CC Mission Builder

Raid on Tarawa - Page 5

Well how did you do? Were you able to avoid the flak and successfully complete the mission? Did you notice that the torpedo boat we placed there was firing at you as well? Did you succeed or were you shot down over and over again? Here’s a little tip. Before test flying a new mission that you’ve written go into ‘Settings’ and look under the realism settings. Change the player’s plane to ‘Invincible’. I would never play the game at this level but for testing missions it is very helpful. Even if you’re an Ace you run the risk of a lucky flak shot or an accidental collision. It can get very frustrating to keep getting shot down before you can fully test the mission. Switching to invincible will solve that for you.

Did you notice the radio chatter? As in our first mission, Beginners Luck, the game automatically adds a number of extras, such as canned radio traffic, to the missions. It adds a little realism and keeps us from having to plug it in each time.

You’ll probably need to do some tweaking, especially around waypoint #4. It’s a little tricky to get just the right balance between the B-25, the Zeros and you. You want to arrive at the B-25’s location at the same time or just slightly ahead of the Zeros. If they get there first it’s very easy for them to shoot down the B-25 because of the damage it has already suffered. If they do that you can’t successfully complete all of the mission goals. Remember that the B-25 is flying away from you and toward the Zeros. The distances shown in this illustration are approximate but are one combination that seems to work. Work with it and adjust it until the mission flies the way you want it to.

OK, let’s finish up by plugging in the narrative information. Click on the ‘Mission setup’ button. In the briefing ‘Overview’ window type in the following: You will lead a flight of Wildcats on a bombing raid against the Japanese airbase on Tarawa. Your mission is to destroy the Betty bombers parked there and return safely to your base.

Under ‘Background’ type in: The Japanese bomber missions launched from Tarawa have been wreaking havoc on our airbases and convoys. If you can destroy the Bettys based there it will buy valuable time for our troops.

Your ‘Intelligence’ information will be: The Japanese have followed a steady pattern with their bombing raids. Based on this routine, G2 estimates that today’s raid stands an excellent chance of catching their entire bomber fleet on the ground.

Remember, when you write these narratives you’re not writing them for yourself. Write them as though they were going to be read by someone who knows nothing about the mission. This is especially important for missions you plan to upload to the Internet or swap with friends. Your narrative should make sense, help build the story line, and be grammatically correct.
There is no spell check in CFS2 so be careful!

The default date of June 1, 1943 is fine. The U.S. Marines didn’t land on Tarawa until November 20th of that year so any date prior to that is fine. (Although it really doesn’t matter. I have made no attempt to be historically accurate in this mission. This is after all a tutorial, not a history lesson.) Set the time for 09:00. We’ll strike in the morning and have all day to get home. You can set the weather at anything you’d like. Remember though, more clouds means decreased performance.

That’s it! We’re done and you’ve now written another successful mission!

Tips and Thoughts

Raid on Tarawa is more complex than Beginner’s Luck but the basic concept and principles remain the same. We merely added some additional features and more complex triggers and events. I hope you’re learning that Mission Builder is a powerful tool that gives you a wide range of options in designing your missions. Here are some thoughts and tips regarding Raid on Tarawa.

Mission Too Hard:

eliminate some or all of the antiaircraft guns
reduce the number of Bettys from 4 to 2, or
move a couple of the Bettys onto the runway where they are easier to hit
reduce the skill level of the Zeros to ‘Rookie’

Mission Too Easy:

add more antiaircraft guns
spawn more Zeros - spawn flights of 6 instead of flights of 2
add another waypoint with more enemy fighters
raise the skill level of the Zeros to ‘Ace’

You can also do any number of other modifications to the mission to suit your tastes. For example, you can replace the ‘infrastructure’ torpedo boat with a moving one and lay out waypoints so that the torpedo boat circles the island while you are bombing. This will give you antiaircraft fire that is constantly moving.

