Euro and US time AvA staged mission test

[jimson]

Tomorrow, Tuesday at 3pm est (8pm London) and again at 8pm est. We will be testing a staged mission in AvA.

It will be a Battle of Britain mission.

Come give it a try if you have time.

Come 5-10 minutes early to have time to auto download the updated avachanl terrain.

To join the mission, just go to Staged missions-Populate mission. Click on your name and then double click the slot you want to fly.

[jimson]

We had some fun with it today. Had a couple strange things happen, but overall not bad. Thanks to all who played. Will run again tonight 8pm est

[jimson]

Well, we had some arena crashes, so on to trouble shooting. Thanks to all who helped test the system.

[asterix]

Thanks for inviting, pretty cool setup for a change.
Some of my observations:

Could the aircraft designations in mission populate list and in flight be the same? For example after being shot down I saw from the clipboard map dots that AI 43, AI 36 etc were still alive. From the list I do not see what aircraft is AI 43 or 36. I often joined an aircraft in flight that was already shot down too. Maybe there could be a mark next to the aircraft in the populate list that have been shot down.

For bombers the 5min to target appeared too late. I tried to stay in formation with the group and carpet bomb on command. I heard bombs drop from others, but was a little late with my own drop.

AI seems to be a good gunner, but it also seems to bail out to quickly.

On initial climbout the AI bomber lead was a bit too fast for a short period. Could not gain on it while in full throttle.

[jimson]

Thanks for the comments.

Nothing much we can do about ID of planes that have been shot down. We will report it though for a possible change in a future update.

I didn't have the timing right on some of the text/voice events, I think I have that fixed now.

I'll take a look at the speeds.

It's a bit tricky to set speeds with the AI, because they have to adhere to a certain climb rate. Some times they require an incredibly low speed to get to the right altitude over a certain distance which makes it difficult for fast escorts to stay with them and apparently they sometimes go faster then expected. I use warps to get everyone in the correct position just prior to the action segment so it's not a big problem if you can't stay with the AI during climb out and route.

Thanks again for coming.

I am going to try to have a different mission/theater ready for next Tuesday, so that we can see if the arena still crashes with different mission/terrain.