cfrag

With the advent of Foothold and similar sandboxes, this is no longer true; it is indeed a content issue, and classic, multi-hour engagements are only enjoyable for a small section of players, while MP sandbox play can attract a much greater variety of players. If DCS added more and better support for this inside its scripting environment (there is a lot of untapped potential here: more/better support for C/SAR, Transport, Logistics, better scripting for fuel, unit damage and drone control, etc), mission creators can cater to that need, and the MP community can grow hopefully disproportionally. A typical Foothold session lasts 45 minutes, which is still long in MP circles but significantly easier to swallow than 1 hour briefings followed by 3 hour missions that can't be interrupted. And yes, even with Foothold-style missions, real save and continue is a must in MP, hopefully it will arrive some day. Let's hope that content creators soon receive better, and more flexible tools that can help creating more popular MP missions.

That is indeed good news, thank you BN. That being said, I don't see the numbers (I am hosting 2 servers through the kind people at Fox3). So if (as I'm hoping) you are phenomenally successful at SP, with steadily increasing player numbers, keeping online players steady does mean a relative decline. I dearly hope that on-line play picks up soon. If not, I will at least retire one of my hosted servers. To increase on-line play I'd love to see a better, tighter integration into the main game, and a massive upgrade of the UX/UI. I have already posted many suggestions in this regards, and I'm sure that you have forwarded some of them to the team. Here's to great DCS success - online and SP.

I seem to recall a post by some ED people citing a 10%-12% online figure, probably 1-2 years ago. Given DCS's atrocious online experience (compared to other games that allow online play), that is hardly surprising to me. On-line play does seem to be in decline for DCS, even though some companies (e.g. Fox3) have taken much of the pain of hosting DCS out of the equation (I'm publicly hosting 2 DCS servers for the community). In the context of this thread, all this IMHO is immaterial, though. OP suggests adding some air frame and maps to make DCS more beginner-friendly, a non-sequitur in my mind. In my mind, it's neither the planes nor maps that make DCS inaccessible to neophytes.

Beneficial in what way? The title reads "beginner-friendly", the contents focus on WW II aircraft, which are decidedly not beginner friendly to fly. And that makes DCS more beginner-friendly because...? Also, keep in mind that in DCS, we look at geological timescales for new aircraft - "several" aircraft equates to 10 years+ Uh. Normandy and Channel are dead last when it comes to players, at least on servers. Last week-end I counted 3 players total for Normandy and Channel (ok, dead last is Falklands with 0, and 1 for Iraq. I consider both maps dead, along with "Halfghanistan"). So how is creating a worse version from one of the most unpopular maps (by server player count) going to make DCS more beginner-friendly? So those "several WWII aircraft" you talked about were full fi? ED wants to make money. Iconic planes make money: Hornet, Tomcat, Fat Amy. The others - not so much. Creating several warbirds in lo- and hi-fi? Unlikely to the extreme to become funded. And it's still a mystery how adding aircraft - any type - makes DCS more beginner friendly. Making DCS more beginner friendly IMHO would be things like A UX/UI that is usable Make it easy to view and get into your aircraft, and especially reduce the pain to configure your hardware for your aircraft Provide some decent tutorials Make it easy to create a quick engagement (the new QAG isn't there yet. Not by a long shot) Make it easy to create missions (Mission Editor really isn't there yet, not by a couple of light years) Make it easy to discover (find, download, manage/update, remove) new content, especially user-created content like missions, liveries, mods Much better improved multiplayer support: find who is online, join them, invite them etc, create groups, arrange meetings etc. There are tons of things to improve DCS's decidedly callous approach to welcoming new players. Adding new planes or maps seems not to be among them for me.

As an avid fan of the map, and born and bred Hamburger, here are some things that are absolute no-gos to me, and probably definite "who gives a flying f*ç%" to anyone else. since none of this is phase 2 Bunker Feldstrasse (see here) Köhlbrandbrücke Euler-Hermes Hochhaus (here) Planetarium (here) Also, this may be an edge case, and it's only an issue for those who parse the 'radio' file: please include western airbase callsigns, using eastern callsigns for airfields with german names (e.g. Allsted) throws a spanner into airfield matching and retrieving frequencies (see here) The Elbe-Seitenkanal is interrupted northeast of Lüneburg, where the Schiffshebewerk (boat lift) would be.null Please keep up the great work!

Version 20250611 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. Supports all helicopter bases. 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 now keeps book of your achievements, per type and a total: If enabled, your achievements are persisted, and shared with "Ferry Germany" and "Ferry Caucasus" (if you have them). 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. ANOTHER NOTE: To allow Ferry to save and share your accomplishments with other Ferry missions, you must de-sanitize DCS And of course, the mission does support multiplayer.

