Wild Goose Chase

[NakedSquirrel]

Please remove Wild Goose Chase from the server. The mission often causes players to drop or it will lock up the server completely. I have never seen the mission run all the way through without dropping people. I'm not sure if it's because of the number of objects or because of the AI, but something about that mission causes problems in RoF.

[Sensenmann]

Sadly, I would agree with this. I had hoped it would have been a good mission but between the bugs and the fact that only a very few people seem inclined to follow the mission objective, this mission has come off as a big disappointment in my mind.

Unfortunately I have never been able to find the lag bug, even though it is minimized, and new issues seem to have cropped up (unused planes are not being disabled causing issues with tracking player numbers and mission results). If I could figure out these issues I might be inclined to say it was a marginal success, but the AI/lag issue (perhaps tied to bandwidth issues) seems to be something Neoqb needs to fix, and until then I will not be putting AI in any of my missions.

[Cecil A Lewis]

Works OK most of the time for me (Win7 64bit).
Whenever I played it people seem to protect or attack fine, but maybe just have 1 set of AI, and one side defends it, then have a reverse mission where the other side defends the AI (and maybe make it 2 A/C?) - that way you'd have half the AI to deal with too and only one texture and one 2-seater model to load not two of each.

[Sensenmann]

Good suggestion Cecil. That might solve the issues of lagginess and help get more of the players on task.

I will begin this revision if it is deemed a worthwhile effort. Just looking for Masaq, or any of the other T&T members to chime in here and get some "official" opinions on the matter.

[Masaq]

Yeah sorry - saw the thread just before I went out for the evening. Personally I love the map, and the choice between defend/attack makes for a different mission each time.

However, it definitely does stress the server a little too much and I think it crashes out people on weaker systems on a fairly regular basis.

CAL's suggestion is worth persuing I think - with the advantage that the server gets two new missions rather than just the one :) It'd also make it clearer what you're to do... many players do seem to struggle to follow the on-screen advice lol...

[Masaq]

Mission's been commented out; Sensenmann I'll happy host whatever replacements you care to dream up :) Glitchyness aside, that mission was pretty popular...

[Sensenmann]

Right then, I will recreate the mission(s) accordingly. Should be able to do this in a relatively short time as I will most likely be editing the original.

Hopefully this coincides closely with the 1.008 patch so we can get the server updated with the revision and the new plane missions.

One curiosity however; I have two other missions I submitted that (at least one) made the rotation briefly. Just wondering if there is anything amiss with them that might need repairing or if they were removed for other reasons. Perhaps I can amend them, or they could be put up for the interim.

[Masaq]

Oh sorry chap, was pretty sure I'd let you know... both had vanishing planes and caused a little stuttering. I'm sure I saw a post from you that you were fixing up the vanishing aircraft issue, although god knows the past few weeks have been that hectic for me that it's entirely possible I imagined it! But yeah, if you could just double-check the files for me and make sure they're as they should be as far as you're concerned and I'll sling 'em back on. They're both in the maplist at present, just commented out :)

[Sensenmann]

I believe I did see your message about the problems with my other two missions, and subsequently posted repairs to them along with the repairs to the Goose Chase mission. If the issues continued after that, I heard nothing about it.

Neither here nor there at this point as I am going through and re-editing them any way. I was looking at them and decided to reduce the number of plane types available to see if that would eliminate some of the issues as well.

The Ground Attack mission will be reduced to 4 plane types per side with the Entente flying N28s, Spads, Dolphins, and SE5s, and the Germans flying DVs, DVIIs, and both Pfalzs.

Likewise the plane line up for my reduced/revised Goose Chase missions will have the same plane line up as the above Ground Attack mission.

I want to hold off on Furball until the release of the new planes so that it will have 6 total types with the Entente flying 8 N28s, 4 Dolphins, and 4 Camels and the Central Powers flying 8 DVs, 4 DVIIs, and 4 Dr.1s. Considering its close quarters and low ceiling, this plane line up should give some nice heated turn fights.

There is a new mission in the works in which the Entente are going to be attacking the Douai aerodrome for their Primary and a random Secondary. I will be going with a limit of 3 or 4 plane types per side on this as well, but am uncertain on the line up as yet. This is in the very early stages as I am testing the random generation of the Secondaries and tweaking the timing so that they are conveniently located for attack during/after the Primary.

[Masaq]

Your sir, are a giant among men. Nice one :D

[Sensenmann]

Just a little update on my progress with these...

Wild Goose Chase is currently split in two and I am tweaking and checking everything to make sure there are no odd problems and proper mission results. Long way to go yet.

The Ground Attack mission is renamed Front Line Assault, and to the best of my knowledge, is finished.

Furball has been renamed Furball at St. Mihiel, and is ready to have the new planes swapped in. As soon as the new planes are released, this will be finished.

Dawn Raid at Douai is very much still in the testing phase: The primary objective of destroying over half the buildings and vehicles is working fine. The secondaries on the other hand are not going so well: the convoy has vehicles driving backwards and the train just sits there??? The returning recon flight is fine, but until the other two options are working I can't test the random selection of the secondary.

All in all I expect (hope) to have all but the Douai mission ready by the time 1.008 is released.

[Masaq]

Wow, nice one Sensenmann... I may pop the new missions onto the server by themselves for a day or so, get them properly tested if that's ok with you?


M.