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Off the top of my head, a coupe of possible reasons come to mind the airbase may not be in possession of the coalition the airbase may not have a free parking lot of sufficient size the airbase may not be an airbase the AI is wonky and feels that you should suffer

While seething with envy to your specs, I found out that one setting for my (much lesser) rig did wonders in VR (and VR only): I found that setting LOD Switch Factor to 0.4 immensely boosted fps (but I'm also running on lowered settings for many other settings, and my max FPS is fixed at 45, half of my HMD's refresh -- running a Vive Pro 2)

Because good always requires time. Anyone can do bad quickly. Good means care. And care takes time. And time is precious. That being said I think that providing a couple of nice, "inspirational" missions with a map could do wonders for the community to help their mission creators to get their creative juices flowing. Such a 'instigator' map could highlight the interesting parts of a map - because finding a good, interesting place for a mission takes a *lot* of time, and the map creators could help their map become more popular if there were more missions available.

You, sir, apparently do not live in Antarctica That being said, a good friend of mine hails from Bodø, and yes, she regularly takes a swim in Salzfjord during Summer. Refreshing indeed. Obviously, I know my way around ME, but few other in the group I fly with do, so it is entirely imaginable that people don't know ME - nor care. Missions are what is in their folder.

Unfortunately, yes. Yes, but not with current DCS. Game-wise I suspect that the game engine needs the FARP to create the comms menu at the location to be able to command the infrastructure to refuel and rearm player's aircraft. I know that there was some experimental scripted dynamically spawning FARPs in the past year, but without reserving them first, I *believe* that to still be a no-go. A bit disappointing since I was trying to bring some 'fat cow' scenarios to DCS. Right now I think that ad-hoc refueling in DCS is not possible.

Since the OH 6 isn't an official DCS aircraft, I can't look it up. It would be the "TypeName" attribute for the unit in the mission. For example, the Kiowa's typeName is "OH-58D". You could try opening a mission that contains an OH-6 and copy that name from the mission. From there it'll be only a few seconds until CSAR accepts the 6.

I believe that creating missions is a creative act that improves with practice - much like playing an instrument. And of course by playing other people's missions, and taking note of what you like and (more importantly) dislike you can become inspired. Most of all, though, you should enjoy creating missions. So if you have the time, see if you also have the inclination, if creating missions is fun for you. Be advised, though, that DCS's Mission Editor will fight you - hard, and it will never love you. It probably helps if you can derive fun from being able to create fun missions in spite of ME. Become comfortable working in ME, know its limitations, bugs, pitfalls and other idiosyncrasies. Because they are legion. There are some tools available that can make some tasks writing missions easier. I'm using DML, and many other exist. These tools won't magically endow you with mission-creation abilities, they merely make some aspects of your work easier - just like a good brush multiplies a painter's potential. I recommend that you start with simple ideas, and create simple, fun missions. They should be fun to create and fun to fly. Then, when you feel comfortable, broaden the scope of your missions, and experiment and choose from the available tools to reduce the amount of work and multiply your abilities. So I think that the best place to start is ED's User Files section, where you can find many small, fun missions. Study them, see how it's done. And notice that a lot can be done without scripting. Now, Expansion is heavily scripted, so obviously there will come a point at which you may want to look into that. Some tools do not require that the mission editors script themselves, others do. No matter what, if you enjoy crafting missions, there's lots of frustration, and (if you are lucky) even more joy ahead. Have fun!

I *think* that those attributes are handled by the csarFX module that I wrote to extend CSAR missions. So if you copy/paste that module, you should be able to add the baddies to any CSAR mission, yes. The csarFX module is 100% DML compatible (it's written as such, and if I get the around to write the docs, it'll become a 'full' DML module). Until then, I'm afraid that you'll have to guess what the attributes do, but I don't think that your guesses will be wide misses

I like the idea, and I'm still looking for a good way to implement that in DML. Currently, there is no such functionality, and I'm hoping that I have some time (and enough wine) over the coming three weeks to look at this more thoroughly. I was hoping that DCS's API extensions for the Hook and Dynamic Spawn abilities would bring something to the table, but it seems that I was a bit optimistic. Let's see what I can come up with

I'm not sure that there is such a function for ME, for the simple reason that multiple planes can be controlled by a player. If you want to find planes that can be player-controlled, your best bet would be to open the Units panel, and sort the units by Skill. Look for 'Client' and "player", and click on the unit. The screen should center on the unit that you just selected.

