carrollhead

Quick question for you (and any other FC3 fighter pilots) - How would you feel about using a single waypoint (say WP1 for simplicity) that coincides exactly with the bullseye? If you reference that steerpoint and use the HSI it's pretty simple to work out your own bullseye position, but then pretty hard (at least without practice) to visualise where other bullseye positions are relative to you. It's not impossible though. (Especially if the briefing map has it clearly marked) As you point out - a ground pounder saying "I need help WP1" is pretty meaningless, but a bullseye call (or a raygun/buddy) can be made to mean something to everyone (who bothers to learn!). I realise of course that FC3 would prevent you from being super accurate, since the radar doesn't give you the info - but it does have the ability to sort friendly/enemy. So, if I was being chased in my A-10 and gave that call - would it help you? Obviously it would rely on the mission having a specified waypoint at the bullseye :). A-10s can display it on the HUD anyway. I genuinely don't know what the FC3 fighter squads use, so I'm just curious. :D

I'm not being rude - just checking! Have you unpaused the sim when you try this? By default, the grey hat on the stick is mapped to move your view around. You need to go into OPTIONS -> CONTROLLERS -> A-10C SIM and delete that assignment. Replace it with Trim. It's like that so people without a TrackIR can look around using the stick. While you're in there it might be worth checking that the throttle axes are correctly assigned to your stick. You can also check to see if the sim is "seeing" your controller by presing RCTRL-RETURN on your keyboard (while you are in the game). A red box will appear showing the position of all of your controls. Try moving the throttle and the stick to see if anything moves on the diagram. If it doesn't then the most likely thing is incorrect controller assignments.

I wasn't necessarily talking about large scale engagements, more like smaller scale squad v squad type stuff. I'm not having a go here - so please don't take it that way :), I feel sometimes that what happens on the big public servers ends up in two sub-games. People doing ground attack, and the a2a engagement going on somewhere else. When one side starts beating the other in a2a then fighters swarm all over the ground atack part of it looking for kills. I don't have a problem with it, but the "feel" of the game is that the A2G part is a sort of sideline. (which for a lot of players it probably is :)). I know a lot of A-10 pilots don't join big servers much because they are easy prey - rightly so, but it doesn't help player numbers. A-10C pilots are pretty much relying on blind luck to survive already. Last night for example, I got jumped by two MiGs on the 104th, I even got a sidewinder off at one of them but ultimately I was always going to be dead meat! It was really good fun playing cat and mouse for a little while though. If I had a fighter near me..... Taking part in smaller inter squad events might be a way to foster better links between us all, generally improve the level at which participants fly, and encourage teamwork when we do join. Anyway, if there was a mission/s with both sides having ground attack objectives and weapons that force the fighter support to fight BFM wouldn't that be a bit of a laugh? A lot of the comments in this thread and elsewhere lament the inability of the sim to support enourmous games like in the old days - so why not make smaller ones, and make the most of what we have now? This isn't meant to be an idea to replace the bigger open servers BTW - just a way to get the various squads out there playing together in a more structured way. ...and yes, we will host this stuff (although it would be nice to get as much participation as possible).

That would be cool :). I can do the same thing, although it might be a good plan to try and get some ideas for a "mission type" we can both agree on before committing all of the time needed to actually build the mission. As a friendly competition for example, we could just look at there being two target sets and each side needs to kill theirs first. (or with the least amount of bombs etc.). Heck if we put the targets close to each other then there could be an air-to-air element as well (although we'd need to discuss that :)) I have a TvT mission using combined arms that might work too - it's basically "capture the flag" using combined arms. The AI drives at a town centre, and the first side to occupy the "flag" and stay there for more than 10 minutes is the winner. It's pretty quick, and works as a mission with 4 players up to 10(ish) - it just goes quicker with more players. We;ve had a fair bit of fun with that one. With a bit of work, I'm sure we could come up with some fun and competetive scenarios. Any other squads wanting to join in would be great. There's been a lot of A2A stuff recently, but I'm a ground pounder - and it would be great to really excercise the A-10 in a scenario where it isn't prey to everything else:joystick:. Also - I like having the idea of fighters in missions, but it would be interesting to see what happens if they're limited to heaters only. Would that make the engagements a bit more accesible to newer players? The dogfighting would be pretty cool. I'm not talking about every mission, just some of them to alter the style of play a bit.

