI flights to avoid spawn-related accidents) and added airstart overflow to both of them. I also removed the 1600lb. bomb from the SBD loadouts - it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Otherwise the mission remains as it was. I still think it's probably best to look at last Saturday as a test run due to the spawn problem, but if there is strong feeling about counting that as an official mission, we can do that. Either way, we switch sides tomorrow; if we choose to keep last weekend as a test, then we'll switch back on 30 Jan.

[RAF74_Drummer]

Ok, I'm confused....nothing new there..lol

Are we flying French tonight then? Or U.S.?

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Tonight we will switch sides as planned, so RAF74 will be flying for Vichy along with WWs, and II./JG1 will be flying for the USN. If we go with my suggestion that we count last week as a test, then we will switch sides once again on the 30th. I really would have preferred to keep to the original schedule of two weeks, but the carrier spawn problem was not something I could discover in solo testing, and it was a pretty significant issue given that no more than 7 could fly Red at any given time.

[WWSandMan]

Two items of interest today:

1) Can you make the latest version of the Operation Torch mission and properties files available for download?

2) Can you dig through the admin archives and approve WWMirage's registration on this forum? :) Thanks!

[RAF74 Taipan]

Look for a pm, and ill register him.

Unfortunately we receive a lot of spam, and he was probably deleted in a purge by accident,

[RAF74_Winger]

Not to worry Tai, I just registered Mirage & Spardog.

W.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

1) Can you make the latest version of the Operation Torch mission and properties files available for download?

I'd rather not spill all the inner workings of the mission before we've run through the event; FWIW no one but me has seen the file, and I've tried to be careful not to use my inside knowledge to any advantage. Once it's over I'll happily provide the unaltered mission file. It will also be added to our DF server rotation once the event is over.

[WWMirage]

No worries Bimmer. We just wanted to practice bombing.

[II./JG1_Klaiber]

S! Guys,

I heard from one of my pilots that you guys were planning on flying Operation Torch again tomorrow (Saturday, January 30th) at 9PM EST.

Is this correct? If so, I'll rally the troops. :)

Talk to you more soon,

~Salut!~

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Yes, we're planning to run it again. Given the problems of the first run, it seemed a good idea to write that off to practice and give both sides a full, fair shot at it. So last week was the first official run, and this week will be the second. RAF74 and WWs will fly for the US Navy, and JG1 will fly Vichy French colors.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Just a reminder that Operation TORCH will conclude tonight, beginning at 2100EST.

[RAF74_Bimmer]

Operation TORCH wrapped up tonight. As with last week's mission, neither of the Allied objectives were achieved, so in both runs the Axis came out on top.

Minor hitch: death kick was inadvertently turned off on the server for tonight's run. My apologies. I was trying to juggle one too many things and my unfamiliarity with the FBDj controller software bit me.

Regardless, thanks to all who flew in this one. I hope everyone enjoyed it, in spite of a few issues. I learned some things about setting up these events, so the next one will hopefully run a little smoother. And we're already getting ready for the next one. Stay tuned.

[WWSandMan]

S!

Had fun with this mission/campaign. The targets are difficult to get at so that victory is not assured, yet there is plenty of 'side mission' stuff to keep folks busy. For instance I noticed the JG1 guys were attacking Allied shipping quite effectively (I was a low-level TBF that got over-flown by an A-20 on it's way to bomb some shipping at one point). Had fun with this, and look forward to more! :)