Tank50us

It technically does matter, because if EDs weapons techs know the distances involved, they can adjust the ordinance accordingly. I know the point you're going for, but for things to be corrected, one must get scientific. So for best results, set up a bunch of things at known ranges, and drop bombs on the bullseye and measure how far away things get damaged/destroyed by the blasts. Once you've collected that data, present it to ED along with any declassified data on the ordinance to back up what things should be.

Tell ya what, you go ahead and make a working nuke for DCS that doesn't break the servers, and works exactly how the real thing does, and see how well that holds up when some people in black suits show up to your door wondering where you got the information to simulate the thing. ED may be willing to change their stances on certain items, but governments are slow AF to change their laws, and the companies that build these things also have rules which must be followed by ED and the 3PDs if they wish to maintain the licenses. I'm fairly certain that Boeing, Lockheed, N/G, and every other aircraft manufacturer have access to a much better group of lawyers than ED or a 3rd party dev could even dream of having. @NineLine or @BIGNEWY please close this thread. We all know EDs official stance on nukes, but people won't stop bringing it up.

I mean.... Sometimes reality is quite cartoonish looking....

How close were they? it's hard to tell in these images

That...... is a lot of bases

One would think, and yet.... people argue over the validity of nuclear weapons. Especially when the companies that make the aircraft, as well as the real world operators all have a single, two-letter word for those wanting to add nukes to DCS aircraft: NO

Oh it is ambitious. Fortunately, I do know a few people with engineering degrees who are in a position to assist, or at least advise. As for figuring things out, admittedly a lot of things will be trial and error, but some things are knowns (like the engines and MFDs), so that will certainly help. Like you said, the challenge will ultimately be merging all of these systems into a single plane, which is a challenge the real world designers would've faced anyway. As for ED, I have reached out to find out the requirements, and most of them are doable from the get-go. The challenge is going to be documentation (IE, manuals and such) on any of these aircraft, since any that existed would likely have been destroyed when their projects were canned, so, we'd have to create them from scratch. On top of that, many of the birds we plan to emulate may not be what's sitting in museums right now, but late-service versions with bits added assuming the aircraft actually saw service (such as the TSR-2 and Avro Arrow), much of these may be cosmetic in nature (like a post-it note for how certain things actually function), others functional, but ultimately, the idea of these projects will be bring something different to DCS, something I think people will enjoy.

There's quite a bit of information on what those aircraft could have been actually. You have to remember, I'm not talking about designs that were drawn by some drunk aeronautical engineer on a napkin somewhere. We're talking about aircraft that at the very least had a model or mock-up built to try and convince the walking talking piggy banks why they should fund this project further. In other words, while some of these aircraft were never built and flown, they still had real design work done to them. It's just that the funds dried up before they could go further. And in the case of the Tomcat, we at least know what it would've had in terms of weapons, systems, and engines. So all that's required to design and build an accurate flight model is lots and lots of reading, and a bit of trial and intestine pulverizing error.

Yeah, that would give us accurate weapon behavior when low to the ground, and gives aircraft a chance to horizon mask for their approach to a ship

You say that like it's a bad thing Obviously, such a map would be freaking huge, even compared to the existing maps. But thanks to the way that the new Terrain editor works (according to Razbam), it seems to have the capability to greatly optimize a map for normal play. I'm not exactly sure how this works, they didn't go into great detail on that after all, but still.

