IronMike

The issue is that TALDs were shifted to the SEAD task by ED, we added the SEAD task and a mission fix in preparation for the coming patch, but ED will have to adjust on their side, which they envisioned for one of the following patches. Our apologies and thank you for your kind patience.

This is prolly a DCS issue. The AI recently does not want to drive through checkpoints and sometimes just random locations. When I initially created the mission it drove the entire way from start to finish, by now I think I am already despawning and respawning it 3 or 4 times.. We will continue investigating.

I think I just left the default value, but I cant remember now. If you would prefer another one, I can change it.

I doubt that, simmers are proud to be simmers, haha. It's funny how much that changed in society in general, btw, imho. I remember my friends rolling eyes at me "you do what?" "don't you rather want to go out and live life?" (as if I didnt lol) - nowadays all our guests want to see the sim setup (it aint even special just a few aficionado HOTAS and pedals, etc), and it is more like "ooh!" and "aaah!" and "wow!"

No, there is no professional side to the F-14. But it is being used in some museums or exhibitions to offer an experience to visitors, which is great. And indeed, at some point we may get the professional sims, but not by intention ofc, or when used in active service, and depending on what part would remain classified for how long. But also, apart from the aha effect and the fun of experiencing a professional sim, some you couldnt fit in your home, and if you could they may not provide the same, well, entertainment. It's something they don't need to care about as much as we do, though also in education we think more modern, and fun during learning yields better results.

In other words, you came to have fun. And we provide you with fun that you seek, by translating it to your screen as we know. I don't think you would enjoy it as much if we ran a numbers simulation based on your inputs? No graphics? Or, maybe just triangles? Or, let us be less extreme, how about campaigns without any story, voice acting, etc. Or better even: how about no missions at all, since, we do give you the realistic module, and you all do with it as you please. We could also remove Jester entirely and still fulfill that goal alone. Some few may enjoy that, plenty more less. Plenty enjoy jester as is, some less. There is a spectrum of things that are needed, and you fit on it somewhere, and others somewhere else. What you (or anyone) individually, personally need/s, is not as important, as what you, the audience, in general needs. And that is the entire spectrum of things we need to think about vs you basically enjoying the aspects you enjoy more or less. The sim is, in the end, for entertainment purposes only, always was and always will be purely that. The professional side you mentioned will never be made available to you (in general I mean, ofc), and the one that will, will never be made to serve a professional purpose. Your idea of being entertained may lean on realism, but it is still a request to be entertained in the end, to provide you with a video game based on certain principles for your leisure time, and any end conusmer home-sim, will always be made for that primarily, to entertain you. It's not a bad thing, and it does not hinder or speak against what you want out of it. One could even argue, that because we can do these for entertainment purposes, you get to enjoy the realism part of it in the first place.

I'm sorry, but this makes me chuckle a bit. I think the fact that you are sitting behind your desktop, or in your sim chair, under your VR headset, with a joystick in your hand, at home, is disclaimer enough that this is not real. I can assure you, we are not trying to create skynet. On a serious note, it would go against all rules of story telling, if one would on purpose try and create characters you cannot connect or identify with. There is also no harm in having imagined relationships, we do in stories, fairy tales, novels, movies, books, or even when falling in love with a flame who at that point may be stil entirely clueless about your existence... It would be unhealthy not realizing the imaginatory character of your relationship, but this then is not the fault of the novel, movie or character, etc... but rather an issue the concerned individual needs to deal with. The better a story teller, the more immersive the story, the more you forget about everything around you. This is one of the purposes of story telling, with many benefits, one of which is, well, just to relax a little bit, the other to dream, the third to inspire, and not the least to connect us in thought and emotion. Like doorways to each others' thoughts, ideas and worlds.

There will be some notched missiles ofc. But during our tests plenty of missiles connected, and reached really out to touch. Much more than before with the pitch up bug. I recommend observing over a longer period of time, and a greater span of shots. One could fire 50x a shot where the AI notch will favor the AI getting away with it and get the impression the missile is broken, too. So take plenty of different shots across the board over a longer span, and you should see a much higher increase in shots that truly connect. If not, we need to continue improving. But from our testing the results looked very promising. Plenty of x4 and even x6 kills, and long shots, too.

Correct as is. It is a gunzo mission, but you can use the simulated sidewinders to see if you get tone.

It can potentially break the timing, yes. The missions are all timed for the starts as are, so you would have to make changes to triggers, spawn distances of other aircraft, etc... I would not recommend it. Thank you. That is odd, I will take a look.

Thank you for your feedback!

Just a question - did you download from here, or did you play the one included in the build? The TALD issue has been fixed in the version that is included in the build.

I don't know where you are seeing this. With today's hotfix the performance is pretty much in between the latest OB update and where it was prior to the update. It also carries a tad more oomph in the terminal guidance, with improvements to its notch behavior, and eliminates lofting bugs. A bit further tweaking is needed, but the difference in performance is small, and from the tests we see more shots connecting. If you see a deprication in performance, please be so kind and help us visualize with tracks and/or tacviews.

