Ripcord

Yup, just make it hover at 1 foot. You would probably be unable to tell the difference anyway, if watching it from the air. I suppose if you are in an enemy ground vehicle at the LZ you might notice -- assuming this will be an MP mission. You can actually do some cool stuff that way using that hover method, like 'landing' on a flat-roof building for instance, provided you bring the helo in real nice and slow and don't make it try to drop too much speed or altitude too fast. I'd been planning to incorporate that into a few missions myself -- had not considered AH-64 gunship cover however, that is really going to be a nice touch.

Yeah Bahger, really I think you aren't going to really need the follow or escort features for these helos. Just give them the same waypoint route, or close to it, and let those apaches roll in a minute or two ahead of your chinook flight. Gotta think that is how it would likely go down in reality -- they would want the gunships to get there first and hose down the LZ area... before the slicks arrive with the troops on board. And depending on how that goes, I would imagine the gunships might hang around a bit to cover the troops on the ground, particularly if any enemy contact takes place. The chinooks, on the other hand, would get in and get the hell out. Not an expert, just going off common sense.

Hmmm AFAIK no release date -- pretty much sticking with the 'when it's done' mantra, and probably rightfully so. I think Wags did mention recently that the theater itself is more or less done, just waiting on EDGE to get finished up.

Very cool screen shots, he did a lot of good work. Search for those threads if you are interested.

Good well-considered responses, sir. Thank you Yes it will be interesting to see how much 1.2.3 improves performance on 'larger scale' missions, if at all.

Amigo, your colloquial english is so good that I fear I am too old to fully comprehend it :noexpression: Or in other word, what in the hell does this mean?

One guy in France was making one for FC, a couple years ago. He never finished it. Probably he is waiting for new theater SDK to come out. Similar work was being done on the Russian Far East and the Chinese border area out there.

Hamblue, this is a really good question. And a good response from Chromium, thank you! Some related questions: 1. What if we had only 8 MP players? Could we double the amount of ground units? Or triple them? Or would it even make a difference at all? 2. What if half of my ground units are located sufficently far from the battlefield? Say I have 300 units engaged around Poti - active combat there. Would I be safe with 300 units elsewhere, far away, in Russia, in Tbilisi, etc? Here I mean SAM sites, supply areas, and of course units near airfields. Maybe only 100 of them could ever make it to the front lines, as reinforcements, and then it would be later in the mission. 3. Does it matter what kind of MP players we have? In terms of frame rates, is 16 players flying aircraft basically the same as 4 players flying aircraft and 12 driving tanks/APCs or other vehicles?

Sorry, I meant to post this in the Wishlist subforum.

For building missions that will be used in a campaign eventually, I would like to be able to set the date as some increment from the previous mission start. That is, I want to have a dropdown menu that allows me to set the date equal to +1 day or +X hours, and reference the previous campaign mission. It would probably need to read some kind of Date/Time field that could be stored in a campaign file somewhere -- or least that is a suggestion, there might be a better way. If the mission is played as standalone, then it would just default to a date that is set the way we currently have it. Now, with that in place, we would need to be able to alter the weather patterns a little bit as well.... as temperatures would change somewhat as we move/progress through months and seasons.

How is this already supported? Is mission outcome data being written to a file somewhere? Can we read that file and make use of it in the ME?

I agree. BTW, if you are familiar with the work that Matt did with Janes FA-18, then the supply warehouse concept is not new. They had it there as well. Certainly not suggesting that the supply/resource management concept was borrowed -- it is a pretty basic idea when considering what is needed in modelling a campaign, dynamic or linear or whatever. And this one in DCS is much improved and more robust, and I like that it is built into the ME and not the campaign file. That in itself is another major departure, that the DC seems to be being built on the MISSION and the ME rather than remaining over in the Campaign Editor. Not seeing much of anything changing in the campaign editor (yet). What I am looking for now is the method/mechanism that they plan to use to implement some from of damage tracking. Bridge bombed in mission 1, what will make that bridge continue be bombed out in missions 2 and 3 and 4? Or EW radar site, or SAM site, or that runway that got cratered? ED has gotta be working on this. Remember that it was Matt that created the campaign template with damage tracking for the naval units in that sim. So it is near and dear to his heart, I suspect. Maybe this new conditional variation of units placed in ME is going to be a central part of that mechanism. I suspect it might be. Looking back at that campaign engine from FA-18E I kinda wonder what else might finds its way over into this sim. Maybe nothing more, since this seems like it will be built more around the mission files and not around the campaign file.