A while back, I posted a thread about the ST21 project, and after what I saw of the Super Hornet mod, I decided that I was going to do this, and make the ST21 a reality. But, being the capitalist that I am, I have some rather ambitious goals, I do not intend to make this a free mod, but a full fidelity module that will hopefully become part of DCS. The aim is to bring this aircraft to life, and make it competitive with the JF17, J11, and upcoming EF2000 (since in the aircraft history I'm writing up, it entered service in 2006). Note I say 'competitive', and not ROFLStomp them, it is still an F-14 at the end of the day, and she's not known for being small. I won't share too many details here, but I will say that the ST21 is not the only project I aim to do. What I'm hoping is to form a team, one that has a passion for aircraft and helicopters that were just never given a fair shake in the real world, as well as aircraft that have limited information on them, so some level of deductive reasoning will be a requirement to be a part. Yes, this means that we'll have to work with assumptions alot, but given that access to some of these aircraft can be best described as 'target practice if you lack the clearance', this is what we'll have to do. So what will be on the roadmap? Quite a bit actually, right now the ideas tossed around, in no particular order are: TSR-2 Avro Arrow F-20 Tigershark RAH-66 Comanche F117 Nighthawk F-14E Super Tomcat In addition, the team will also attempt to make new AI units that follow the same vein as the flyable units, as well as some that just haven't made it into DCS just yet, but certainly deserve to exist. Keep in mind, the above list is not all inclusive, and the goal once work starts is to work on one craft at a time, two at the most, and then as they're released, new aircraft will commence work. Well, that's the goal anyway, but since no plan survives first contact, we'll see how things play out. Anyway, if you're interested, the roles we have to fill are as follows: 3D Artists Animators Lua Coders Test Pilots Texture Artists And a researcher or two might not hurt either. Hopefully, this all works out, and these can become real modules. I think we can all agree that it would be nice to answer that age old question when it comes to aircraft development: "What If?"

The catch of course is getting the scans in the first place. While larger companies are perfectly fine with getting the required access, smaller companies may not be so lucky. TheChieftain talked about it in a speech once as he ran into that issue back when WG was still relatively unknown. These days they practically have the run of the place when it comes to getting scans and measurements. That's not to say it's impossible though, if you know someone's that really skilled with assembling model kits you can get the scan that way, just on a much smaller scale that you'll need to blow up to the correct size.

Well, I might have a solution. Sent ya a PM.

Why not? I don't see a reason you should be prevented from doing so at all.

If you have Super Carrier, you'll see all of this in action, at least when it comes to the catapult operations

That whole region would be nice to have, from the northern part of the Balkans to the North Sea, I'd be all for such a map existing in DCS, regardless of time period. Although it would be a massive chunk of work for the devs to make it look right, especially for that time period.

My point, is that if a representative from Boeing or the USAF tells Razbam they cannot model it, they don't have a choice, they *can not* model it. And if they do, they'll be a barge load of legal trouble. They stated this in the podcast interview that came out earlier this week.

There's also the fact that if you were to accurately model how nukes are deployed by aircraft, you might get a knock on your door by some nice men in uniform telling you to either stop that immediately, or to come with them. How the Mig21 devs got away with it, I'm not sure, but I don't think Razbam would get away with it in the F15E.

Is there any chance that ED could make some dedicated AT troops armed with ATGMs? Such as the M47 Dragon and its Russian/NATO counterparts?

Spinning lights are actually very common at airports as they're required by law. While many vehicles also use flashing lights, a lot of other things use flashing lights, so rotating lights are often used to avoid confusion. Also, I think the lights are tied to the units alert status, so he may not be able to make it flash.

We have them coming with the Falklands map actually, according to Razbam

hell, just what vehicles should even be *at* an airfield to begin with.

The way I see it is that they'd spawn from their 'warehouse' (or just near it), and then start moving along the 'designated' areas until they get to your plane, turn, and park just outside your safety zone (for those wondering what I'm talking about, a Safety Zone is an area, typically a diamond, that extends a minimum of 3 feet from the nose, tail, and wing-tips of the aircraft). Once they've done that, the re-arming and refueling begins. once they're finished, they take the same path back, and de-spawn (and reset their positioning as well). The actual paths they would take is on the map designers to implement, but available for the mission editors to adjust as needed (say if a warehouse got destroyed in a previous mission). The reason for this method (spawning and despawning) is that it does save on resources, since having all the items pre-placed can eat up lots and lots of resources in a persons PC if they're on a lower-end machine, so the game will only ever call what is absolutely necessary at any given time. As for the crane idea, it is still just an idea, and one I'm sure many would like to at least see just to have your plane put on tarmac when you're repaired rather then trying to taxi on grass/dirt/sand (which is virtually impossible with some planes). On the subject of warehousing, you do bring up a good point in that that is something DCS needs to address at some point. Particularly for servers running a single persistent campaign mission (where players are constantly at war), so that each 'team' has a single airbase with unlimited stocks, but the rest have limits on them, which the players must deal with either by flying goods back and forth (with a cargo helo or aircraft), or ensuring that supply convoys get to the destination without difficulty.