You're bang on Blooze :). That's why I think those of us who do fly as groups should try to look at ways of getting together more. It would return some of that "buzz", and help keep the old girl going until we get the new engine. Past a certain point, you need interaction with other pilots in DCS to keep the game a challenge. Just some ideas - not sure if there would be much of a take up... 1. Try some bombing competitions. 2. Try flying as teams in the bigger public server, and (shock) get the fighters to actually cover the ground attack planes. (I know some do this, but...) 3. Have some friendly formation type events, where those of us who take it a little less seriously than the display teams can have a go. I know it's been done before, but not doing it isn't helping the general level of interest I guess.:)

Amusing as the FPS discussion is (did you know Tekken has "mindgames"?), shouldn't we at least try to discuss what (if anything) the community as a whole can do to try and make up some of the lost ground in multiplayer? The truth is that getting new players in (and staying) is hard. It's a big ol' learning curve, and one you never really get off. That puts off all of the people I would rather not be in the game TBH, but it also puts off a lot of guys who would probably be really good teamplayers and pilots. I don't think it's because they're afraid to put the work in, but I guess they want to feel some sort of progression. Getting whacked within a minute of taking off doesn't help with that. The only way around it is to get people into squads who can dedicate the time to help people learn (which we do), but then that might be a level of comittment too far for players just having a casual look. It's a bit of a catch-22 at the moment. I'm not moaning BTW, but I think there is some ground to be gained here, and also in trying more to get the squads we do have flying with each other. If we could try to re-kindle that sense of friendly competiveness then I think we would be on the way to things getting better. Again - I'm not having a go, some people are trying to do this and I'm really grateful. Still, we need more (I volunteer BTW:pilotfly:)

Isn't exactly the problem though, that DCS almost enourages pilots not to prepare before flying? I don't know how many briefings I've made that are obviously ignored by people flying the mission! It doesn't stop me putting the info in there BTW. Pilots don't need to do any more than join aircraft - fly to waypoints. Then die, and DERP do it again. Actual pilots would be spending a great deal of time working out the whole mission before they went near an aeroplane. In DCS, the mission creator does that, then people mostly just jump in and fly. There are ways around it, but it's pretty silly not to be able to review your own waypoints, and get a picture of your mission "in your head" prior to departure.

I don't think the community has gone exactly, more like we've split up into small groups and mostly keep to ourselves. There are too many reasons to post for this, and they've all been raked over in this forum enough times! The question is, what are we all going to do about it? We have to get that sense of friendship, and cheerful rivalry going again if the multiplayer scene is going to make a turnaround. A while back, I suggested a public teamspeak that could serve as a lobby for everyone. It was't met with much enthusiasm, because most of the server owners and squads run their own (which is fair enough). I still think it's a good idea though - players connect to one TS and then move to the relevant server channel (which could me managed by the servers owners I reckon) - everyone playing is in the same TS and they would "bump" into each other a lot more. People could easily password "their" channels if they wanted private areas. It would help to get us all together a bit more though. I would happily set this up BTW - so I'm not looking for money from people. It's a start I reckon - we really need to get people playing together more than anything else! :)

Wierd :) - it happens to me regardless of having the HOTAS sync checked or not. I've just got used to doing it as my APU spools up. One of those things I guess.

If you start the mission with your throttles in the "off" position, the sim doesn't pick it up. You need to have them in "idle", then once you're in the jet move them to the "off" position. Then proceed with the startup. Also do them one at a time :)

I think the others have it - it's slewing to a point in space above your steerpoint. If this happens, you can change the elevation of the steerpoint from the CDU. Hit "WP" on the FSKs, then choose "steerpoint" from the menu. The elevation of the steerpoint is on the line saying "EL" on the left hand side. Just put a zero into the scratchpad and hit the LSK next to the "EL" (as long as it's on the right steerpoint of course :)) The steerpoint will now be on the ground. I'm not infront of it at the moment, but I'm fairly sure that's correct! :) Another slightly more "hacky" way of doing it is to put your TAD cursor over the steerpoint, make a markpoint and slew to that. It will be on the ground, and pretty close to the steerpoint (depending on how accurately you placed the cursor). This isn't an awfully "tidy" way of doing it, but it works without having to do too much with buttons in the cockpit, most of it is on the HOTAS. The trick is to have it done before you start running in :P, maybe something worth checking on the ground before you depart.

