cfrag

I've mulled this idea a bit. Depending on how people add statics to embellish a mission (I do add quite a bit of statics for eye candy purposes) this could add quite a bit of overhead. So, sitting on a deck chair, holding a glass of 'death in the afternoon' (a cocktail invented by Ernest Hemmingway and seriously debilitating), and mulling this question I had a couple of ideas that I can no longer recall. BUT, maybe I can come up with something that allows both static objects AND map objects to be included as recon targets. I'll see what I can do. Since that bottle of Champagne is empty anyways, there's a good chance that the idea survives the week-end...

20250705 - added missing audio Yeah, I forgot to include the audio files for some aural mission embellishment. Added. Enjoy, -ch

This would be a tough nut to crack, as - the way that you phrase it - the objective is intentionally insufficiently defined. I think what you are looking for is a mission generator that either randomly picks 3 types of missions from a set of e.g. 12, and assembles those three around you and leaves it up to you which one to go after when you discover it. This mission has a limited 'shelf life', as when the mission is created, DCS currently has very little means to randomize the mission itself. Another approach would be to create a mission that offers all (or a good portion) of the missions that you are interested in, randomizes them for replay-ability and allows the pilot to pick whatever they like. These missions already exist - not from ED, but from mission authors who post their missions on ED's User Files. The type of mission usually is called a 'sandbox' or similar. So, yeah, I'd love if there was a more flexible, more randomized mission 'configurator' that could randomly pull down some mission types around you. I wouldn't hold my breath though, as the kind people at ED have shown their very limited abilities in content creation tools with that QAG thing that IMHO can't do anything right. WRT the living, breathing world, you would again need to resort to third party tools (civil air traffic etc), and be mindful of the fact that each and every moving part will draw processor cycles. So if you populate all airfields, your CPUs may crumble from that load alone. To curtail this, you'd need to create a living bubble around your base of operation. I agree that DCS's Mission Editor should be able to place 'bubbles of activity' that automatically provide that living, breathing semblance of life, while not having it outside to calm your CPU's nerves.

Plus, it performs really, really good...

Version 2.5.2 - 20250703 - minor update Dog days. A heat dome sits across Europe, and it really doesn't agree with me. So I got very little done (except putting the finishing touches on "Ferry Sinai", see here (ED User Files) and, by the looks of it, forgetting to include audio. I'll do that when the temperatures become more agreeable, probably next week. I've done some re-writing of the docs, and some debugging. In all, this is update has few exciting updates, if any: Documentation Main - various updates Quick Ref - small updates Demos Modules - artillery zones 3.0.1 - corrected typo and removed deprecated attributes Time to jump into Lake Zürich!

Version 20250705 - added some audio Download here (ED User Files) Do you know that feeling? When you can't be bothered, and you just want to FLY! This mission scratches that itch. Any plane, anywhere, hot or cold, any livery. Just jump into that cockpit and take off into the wild blue yonder. Fly that aircraft from one location to another and have a blast. Switch to any other plane that you own at a moment's notice. Enjoy yourself! And if you *can* be bothered, this mission can suggest some location to fly to, and maybe even navigate to a beacon on the way. Of course it allows you to choose any airfield on the map as destination. And yeah, the mission will look up frequencies and other stuff for you. Because it knows that you can't be bothered otherwise, and you simply want to have fun. This mission is so simple and so much fun, I'm surprised that I had to create it. So here it is - slightly embellished with some bells and whistles like civil air traffic, fog, etc. to keep you interested. For example, it can keep a log of your achievements, per type and a total: And since you guys asked for it: Ferry can and does keep a record of your flight time, distance etc. per airframe, and even shares it with the other "Ferry" missions (Caucasus, Germany, ...) IMPORTANT NOTE Due to the way that DCS works, this mission can only grant access to all your aircraft if it is run as "multiplayer" even if you are flying all alone. That "Freebie Plane"? It's only there to mock you in single player. So, press "LAUNCH MULTIPLAYER SERVER" to start this mission for real, join BLUE, and then click on DYNAMIC SLOTS to gain access to ALL airfields, stocked with ALL aircraft that you own. And yeah, the mission does support multiplayer. I never tested it with more than 40 concurrent players, but it should support even more if your server can take the load. NOTE In order to persist your achievements (and to share them with other Ferry missions) you must de-sanitize DCS

Version 2.35 - 20250630 -- Corsair Added the corsair (and Essex), and some maintenance code to guard new DCS bugs.

