To add to the discussion - I noticed that the floppy version (1.4) when updated with TO will show the version 2.1 in the menu (if run from sc.exe) and 1.1 (if run from scto1.exe) while in flight will display 2.3. (with both executables).

Great patch guys ! For the record, I'm using macOS and had to adapt your script. After installing Powershell through Homebrew (brew cask install powershell) I had a nasty error using your script : Cannot bind parameter 'Encoding'. Cannot convert the "byte" value of type "System.String" to type "System.Text.Encoding".

It's a pretty new error that appeared in Powershell Core (the opensource version). I had to replace -Encoding Byte with -AsByteStream in both the Get-Content and the Set-Content command.
I got the solution here : https://github.com/DTW-DanWard/PowerShell-Beautifier/issues/33

That's good to hear. The Mac version just runs the original DOS version of the game in DOSBox, though, right? If so, Mac users would find it a lot easier to just download the pre-patched Strike.exe that I linked to. That saves having to install PowerShell.

Oh I missed that link ! Thanks for the tip. It is the exat same version indeed.

No problem. I just wanted to point it out so that more Mac users don't unnecessarily go to the hassle of installing PowerShell just to apply this patch. In fact, that's part of the reason that I uploaded it, since there are probably more versions of DOSBox-compatible OSes that don't come with PowerShell than do.

Just an update how I currently play the campaign:

Changing Hex offset 0xDDD0 , 0xDE01, 0xDE06
01 -> FF
02 -> FF
03 -> FF

This almost completely removes the initial reaction to missiles from the AI, maybe it is too easy.

Playing on cycles max and dynamic core for maximum frame rate.
Even if missiles hit the damage and hit detection sometimes do not guarantee a kill like on lower cycles , so I can live with that, also wingmen still seem to evade properly (testing by shooting them :D )

I think I have to lay this to rest, If anybody wants a very confusing IDA file (5.0 free) you can contact me here.

Do you think that those extra changes are useful enough to update the patched executable that I uploaded based on your earlier edits?

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/922-strike-commander-cd-missile-fix/

You said that it's maybe too easy now. Are you afraid that it might be easier than the game was meant to be (in which case, maybe we don't want to replace the older version with it)?

It feels kind of balanced , let me explain: low cycles (around 10000), most planes the likes of an FA18 in game will be killed with a single missile hit (AIM-9M) almost every time (some other planes like the A10 takes more than one hit most of the time), but with higher cycles (50000+ and who knows where I land on dynamic core with auto), a single hit seems to increase the probability to only damage but not kill the target, even with AIM-120s.

When testing against FA18 in dogfight mode attacking 2 separate targets head on damaged both/sometimes killed one on high cycles, but almost guaranteed killed them almost every time on low cycles, that is against novice without any counter measures, and in the campaign they will still sometimes evade , but not instantly if at all.
In the normal floppy version the AI was 99% dead if fired upon with an AIM120, here it could often only damage them sometimes, so some aspects are easier , some more fun.

Try these changes in campaign, make saves and play the missions again alternating between patches, focus on dogfight heavy mission and play it some times with each patch to get a feel if its better and worth uploading, I can only decide for myself that it feels like a better "game" this way.

In addition to the fix by Harr-Nuta and jnisbet (thx guys, youre the best!), I found out, that playing the game with 19K cycles tends to result in the best experience. Not to slow, but the enemy is´nt always expecting your maneuvers and my AIM 9-M tends to hit relativ regularly, even against 3. Gen Fighters. I play with Veteran - Enemies.

With the default 25K - Cycles, even Mig 21 and Mirages tend to turn ridicilously quick and are much harder to hit than I remembered from the days of yore. (But to be fair, that may be my slower reflexes, being an old man now and all.) Nonetheless, I find the game with 19K much more fun, and the kill ratio more like I remembered them.

Hello to all, if anybody still reads this.

My story is rather odd and off-topic, if someone wants to read it though, and maybe also reply , I would be thankful.

I found this thread because I was searching for something different. I was wondering if there is a way to decompile and recompile the .tre files because I would like to lower the volume of the passing-by-jet-engine sounds, but only those sounds, all the other sounds should stay as they are.
I haven't found a way to do that yet, although I saw some posts in another forum about a tool that was designed to work with the .tre files from Wing Ciommander Privateer, but I have not tried that yet.

I did not know that there was an issue with the drop rate of enemy planes counter measure. When I played Strike Commander back then, I played the CD-version with Tactical Operations, both campaigns, on a 486-DX4-100, with unlimted gun ammo and easy enmies. I did not use Air-to-Air Missiles that much, I nearly killed all planes with the gun. Maybe I did that because the game was running to smooth on that 100-MHz-PC and the enemies dropped to much flares.

