Official SEOW

Has there been any thought to expanding SEOW to take advantage of the new "Moving Dogfight" mods? In particular Zuti's MDF allows a "full functioning" COOP style "war" using the dedicated server software. Version 0.8XX is in beta testing and will add many new functions - check the link above.

Right now Forgotten Skies is using V .77 and it allows for moving columns, ships (even carriers), trains and AI aircraft. We use many other mods and we are able to combine the best from "COOP" with the best from "Dog Fight". However, the complexity and detail that SEOW offers is far beyond the mission generator we currently use in FS.

I know there are some significant differences in COOP based missions and DF missions (aircraft names and logging etc...), and I am not sure "how much work" it would take to adapt SEOW over to MDF, but has there been any been any thoughts along these lines?

Wotan

Hi Wotan,

Thanks for the post. I'm not sure that it would be easy to get SEOW to work with MDF. There would be a lot of stuff to chop out/disable/change. Of course, all the SEOW source code is available if someone wants to pursue that.

Personally speaking, I'm not sure that it would be worth the effort to join SEOW with MDF. Let's face it, SEOW is designed to maximize penalties for defeated pilots and to perform persistent and detailed tracking of all units and affiliations. The central purpose of a DF server is that pilots can respawn and rejoin the fight if they get killed early. Two different approaches to campaigning, serving two different communities.

So what would be the goal for merging the two approaches? What would be kept in SEOW and MDF, and what would be thrown out of SEOW and of MDF?

Cheers,
4S

I see no benefit at all from dogfight mode; it'd be a step back than the coop mode under several point of view.

S!

I would like to see an attempt to combine both worlds into one campaign but using both setups. We do a 128 person SEOW coop on the weekend with a 3 hour mission to start the campaign or we get everyone together to FS and do a 3 hr mission. We will call this the primary config. When the mission is finished we take the location where everything finished and feed this info into the other systems template builder to make something that is played through the week using the second system which we can call the alternate config.

Let's face it, SEOW is designed to maximize penalties for defeated pilots and to perform persistent and detailed tracking of all units and affiliations.

Forgotten Skies is Dead is Dead (DiD). If you die you are done for the night. Even the stats are DiD. When you die your personal stats are reset. We call it "persona". At the start of each new life you are assigned a "persona name". If / when that "persona" is killed / captured you start a new one.

FS uses several scripts - one being that if you die and try to re-up a new aircraft you are kicked.

FS does allow multiple sorties but with restrictions.

If you land you must wait 5-minutes before you re-up.
If you "ditch" you must wait 20-minutes before you re-up.
If you bail you must wait 30-minutes before you re-up.

If you try to get up early you are kicked. Since its DF you can rejoin after being kicked but you still have to wait out your kick time. These limits can be set to whatever we want. We can make it so each player can only fly 1 sortie per mission etc...

We have limited aircraft. If you lose your Bf 109 G-2 and there are no more available you will be kicked if you try to take-off in one. We can assign aircraft to squads based on squad tag. Aircraft bombed at the airfield deplete the supply of those aircraft at that airfield.

We use a mod that allows us to create custom chiefs. For example here is a "heavy tank column" we will be using in the next FS campaign:

[Armor.10-Axis_Heavy_Armored_Column]
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$PzIVF2
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$PzIVF2
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$PzIVF2
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$PzIVF2
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$DemagFlak
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.cars.Car$SdKfz6
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.cars.Car$SdKfz6
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.tanks.Tank$DemagFlak
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.cars.Car$SdKfz6
com.maddox.il2.objects.vehicles.cars.Car$SdKfz6

If 8 of those 10 vehicles are destroyed the next mission it will have just 2 left. The side commanders send columns, ships, trains, and AI aircraft wherever we want them to go - similar to SEOW. We track where they are, where they are going, and their destruction level. Since its MDF they move there

As I said the MDFs allow for the best of both worlds.

The thing about MDF is it allows for the use of the dedicated server software. It allows players to rejoin a mission if they get disconnected. If a player damages his aircraft OTR he can re-spawn without having to restart the mission etc. You can say "mission starts at 9PM" and launch at 9 even is a few players are late they can get in.

We use many other mods that add to realism. For example, in a stock DF server when you join the server you can see how many players are at each airfield from the main briefing screen. We use a mod that turns those numbers off. We can't see which airfield[s] the enemy is taking off from.

We use another mod that hides the players aircraft type on the player roster. This means folks can't check the roster (default "S" key) and see that there are 10 B-24s up. With these 2 mods we don't know what the enemy is flying or where he is flying from. This is "full fog of war stuff".

I only point this out to dispel the idea that DF means "spawn in, furball, and repeat". If that is the perception then that is not the case.

On to SEOW and MDFs. With the FS mission generator it is slowly being built as FS goes forward. New features are added as the need arises. SEOW is much more detailed and many of the things we plan on including in FS are already apart of SEOW. Its great SEOW is open source - I just wanted to know if anyone has thought about, looked at, or started trying to bridge, SEOW with MDF!

Wotan