Yeah, the manual is old in many places, and needs amendment. I corrected that, too - thank you!

They are now -- i.e. next release.

IIRC, all flags in DML can be names, and can be local.

Thanks for reporting this. I traced it to a small typo in arty zones. It was forced into the open by using the (now legacy , deprecated) "f?" attribute. It's fixed in the update below. Enjoy, -ch artilleryZones.lua

This is a GREAT find, thank you @Actium - and IMHO it might help put to shame the sorry excuse that we currently have as 'mission save state' - if this works out well, we can finally create create mission persistence where a unit can be restored to a saved location and health (of course, it still has full ammo, but beggars can't be choosers). It's sometimes depressing to be reminded just how godawful ED's abilities are when following what content creators desperately need and are clamouring for (or designing sensible API)

Thank you so much for looking into this. I cannot confirm that the Tigr's lights are active, the scene is still pitch black dark:

At least you acknowledge that you are already filled with hate, which can be a first step in recognizing where a problem may be. Of course two things can be true at once, and yes, there are definitely toxic people around. AFAIK, @Kanelbolle is not amongst them. I usually recommend that you do not interpret, and simply try and find out the facts. You already have everything you need, and it would have taken you another minute - less than it would have taken you to write your angry post - to find out (and I do agree that DCS documentation is bad. Really bad. That's why it's better to try and find out). Are you sure that you weren't just looking for a way to vent your anger? You do sound angry to me. If you want to force your will on others (instead of talking to them and coming to a mutual agreement), that is of course your prerogative. Your server, your rules. It won't be a popular server if the rules that you enforce go against the mainstream, and that may not be your goal. I run my servers so people can have fun which ever way they want.

No. [Edit: to be less opaque: the startup ends on folding down the wings. The taxi starts with wings up, and although I have no issues with that I think that either the dulcet voice of Wags should have mentioned that, or told us (preferred) to lower the wings before starting to taxi. I do not think that a tutorial for taxiing should include taxiing with wings up. Controlling a taildragger is difficult enough as it is. And it's a personal preference - feedback. A problem for me, not a bug ]

Agreed. I simply would have preferred if the training Taxi Mission told us to unfold the wings before starting to taxi. It feels wrong otherwise although you can see other planes taxiing around withtheir wings folded. It’s a gut feeling kind of feedback.

Here's a short feedback for the Taxi & Takeoff Tutorial: Show and tell us how to unfold the wings before we start moving. Taxiing with furled wings feels wrong...

it's near the top third, but not (yet) at the top. And thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you enjoy it.

Update 20250619 - Version 2.5.1 So I took the new ferry module, and applied it to some other maps. I ran into issues with some (relating to data files that contain some unexpected data and characters), and nore importantly I ran into an issue with the way that DCS currently does not allow a script to manage dynamic availability (and hot-start ability) of airfields. I posted a request to ED's pagesm, and have note heard back so far. But the upshot is this: without a script's ability to control if an airfield allows dynamic spawns, it is up to you, the mission designer to click on each and every airfield on the map, and change it by hand. This is annoying for Caucasus. It's a show stop for larger maps with hundreds of airfields like Germany, Sinai or Syria - as I found out the hard way when I created those missions Ferry Germany Ferry Syria I decided that the ferry module simply isn't ready for prime time yet, it requires that ED improve the warehouse (or airfield) API before this module can reach acceptable levels of interaction. Once we have sufficient API support, 'ferry' will be included into the 'official' DML set. While seeing if and how ED respond (so far they have not), I took to heart one of our community leader's comment that I should be more constructive, and I invested a couple of days writing up a (in my mind) better UI/UX for DCS's "Quick Action Generator", which I think has some major design deficiencies. As with the other feedback I've sent to ED we'll see if and how they respond. As (unfortunately) expected, there was none. Oh, well. So, here's a slightly enhanced update to DML: a few bugs corrected that were reported by some kind folk, and some enhancements to "scribe" All Changes: Manual - added new attributes to Scribe for recording total distance travelled Demos Modules - dcsCommon 3.3.2 - getLongestRW (new) - playerScore 5.3.2 - more bug hardening - scribe 2.1.0 - now also tracks distance travelled Enjoy, -ch