I might be misinterpreting your problem here, but my map shows lat/long positions as DD MM SS. (i.e. degree minutes and seconds). If you put those into the CDU, there will be an error since the A10 uses DD MM.MMM (i.e. degrees minutes and decimals of minutes). So - for example on the map 40 20'30"N is actually 40 20.500N in the CDU. I could be barking up the wrong tree though!

www.combined-ops-group.com are going to start running a PvP style mission, usually on Wednesday nights starting at 2000 UTC. The basic plan is that each side have a similar number of ground units that have to attack and hold an area of Gori, roughly half way between Kutaisi and Tiblisi. Once the ground units are in position, an immortal "HQ" group start driving toward the city. If the units holding ground get destroyed, then the HQ stops. The first HQ to reach it's designated position triggers the mission to be won. The idea is to encourage CAS type work for A-10s and KA-50s, working with humans on the ground. We've had a couple of run throughs, and it seems to work pretty well - and we've had a good laugh doing it:) There are also slots for transport helos, and fighters. The number of available aircraft and weapons on each side is very low, so you need to make each shot count. There are however plenty of Mk-82s to play with! We've had some glitches with CA, and players being disconnected, although I think that stuff has been mostly ironed out by now. What we need to do is test it with more players and find out what sort of things limit this type of mission. If anyone wants to join, then our teamspeak address is readily available on the front page of our site and also in the server breifing. We'll give you the password in TS. So if you're interested in a "capture the flag" type of mission, with ground forces and aircraft working together then come and say hello. We'll do our best to fit you in. Please bear in mind though that the mission is pretty hard on the hosting machine, so if we start to get disconnects etc then it might need restarting or it's full. You will have helped us get a baseline for realistic player numbers though! We're really keen on making this type of game a regular feature of multiplayer, because it takes away the usual "know where the targets are" type of mission typical of DCS at the moment (at least without a LOT of hard work), and the A-10 was built for helping guys on the ground. Although the scenario is a little unrealistic, it is very replayable - and we'd be really grateful for any constructive criticism from players. We don't mind how good or bad you feel you are as a pilot - but we do need you on teamspeak! Andy - COG

I'm definitely interested, and there's a few more in our group that would fly also. Are you interested in getting just more serious coop games or specifically, are you interested in using that ATO? I can supply a teamspeak with plenty of slots, but my own internet connection limits me to hosting four players (which is enough for small missions :) ) If we can - I'd like to see missions like CSAR supporting MI-8s etc type stuff, as well as human JTAC and that kind of thing. Let me know :)

@pman - I understand your position! What I'm suggesting might be a way to get the people who turn up on public servers and don't use teampseak to get on comms. I know there will always be people who just don't do the voice thing - but I do think that if people could be persuaded to go looking for a game by joining a teamspeak that acts as a sort of lobby - then it would tackle some of the problems we have with DCS multiplayer. I think (from reading this thread anyway), that the VA server is one of the few that can stay running for relatively long periods of time without falling over - because of the type of mission you fly. What's happening a lot (IMO) is that when a server crashes, we lose loads of players because they don't know what's happening - being in one teampseak would make that go away. Even if people don't use voice - they'll be able to hear it - and there is a text chat. It's the closest thing I can think of to replacing an old style hyperlobby. It's not ideal, but with community support it could be made to work I think. I don't know how many (% wise) of the players on a typical open server are in TS, but I suspect its pretty low. Anything we could do to fix that has to be a good idea surely? I realise that there are issues surrounding things like bans etc - and we would have to find some sort of common ground on how to deal with stuff like that. I still reckon we could improve the overall experience for the typical "casual" player by setting something like this.

