Cliffs of Dover offline Tournament, missions available

DOWNLOAD AND PLAY NOW! http://www.box.com/s/mbl65u8uvtoaemgti2ns

Who is the Cliffs of Dover Ace of Aces? Lets find out!

16 (8RAF + 8LW) specially designed offline missions which together form a tournament that you can fly at your own pace and in your own time.

The challenge is three-fold:

- Fly each mission in the tournament at your usual realism settings
- Score as many victories as you can with your pilot
- Keep your wingman alive

The winner is the pilot who completes the 8 missions with the greatest number of victories!

Post your own score on the Tournament page for bragging rights...

Honour Tournament for CoD

Who is the Cliffs of Dover Ace of Aces? Lets find out!

Next weekend I will be uploading ten specially designed offline missions which together form a tournament that you can fly at your own pace and in your own time.

The challenge is two-fold:

- Fly each mission in the tournament at your usual realism settings
- Score as many victories as you can with your pilot

The winner is the pilot who completes the ten missions with the greatest number of victories!



Some missions will include bonus challenges, such as bringing down enemy bombers (scores as 2 victories) or protecting your own bombers (scores as one victory for each bomber that survives).

You will be flying the RAFs finest fighter, a Spitfire IIa, as part of the famous 54 Squadron.

PSEUDO-DYNAMIC(TM) MISSION DIFFICULTY

Missions and enemies increase in difficulty as you progress. You start against fewer, slower, weaker opponents. You finish in all out melees against the Luftwaffe's finest.

You are not flying alone - your wingman 'Fatty' is at your side. Try not to lose him. Losing your wingman is bad karma. He is a tough nut, and if he is shot down he will walk, swim or limp back so that he is with you again for your next mission, but you will lose 1 victory each time he is shot down.


'Fatty', before his first solo flight, last week. Note the flight manual for his Hurricane in his hand...

Your wingman's skill and aggression will increase as you progress. Fatty starts mission 1 as a timid undisciplined Rookie, and ends as an aggressive and disciplined Veteran.



RULES

You can fly each mission only twice: once for practice, and once for real. The best of your two missions can be submitted. If you are shot down in the mission, no victories count. You must move on to the next mission.

You must submit a screenshot of your summary screen to qualify. Remember, sometimes just surviving is a good result, so submit your results as a screenshot and include a short combat report, even if you don't score a victory!

HONOUR IS ALL

Where does the HONOUR come in? It is an offline tournament, so you are the only one who knows if you followed the rules, and we trust that you will. Only two tries per mission. Fly at your usual realism settings. Fess up when you are shot down! Doubt that this concept works? Then it is not for you! I have run several Honour Tournaments for EAW, and BOBII and they have been a great success.

SCORE TALLY

When you report your combat for each mission here on SimHQ CoD forum, your tally on the CoD Honour Roll will be updated over at BoB Game Hub. Feel free to drop in there any time and see who is the CoD Ace of Aces!

WHAT CAN I DO UNTIL THE TOURNAMENT MISSIONS ARE UPLOADED?

- Get some stick time in a Spit IIa
- Learn how to add 'kill marks' to your skin...previous tournament participants have had fun doing this
- If you don't already know, learn how to take a screen dump of the Single Mission Summary Screen. The easiest way, without installing any new software, is to press 'Prnt Screen', go to Windows Accessories, open Windows Paint, paste and save.
- You can upload the file to any photo sharing site. If you don't already use one, I recommend Photobucket.com
- If you can't work out how to upload a photo, you can PM me and I will send you an email address you can email your screen dump to.




Of course if you just want to play the missions and post your end result, feel free...

BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO INSTALL CUSTOM MISSIONS!

The tournament download will include a self-installer. Just point it at the CoD Folder on your hard drive and it will do the rest for you. The missions will appear in your Single Missions menu. If you get stuck, someone here will talk you through it.

WANT TO JOIN IN?

Just indicate your interest below...ask any questions, start psyching out your opposition with tales of your aerial derring-do or plain old fashioned trash-talk. I hereby declare the tournament...OPEN

Go to SimHQ to register 

Mission of the week 20 November: Wick's Big Day Out, Part 1

Download here: http://www.box.com/s/xkz1qo9a9gqn8371y48t

Helmut Wick was arguably the greatest fighter ace of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. In 7 months he went from a trainee under Werner Molders, to the leading ace of the Luftwaffe with 56 victories to his name.

In this recreation of his first sortie on October 5 1940, you can fly as Wick (or against him) on the mission where he scored 3 victories. The mission features a fantastic skin by Shado.

In this mission the player can fly as Wick, or against, him. Or you can fly for any of the other historically correct units in the mission, including RAF 238 and 607 Sq, and Ju88 gruppe KG54. (Just click 'custom' at the first menu screen to choose your aircraft and unit.)