Agreed. And they very much underline the issue. Younger modules that do not sell as well do not receive updates, simply because the business case requires investing into he cash cows, and let the (unfinished, EA) paid modules that do no longer sell well enough languish. Cases in point: YAK, Mossie, SC, Hind, NTTR, Afghanistan ... Agreed. In business, though, no money doesn't fix anything. Funds are the lifeblood, and that explains why so many modules seem to be slowly dying. Assuredly so if this is handled wrongly. I do not claim to have the perfect solution, or even a solution. I'm merely interpolating from where we are today, feeling worried. My investment into DCS (all models, all terrains, all tech, two rented community servers) is substantial. And I would like to see DCS flourish.

I understand that you are trying to talk up your video review on YT -- and I think that this forum is perhaps the wrong place to do so. In the interest of bettering everything DCS, please allow me some comments as to why I think that your writings come across as a bit low-effort: Because.... ? You say so? IMHO, that is pretty much what everyone expects from a surface mesh, and hardly new. What is the new, unparalleled tech that you speak of and how is that evidenced? Except what is not. Which is a lot. I recommend that you avoid empty expressions. What does that mean? More importantly: above doesn't say if that is good or bad. My godson has cooked some food in ways that I have never seen before. It was also exceedingly awful. So it's 3 years old. I think it a bit ironic that you should say that, considering that four words later you write and on, and on. Too many empty, IMHO meaningless, phrases, which makes me believe that the only reason that you posted here was to push your YT channel: I recommend that you realize that you also put your best foot forward in the description of your video. I am sure that your written contribution does not represent your full abilities, that you can do a lot better. I also think that you like the map, and I think that it is good that you post that opinion. For the record, I have purchased the map (for the full 70 USD on Steam), so you do not have to convince me.

Coming from ED, that’s almost cosmically ironic. Well, I did purchase for 70, so I’m interested to hear if us early customers get the difference refunded.

Agreed. I'm looking forward to you building and sharing such a mission with us.

Well, there are many directions to go , and I think we all know that no matter which direction ED take, there will be detractors. To me it is becoming increasingly apparent that a lack of sustained, steady income is eroding the base product - which happens to be the free product. Coincidence? I don't think so, others do. To add my own 2 cents to the heap of unrequested advice: I'd suggest a split approach to start the migration: offer a free DCS for anyone interested to get them hooked. And a 'pro' version, with subscription that enables additional features like Multiplay with more than 4 people, has "save and resume" for missions, and other amenities that slowly trickle down to the free version over time, but are available to 'pro' first. Will that make everyone happy? Hell no. But given the choice of keeping a great game in the future (and pay a subscription fee), or see DCS become more and more obsolete, I will choose the to me more expensive route. One thing is certain: I will continue to play great flight sims in the future. I'm hoping it will be DCS. It's current trajectory sadly is (to me) discouraging.

There is a Unit.getDrawArgumentValue() method on the unit tree that might do what you want. Be advised that all "X-" conditions in mission trigger rules are intended for single-player missions, the values hare hard to come by, there is no guarantee that getDrawArgument is indeed the same X:Cockpit Parameter, and that he mission scripting environment hates you. The rest should be simple

