norman99

As I've said in my previous posts, my examples haven't included testing with different aircraft, only the hornet. Because of this, I'll hold off sharing my files untill I can complete this, otherwise you may just end up with a deck full of smoking tomcats haha. Also, what we really need to take this to the next level, is the ability to dynamic change or reload the USS_Nimitz_RunwaysAndRoutes.lua whilst within a mission. That way you could set up your spawn/CAT/parking positions depending on your current needs. Hopefully someone much smarter than I am can figure that one out.

Pretty realistic if that's the case. Whilst technically feasible if the aircraft hast been moved since shutdown, the chances of getting into a jet that hasn't are probably very low, given almost all aircraft would be re-spotted by ground crew after recovery or prior to launch.

I saw those descriptions in the NATOPS manual as well. What it dosen't explain clearly, is whether the OFF/NIGHT/DAY switch of the DDI controls power to the display generators as well as the DDI screens. If so, than your examples above shout be correct. If the switches simply control the DDIs only, and the display generators are always powered, then they shouldn't affect HUD and MPCD operation. Either way, the current implementation is incorrect re the MPCD as it's currently controlled by the right DDI, not the left.

Hi, I'm not sure if this is correct or not. It seems the right DDI's OFF/NIGHT/DAY switch also controls power to the HUD and MPCD. Not really noticeable on startup, as most people switch the DDIs on first, but it's noticeable on shutdown if the same order is used. I've searched through as many documents as I could find DCS, NATOPS etc, but I can find no mention of HUD and MPCD electrical power coming via the right DDI, and requiring it powered on first. In the video below, the left engine is already shutdown. As you can see, switching the right DDI off also affects the HUD and MPCD. Their own individual switches still work correctly, but they require the right DDI to be powered on to function.

Can anyone confirm whether INS drift is currently modeled when GPS is unavailable? I see alot of conflicting opinions on this, so something more official would be appreciated. Also, will ground radar waypoint updating be implemented in the future?

Brilliant! Thanks so much for the tip, just what I needed!

Thanks, I’ll do it this way for the time being. Cheers.

You can disable MSI from the radar DATA submenu. It'll remove the Link 16 contributions, among other things. True, but I’d also have to disable MSI data on the SA page as well, and possibly other locations too. In the end, the UFC D/L on-off function should work, and currently it doesn’t.

Thanks Jack. That satisfies my curiosity perfectly.

That’s what I would have thought too. The reason this really bugs me is I’m trying to improve my radar proficiency, hence I often turn the D/L off. Unfortunately, I’d still like to keep the TCN on, so I can return to the boat easily among other things.

For those of you who would like to look into changing spawn/recovery parking positions and taxi routes, the following will help. 1. Open Model Viewer 2 2. Select Carrier Plugin UI 3. Load carrier from DCS World\CoreMods\tech\USS_Nimitz\Shapes folder. Choose any one of the LOD_0 models. 4. Load routes from DCS World\CoreMods\tech\USS_Nimitz\scripts\USS_Nimitz_RunwaysAndRoutes.lua 5. Select opt down view. 6. Select camera mode to ortho. The taxi route and spawn locations are now visible, and coordinates shown at the cursor position. This helps when entering modified figures in the LUA file. The aircraft menu in the carrier plugin can also be opened, and sliders used to viable move aircraft through their taxi route. Only departure works in this fashion however. Lastly, as mentioned above, the format seems to be (x, y, z, speed). Speed is just figure, 1 being slowest, 5 fast etc. I'm not sure the max speed. Also, a negative speed value will reverse the aircraft on that specific leg. The initial spawn heading and final parking heading is derived from the direction of the first and last taxi rout respectively. The biggest benefit i see from this is removing recovering aircraft parking positions from rear of the island, so as not to foul the deck of landing aircraft. Secondly, ensuring spawned aircraft forward of the island only use the bow cats, and rear of the island the waist cats. This means statics such as E2s and helos can be placed in their correct positions around the island, and they won't interfere with AI movements. Hope that helps.