That's not a beginner's item, that simply the price of admission, and it applies to everyone. To me, it's like saying that for a beginner Paraglider the upfront cost are too high. Lowering the cost of admission is not making DCS more beginner friendly if for the full admission you still have to spend. It's a data point, surely, and maybe there is something that ED can do to lower the cost across the board - but I doubt that there is much that they can do. After all, complaining that playing Half-Life Alyx has high upfront cost (you need a good VR set) is similarly missing the point entirely. The game costs a small fraction of the hardware required to play it, and with DCS it's similar. IMHO DCS's challenges lie elsewhere. Now, that is indeed a big challenge, and it is painful to me to see how much the kind folk at ED fumble this one over and over again. Terrible UI/UX, terrible tutorials, nothing to do, and content creation tools that harken from a millennia past. Look at the current implementation of DCS's control configuration. It's unintuitive, badly made, and squanders one chance after the other to make getting into DCS a quick, fun experience: Have a fun, interactive experience for a newcomer to set up a simple aircraft, the core controls - after all you only need a few inputs to control any aircraft: pitch, bank, thrust. Gear and Flaps. Optionally Yaw and perhaps wheel brakes. That's it. Enough to fly most planes. If you are smart, you also allow the player to copy your current settings for 'core' controls to all your planes. Because I wager that they are the same for all planes. They are for mine, and I own them all. DCS squanders this chance by displaying a user-hostile interface with myriads of unintelligible (for the beginner) choices, burying the few important settings in an avalanche of unimportant ones. Some hard-core people confuse complexity with sophistication here. It's not sophisticated. It's just crappy UI/UX design. Making this simple step of getting into the cockpit more fun and simple could go a long way. DCS has been obnoxiously bad in this regard for decades. Similarly bad are the experiences to be had for content generation. Be they Instant Action, the new Quick Action Generator or Mission Editor, they simply are user hostile, badly designed, and could be so much better. Worse, there is phenomenal community-created content available (which is great), even hosted by ED (a phenomenal chance). Getting it into DCS is an exercise in futility and bad UX. WTF does a player need to go to ED's web site, use a decades old, really bad web design and navigate to some content, then download and manually install the files? We live in past 2005! Discovering, contributing and managing content should all be integrated into DCS. After all, Unreal Tournament showed us in 1999 how it can be done, and 25 years later there is very little excuse why it's not done here. I hear that a lot, and unfortunately sometimes have to concur. The blame for this IMHO can't be squarely placed at ED, and I hope that if they improved their engagement with the community, that this can change. Community integration still seems underdeveloped as a discipline for ED - tbh, if you read "We do not have time to read through a 30 post thread of two people arguing why something is bad" as your welcome message, you know that there's room for improvement. There is. Which makes it so bewildering that so little effort is done to flatten the curve, or built in steps that make the curve more accessible. This does go against the grain of the more toxic "git gud" people of the community, and I still think it could help DCS become more popular. Again, a missed opportunity. If this is a common question (and I do NOT doubt that it is), there are a lot of things that can be done in DCS to alleviate such basic beginners pains. Just how difficult would it be to tell someone who tries to autostart the A-10A that, when it's not zero, the throttle MUST be set to zero, else the sequence would fail? And how difficult would it be to simply go the logical next step and make the experience better by simply starting the effing plane? When the user presses 'start engine' on the keyboard, their intent and desire is clear. Adding complexity (throttle must be zero) without reason is the realm of really bad design [and IMHO having to manually turn on bat power and EO is just adding insult to injury]. It just results in frustration from the players. I think that this is one of the biggest barriers to enter DCS, and many people fall into the 'it is sophisticated because it is complex' trap. The tutorials are bad. They are often written for the wrong audience, and, on top of that, badly executed. Some people think that because they are difficult they must be good. They aren't, they are just bad. If you, as an instructor, fail to get your point across, you fail as an instructor. Flying isn't difficult. DCS, unfortunately, often makes it unnecessarily difficult, and I hope - since I do love DCS and want to see it flourish - that this can be overcome soon.