IMHO astutely put. In episode "Birnham Wood" of "West Wing", President Bartlet is trying to broker peace in the Middle East. When negotiations break down over how to handle Jerusalem, Bartlet and his team try a different approach: try and resolve all other, smaller, issues first, and see what happens. He is warned that the issue of Jerusalem must be resolved, or no tangible progress can be achieved, no matter what other successes they may have. Everything else is irrelevant. When it comes to Dynamic Campaigns, a real "Save Game" feature (more precisely: "continue from save") is ED's "Jerusalem", the elephant in the room. Unless ED manage to implement a real save/continue game (not a kinda-sorta save game that could be called that name if you squint real hard, and it semantically puts bytes to storage), anything else in relation to a dynamic campaign is irrelevant. Why? Because without a real save/continue feature (that saves and continues units mid-tasks, with damage and some expended stores, can set time of day, weather, and allows scripts to continue where they left off), no real dynamic campaign is possible. We already have a precursor DC without a real save game that creates new missions based on the results of the current one. That may technically be a dynamic mission, yes, but it is not what the majority expect, and it's not what server owners need to host real, developing dynamic missions. Servers must restart every 8-10 hours to account for DCS's many memory leaks, so not being able to save and continue-from-save a mission would be worthless. And that is how I view the status of dynamic campaigns: DCS's ability to deliver "continue from save". Since this feature can (and should) be delivered independently from a dynamic campaign, we know where on the road to DC we are. Currently we are nowhere. Once we have continue-from-save, I believe ED is in a position to deliver DC within 5 years. Until then, I feel that ED is needlessly embarrassing themselves when they talk about DC without addressing the elephant in the room. Let's be hopeful - "next year in Jerusalem"?

My apologies, I should have been more clear. While the Kiowa's L2MUM video feed shows a potential unit that the drone might be targeting, it is currently unable to show the target that the drone is actually engaging/lasing. It might, by random coincidence, show the correct one. The reason is as simple as incredible, and not the fault of the kind people at PolyChop: there is no way to know the target that a unit Is currently engaging. Yes, the mission scripting environment, after nearly two decades, still does not allow a script to ask a unit what target it is engaging. Some people might think that in a combat environment, that would be relevant information. ED, it seems, are not among those. So the kind folk at Polychop made an educated guess to show off the incredibly cool L2MUM feature: get the nearest enemy group, and then get the first unit in the group. The image that you see on-screen seems to be a simulated camera view from the drone's position to that unit. Should a script then tell the drone to lase another target, the simulated camera has no way to know about that fact, and will continue to show the target that it initially chose - even if that target (or even entire group) was destroyed. So, I'm hoping that ED (not PolyChop) provide the means to know which unit a unit is targeting (more precisely: allow scripts to control and query which unit to lase), and I'm quite certain that a few days later, L2MUM will be updated to correctly synch the video feed with the unit that the drone is currently engaging.

Ah. Indeed. That may be something that I need to look into. What is happening is this: A convoy's units are not persisted, but they may have caused the owned zone to switch side. When the game reloads, the owned zones revert to their original owners (meaning: I'll need to check if they persist their owner). Since convoy units disappear on reload (not persisted), the owned zone may forget and never correct the fact that it was owned by a different faction. Will have to check. If you have a small mission that can demonstrate the issue, so much the better.

It gets even worse should you land a helicopter on a street: even though vehicles do drive through ground units, they smash up a helicopter. So if you are creating a rescue scenario, turn off road traffic, or designate the LZ far away from roads.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves... For a set-back there has to be progress first. I think it would be good to remember that no-one outside ED has seen any progress for a decade or so. All we had were some pretty pictures that allegedly show something-something-mumble campaign, and some breathless commentary form internal sources on how well the developers were progressing... 3-4 years ago. Then again, I heard some positive rumors: ED allegedly managed to hire G. R. R. Martin to write the narrative for the first dynamic campaign, and he'll get to it right after he finishes his current engagement writing that "Thrones" thing.

This is possibly the longest-standing wish of all mission designers, posted over a decade ago, and yet to be fulfilled. So, sadly, not at this time. No. There are no time-of-day related triggers in expansion I'm sure that you have discovered this already, but you may gain additional respect for the Kiowa's abilities when you order a drone over your objective, and carry some laser-homing missiles... How I wish that we could synch the Kiowa's TV to the drone's feed, it could jump the Kiowa to the forefront of all current DCS helos for me.

Version 20241208 - Fog by the menu! Added DCS's new fog capabilities to the mission, so you can try your hand at flying in the soup.

Update 29241207 - Fog by the menu! You now can set the level of fog from the communications->other menu. Want to try your hand at landing the tiger at 'pea soup' visibility? Now you can! Enjoy, -ch

Indeed. Remember that this is DCS, with DCS-style API and UX. Visibility is set in meters, BUT has to be more than 100. If you set visibility to 0, this means full visibility, no fog. No sense? Your call. I just call it terminally bad design.