"Seems a bit wonky" is absolutely right. The NATOPS flight manual makes no mention of a descent target of ~6,000ft for TACANs. The only thing it does mention is if it is unable to calculate a descent, invalid Xs are displayed. Hopefully ED can have another look at this. Cheers

Is this feature considered working? I don't seem to ever get a number that makes any sense. In this screenshot, I'm at 7,500ft, at 38nm, and it shows my TOD at 2nm. shouldn't it be in somewhere around 7-8nm?

I've posted this in the bugs section, yet it may simply be user error. I cannot get the datalink to remain off. It seems it is activated by the UFC TCN control, not the D/L button. Please see the video below for an example. In the video, both TCN and D/L start off, and no data link aircraft are shown on the SA page. When the TCN is switched on, D/L aircraft become visible on the SA page, even though D/L remain off. I hope this help. Cheers.

I was reading through the NATOPS Flight Manual, and came across the following statement: WARNING Use of catapult 4 is restricted with certain stores loaded on station 2. Refer to applicable launch bulletin. This made me curious. Does anyone know the details of any restrictions, and why they exist?

Hi guys, I’ve a question regarding planned updates to the Supercarrier in 2021. Two areas that are in need of attention are the ATC comms and AI behaviour/interaction with user aircraft. I’m interested to know whether we will see any improvements this year. In the official Jan 8 updates, the following was stated: “Air Traffic Control (ATC) Over the past year, our primary ATC focus has been on the Supercarrier. Now that the Supercarrier ATC system is nearing completion, we will next move on to airfield ATC radio communications....” Does this mean we will receive an update to the Supercarrier ATC soon (ie 2021)? Will it be implemented prior to the airfield ATC improvements, which are obviously still a long way off? The following was also stated: Enhanced AI Behaviour ...Additionally, the new ATC and radio communications will demand a significant amount of AI engineering. This work is ongoing and will probably never really be finished but we do hope to deliver substantial enhancements during the latter half of 2021.... Current AI behaviour airborne around the boat is generally good when only AI are present. Unfortunately they seem to have absolutely no awareness of player/client aircraft, and hence it can quickly become a bit of a mess when a combination of both are present. As ED have frequently stated, single player ops is by far the most common in DCS (though definitely not the most vocal), and therefore AI interaction with player aircraft is most important. Can we expect an improvement in AI awareness around the Supercarrier this year as the above statement suggests? Lastly, since the release of Supercarrier last year, and the initial updates that quickly followed, attention on this module seems to have largely disappeared. The current impression is it’s now sitting in the corner unfinished, collecting dust. From a commercial standpoint, it would seem ED have most likely backed themselves into a corner here. Most people who were/are interested in this module have already bought it, so future sales numbers just aren’t that high any more. Also, any further improvements from here on are complex and time consuming. The result is simply a very low return on any future product investment. Unfortunately this leaves us, the customers, out in the cold, having paid for a half finished module that no longer attracts the development attention needed to complete it. I realise ED have a huge amount on their plate at the moment, and the Supercarrier is just one small part of that, but releasing an update sometime in the near to mid future, would go a long way to reassure your customers that this module is still alive and improving.

Generally, AI aircraft sequence them self quite well around the Supercarrier. The big issue I have is the time interval between recoveries of different flights. Currently aircraft within the same flight break correctly from the overhead, creating a landing interval of about 45 sec, which is perfectly manageable. The issue is the following flight currently checks for the entire preceding flight to have landed, before it will leave the marshall stack, and commence its maneuvering towards initial. This creates a gap of a 2-3min between recoveries of different flights. May I suggest that each time a flight reaches the 9 o'clock position and checks the status of the preceding flight (this seems to be the current position of the check, and is correct), that the trigger to commence be changed to the preceding flight passing the initial point, rather than landing. This would greatly improve recovery flow and be much more realistic. The video below shows the current situation, with each flight in the marshall stack effectively flying an additional, unnecessary orbit of the stack. Also, if you compare the position of lead marshall stack flight as it passes the 9 o'clock position, and the flight currently in the landing pattern, you can see a trigger point of the 'initial point' would work extremely well. The subsequent flight would basically be overhead the carrier entering the break, as the last aircraft of the previous flight is abeam the boat on downwind. I know a lot of work is apparently going on behind the scenes, both on the Supercarrier, and on ATC in general, but these do seem along way off. A small change like this would be a great short term fix/improvement until a more complete carrier/ATC update arrives. Cheers, thanks for considering.