I reinstalled my still-working CD from back then and played it in Dosbox, and yes, the enemies drop too much flares to get reliable missile hits.
I tried to reduce the cycles to 19000, the game is still playbale but not so smooth, and I think the drop rate of flares is better.
And I tried to set the core to normal, leaving cycles at 50000, did a gauntlet run and the second or third enemy immediately dropped 2-2-1 flares in a short burst, maybe that was because of his skill, did not test that further yet.


Now to the really off-topic...

I played B-17 Flying Fortress, the Version from 1993, on the Amiga 500 and on the PC, not B17- Flying Fortress the Mighty Eight from 2000.

When I play that game in Dosbox with enough cycles to have smooth framerates, I noticed something.
The gun Turrets and the enemy fighters do have increased rate of fire, I guess that's because the game was coded to have firerates dependent on framerate, maybe in a similar way to the countermeasure drop rate in the CD-version from Strike Commander.

That makes enemy fighters way more deadly, but that is not the only thing.
There seems to be a limited number of bullets the player can spawn with the gun turrets, I do a little hobby coding myself, but its very basic, so I guess there is a pool of a certain size for gun turret bullets, and if that pool is full, no more bullets spawn, even if the player keeps firing and the firing animation of the turret keeps playing. If the bullets expire or hit something, new bullets can be spawned if the player is still firing.
That results in the turrets only to be able to shoot a very short burst and a long waiting time until the next burst can be shot. That makes it very difficult to shoot down enemy fighters when running with high cycles and smooth framerates.
And the Norden-Bombsight seems to have problems to light up the Drop-Bombs-Light at high altitudes, and the AI-gunners do miss enemy fighters nearly all the time.

If I reduce the cycles and the framerates become so choppy like on the Amiga 500, maybe 6-14 FPS or so, then the firerates and all the other things function very much the way they should do. But aiming gun turrets at such a low framerate is not so pleasant. Although I do shoot down way more enemy fighters with low framerates. Since the turrets shoot only one bullet per frame, the bullet-pool never gets full and I always can shoot.

Now that I red about the fixes for the strike.exe, I was wondering if someone knows a way to edit files from B-17.
Maybe in a way to reduce firerates but keep hight framerate gameplay.
Or maybe in a way to increase the size of the pool for turret-bullets and there to be able to fire continously at high framerates.

Thank you very much.

I think I used that tool when I checked out if any of the data files would have a hint regarding the missiles, and if I remember correctly , you do NOT recompile the tre file but can put the extracted DATA directory beside the strike commander installation directory.

https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/wing-commander-toolbox.27769/

Priv1ToolsCmd.exe untree bigtre.tre

should unpack the files into the directory, remove the =bigtre.tre entry from SC.CFG file , then the data will be read from the extracted directory.
Missile launch , flyby and gear digital sounds are stored in

DATA/SOUND/DSOUNDFX.PAK

But it seems not to be a priv1 stzle PAK file and the tools fail , unsure what format is used , if anyone could help with that we could edit the VOC files and repack them....

EDIT: Hmm , seem to misremember some things , have to check how to use the extracted files again , .... otherwise repacking the tre files should work at least

You may have to mount sc.dat (its the CDROM image file) in the gog installation directory to get the bigtre.tre file , I think it is not installed by default

Hey Harr-Nuta, thank you very much for the info. I will try, if I can achieve something with that.
Awesome, that you responded. I thought this thread was so old that nobody would read it anymore.

Hey , no problem , occasionally I revisit tinkering with strike commander....
Also I sourced the DSOUNDFX.PAK from the disk version of tactical operations and tried to replace it by adding a custom tre file, unfortunately that also did not work as the order of the samples seem different and it would play a flyby sound on explosions :D and still the loud sound on flyby :(

If gog would ever release the disk version your problem would be gone , because it uses a very soft fly by sample and has less/almost none of the missile problems I tried to solve....

Thank you for the info. I managed to get the disk vervion, all works fine, missiles work better, enemies don't drop too much countermeasure, flyby sound is soft. So far so good.
However, the cutscenes have no voice audio, only subtitles. As far as I know, the CD version has the VOCLIST.TRE and TOVOCLST.TRE files for that. Those files are mentioned in the SC1.CFG and SC2.CFG files.
I tried to copy the voclist files to the install folder of the disk version and added the =voclist.tre entries to the according cfg files of the disk version, still there are only subtitles.
So I guess the disk version is just not coded to support voice audio in the cutscenes and to handle the voclist files.
Or is there maybe a way to import cutscene voice audio into the floppy version?