Official SEOW

Alright, last night the black sheep attempted to host our second mission for our SEOW campaign... but it was all to no avail.

The mission started fine, everything seemed alright until about 5-6 minutes into the mission - everything just suddenly freezes up... for no apparent reason... I was flying along in my p51 escorting my a20's and my screen just froze... and the game locked up and would not continue.

We tried to re-host it several times only to have the same exact thing happen every single time... and might I add, at exactly the same time into the mission - 5-6 minutes.

The only thing we did differently from our last mission is upping the control radius to 2KM instead of the previously set .5 KM, we also added in 10 more aircraft for each side to use in one mission (brining our total from a previous 40 to now 60) so we did not change anything that was ground breaking.

One thing we did notice is that upon start of the mission it did seem a little laggy... everyone was having small screen freezes - it however smoothed out as the mission progressed (my thoughts were just because of all the aircraft taking off etc...). We finally attempted to host on a different person (Bulau) and things seemed alright until we hit that 5-6 Minute mark... then freeze. This leads me to believe it is a problem either with the MP or the DCS because I am almost positive that adding in 10 more airplanes per side that are allowed airborne wouldn't cause something like this... yes it would cause slightly more lag due to the increased aircraft but as far as a total game lockup? I'm not so sure.

So where we are sitting now is we have a mission ready to host that we cannot effectively host because of lock ups of the game. Also in the MP when we try and plot new missions for the next hour (which would be 9:00 AM on our campaign set time) the MP still recognizes any old unit missions. For example, my b17 flight, when I give them a new mission the MP pops up and says there is a mission conflict and shows me the mission I had originally planned for the 0800 hour and then asks me to either override or cancel the existing one. I believe this is because no mission DATA was uploaded to our DB from the 0800 mission because we could not finish a successful hosting of it.

Any suggestions? I am just hoping that we do not have to flush the DB and start over again.

Also, a quick question about the Remove In Progress tool - does it just work on missions that are still in progress after the last mission ended? or can it be used to scrub all missions in planned/in progress? This would help us as we could effectively scrub all missions currently planned out from the 0800 hour.

Do you want to test the same mission by hosting it on our dedicated server?
Send to me the mission, tell me when (timing) you will play it and I send to you the instructions to launch it.

I will just add to what Jaw mentioned, that the aircraft total is actually about 80. And the freeze at 5-6 minutes involved the games of all four players locking up at the same time.

22GCT_Gross, thanks for the offer. We are all in EST and MST time zone, does that work for you? You would need to add a host seat for your IL2DCS to "fly".

We could try that, although I am not sure if anything will work better... I still believe its a bug within the MP/DCS.

If you are within the US we can definitely give it a shot, I will pm you the DL links for our mission. Also just so you know we do not have a host seat setup in the DCS so this might affect your ability to run the mission?

Gross is going to run it on COOP_dedicated server so he already must have host seat in his dcs - important thing is that its not a necessary to host it as a seow mission at first - you can try to load that mission in FMB just to see if FMB gives you errors - try and save it afterwards and just host it as a regular coop with one player (preferably admin of campaign) on a fast computer - report your findings here so that someone takes a look at your "results"

I tried that the night before thursday (wednesday) just to make sure my side had no issues with flights (everyone was doing as ordered) and I experienced the lock up then as well... I figured it was just a coincidence and I didn't think much of it ... until we actually tried the host of the mission.

I will reopen it in FMB and see if I get any errors if not then I don't know what to do.

Our MP seems to have "frozen" as well... so I am DB flushing right now and I will post a report after I am done.

Go to Hyperlobby, look for ITA COOP DED server in the dogfight server list and join the game.
Once in, type in the chat window:
DSC MAP 13 -> ALL
Your mission will be loaded.

It'a very heavy mission, and map too

Mission ran fine for 5-6 minutes then my IL2 froze up... same problem.

Must be an error within the mission.

Thanks for trying to help, btw you might want to check your server and make sure its still up and running.

Also a question within the MP.

When I have a flight and I want to have a provided escort with it I cannot always see that flights details... the text box cuts off at the number of aircraft. For example, I want my A20's to be escorted by a flight of 51's from the same airbase... but when I go to select those 51's all Ic an see in the text box is the unit number, squadron number and such then it cuts off at 4x... This is annoying as I cannot see the type of aircraft I have selected for an escort. Anyway to make it larger?

Also, with the ground attack assignment for bombers, what does local search mean? I would assume that the bombers just go in and destroy whatever they find in the area?

BS8th_Jaw wrote:...with the ground attack assignment for bombers, what does local search mean? I would assume that the bombers just go in and destroy whatever they find in the area?

To target an industrial area using bomber flights, simply place a GATTACK point over the area and select a specific factory or fuel dump in the target selector drop-down box. Using "local search" or selecting a nearby military unit is not sufficient to make the whole industrial area live - you MUST target at least one factory or fuel dump directly. Subsequent bomber flights can use "local search", as long as at least one flight targets a factory or fuel dump in the area.

HI,
your problem is:
- your il2fb.exe reached its RAM limit usage very fast because of a very "hungry of memory" map and too many objects.

See previous discussion about this
http://seowhq.net/seowforum/viewtopic.php?t=118
That's why our server didn't crash.

BS8th_Bulau wrote:

BS8th_Jaw wrote:...with the ground attack assignment for bombers, what does local search mean? I would assume that the bombers just go in and destroy whatever they find in the area?

To target an industrial area using bomber flights, simply place a GATTACK point over the area and select a specific factory or fuel dump in the target selector drop-down box. Using "local search" or selecting a nearby military unit is not sufficient to make the whole industrial area live - you MUST target at least one factory or fuel dump directly. Subsequent bomber flights can use "local search", as long as at least one flight targets a factory or fuel dump in the area.

Knew that bit... just curious about the local search thing... reason is I want my A20's to attack a area of targets instead of a certain target within that area.

Yes, 80 aircraft, Guadalcanal map, simultaneous freeze of all players. I know that II/JG11 and AG-51 went through all kinds of traumas trying to debug similar freezes on that map. Their freezes happened after about 45-60 minutes, with about 40 aircraft.

As rnzoli so expertly showed, it is an IL-2 memory leak bug for the Guadalcanal map. Nothing SEOW can do about that. You need to drastically reduce the object load in your campaign or choose a different map. Brandle seems to think that Smolensk is a very good map. CrazyIvan tells me that Normandy is another map with a known memory leak.

Cheers,
4Shades

We reduced to 25 aircraft per side, total of 50, plus there were some ground movements going on. This time, it lasted around 25 minutes before lockup occurred. I would like to try reducing to 32 aircraft total. We had 40 in first mission, and ran it to completion, about an hour, without lockup, but there were few ground movements in that one.

Or we will try to find another map and start over.

What is the typical maximum number of aircraft that people are using with success?

Depends on the map, but usually we aim for something like 30-40 aircraft in the air, plus 40-60 ground movements, maybe a few more. We have had good experience with large campaigns in Cyrenaica, Ardennes, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Prokhorovka, Midway, Okinawa. Be careful with shipping - they can be very hard on game performance.

Cheers,
4Shades

We haven't used any shipping.

I have two campaign templates, built on the Ostfriesland map, by IV/JG7_Warg:

TeutonicKnights
Teuchel Heath

I'm curious to know, if these campaigns were ever flown by anyone successfully, and what sort of numbers of air and ground movements were used.

I'm just trying to get a handle on whether our lockup is due to a problem with this map, or the numbers we are using, or maybe it is a combination of both.