Now that the Targetware engine is in Open Beta (details at
http://www.targetware.net/index.php) we are putting together a guide in preparation for the Target Flanders open beta, scheduled for Friday August 8th. Here is the first installment
NOTE: Before attempting a take off, please read the Pilot Notes for your aircraft. They are available under "briefings" AFTER you have selected a mission AND a unit.
Report any problems to
costo@videotron.ca or on the Target X forum at
http://www.targetware.net under "forums".
You are STRONGLY urged to begin with one of the two training missions (one available per side). Once you can take off and land in the Bleriot XI, you can start flying other macines.
Lives are unlimited for the training missions, but they are limited to TWO per scenario (3 hours) for all other missions.
BETA NOTES
Known Issues:
The plane graphics sink into the ground a bit (worse for parked planes). This does NOT affect taxiing. Still looking for the problem.
Our sounds are begged, borrowed and stolen. If you can put a good soundpack together, please go ahead.
The server will go down every so often while we update files. Thanks for your patience.
The July 1915 Campaign
In his History of the First World War, Liddell Hart called 1915 "the deadlock". With their ground forces alternately frozen, mired or baked, and with their ground offensives failing to "break the front" and restore a war of maneuvre, both sides increasingly took to the air.
There is here a certain irony, in that the respective air services, had significantly contributed to the creation of the deadlock by supplying commanders with unprecendented intelligence about, and warning of enemy movements and dispositions. Now, both sides looked for ways of using the newfound airpower to step over a front they could not get through.
The summer of 1915 saw the first timid, larger scale air operations designed to destabilize the enemy both tactically and strategically. Both sides rapidly determined that the threat was real and in an incredibly short time had fielded effective scout aircraft, the first air superiority machines.
This series of scenarios attempts to recreate the broad outlines of a typical day on the northern sector of the Western Front in July 1915. The place names are fictitious but suggestive of the area. The units mentioned are real and were in the region in July 1915.
As players, you will need to decide how best to employ the resources available to your side in order to damage the enemy and prevent him from damaging your own forces and supply organizations.
And remember, the fight here is one of position. The objective is to be the one to observe while the other is blind, to be the one to hit while the other is down.
"In nearly all cases where machines have been downed, it was during a fight which had been very short, and the successful burst of fire had occurred within the space of a minute after the beginning of actual hostilities"
-William "Billy" Bishop
Target Flanders: An open beta for the modding community
Target Flanders is first and foremost a team effort. We are all modders who began the project rather late in the Targetware process. We don’t have the resources of Targetware, and we don’t have the resources of the Target Rabaul Team. We do have a few very dedicated individuals with outstanding skill in their own areas who have done some quite incredible work. But our coverage is deep rather than wide. We have done some things very well, and some things not at all.
If upon seeing Target Flanders your first reaction is to say: “such and such is clearly missing”. Let your second reaction be to create it and send it in. Odds are you will see it up on the server in a very short time. There will be no better way to learn how to create your own mod than to participate in the further shaping of a mod which is already well under way.
When you first fire up Target Flanders, you will notice many things missing. No, we don’t really have cockpit instruments yet. No, we don’t have tons of skins for each aircraft. Yes, our ground objects are really markers for ground objects. Yes, we only have control surface animations for a few planes. Well, you get the idea.
But everything you will see is functional, and has been designed with one single purpose in mind: to provide the most atmospheric, realistic, and yes, informative and educational WWI air combat simulation experience. We have tried to create something unique and which many say cannot be done: A gripping, intensely thrilling, accurate, no-compromise simulation. This concern for the accuracy of the simulation extends well beyond the traditional obsession with flight model, damage model, and gunnery. It extends to the air combat environment, the draconian influence of the ground war over action in the air, etc. Bottom line, Target Flanders is highly playable in its present state, if your goal is simulation of early WWI air combat.
Our philosophy is simple. If a given action was unthinkable for a WWI pilot, you better not try it in Target Flanders. If a given course of action was incredibly risky for a WWI pilot, without being unthinkable, keep it for those occasions when you have no choice in the matter, and hope for the best.
The air combat environment
We begin in July 1915, with a 20 km stretch of the northern sector of the western front. Don’t look for it on a map, it isn’t there. The airfields, the layout, everything is inspired by the Arras area, but everything is believable rather than true. That is a crucial concept for the TF design. We are going for verisimilitude rather than the straight jacket of absolute accuracy.
On each side of the front, 2 infantry corps are arrayed. These are made up of 3 divisions of 24 companies each. On the British side, 18 field artillery batteries are distributed among the divisions. The German artillery will be in place soon. It is a momentarily quiet sector of front with an average divisional frontage of just over 3 kilometres. Each side has a supply network composed of divisional and corps level supply dumps. These are important objectives and should be well protected.
The ground units and supply organizations are represented by traditional wargaming counters, each bearing a symbol which indicates its type: a cross in a box for infantry, a circle in a box for artillery, and a half-moon symbol for supply organizations. The level of each unit is indicated by a symbol at the top of the marker: a single I for a company or battery, X for a brigade (only artillery is a brigade level at the moment), XX for a division and XXX for a corps. Artillery also has the type of gun indicated in the lower right corner of the unit marker (for example “18pdr” for British 18 pounder field guns).
The unit markers are all “mud brown”. The colour of the symbols on their face indicates ownership: Olive drab for British and field grey for German (what else!). The size of each marker is proportional to what it should be on a miniatures gaming table top. The entire area of the marker can be attacked and damaged. The odds you will actually completely destroy one, however, are quite remote. It takes more than a couple of 20 pound bombs to really hurt, or even significantly disrupt a well dug in front line infantry company. But any havoc you create will in the end help your side win the scenario.
Training and Front Line Combat
As a new pilot for the Royal Flying Corps or for the German Air Service, you are required to report to the appropriate Training Area, situtated well behind the front. Log on first to the Training Area server, where Target Flanders veteran beta testers will help you with everything from your joystick setup to the proper techique for strafing a ground target. Once you have shown that you can consistently and safely take-off and land in the Target Flanders aircraft, you will be allowed to proceed to the Front Line. There you will fly combat missions. But be careful! You have only two virtual lives per run of a scenario! These runs can last up to 3 hours. Fly to live. It is better to abort a mission which seems doomed than to lose a valuable aircraft and pilot for your side.