If you’d prefer to bomb a convoy instead of ground based targets simply eliminate Tarawa all together. Make your second and third waypoints out in the open ocean. Instead of Bettys place Japanese ships sailing in formation. You can still spawn a flight of Zeros, just have them take off from a carrier instead of the island. In other words, design your missions any way that you want as long as it’s fun for you. Use your imagination and be creative.

Troubleshooting Raid on Tarawa

You have three warps in this mission. The first one is automatic and should cause you no trouble as long as you checked the ‘Warp to’ box for the second waypoint. If you have trouble warping it will probably be at the other two locations.

First, be sure that you checked ‘Warp to’ on waypoints 2 & 4. That is the easiest fix. If that is OK then the problem lies with your triggers and events. Go back over the section on triggers step by step. Warp is disabled automatically when we reach waypoint #2 because the Zeros spawned. We keep it disabled by creating the trigger/event combination that disables warp as long as we are inside of the Target Area. We MUST turn warp back on when we leave the Target Area for it to work again.

If you arrive at waypoint #4 and immediately get the blue “Press ‘X’… “ message then you didn’t follow the earlier instructions regarding disabling warp. Warp will be disabled when you reach waypoint #4 because of the earlier event disabling it when you entered the Target Area and the appearance of the second flight of Zeros.

If everything goes well except you can’t warp to the finish then the problem lies with the triggers/events. Review that section again. Remember that we must create an event to turn warp on at waypoint #4 that includes both the fact that the Zeros are destroyed and that we are outside of the Target Area.

Make sure you selected the repeat/recalculate feature on the enabling warp event at waypoint #4. To work properly the event enabling warp at waypoint #4 MUST be set to ‘Repeat when action(s) true’. The recalculate time for the enabling event could be anything, but setting it at one second will enable warp immediately after destroying the last Zero.

If all else fails, in this or any other mission with lots of things happening, you can always delete all of the triggers and events (you must delete the event first) then start over. It’s not as hard as it sounds, especially if you’ve thought out your mission thoroughly or if you’ve made notes on what you want to have happen. This is good to remember because if you have a big mission with lots of infrastructure, planes, ships and waypoints you don’t have to rewrite the whole thing. Just delete the triggers/events and try again.

You may find after warping from waypoint #4 that instead of approaching your base and ending the mission you are over empty ocean with the blue “Press ‘X’…” message and an indication that your engine is sputtering. That happens because you are out of fuel. You need to do one of three things, fly unlimited fuel (not very realistic), move waypoint #4 closer to Ocean Island, or be more conservative on your fuel usage.

You will probably notice that your wingmen are very ineffective when it comes to bombing the Bettys. As soon as they see the Zeros they get distracted and forget all about bombing. In my experience this seems to be a bug with them. I can successfully design bombing missions where the AI bombers hit their targets but I can’t seem to get my wingmen to do the same. Even using settings of Ace and high aggressiveness with no enemy planes around they still want to fly over without bombing. I haven’t tried every combination of planes, targets and realism, but I haven’t found one that works yet either.

So, use their behavior to your advantage when flying the mission. As you approach Tarawa order your wingmen to attack. They will go after the Zeros freeing you up to hit the Bettys. With luck they will destroy one or both of the Zeros for you. If they shoot them both down, order them to rejoin you. Even if they don’t drop their bombs on the Bettys they will draw off some of the antiaircraft fire. You definitely want to order them to attack when you reach the B-25 as you need all the help you can get keeping the Zeros off the back of the bomber.

Summary

By now you should be feeling more comfortable with Mission Builder. While Raid on Tarawa is a little more complex than Beginner’s Luck I hope you didn’t find it difficult. The more comfortable you become with using triggers and events the more creative and challenging your missions will be. Experiment and be creative. Remember that you’re doing this for enjoyment so have fun and don’t get frustrated.

In Part Three we’ll design a shoot-em-up. You know the kind of mission I mean, you fly your Corsair against the entire Imperial Japanese Air Force. Well, ours won’t be quite that bad but there will be lots of planes, lots of action and lots of choices for you to make plus multiple ways to end the mission.