Changelog entry for the Aim-54 for today's Hotfix: DCS World Weapons. AIM-54 loft trajectory adjusted

Thank you all for the great feedback, we are glad that you are enjoying the update. Our apologies again about the aim54. Good news, however and presuming all things go well, ED was very kind to look into a hotfix, so that the missing piece for the aim54 can be included and the loft restored as it should be.

This and worse is probably how we all would have sounded and looked like had we ever been blessed to fly in your backseat, hahaha. "Please, just one more roll!" "Can you light the AB again?" "Let's do another loop!" "Yay! One more, one more!"

The AAR is a very bad bug, which we simply were not able to locate so far, we tried several times and will continue trying. What happens is that all AAR jokes/calls get called and looped. It is a very, very sore thorn in our eyes. Our apologies.

Please report to ED in the SC bug section, this is on DCS side. Thank you!

The issue is really only the loft being lower as it should, which will be fixed as soon as the missing piece gets added.

Noted, we will contemplate your ideas, and you may be pleased to hear that we already have been thinking in a similar direction, but I shall leave it at that, to a) not raise false hopes or b) make false promises yet. All of these ideas are great, as you know we are great fans of offering options and modularity, whenever we can. While we may not always want to compromise in how we approach things, we do want to give you all as many options as we can, so that you can enjoy it the way you like. That has and always will be very important to us and something we will continue to strive at. Whaaat? I want to be deepfrozen and sent back to the 80s forever! But tastes will be tastes and no one can ever argue them. Thank you for the very kind words, too, they are much appreciated.

Thank you! Hope you and yours are doing well, too, and indeed we fully settled in by now, enjoying our home. Thank you for asking!

Unfortunately a slider would not help much, neither would "phase of flight", it really would be a rather either/or solution, because the jokes are part of the call variations, which can only ever happen for a set situation in that situation, for example in a dofight, if the joke is part of a directional call, like you would only ever hear the wire trap remarks when trapping a specific wire. So say you defined trapping on the boat as "serious phase of flight", just as an arbitrary example now, then you would hear no jokes when trapping at all, if you removed them from the call-stack. It is intertwined, as in there is not a set of calls labeled "jokes" that get added to a situation. Much rather the joke is included in or part of the call variation belonging to the situation (as this is a much more natural way to create situational comedy). This btw also means that his jokes are somewhat isolated to specific situations, he is not that overall goofey as some make it out to be, it is ofc repetition at some point that stacks his comedic remarks, while there is also enough arbitrary variation that some calls/jokes may never be heard by someone. We really are very limited in what we can draw from, and already bloated his repertoire to 11k calls, of which there are maybe some 200 to 300 jokes at best, if not much less. Breaking the 4th wall on purpose is playing towards the gaming aspect of the sim, which imo is just as important. I doubt any pilot irl would appreciate his RIO going "boink boink bolter" when they bolter, haha, but in the sim, when you learn trapping, or have a bad day, and frustration starts to eat away at the enjoyment of your leisure activity, the comedic relief returns a bit of the entertainment/enjoyment that has been lost through the tedious/frustrating phase of simming. And depending on your goals, frustration can draw some further in, but also push away others, while Jester tries to make them both chuckle and remind them: we're here to have fun. Would this be a professional sim aimed at irl training, he would ofc exhibit none of that, to the contrary, he would be structured to offer only ever that which is needed. While the module itself aims to stand the test against the irl professionals who operated or worked on or with these aircraft, and aims at historic accuracy, trying to honor both aircraft and crew, Jester aims to stand the test of entertaining a widespread and diverse community who plays the sim at different levels of skill, immersion, time invested and simulation or arcadish fun, coming from all sorts of backgrounds. All of which are valid, and in the end, would like to be entertained, to different levels through different means. Hence offering options is something we like to do, whenever it is faisable. I would not oppose a "personality intensity" setting for Jester at all, I just would not want to compromise in writing his character and/or personality. But also, we have a lot more important things to tackle first, which is making him better and more professional and human like in the way he fulfills his tasks, and serves as a RIO and WSO in the F4. All of your input, including this thread, will figure into Jester 2.0, and we always appreciate these ideas and listen very closely, I can assure you all of that. But please also remember, everyone, that Jester is in majority appreciated as is, when it comes to personality, and tastes do differ, while his shortcomings in functionality and operation otoh are shared among you all more or less evenly, which just naturally sets a priority to focus on improving his functionality above all. More and added functionality, means also more situations to spread out his call variations, including new calls that add to his professional side, though we will ofc also keep adding the occasional joke here and there, if we feel it is necessary or fits or helps us expand the Jester persona or lore. Generally though we are striving to offer you more options with Jester in the future, not less, and we will see how we can approach such ideas best.