Update from CoD devs 14 Nov 2011

Hi everyone,

Quick status update.

We are aware of the issues many of you are having. We are monitoring the forums, and we are checking the crash dumps you are sending, for which we are especially grateful.

The crashes are caused by an old graphics bug that’s been in the game all year. Since we are in the process of seriously overhauling graphics, we cannot release a quick fix. The bug simply doesn’t exist in the current version of the graphics at all. It got thrown out with a lot of other bad code, but the overall feature isn’t ready for the world quite yet.

We’re also improving the sound quite a bit, doing exciting things with aircraft, and generally progressing along the same fronts I’ve listed in my older updates.

These are all major features so they take time. We only have a tentative ETA at this point, but considering this forum’s special relationship with the word “tentative” I’m not going to say what it is. It’s not this Friday or the next – take that as you will. We’ll keep you updated as we get closer.

Luthier

Ramming Speed video

A quick video based on the RT Holmes mission...

How crazy would you have to have been to do what that man did?

Mission #7 - Arty Holmes - Ramming Speed!

So, you think you're hard?

Hard enough to bring down a German bomber with jammed guns? This mission lets you find out!

On September 15, 1940, Sergeant Ray 'Arty' Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a damaged Dornier Do17 bomber of KG 76 apparently making an bombing attempt on central London. 

Avoiding the bomber's return fire, Holmes made a head-on attack on the Dornier, however upon firing discovered his machine guns failed. Holmes decided to ram the bomber hoping his plane could withstand the impact and cut through it. He cut the tail off the bomber with his wing, causing the bomber to crash near Victoria tube station. His Hurricane was badly damaged, crashing near the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Holmes bailed out injured.

See a video of the mission here:

Can you replicate his feat, and live to tell the tale?

Download here: http://www.box.net/s/gfp4toapu1zuikzcvd2n

BoB Game Hub CoD Mission 6: Bader's Big Wing

Bader's Big Wing

Download HERE: http://www.box.net/shared/yiidfc5jqk3uzuc45015

Bitter was the rivalry between RAF 12 Group Commander Leigh Mallory, and 11 Group Commander Keith Park. Not least because Leigh Mallory was a strong supporter of the Big Wing theory of 242 Sq CO Douglas Bader, who advocated hitting the enemy en force, with massed fighters, while Park preferred the quicker and more efficient tactic of harrying the enemy constantly with smaller units. On 7 September Bader made his first Big Wing attack and took so long forming up, he effectively failed to engage the enemy. Park was enraged.

On 11 September Bader got his second chance, when his Big Wing comprising squadrons 19, 242 and 310 (Cz) met a heavy Luftwaffe raid over London. This time the Wing had formed up in time, and met the raid in strength, claiming 20 victories for the loss of 5 Hurricanes and 2 pilots.

Distinguished RAF historian Tom Gleave concluded about the Big Wing attacks, "of 32 Big Wings launched by 12 Group, only seven met the enemy, and only once did a Big Wing arrive first."

Can you make an impact in Bader's Big Wing?


(Features as flyables Hurricane, Spitfire, Bf110C, Bf109e4, Ju88.)

Big Wing forming up with 19, 242 and 310 Squadrons





Bader meets Luftwaffe raid over central London



Big Ben under attack



(*Note: this mission uses squadron strength unit sizes and is GPU intensive. The player can customise the number of aircraft to suit their machine specs.)

Cliffs of Dover full mission builder for DUMMIES

In creating the BoB Game Hub weekly missions for Cliffs of Dover I tried to find a simple guide to the FMB but never really found one which was super basic. Even the most basic seemed to assume I knew stuff from IL2, like how to 'deselect' a flight after selecting it. Nothing is intuitive in the FMB! But I have now learned a thing or two which other novice mission builders may also benefit from. So here is Heinkill's Full Mission Builder for Dummies.

INTRO

The full mission builder (FMB) is found in the EXTRAS menu.

Want to create a 1 vs 1 mission for a Beaufighter vs a Bf110? 8 Ju88s vs a Sunderland? Ground attack on a Luftwaffe airfield in Belgium? You can, using the FMB.

CREATING A NEW MISSION

It is easiest to create a new mission from an existing mission - such as those that are in the existing Single Missions menu, or, by creating your own missions in the Quick Mission Builder, then saving and adjusting those. If you do this, you can avoid a lot of the work to set up all the waypoints, altitudes, airspeeds, skill levels etc etc as many of these will already have been created.

I will explain both processes then outline some FMB basic commands.