I would absolutely do this - but before I went ahead, it would be good to see if any of the owners of the more popular public servers would support it. Otherwise it would be dead before it started. As I said - it's not about treading on the existing teamspeak servers out there, more to just give all the players looking for a game one TS that they can all populate. I would give each channel (representing each server) their own admin rights so they would be free to police what they needed, add TARS etc. I reckon 40 slots would probably be about right to start with, but I'll wait to see if I get some more positive responses before spending any money:) - at the very least we'd need the briefing on the servers to show the new TS address.

Just a thought..... Looking at Krebs open teamspeak idea, what do you guys think about using teamspeak as a lobby? It's only an idea, but if there was a teamspeak with a red and blue channel for each of the "big" servers out there plus a lobby, would that help us all organise things? Three server restarts last night got a lot of the crowd I was flying with to give up and do other stuff, because they didn't know what was going on. All folks would need to do is jump into one teamspeak and we have instant chat and voice comms. It could even have a TARS channel for each side in each server (that would probably be up to each server owner though). If so - I would pay for it as a trial to see if it worked. I'm not trying to tread on existing squad teamspeaks here (or Krebs for that matter), but it just strikes me as a simple way to get the online players together and talking :). I know nearly everyone has a teamspeak and it's not hard to set one up, but from the point of view of the average player, wouldn't it be cool to connect to just one when flying on the public DCS servers and then if (when) there is a crash - everyone will still be talking and they can either wait for a restart or move to another one? It might also be a nice way to bring everyone who plays together a bit more. It would be easy to set up admin rights to each servers channels for the owners of the servers. Anyway - just an idea, and if Krebs is reading this then please don't think I'm trying to "steal" your idea - I think it was awesome, I just don't want to presume that you would want your server being used in this way!

Once you turn inbound at the start of the approach, fly directly down the runway heading (these values are often not what you see on the map - there's a couple of degrees difference). At first, be at or close to your planned landing speed - say 130 kts. The needle should be centred at this point. Observe which direction the CDI needle moves. Once it starts to get offset, then turn the aircraft toward it, say 5 degrees and stabilise. You'll be descending on the glideslope too. Wait to see what your new heading does to the localiser needle. You'll either need to turn into the wind a little more or turn back toward the runway. Keep making these small corrections until you stabilise on the correct heading. Holding speed is important here, otherwise you'll make the solution more complicated. Flying in a sideslip will make handling the jet a lot more complicated! To give you an example of how to work it out, imagine a plane landing in a direct 10kt crosswind with an IAS of 130 kts. (I know I'm simplyfying the maths a little here - I don't think it's enough to worry about!) The required crab angle is 4.4 degrees (sin^-1 (10/130)) At 150 kts it's 3.8 deg (which is over accurate I know!) Since I don't know anyone who can fly to 0.5 of a degree, hold an exact speed etc etc - try the method above. Give yourself plenty of room to get stabilised (10 miles or so at first) and be patient to see the results of your corrections. Once you get the hang of it you can fly at a higher approach speed until you get to 3-4 miles and then slow it down. Only when you get into the visual environment, and can see the runway should you transition to a sideslip in order to land (in fact you can do this in the last few seconds of flight with practice). Hope that helps - you can also practice course corrections like this using TACAN. Just fly inbound with a crosswind and practice keeping the needle centred. The only difference is that the ILS needle is a lot more sensitive.

I hope so :) - Keep in AUTO or it won't automatically switch between the map layers available.

The easy way to tell is to make the TAD SOI, and zoom out a bit. There are different levels of map in there, and if all you see is a black TAD, then that should fix it. Also if you set FLIGHT PLAN on the rotary switch aft of the CDU, you should still see you FP lines - just no map if there isn't one available at that location and zoom level :)