Haha, duely noted @Victory205. I don't doubt for a second that this was the norm, and that the majority of moments were comprised of a professional demeanor and atmosphere. And of course, your job was not to entertain. But it is a bit like the increased buffeting, for the screen, and for entertainment purposes, it is not a strong exposition and does not translate very well long term. I would never assume that any one pilot or RIO or WSO was ever as comedic as Jester, but the fact remains that he's still taking examples from real life stories, from scanner audios, from stories we've been told, from videos, etc... and condenses it into a character and personality, who unlike real life pilots and NFOs, has to entertain at the same time. It's less taking examples from Hollywood (a reason why except for the obligatory one liner there are little to no Top Gun references) than making Jester a fan of Hollywood (with the premise that in his "timeline" Top Gun never existed), a fan of movies, and drawing from those stories mentioned above and the movies into his persona. It's not that I do not understand the wish of some to have a more "strictly business", or, if you will, a leaner RIO (and for Jester 2.0 we will be looking into solutions how to offer more options for Jester), it's that I am asking to understand why we cannot write characters that would appear bland or pale to a large degree, if they would not have a bit of an over the top attitude. It's not easy to give an AI that has language stitched together from call snippets a personality that also displays a range of emotions, which are all compatible, but also distinct from each other at the same time (and with his own cultural background). Caricaturizing the character, by overdrawing his edges, exposes his contoures better, makes it possible to contrast his traits. Which is needed to make him appear more human-like, while he is in fact a quite limited "AI" program, not even with a mind of his own, but following a behavioral tree. His behavior can only ever be situational, where ofc we try to make him as human-like, too, but by breaking the robotic repetitiveness of tasks with his contrasting demeanor, you get something much closer to a "pal in the backseat" than a program interfacing the RIO systems for you. His maturity is based on the maturity of someone in his mid twenties, as I have seen displayed by servicemen in their twenties plenty, pilots or not. But, here, too, it is caricaturized, no one person is ever always like that. Everything here is condensed and overdrawn ofc. Would he had been written as a character in a novel, this would be different, it would be bad writing in fact, 100%. He is cliché and what in theatre would be called a charged role, like Firs in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. They are great if you make them walk across the stage once or twice, but cannot serve as main characters. But a novel or a theatre play has not the limits we have. 11k voice calls sounds a lot, but is not nearly enough to write free dialogue, or a fully nuanced, life-like character, a human in thought, expression and demeanor, living out a story and growing througout. We cannot tell Jester's humor and lifestory in the ready room, or pre flight, or in the bunks at night, at the bar with his buddies, or laughingly stumbling arm in arm with his pilot over the flight deck reminiscing of a funny moment. We have to take aspects of it, magnify it, charge it, and displace that into the cockpit.

This I think would be a grave misunderstanding of Robin Olds, who stands for "bending the rules" likely more than most. He was a very empathic leader, witty, funny, and willing to push the envelope of dos and don'ts, someone who openly opposed procedure, if it favored a better outcome, someone who was willing to fly an airshow to get his promotion declined so he can keep flying and who had his GIB go through garbage to find his lucky socks all while showing a big middle finger, in the words of his daughter, to Washington in the form of a giant mustache that was against regulations. From several accounts there were all hell broke lose moments, including screaming in the cockpit, and you can bet that banter was included. I can imagine he was a much more no nonsense guy in the heat of the moment than most, but if his GIB would have gotten him kills with a joke on his lips, Olds, I am sure, was not the type to complain, he encouraged pilots to think outside of the box, like he did himself. That has "open minded" written all over him, not as much as being stiff. But in the end, this is how I see Olds, vs how you see Olds, which is fine. Just a remark would be that we're not Robin Olds but playing software that is meant for entertainment purposes only. Which makes a difference. On top of that, you have real life accounts attesting to the contrary in this very same thread, Olds or not, I guess their word counts more than mine. Lastly, there is a difference between clowning around and making jokes even in dire situations. There is no instance where Jester is clowning around, which implies acting off distracted from the task, rather than just conveying still accurate and on point info through a joke. In fact folks who have a professional or hightened SA, develop the ability to have a spare 3 or so percent of SA to watch themselves executing their tasks, including commenting on themselves and their actions in a humerous manner, which actually lets them assess their situation even better and correct their actions on the fly. This is true for benign things like stage actors adjusting their stance while staying completely in role, Irish rally drivers Neil Hickey and Enda Kennedy blurring out one pun after the other while racing corners, Ayrton Senna saying he watched himself from above and corrected his driving on the track (during a wet Monte Carlo race of all things), or fighter pilots screaming during a dogfight, like "kiiiilll hiiiim!" not to distract themselves, but to actually increase their SA and play into the adrenaline filled moment. Here is a great and hilarious example of what I mean. This isn't "clowning" around, but how high performance can also look like (and no, this ofc did not inspire Jester, just something I remembered while writing this reply):

It means that you shoot off the catapult 15 kts slower, which is more realistic, is all.