The thing is, some of it we already have for the Super Carrier, which is where people like me are getting the idea from. That, and having worked the local airport ramp, I got to see how busy it gets out there, and would like to see some of these things implemented.

As a preamble, I am not creating this post to put down modding the game, nor am I doing this to be pias. I am doing this because there are rules in place, and those rules are ultimately for our own good, as well as the people making these fantastic mods. With all that said... here we go.... As some of you are well aware, a mod was released today. This mod is a rehash of a previous mod that was forced to cease work and had to retreat into the shadows for a bit. Fast forward to today, and said mod is back, it's released, and it's hit an issue already. This issue is a simple one: You cannot modify the CoreMods files. You are allowed to make something that works fine in the Mods folder by itself, but you cannot make a mod that modifies anything in the core game files. And this mod, did exactly that. Now, while the only thing the mod modified was the cockpit, and visible shape of the aircraft, and changed nothing else, it could still be abused as an exploit. How so? Well, imagine you're in a dogfight with someone on a random public server. You think that the IC will keep mods out, but it turns out this mod somehow gets past that. You are flying the original aircraft, and you go up against someone who has this mod in BFM. The aircraft you fly is smaller than his, but as he is using the mod, and you aren't, your aircraft now appears larger, and because the liveries are not compatible, he sees a bright green aircraft shape that can only be you. You are now easier to see, track, and if you try to go low and escape, he cans still see you (especially if on a snow map). He has just gained a massive advantage that the server did not catch, and that you will not know unless you got ahold of his 'gun camera' (IE, if he posts video to YouTube). How was that fair? How was that allowed? Well, technically, it isn't allowed. Let me be frank. I have no problems with the existence of mods. My group uses them in our campaigns and stand-alone missions from time to time, but none of the mods we use modify the game folders in any way. They slide into their own folders in the DCS/DCS.OpenBeta Mod folder, and are just as easy to remove. They're also safe, as this folder exists for this very reason. Now, the sad part about this mod and its development is that while the exterior model looks great in the screenshots, and likely behaves just fine in game, the fact that the team behind it went out of their way to create one excuse after another as to why they couldn't just make it a stand alone item (or an item that requires a 'donor aircraft'), is just sad in my opinion. You have the A4, The Super Tucano, the C-130J, the AH-6, The MB339, the T-45... so many mods that do not require donor aircraft, and while some may have some limitations in how they can be used and what they can do, many of them have their own flight models, damage models, their own weapons lists, and some are even capable of interacting with the SCM. These guys did not do that, and instead of working on their own FM and cockpit functionality, they used one that already existed, and given the aircraft they made and the one they modded, their reasoning is exceptionally flawed. If they had sat down, worked out how to get the aircraft to behave realistically, created their own flight model, their own weapons list, damage model, cockpit, etc. I would've been perfectly fine with it, and happy to promote it. But they didn't. And as such, I will not be using it, I've advised my unit to avoid it at all costs, and most importantly, I've decided I will not promote it either. Notice I didn't mention the mod once in this wall of text. But I will end on this note: I can't stop people from using whatever mod they want. I use them to add items not in the game (like the Herc), and to add a bit of immersion where needed. And I'd like for that to continue for DCS as a whole. The devs have said that they want to support mods, but if people start releasing mods that can sneak past the ICs, and give people massive advantages, or create exploits, then what will happen is that the Devs will opt to not support mods at all, and we'll all be back at square one. Key reasons to avoid mods that modify game files are: 1. It can make your game more unstable than it already is 2. They can give you an unfair advantage in multiplayer (which will see you banned from servers) 3. It breaks the EULA, which can result in you being banned from Eagle Dynamics services So yeah guys, stay safe, use the mods that ED is actually fine with (the ones that go in the Mods folder), and avoid those ban hammers. Tank out.