A look back at the past 15+ years of FSO

[Devil 505]

Most FSO Experience

Pilot	Starting Date	Ending Date	Frame Count
Steely	06/12/09	06/20/25	523
Dantoo	06/12/09	06/20/25	523
AKQwik	06/12/09	06/20/25	503
JoeJoe	06/05/09	06/20/25	499
RedBrd	06/05/09	06/20/25	480
AKWxMan	06/12/09	06/20/25	475
68hobo	07/10/09	05/09/25	473
Devil5O5	07/08/11	06/20/25	470
jaeger1	06/05/09	06/20/25	462
Snibbo	06/05/09	06/20/25	458

These are pilots with the most FSO experience.  This shows when they started participating and the last frame they participated in along with how many frames they have flown in.

Again, this is limited by the log data I have.

This is strange in my case. My first FSO was January of 2011. No name change either.

[AKKuya]

Do you have data on victories objects destroyed?

[RedBeard]

I’m in the process of hand entering objectives to get victory data. I have objectives emails for the past year or two, but not before that. If people want to send me objectives going back to mid 2009, I can enter those in as well.

By send me objectives, you could forward me just the objectives email, or send a crowdsourced set of data for the objectives, or both as there are over 500 frames to enter.  I'm currently using a CSV file format to store the objectives data.  The columns from Must Destroy Hangars onward are boolean where 1 is true and 0 or null is false.  Here's an example from the last frame:

ObjectiveID,Frame Date,Field,Type,Pos,Side,Must Destroy Hangars,Must Destroy Bunkers,Must Destroy Ships,Hr1 Target,Hr1 Not Target,Hr1 Active,Hr1 Capture,Hr2 Target,Hr2 Not Target,Hr2 Active,Hr2 Capture
,2025-07-11,#1,CV,"11,6,5",Allies,,,6,1,,1,,,1,1,
,2025-07-11,#44,BB,"11,6,5",Allies,,,3,1,,,,,1,,
,2025-07-11,#45,BB,"11,6,5",Allies,,,3,1,,,,,1,,
,2025-07-11,#16,LAF,"9,8,5",Axis,12,,,1,,1,,,1,1,
,2025-07-11,#18,SAF,"7,8,4",Axis,,,,,,1,,,,1,
,2025-07-11,#21,LAF,"9,9,6",Axis,,,,,1,1,,,1,1,
,2025-07-11,#2,CV,"12,8,5",Allies,,,6,1,1,1,,1,,1,
,2025-07-11,#13,LAF,"9,8,3",Axis,12,,,1,,,,1,,,
,2025-07-11,#3,CV,"11,6,5",Allies,,,,,1,1,,,1,1,
,2025-07-11,#41,BB,"12,8,5",Allies,,,3,,1,,,1,,,
,2025-07-11,#46,BB,"12,8,5",Allies,,,3,,1,,,1,,,

Note, the format may change as I get more victory styles entered and used.  I also use a separate settings table for things like map, fuel burn rate, AA strength, icon ranges, points, object weights, etc.

[RedBeard]

Thought I'd post some more about FSO.  I don't have a complete set of information, but it's reasonably complete based on information found in objectives emails, orders, and forum posts.

Here's a breakdown of the number of events (months) with the most used theaters of operation:

ETO	48
PTO	38
MED	35
CBI	6

[RedBeard]

Interestingly, I found only two events that included fleet operations (control over the fleet) that were mentioned in the objectives or orders.  I would have thought there would be more, but perhaps it used to be assumed that would be done.  For those, we were given constraints of where the fleet could be moved and there were people assigned to change course as appropriate to dodge bomb runs.

I also have some recollections of fleet to fleet battles (manned gun positions), but I couldn't find any event that mentioned that in the material I had.

[RedBeard]

I looked at air spawns over the years.  They didn't seem to be used that often in the early data with just 1 mention from 2009-2017.  The seem to have become more popular since 2023.  Presumably, this is to allow multi-life players a faster engagement experience to keep them sticking around the whole frame.

[RedBeard]

I also took a look at formation use and bomb sight calibration.  There's not much mention of formations early on in the data, though calibration method is mentioned.  Presumably, no mention of formations would assume formations on. 

I did not find any mention of manual calibration in the order and objective material I had, so that would seem to indicate that manual calibration of the bomb sight was done prior to 2017.

I made a video for my squad on manual sight calibration back in March of 2016, so my data was probably just shy of that.  I don't know how often manual calibration was done back then.

[RedBeard]

There have generally been two styles of events.  Battles (both sides playing both offense and defense), and assaults (one side is offense, the other defense).  Sometimes an event will trade off who is offense and defense with each frame.  Some events will mix a couple of assaults with a battle frame.

There were 46 assault style frames and 48 battle style events.  A pretty even mix.

Out of the assault style, 17 were axis assault events and 17 were allied assault events.  I didn't count events were assaults were traded off across frames.

[RedBeard]

Map usage was a bit tricky.  There are some maps listed in AH3 Choose Terrain that are no longer available and are possibly FSO maps.  These would include Australia and Morocco.  Some maps look like they should be part of a particular FSO Event, but when trying to match field types derived from damage data, it didn't match field types in the maps.  I didn't think that changing a field from an Airfield to a Vehicle Base or vice versa would be trivial with a map editor, but perhaps there were some custom map changes done for some FSO events.

I also found it interesting that map usage didn't quite follow the theater usage.

Map	Event Count
bob40	16
italy	12
blksea	9
finland	9
luzon	8
germany	7
solomons	6
newbrit	6
bof44	5
egypt	5
malta	5
blkseaw	5
tunisia	5
okinawa	4
burma	4
northsea	3
russia	3
russiaw	2
java42	2
greece	2
Italy	2
marianas	2
danube	1
germanyw	1
rhnland	1
danubew	1
malaysia	1
mnchuria	1
finlandw	1
midway	1
Luzon	1
	0

[RedBeard]

Lastly, here's a look at the number of Events by war year.  Not all events have a year associated with them, but of the ones that were historical in nature and represented a particular time of the war and I was able to determine what that time was, they are shown here. 

I've kind of wondered why we didn't have some Blitzkrieg early war period events represented in the list.  I know that it may not be popular to play the Allied side, but setting an objective threshold goal for winning the frame/event that is within reach might compensate for having to stand up to overwhelming forces.  Give the Polish forces some Spads and Storchs with gunners and if they get even one kill, they win the frame. 

Year	Event Count
1940	14
1941	10
1942	27
1943	25
1944	28
1945	11

[Spikes]

Cool data. Regarding air spawns, I don't think we were able to use placed air spawns until not too long ago, maybe a few years? Only ones tied to the map prior (where it denotes it on the CBM). Prior to our placable spawns I assume the only ones used were in 8th or 9th AF events with heavy bombers (namely Germany map).

Morocco is a AH3 SEA terrain that we ran my first FSO on (Conquest at Casablanca) back in 2018, I'm not sure if there was an older map back in AH2 named differently or not. There was another Pacific event run on Morocco that was supposed to be a sub for an Australia map.

I am surprised to see Luzon with only 1 event, since that is our only map with Leyte on it and I recall a few events surrounding Leyte.
Disregard, there are 2 Luzons on the list for a total of 9 events.