Thought I'd create a new thread on modifying the USS_Nimitz_RunwaysAndRoutes.lua file, so as to not disrupt this discussion, and the great work with done by Redkite and others. Find it here. Creating custom CAT selection, taxi routes, spawn & parking locations.

I thought I'd make a new thread to carry on from the discussion at the end of this thread. As mentioned previously, I spent most of the day playing around with the USS_Nimitz_RunwaysAndRoutes.lua file, and produced the flowing test example. 19 aircraft launches using cats 2,3 & 4 only. 16 Custom spawn positions, all with custom taxi paths so as to not interfere with each other and the many static aircraft present. So far I've only tested with the F/A-18. Tomcat will take some extra work as it has some crash issues. Also, there's nothing stopping all the remaining static objects everywhere except the bow to be changed to spawn points. You could literally create a 30-35 aircraft launch sequence. I also managed to create a recovery test scenario. In the video below, I have 20 hornets recovering, and parking firstly on the bow, then between the forward elevators, and finally on the "street". This was made as a proof of concept, rather than as a polished, finished product, so some taxi routes and parking positions could be tweaked to work a little better. Also one of my "street" parking positions is skipped, hence the last aircraft disappears on landing. Again, I haven't tested the Tomcat yet either. Now, in a perfect world, it would be possible to create a number of different USS_Nimitz_RunwaysAndRoutes.lua files, for use with with different scenarios (launching on CAT 1 vs CAT 2 etc..), and the appropriate file called as needed with a trigger. Combined with something like the MOOSE AirBoss script and RedKite's dynamic static aircraft & objects, a truly dynamic carrier deck is possible, that would represent cyclic ops better than anything thus far. Unfortunately it seems this particular file is only read once on starting DCS, so at this time any changes made apply to the entire session. Regardless, it's nice to have some development in this area, even if it is rather cumbersome & time consuming.

Great mod guys, absolutely fantastic! Is there any reason I can only add single ship flights to my missions? I use this model as a sub for the A-6E, and would like to include 2 & 4 ship flights. Is there anyway I can do this?

I spent most of the day playing around with the lau file, and produced the flowing test example. 19 aircraft launches using cats 2,3 & 4 only. 16 Custom spawn positions, all with custom taxi paths so as to not interfere with each other and the many static aircraft present. So far I've only tested with the F/A-18. Tomcat will take some extra work as it has some crash issues. Also, there's nothing stopping all the remaining static objects everywhere except the bow to be changed to spawn points. You could literally create a 30-35 aircraft launch sequence. Lastly, the same process applies to recovery routes and parking positions. It should be possible to bring recovering aircraft down one side of the bow and park them in line on the opposite side. I just haven't got around to that test yet. Any way, enjoy the test video. More to come soon

This page also has some useful information on formations/positions and related tactics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Carrier_Group_tactics It’s impotent to understand that the vast majority images available of carrier battle groups are just PR photo ops. Actual, combat formations tend to be much more spread out, as described in this quote from the above link. “The units of the outer screen operate between 12 and 25 nautical miles (22 and 46 km) from the main body. The inner screen is within 10 nautical miles (19 km) of the HVUs(carrier).”

Thanks guys! I’ll give this a try. Thinking even further, would it be possible to modify the parking position locations with further edits to a lua file? I guess you’d have to redefine the routes to the relevant CAT too, but once the coordinates zero reference is identified, this shouldn’t be to challenging. I’ll see what I can do, as I really want to spin the six-pack aircraft around so their tail is up against the CAT 3 foul line, as shown below. It would make launching aircraft from the front of the ship much more interesting and realistic.

Can anyone explain to me how, in the above video, it is possible to direct the first 2 sixpack aircraft and the 5 parked forward of the tower, to use CAT 1 only? No mater what I do, I have aircraft that still attempt to use CAT 2, and either get stuck because of the statics I've placed, or just taxi/launch through them. Everything I create seems to follow the following diagram re parking positions and CAT use, whereas the video above somehow gets around this.

+1000 desperately needed. Also, make sure AI both receive and fly correctly their assigned alt too.