If a unit U is stopped on the deck of a carrier C, they will stay in the same relative location to each other over time. In other words, if you subtract the location of U from C, that difference will remain the same over time since their movement in the world is the same. So all you need to do is subtract one from the other, keep the values, and if they are the same for a time (say, 10 seconds), and unit U is not inAir, and their difference (distance) is less than say 200 meters, U is stopped on the deck of C. So you'd need to take two measurements, and remember the first. But the math is simple and straightforward.

I always assumed that was because laundry services returned our cleaned uniforms on Saturdays. Well at least at my barracks they did..

Perhaps try coord.LLtoLO()

Update 20250608 Like Ferry Caucasus, Ferry Germany has gained some suggested features like accomplishments, and the ability to share and persist them with other Ferry missions if you de-sanitize DCS.

That's a great point! I see if I can include it (length of longest rw) in the destination info.

20250608 - Accomplishments, share them with other Ferry missions On the heels of the last update people started reminding me of the modules that are available for DML, on which Ferry is based, and requested I add some of them since I could get their additional abilities almost for free. So here is another update: Ferry no accumulates your achievements (total distance travelled, per type data etc), and if you persist this data, it is also shared with the other "Ferry" missions (at this time, Germany and Syria). Enjoy, -ch

There is, sort of, and it is lowest drawer UI quality-wise (unfortunately like so many of ED's recent features). In order to import drawings from one miz to the other, you can use the the 'band select tool' a.k.a multi-select (I warn again that this is quality-wise not a good experience): Here's how Select the drawings with the band selection tool (note that unlike any other band selection tool in other apps, you first have to activate the band selection mode) MAKE SURE THAT YOU ALSO INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE UNIT INTO THE SELECTION. Why? Because band selection is buggy. If you select only line drawings, nothing will be pasted. I assume that the silly anchor is required for pasting, and there is no anchor when you copy/paste line drawings only. Once you have selected the drawings (plus a unit), press ctrl-c to copy immediately open the target mission. Be advise that that mission has to have been saved before, so do not create a new unsaved mission. Open a saved one instead. Activate the Band-Select mode. Why? Because the kind folk at ED seem to have no idea of proper UI design. If you paste without activating band selection first, nothing is pasted. Silly? Stupid? Yes. Move the mouse to where you want to place the objects Press ctrl-v to paste the drawings and unit. Engage the MOVE mode inside the Multi-Select mode (yeah, a mode within a mode, another UX sin). Move the pasted line art to where you need them to be disengage move and multiselect modes Remove the unit(s). Note that if the unit was an aircraft with "start from ramp", you'll have to look for it at the nearest airfield close to the location where it would have appeared during paste. Yeah, I know... Indeed, this is bottom "quality", and there is little excuse to leave it in this abysmal state for half a year. Then again, this is DCS...

Ah, that raises an interesting point: If you are a member of squad "A", and fly a mission that was hosted on a server that is owned by your squad, but not you, and that mission was created by a member of your squad that isn't you, does that constitute 'using community contributions'? After all, a point can be made that both mission and server aren't yours and that they are contributed by others that are not part of the product that you purchased from ED. Also, I know few squadrons-level missions that aren't using at least one the following: CTLD, MIST, SSB or MOOSE; all community-contributions (IIRC), so technically, I think that such missions fall under "community use" since they rely on community-provided frameworks.

Version 20250611 Download here (ED User files) Just fly in Cold War Germany -- any aircraft, from any airfield, to any airfield, hot and cold. Oh, and if you really want it to, the mission provides you with destinations to go to. But only if you want it to. 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. Supports all helicopter bases. 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 now keeps book of your achievements, per type and a total: 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. ANOTHER NOTE: Radio frequencies for many eastern airfields currently are not available due to a bug in Ugra's data files. YET ANOTHER NOTE To allow Ferry to save and share your accomplishments with other Ferry missions, you must de-sanitize DCS 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.

That's very odd. I've hardened the code further against unforeseen situations. Does this take care of the issue? playerScore.lua

I just checked. There is the string "Boulderñity" in the radios file that completely flusters net.json2lua() (meaning: that method can't handle UTF-8, that little "ñ" kills it. Nothing I can do. I'll write it up as a bug, for the time being this means that Nevada is off limits for bcn, unless I try and write an UTF-8->ASCII string converter (which is bound to bring up other issues).

Without inspecting this myself it looks as if Nevada's 'radio' file is malformed. Some of these miscellaneous files are, for example Germany Cold War's radio file is formatted correctly, but the names of the airfields are incorrectly given (their eastern equivalents). I'll have a look.