Am I the only one who believes that the entire earth is a supremely bad idea? It would be a nice novelty for, say 5 minutes where you visit the place where you were born, perhaps drop a bomb on your elementary school - and then? "Entire Earth" means a homogenous data source - all map data is sourced from some large DB. So say goodbye to historic era maps (say, Normandy, Germany CW). Also say goodbye to all missions that you have created to date, as the entire earth map data is guaranteed to conflict with your mission. Take DCS Caucasus, for example, then overlay a real map. Notice how almost nothing lines up, and all your carefully aligned units must be re-positioned and given new orders. Oh, and many airfields no longer exist. I've taken the other (non-boom) flight sim that does use a global earth map to fly from Batumi to Kobuleti. Yeah, Kobuleti airfield, as in DCS no longer exists. Many landmarks will be different. Ok, so the maps now are more recent. That's IMHO good for any engagement that takes place around now plus/minus ten years. Anything else - not so much. So, lose any historic map, lose all your missions for the benefit of gaining access to some locations. Location IMHO doesn't make or break DCS. Missions do, the content that mission authors place inside a map. Without a good mission to drive engagement, even the most interesting map turns boring within an hour. You can only land so many times in Lukla before that novelty runs out. Oh, and visiting Merrill Meigs in Chicago is out - it's gone. As is Hong Kong's Kai Tak. So, yay! to the idea, and technical accomplishment. And nay!! to the (expectable) result - at least how it's available today from other vendors. Of course, I'll be happy to be proven wrong. Until I see different, I think we might be better served with a hand-tuned static map that may not have as much detail, but that has (paradoxically) better (more precise) detail/resolution. A quality over quantity thang.

Not to nit-pick -- can you be a bit more specific on the "more regular basis" bit?

Convinced me. Now stop talking, start chalking. My credit card needs action!

