A couple of generated campaign questions

cbreedon · #1 February 14th, 2021, 02:27 PM

Hi All

#1 Is there a way to change the default campaign dates? It defaults to 1976. I know there is an ini file that you can edit for battles. Is there one for the campaigns?

# In the generated campaigns I am trying to get airborne with planes as the core but it never comes up. I can get helicopter ones but no aircraft. Is this a restriction?

Thanks

Mobhack · #2 February 14th, 2021, 03:09 PM

1) no - its just a few clicks to change the start/end dates

2) If you want guaranteed air for your initial purchase, set air to 1 in preferences before generating the campaign so the ai units will be shown there. The purchase screen is the only time that campaigns look at air preferences - switch it back to XXX after purchasing.

cbreedon · #3 February 14th, 2021, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mobhack

2) If you want guaranteed air for your initial purchase, set air to 1 in preferences before generating the campaign so the ai units will be shown there. The purchase screen is the only time that campaigns look at air preferences - switch it back to XXX after purchasing.

That's what I was trying. No planes just helicopters. I have been using the American, British, Russian and French OOBs in 2020 but only getting helicopters. I even bumped up the preferences to 10 to see if that would make a difference.

Mobhack · #4 February 14th, 2021, 03:58 PM

I just tried 20 or so generations, with planes set to XXX and using low air countries like sudan as P1 and others like USA and Russia, and they had 1 air strike (which is all you need to buy helos, planes cannot be in core). Never saw 0 air strikes, and setting preferences to a number had no effect at all.

cbreedon · #5 February 14th, 2021, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mobhack

I just tried 20 or so generations, with planes set to XXX and using low air countries like sudan as P1 and others like USA and Russia, and they had 1 air strike (which is all you need to buy helos, planes cannot be in core). Never saw 0 air strikes, and setting preferences to a number had no effect at all.

OK
I think there was a misunderstanding. I was trying to have airborne with their planes in the core. That makes sense why it wouldn't work... I wanted a campaign that had each battle start with an airborne drop.

Thanks for looking into it.

Mobhack · #6 February 14th, 2021, 06:42 PM

Aircraft belong to the air farce, not the army. We tell you this somewhere in the campaingn help.

There is basically no way to have a campaign where the core would be paras dropping out of perfectly good aircraft on silk hankies. That really would need to be a user campaign set up as such. Para ops were rare in WW2 and rarer than hens teeth post WW2, they really are scenario-only subjects (and a user campaign is a linked list of scenarios, not randomly generated battles).

cbreedon · #7 February 14th, 2021, 07:40 PM

Thanks Mobhack

I did do some paying around and it looks like I found a work around. I bought the planes in the support phase before each battle. Then in the deploy phase I loaded them up and set the entry. Looks like it'll do what I wanted.
Cheers

scorpio_rocks · #8 February 15th, 2021, 12:52 PM

There IS a workaround to include air assets in your core force - it's a bit of a faff and can generate a few weird effects (facing not resetting between battles for instance).

1. Create campaign as usual, buy core forces and an additional number of trucks which will become aircraft.
2. save the game
3. copy save file to "scenarios" folder and rename to become a "free"/unused scenario
4. open scenhack
5. load your "new scenario"
6. change those extra trucks to aircraft - save
7. rename back to savegame format and move back to "save games" folder
8. restart game and you now have aircraft in your core which will gain experience, etc like a standard core unit. (note they cannot be "upgraded or swapped" for other air assets without repeating above - they can be changed to standard ground units as normal)

Mobhack · #9 February 15th, 2021, 01:00 PM

Or method b)

Make a formation for your own use with a truck as unit 1 (the game determines formation type by what is in slot 1)
Put planes in after it, or platoons of planes.

You can now buy planes in any battle regardless of air strike points, including as campaign core (but the upgrade code wont work as planes are not core items. delete, losing any experience and re-purchase is about the only way to do so).

Anyway - that was what I did in the editor I made for SP1 back in the day, should still work. It is a cheat, but may be useful for own use. Not for any scenario or campaign though as end users won't read any text you supply and will come on here whining about not being able to upgrade planes etc.