Once you get the "INS NAV READY" message flashing on the CDU, then the alignment is done. Clicking the "NAV" mode on the right hand side of the CDU page is all you need to do in order for the EGI system to track your movements. What's happening when you click "EGI" on the NMSP panel, is that the instruments will now display what the EGI system thinks is your current position, attitude etc. You'll notice there is no TVV on the HUD until you select EGI mode for example. In other words, the EGI is already working after the alignment, and selection of NAV mode. The button marked EGI slaves some of the dials, the HUD etc to the output of that particular system. The reason for this is simply that if for some reason the EGI fails during flight (It's almost always a BMP ha ha), then there are other options available for you to use. The NMSP panel is basically a switch that governs which data source your instruments read from in order to display the things they do. (Not all of them, but that's taking the discussion a little too far I think!) Next time you do this, watch what happens to the HSI when you hit EGI. The DTS UPLOAD page isn't just loading navigation data, it populates the DSMS and some other stuff too. Whether this stuff lives on a data cartridge or not I don't know. I, for example will generally not hit the "LOAD" button until I've finished re-arming etc. That way, I only need to complete the LOAD process once. There's usually more than enough time after re-arming to load the data, configure the weapons and exchange healthy abuse with squadmates whilst the EGI aligns :) That's how I understand it at least - someone what knows more than me might well correct me too! Hopefully that helps :)

You have to wait a tiny bit for the data to be "available". Watch the CDU screen after power on, and you'll see a message like "DTS upload complete" or something appear briefly on the alignment page. After that you just go ahead and "load all". I guess the CDU (or whichever widget is responsible) has to read the cartridge before it can upload all the data. A bit like the few seconds it takes your PC to think about whatever device it is you've plugged into a USB port. (I think!)

I would love to see the map screen once I join a server, with the waypoints of the flight you've joined marked out ahead of you actually getting into the cockpit. (and maybe other coalition flights including the tankers) Some ability for designers to put simple things like lines, circles and labels on the map would be great too. It would make the briefings massively easier to follow, give everyone much better SA before flying, and save the servers a little bit because you wouldn't need to include so many (if at all) image files in the .miz file. +1 for a chat lobby too :)

Oh - I agree. What you guys and the other constantly open servers do is a real service to the community. I know this more perhaps than most having tried to do it myself a little bit! I also really like flying on the open servers, but DCS (especially the A-10 etc) has so much possibility that we tend to gravitate toward small scale stuff in our own servers just to try and keep our skills up. My longwinded point was that there is more than likely a lot of multiplayer going on that people never get to see - for good reasons. So I don't think multiplayer is dying out, just getting more insular. Maybe us private(ish) squads should all make more of an effort to come and get shot down by you guys :). (I got a Mig with an A-10C in your server a couple of weeks ago - I felt a million dollars before I was handed my ego back on a plate:lol:). It's too easy to sit in you're own niche and not take part.

It would be a big help to have a "planning" stage in multiplayer so that people joining servers had to go through some sort of "map reading/see where the targets are" type of exercise before committing to flight. Their plan could go into a DTS so they could look at some intel and come up with a flight plan based on it. That one thing would be a huge game changer for us all. (I know - I'm just wishing :beer:) As it is, we fly on closed servers now because a) Despite spending money and time on trying to get a dedicated server running, we've always ended up with snags. Most of us can only host 4-6, and a few can manage 10. That's only enough for squadmates most of the time. b) Mission making takes a lot of time, and that's for small scale 4-10 player type stuff. More than that and it get's mindboggling trying to make the AI behave in a semi believable way. Please don't take this the wrong way, I love the <51st>, 104th etc but more often than not I know where the ground targets are :). That doesn't detract from the experience, because getting there is often a bit of a challenge. (OK - I die. A lot :lol:) This quite often has to do with fighters not working to protect the ground pounders. (again it's not a dig - quite a lot of them do - it's just not possible to control it) So, although it's fun, I need to be in the right mood for one of the big open PvP servers - as often or not I (and my squadmates) want to run a specific scenario or practice a task. Or just mess about! c) Unless someone joins a server and talks to everyone on teamspeak etc - then they won't know the plan and will either leave or blow stuff up that they shouldn't. Cool and useful stuff like TARS only add to the learning curve. All of these things lead IMO to people playing in smaller groups, on passworded servers. Nothing wrong with that - but it does give the impression of an unwelcoming MP environment. It's not (I know) - but from the outside I can see how it may be seen to be. All I can add is that we welcome absolutely anybody to come and play with us, all we want is you to be on our teamspeak first. Not too much surely? Andy http://www.combined-ops-group.com