Yes, thank you for this post. It should have been fairly obvious to anybody that has looked at the campaign building section, and the mission generator, and now the supply warehouse feature. Three clear steps in this direction, all implemented at different times. I think also that now we have seen clues revealed as to the next step. That is the ability to have different variants of the same unit, based on some 'condition' or some random %. It has not been implemented yet, but we see it in the ME now and Matt alluded to it in his 1.2.3 announcement. I kinda wonder if this has something do with the mechanism for the way a campaign will read what took place in the previous mission, eg. conditional appearance of a unit in a subsequent mission. So if village XYZ was overrun by hostiles, then that platoon of APCs just won't be there in a DC environment. They will be dead, gone, partially wiped out, or moved elsewhere. So variations of that unit would be used here. Variation 1 -- the unit is still there, holding that village down. Another variation is that it had to fall back and was driven out of the village. A third variation is that the APC platoon was partially wiped out, maybe just one remains, and it had to relocate, or fall back or whatever. Or maybe it is was just wiped out, period. Then you have the opposing attacking force, with variations for all those as well. Just my semi-lucid thoughts, probably have had too much coffee, but I think I am starting to see how this might be coming together. And I think I like it.

It looks like there will variations of units that will appear, based either on some kind of condition or random %. My imagination is probably working too hard here, but this could really be cool.

From Wag's annoucement post: Mission Editor UI for group variation placement tool added, not functional yet.

I have misunderstood your post, Speed. Expression here is really just a condition or equation, the advantage being (I assume) that you can set pretty complex conditions that have to be met.

For higher altitudes you might be more limited to Chinooks versus smaller helos. US forces used them a lot more in higher mountainous areas of Afghanistan, since they could create better lift in higher thinner air. Plus you can carry more troops. And at least we have it in DCS World right now. EDIT: Bahger, I like where I think you are going with this. Very cool.

Use excel instead of word. Much easier. ;) What is a do-end? Not sure I see the advantage here over just using a FLAG, other than the convenience of now being able to name it. Now, here is the 64 dollar question -- are we now able to pass values assigned to Expression ABC from mission to mission? So if I assign a value of 99 to an expression called RIPCORD in the first mission (of a campaign), could I then refer to that same expression and read that value in a subsequent mission? EDIT: probably before posting more stupid questions I should first examine your 2 examples myself and make an attempt at educating myself first. I think I'll do that.

Thanks to BRooDJeRo and Speed for lending a hand with this, and talking me back in off the window ledge.

I would have saved myself mucho problemos had I had the awareness and common sense to do this at the outset. If you have comcast/xfinity here in the US: after installing/updating to 1.2.3 or really any update for that matter, be sure you do this: OPEN CONSTANT GUARD if you have it (comcast/xfinity hands it out free) and go to Options, and then to Manage My Blocked Program Rules. Just take a guess which program is BLOCKED there for you. Many of you have other AV like Nortons or Kaspersky or whatver, and you think you have turned that off. Just don't forget about this little fella here. Never had a problem with it before you say? Well, good. Neither did I. There were at least 2 of us in another thread here in recent days that were plageed by this issue. Figured one extra thread here won't hurt. What happened is that the missions would either not load (stopping at 96%), leaving you with a CTD, or they would start and end right away, leaving you with debrief screen with almost no events, except Enter Mission, Take Control, and Exit Mission. Maybe this will save a couple other folks from 2-3 days of headaches.

I am sorry, I didn't mean to post something that created the appearance that I felt you were accusing me -- I understood what you meant, and I appreciate the kind words. Gotta agree on human nature, but whatccha gonna do? People is people. Without that, we would all exhibit AI behavior : ) EDIT: maybe I am not the anomaly -- maybe the overwhelming majority are out there dealing with their issues, but they don't post anything so we do not see them. As for ED, cannot blame them if they specifically warned me to TURN OFF MY DAMN AV before installing. Not their fault I have 2 or 3 of them going (there is also microsoft security essentials, but it seemed to not mind DCS.exe). Speed, I will only say that it would have been good to get some kind of response from them on my ticket. Now I am left with the impression that if something really serious goes wrong with this software, then I am more or less on my own -- well along with the helpful folks on these forums. I owe you a good brew or two, that much is certain. And same to you Dutch dude with the disturbing avatar and the forum name starting with B, which I will not try to spell -- you damn sure did tell me way pack on page 3 that I needed to have those anti-virus applications turned off, you wily rascal. And you did try to help and you gave me things to look for all throughout, before Speed chimed in. That kept me same, and in turn prevented me from putting an office chair thru my monitor. So bolshoe spasibo to you as well, gollandsky drug.

First reaction for me is to blame myself for something stupid I probably did. In fact, go back and read my first post in this thread.

Dude that avatar is going to haunt me in my dreams.

And there is BS2. All good. Thanks guys, all of you, for the help. Probably we should post something regarding Xfinity CG for some others out there like me.

OK F-15C mission loaded up fine in FC3.