Eastern Front Grand Campaign - Worklog

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

EASTERN FRONT WORKLOG

A few of you have expressed interest in this venture, so I would like to officially request some help on this now.

Currently a few of us thought it would be great to explore some of the Eastern Front conflicts during 1941-1945. I have started gathering some data and chose a few different major conflicts to cover.

Info can be found here

Here is what makes sense so far from what I know about this area of the war.

Summer/Fall 1941: ( Battle of Smolensk - Battle of Kiev - Continuation War )
Winter 1941-1942: ( Siege of Leningrad - Battle of Moscow - Battle of Sevastopol)
Spring 1942: ( Second Battle of Kharkov )
Summer 1942: ( Operation Blue )
Winter 1942: ( Battle of Stalingrad )
More to come......


We need mission builders to start working on some ideas for the following:

Battle of Kiev (1941) - TBD with the New IL2 Expansion
Continuation War [Finland] (1941-1944)
Battle of Sevastopol
Operation Blue
More to come....[/b]



Current Working Conflicts:


Smolensk Pocket ( Dr Strangelove )

Battle of Stalingrad ( Nellip )



Also, I am still working on the History portion on the site in order to make it easier to build missions. So far I have completed:

Operation Barbarossa
Battle of Smolensk




Updated 10-16-06

[:FI:TacticalS!]

What's all this talk about having a "Grand Campaign?" Didn't I trademark that thing? Where's my lawyer, you know the same fine folks who represented Grumman a while back against UBISoft/Maddox Games?

OK, I stole that expression from Tailspin over at Lowengrin. But still will I get a royalty?

---

Looks good folks. Love the site. Pretty maps. Good show Strangelove!

TS!

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

Thank you for the praise. The site is of course nowhere near finished, I only had a few hours to play with it this weekend. Right now I just wanted to get the basics in there and work on the details slowly.

Personally, I am getting pretty excited about this because it offers me the opportunity to study some history. If done right, the immersion factor should be pretty high.

[:FI:Heloego]

Shaping up vey nicely!

I noticed mention of it as a "source of valuable information...", but aren't there any "valuable coupons"?

I like valuable coupons.

[:FI:Nellip]

OK - I think I kind of already volunteered for Stalingrad, and I would be happy to take on maybe one or two more sections (time permitting).

If there is sufficient interest from our more experienced mission builders then lets go for it.

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

Sounds like a winner. I know nothing about mission building, but I can learn. I think the order of business would go like this.

1) Figure out What major Operations we are convering as well as the history pertaining them( Working on that now)

2) Determine which major skirmishes of that operation make sense to model.

3) Make missions that are as historically accurate as possible to tie the whole thing together.

4) Recon missions, etc for inbetweeners.


Did I miss anything?

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

Ok I have updated some information in the first post above.

[:FI:Nellip]

OK - done quite a bit of reading and browsing on the Stalingrad campaign and I have pulled this together into one document.

Doc - I will PM the file to you but it is quite large - around 2mb - so if it doesn't appear then let me know.

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

Got the information and will update this weekend.

[:FI:Falcon]

Daktah S,

It'll be good gettin' back to the Steppes!

Will skins be activated?

If so, if anyone wants any FIS or historic skins or a uniform custom mission skin for all, I have fair to good templates for the:

109F/G/K
110
IL2
153
LA5/7
LAGG
Pe-2
P-11
P-40
Spitfire
P-39
P-47
Yak-1b
Yak-9
A-20
and maybe a few others.

If not, I'll still be there if the time is right.

Thanks for the work,


Falcon

[:FI:Dr_Strangelove]

Yes I would love to do some skins for sure.

How does it work exactly, do I need to have them uploaded on the server side in order for them to work?

[:FI:Falcon]

I don't know exactly ... or vaguely ... all the options dr. Ask Tac about everyone having the same skin.

I'll be happy to make a uniform skin with FI squadron numbers and names on an existing design for all participants,

or I can make available to all a blank skin and activate the ID function in the game.

The FIS green design is easy to modify (or create on new a/c) any of my (or anyone's) templates.

Some folk don't like the "FIS green" design and some wish only to use historic skins.

I could take a historic skin and add numbers to it.

Those numbers could be accurate or functional to squadron organization like ... "Blue 2" or ""Red one" etc.

or I could put anyone's FI number on an existing skin.

It would take less than a day to modify 10-15 skins to any of the above.

What WOULD take a while (less than a week) would be to create a new camo design.

I don't know ... do a poll, get a list of any interested members and I could make a uniform custom FI in Russia skin for the principal aircraft used.


Falcan!

[:FI:Nellip]

Falcon

Using FI skins sounds like a great idea.

I posted a request for winter skins for Stalingrad on the skinning forum a few days ago.

At the moment I am planning P39 N1's for the fighter boys and Il2's for the mudmovers - I liked the idea of flying the same types for the duration of the campaign to add a historical feel to it.

I think we already have some FI skins for these two types - I certainly remember a nice bare metal finish P39

Maybe P39 and Il2 skins with squad numbers for those regular Sunday coop'ers?

[:FI:Noter]

This kinda what I was wanting to do with the HE flights. I was hoping there was a way for the server to have a FI skin and then it just load for all the players, but I don't think it works that way.

What ended up happening is I did individual skins for all participants and everyone who was gonna fly had to install each skin for all the players. When everyone follows through it works great (turn markings off), but if someone doesn't download the skins or installs them in the wrong place...it's not good, serious warping.

You could probably do one generic skin and turn markings on for the numbers, but again everyone needs to install that one skin, this just makes it easier on the skinner and doesn't look quite as neat.

I'd be happy to help with some skins I've done or help with adding some numbers and nose art.

Noter

[:FI:Falcon]

Noter,

One of the few things I've never finished to my satisfaction is a good winter skin. If you can do that tricky li'l number that would be great!

If the squadron were to adopt a semi-official paint scheme, we could all work together and make many skins available for many aircraft for all of our co-op/campaign activities.

I know that one thing that has stopped me from enjoying Tac's campaigns is that I still haven't d'l'd his HE skins.

The other reason is that I have other ... umm ... things to do on Fridays.

Metal skins look really cool on many a/c. They are kinna tough to do really well though and some void/matt/models make it even harder. That's one of the reasons I started the FISgreen thing.

If no one is totally discusted about the few finished metal and more FIS green designs I could make, I could start making plans to up my production for other planes.

Also, there are several other skinners who make great FI-type designs that might be good if we incorporate their concepts into a squadron-wide paint scheme.

Again, maybe a poll (or successive polls) asking if:

-you want a "squadron design"
-you want a design contest
-a submission of squadron design ideas
-penguins to rule the Earth
-more than one design for each aircraft (winter/summer/desert/other scheme, etc)
-whatever.



F