A. Modify an existing single mission

This is easiest, just open the FMB (EXTRAS menu) and choose FILE>LOAD MISSION and you will see a list of the missions that are in the Single Missions menu and folder. Load one of these that is close in design to the type of mission you want to create, and start modifying it! (See example mission below)

B. Create a quick mission and then make it accessible to the FMB

This requires a little more manual intervention but gives more flexibility.

1. Choose a Quick Mission type that fits the mission type you want to create (eg dogfight, ground attack, bomber intercept etc)
2. Adjust the parameters to the extent possible in the QMB (aircraft type, altitude etc) and 'save as' a new mission. It will appear at the bottom of your Quick Mission list.
3. Go to the folder: 1CSoftclub>IL2CliffsofDover>Mission>Quick and COPY the mission and briefing files for the mission you have just created (note this folder is 'mission', not 'missions')
4. PASTE these files into the folder 1CSoftclub>IL2CliffsofDover>Missions>Single (note, this folder is mission's' with an 's'. Confusing, I know).


You can then start the FMB and you should find your newly created quick mission in the list of missions available for you to open and modify.

The few Commands You Need to create or edit a mission

Pan around the map with mouse: left click and hold

Zoom in and out: mouse wheel

Selecting an object or flight: Point and left click

Editing an existing flight or object: Select and right click, then click Properties

Delete an object: Left click to select, and hit DELETE

Unselect a flight or object: right click when selected, and choose Unselect. Or just hit Ctrl+Alt

Add a new flight or object: Ctrl and left click. This gives you a circle that you can either change to an object via Properties, or turn into a flight with waypoints by pointing at another part of the map and repeating Ctrl and left click.

Moving an object or waypoint: Left click, hold and move

Changing object type and properties: Select a flight or object, right click and choose Properties. Now you can change the object or aircraft type, the side (axis or allies), waypoint actions and altitudes, formation type and size, squadron etc.

Setting time of day and weather: You can't set time of day in the Quick mission builder, so don't try. And you can't set weather. To do this go to the FMB main menu bar, choose VIEW>MISSION PARAMETERS and then you can change weather, time of day and cloud altitude.

Writing mission briefings: Go to main menu and choose EDIT>BRIEFINGS. Here you can write the briefings for each unit in the mission, and add the screenshot which will be shown on the briefing screens.

EXAMPLE 'MISSION FOR DUMMIES' FROM QUICK MISSION BUILDER TO FMB

Scenario: You want to create a mission where a squadron of Beaufighters and a squadron of  Hurricanes attack a squadron of Bf109s and a squadron of Bf110s. Over France. At 9pm in the evening.

1. Choose the Dogfight Even quick mission
2. Change the aircraft to Hurricane vs Bf109
3. Save as 'Mymission'
Alt+TAB out. Go to file explorer, navigate to 1CSoftclub>IL2CliffsofDover>Mission>Quick and COPY all the files which start with 'Mymission'. PASTE the files to 1CSoftclub> IL2CliffsofDover >Missions >Single. Now the 'MyMission' files should be visible to the FMB.

4. Alt+TAB back into the game. Go out of the quick mission builder  and go to the main menu>EXTRAS>FULL MISSION BUILDER
5. Go to FILE>LOAD MISSION
6. Open the file 'My Mission'
The map should show a red flight and a blue flight, over the Channel
7. Left click on a red flight waypoint, hold and move the waypoint over France. Do the same for the other waypoints to put the flight where you want it to be.
8. Crt+Alt to deselect the flight
9. Click on the blue flight waypoint and move it so that the flights will intercept each other ie overlap some of the waypoints.
10. Right click and choose PROPERTIES for either flight if you want to adjust waypoint height, flight speed, altitude etc
Now you need to add your other two flights to the mission
11. Hold Ctrl and Left click where you want the flight to start. If it is a Red (RAF) flight, put it next to the start waypoint for the other Red flight.
12. Hold Ctrl and Left click for the next waypoint (suggest putting this near the other Red flight waypoints). Repeat to create all the waypoints for this flight.
13. Right click and select PROPERTIES. On the TYPE Tab choose Beaufighter.
14. On the GROUP tab choose the number of aircraft in the squadron
15. On the WAYPOINTS tab, choose 'Engage Fighters' for each of the waypoints.
16. On the #tabs (representing each aircraft) choose the pilot skill. I never choose Ace because the Ace AI is, in my opinion, broken. Veteran is fine.
17. When you are finished adjusting the Red flights, Ctrl+Alt to deselect
18. Repeat from step 11 to add a Blue (Bf110) flight. You change the flight from Red to Blue and choose the country etc in the GROUP TAB
19. Go to VIEW>MISSION PARAMETERS and set the time to 9pm (21:00 hrs). Save the mission
20. Go to FILE>SAVE to save and then FILE>FLY to fly the mission.