SOME ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR CLARIFICATION HIGH LEVEL OF GENERATOR ABSTRACTION Above describes the UI/UX for a (neophyte) player, to enable them to quickly generate a fun mission. The entire generator revolves around accessibility: it does not require the player to have specific knowledge about the era, area, aircraft or weapons and still be able to have an engaging mission. As such, the generator abstracts as much as possible, and uses accessible phrases and iconography and engaging UI to guide the player as much as possible; the results should be as forgiving for mistake as possible, and it should anticipate what the player may have intended, to have some fun. The generator's focus is on a fun experience, not an optimum of realism. To achieve this, the number of UI elements and choices is greatly reduced, and attributes that aren't strictly required are automatically fit for the mission by the generator. For example, setting the amount of fuel, chaff, flares etc are distractions that merely can confuse and do not significantly increase the experience or outcome. Therefore, this and similar settings (e.g., frequencies, gun ammo, flight formation) are abstracted and automatically filled by the generator. Similarly for enemy units, their AI, position etc - setting these up requires know-how of things that a new player may not have and lead to their frustration. It becomes a chore to provide, is unpleasant UX, and it is something that the generator can be much better at providing. Similarly, choosing Season, Time of day and weather can be abstracted into much easier terms that the player understands. Choosing "Dawn" as starting time does not require the player to know at what time the sun goes up on that map (Month), and that Winter on the Southern hemisphere is different from the Northern. Dawn means dawn, and the generator can sweat the details. It is this kind of smart player support that makes for an engaging interaction. THE GENERATOR MAKES OR BREAKS THIS APP! Providing many of the above 'nitty gritty' mission details (like enemy) the generator derives from the 'difficulty' attribute that the player sets on Panel 1. Abstracting so many different Attributes into a single setting will provide a challenge, and doing it well will decide the fate of the generator: since it is the generator's job to balance the mission, to make it a fun experience, not properly balancing a mission, not correctly anticipating what the player wants, not erring on the side of fun, and not being a fun experience can ruin the entire generator. Here is how I envision that this could work: Difficulty, together with the aircraft type that the player selects already yields an abundance of information: era, capabilities, potential enemies etc. We can use this with mission type to drive enemy unit selection, their number, placement, orders, alert status and AI settings. Examples: For example, the player does not have know which AAA are era era correct for his aircraft type, nor which of them are too lethal. Driven by the aircraft type and difficulty, the generator selects appropriate unit types and numbers for the mission type, and sets their alert status, skill level and how/when they activate (or if at all). For example, a difficulty setting of "Easy" can cause the generator to set all enemy units to ROE to "Weapons Hold", etc. Similarly, the difficulty attribute can control mission complexity for carrier ops: While "Easy" only has the player depart from the carrier, attack some hapless (weapons hold) unit on the shore and then proceed to a land-based airfield, a "Challenging" mission alters this so that the hapless unit now has teeth, some company, and the player has to return to the boat. This way, the generator can quickly automate mission generation without requiring the player to be confronted with settings that simply are too complex and ruin the experience. Note also that this UI (outside the theatre map) fully abstracts locality. The player is not required to place units nor their plane. This is done by the generator. It may be counter-intuitive at first, but not having to worry where the action takes place takes a lot of burden from the player, and also allows the generator to shine and keep generated missions fresh by leveraging map knowledge and always randomly picking the best locations for a particular mission type Mission generation The mission is generated after the player clicks on GO. Since there is no locality managed by the player (other than choosing the map/theater) loading and operating QAG is fast, and should on average only take a few seconds. QAG should retain settings between sessions, so subsequent sessions will be even faster (please see the note on Reuse below) Randomization This is an area where the generator can truly shine and leverage ED knowledge and experience. Each map has areas that are particularly well suited for certain engagement, and can show off the features of a map (for example, Caucasus can be drab in some places, while drop-dead beautiful in others). Picking the correct spot for a generated mission can make it an exponentially better experience. Since the generator places enemies and friends alike, it can randomize and optimize both at once and guarantee a steady stream of good experiences. Modularization, Templates (?) I suggest a heavily modularized approach to getting this version of QAG out of the door. Generation of mission types can be modularized (with planned missions already being mentioned in the Mission Type drop-down, but not yet available), as can be optimization for a particular map (leveraging/optimizing the beauty of a particular map can be a per map module that is added later). For example, an SAR mission type module can be added later. Since the generator picks the location of all action, it can also use an 'embellishment' module for 'eye candy' at the source and destination airfields, as well as the general location of the mission's action. This way, no matter which airfield is used, it can look good to the player and be era-compliant - the joys of automation. This embellishment module can be based on templates and be added later. I will not mention the potential monetization options.. ooops. API I strongly recommend that ED define and release the API for both QAG front-end and mission generator back-end so that the community can provide their own. The downslide here is that downloading and installing add-ons to DCS currently is not neophyte-friendly, so this will have to be a later development, when DCS's UX/UI matures sufficiently to integrate this. Reusability / Save / Retrieve / Exchange I'm assuming that the generator backend creates a '.miz' type mission as it does now, that is loaded into DCS like a standard mission created with Mission Editor, and that the output is compatible. If so, I strongly recommend that the generated missions are named sensibly (maybe ask the player) and are placed in a location where they can later be retrieved and re-played without having to re-generate them. I also strongly advise that QAG's GUI provide an interface to access and manage previously generated missions (it is trivial to store this version of QAG's settings within a .miz), so players can either replay a previously mission (if it was fun), or generate a new one based on the settings used (this was the origin of the 'Other' tab in the examples above. I merely chose to abstract that detail).

It's not QAG, but if you want to fly your F4 in Caucasus, Germany or Syria, these missions should be able to scratch that itch (should it still be there) https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3345044/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3345094/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3345115/