Yes. One particular challenge of the ferry module is switching all airfields to give access to aircraft, and managing the available numbers of ac, and limiting the number of helicopter fields (in Syria and Germany), then making ferry more accessible for mission developers. Ferry Germany is almost finished - and I've run into some data issues with the map (the airfield names don't match radio, and I've asked Ugra to look into this). Let's see if and how far I can push Ferry to make a good DML module. Since it involves the Warehouse API, it's going to be ugly. There may be an appropriate integration into messenger and valet for this as well, and the morse code translation added to common

Version 2.5.0 - 20250605 And so it turns out I was wrong: DCS does invoke the save state callback. It merely disables all debugging, and my debugging code wasn't invoked, leading me down the wrong track. Since all debugging is disabled during state saving and can't be enabled, I'm postponing my own development until it can be enabled. I'm not that masochistic. I also tried DCS' new QAG (Quick Action Generator) and was deeply troubled by what I saw. And, again, I screwed up - believing that the interface blunders in that new feature were obvious to anyone with UI/UX experience (they are), it seems that the kind folk at ED took exception to my publicly saying so, without me elaborating the (to me) obvious. That post was taken down; ED deemed it unhelpful and not constructive (as I did not point to the many -- to me obvious -- faults or provide a better solution). I followed up to our community managers in a private conversation enumerating some 30+ (yeah) of the most egregious (and, yes, obvious) bugs/UI/UX blunders in that one new feature (examples: set the number of wingmen to 1 to have zero wingmen. Press the Cancel button on armament screen to accept all changes. That kind of obvious). I haven't received any reaction other than the we'll "look it over the next few days". Ah, well. Somewhat disheartened by what seems to me an accelerating downturn in DCS quality wise, I tinkered with some scripts that now can access a map's radio and beacon info, and came up with a new mission that turns out to be incredibly fun: Ferry Caucasus It's full of new scripts (some of them folded into "common") that may or may not make a full transition to DML - we'll see. Changes Documentation Manual - clone zones "noSpawn" QuickRef - clone zones update Demos - clone here - but not here (new) Modules - bcn 1.0.0 - (experimental) - cfxMX 4.1.0 - (DCS "state save" preparation) - cloneZone 2.7.0 - noSpawn zones - dcsCommon 3.3.1 - various new support methods - ungrief 2.0.2 - removed typo in config Enjoy, -ch

For a really fun time, request a progressive on a FARP

Improved Warehouse API - Two small Suggestions With the (hopefully soon) coming dynamic campaign and growing importance of logistics (Hook, C-130, ...), I have found myself trying to create missions that integrate these aspects, and have run up against a couple of issues that I recommend that the kind people at ED look at and perhaps provide some remedy. Namely, attributes "Dynamic Spawn" and "Allow Hot Start": These attributes attach to warehouses (and are really attributes of the airfield that the warehouse attaches to. From ME's UX they appear to be Warehouse attributes but logically I believe that they should be airfield attributes). Unfortunately, these two attributes cannot be set in a script. I recommend amending the airfield API with tho setters: nothing Airbase.setDynamicSpawn(Class Self , boolean canSpawn) -- allow / disallow dynamic spawns from this airbase (in multiplayer, and it would be so much better if it was also possible in single player) and nothing Airbase.setHotStart(Class Self , boolean hotStart) -- allow / disallow hot starts for dynamic aircraft from this airfield Above could allow mission designers to control dynamic spawn ability from script. I'm submitting this here in the hopes that perhaps @BIGNEWY or @NineLine notice and, if they believe it worthwhile, to show this suggestion to the team. Thank you, -ch

No, I don't like it at all

20250604 - QoL update OK, that was fast. I hadn't fully posted the announcement of "Ferry" yet, when messages started to arrive suggesting that I make all airfields available for planned trip. And so, now, there are. And so I spent the evening wrestling DCS's menu system (it hates me), and put this idea into practice. So, here you are: all airfields, sorted by distance and sorted alphabetically, all at your fingertips. So you can finally explore all airfields on your map. And yes, that indeed makes it a much better mission, so thank you all for your feedback! There were also many messages requesting that I bring this mission to Syria. We'll see. First, I'll share this little flask of Ribera del Duero with a friend of mine, then I'll see what I can do.

Understood - but I'm a bit mystified wrt the game mechanics. So you go to your squad's briefing, start your plane only to have it fail/have your chief tell you that it's not ready and then wave to your Alt as they take off? It may be an interesting mechanic from the Alt's point of view, but since planes that don't pass muster don't fly, I'm not sure I see the point except playing the "your'e in, you're out" lottery. Or do you suggest that people knowingly take off in an aircraft that isn't flight-worthy? Since it's a game, sure. I don't think it to be more immersive, but it's surely more thrilling if your plane actually gears up when you know that your hydraulics are on the fritz... Is that what you are looking for?