DarkFire

I have to say I disagree entirely. Success being based on AI behaviour rather than player action is IMO poor mission design, for precisely the reason you gave. For SP missions the outcome should always be dependant on the actions of the player, with the AI being used to provide believable opposition and "filler" in terms of friendly forces and if desired a "living world" to whatever degree is required for suspension of disbelief. From my point of view both as a player and mission designer, I want these things from an SP mission: 1) The background to the scenario has to be believable. 2) I want a detailed briefing. Why am I assigned to this mission? What happened to cause command to give me this mission? What are my objectives? Etc. 3) My mission has to be realistically achievable. Making missions pointlessly hard purely for the sake of them being pointlessly hard (with the very narrow exception of very artificial "challenge" missions) just makes me delete and never play the mission in question. For example, if I'm being sent to bomb a power station, having the target guarded by entire squadrons of fighters, dozens of long range SAMS, several battleships and enough SHORAD for several entire armies isn't fun, it's pointless and boring. 4) A mission must be immersive. For me, this means it has a detailed briefing, achievable objectives and a believable background but other very important aspects are communications, voice overs and both friendly and enemy units that are suitable for that scenario. 5) I MUST be able to achieve the mission even if the AI goes totally potty, which we all know it does on occasion. Having missions depend critically on AI behaviour is bad design. By all means arrange things so that friendly AI supports the player, in the same way that principal enemy units should also be believably supported (if appropriate), but success or failure should never depend entirely on AI behaviour. 6) The best missions allow for player creativity. Yes it's realistic for (most) missions to have a set mission plan, but ideally missions should be able to cope with the player approaching a given mission objective in their own way. Of course, the fact that doing so can make a mission harder or easier is entirely the players' problem. Having considered it further, I guess the last point is somewhat dependant on what sort of mission is being undertaken, e.g. a strike mission where the bombers need to very carefully co-ordinate with fighter sweep and SEAD elements will necessarily involve a tightly controlled TOT, but other missions e.g. a HVAA kill, not so much. Anyway, just some random thoughts... :)

I knew about the Nimitz but hadn't heard about a Kuznetsov upgrade. The pictures look great, looking forwards to taking the Su-33 for a spin...

We're getting a new and shiny Kuznetsov? Very cool!

No problem :) I've got a list of 'useful info' threads that keep cropping up as relevant answers to questions every so often.

The HDD gives you all sorts of information and if you have AWACS or EWR operating it gives you better SA than you'll have in an Eagle or M2000 (yes, really). In an attack situation it will even tell you which of your wingmen has targeted which enemy aircraft. Have a read of this thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=160144

I'll echo this. While I tend not to delve in to the depths of MIST or MOOSE, I do tend to adopt a methodical approach to testing. First, does my flight go where it's supposed to go? If there's air combat, does it happen in the general area where I want it to? Do enemy units appear where I want them to? Do they do what they're supposed to do? Etc. I tend to start simple, e.g. with unit spawn and basic waypoints, then once that's all working I then build on it with any necessary waypoint triggers, playing voice over files etc. Very important to test at each stage so if you come across a problem you know that everything up to that point worked as desired - far better than trying to debug 50 different things all at once. And yes, mission creation - even simple missions - is incredibly time consuming if you want the results to be professional. It's definitely all worth it though when people tell you they enjoyed playing your mission.

Very impressive demo :thumbup:

It would be nice if we could have this feature. It would definitely add some immersion, especially for "story" driven missions. Definitely worth putting in a request.

Thanks for re-posting this here. Can this be stickied please?

Interesting. The article reads as though the SPV-24 is a system that calculates a release point for bombs to hit a pre-defined location, e.g. a fixed target. If I remember a number of MiG-25s had a similar system years ago for high altitude supersonic bombing. It'd be great to have that capability in DCS.

Very decent of you Sir, thanks :thumbup:

Great work Eight Ball :thumbup: Would you mind your template being used as a base to develop various missions, with full citation of course?

The type of debriefing that you describe doesn't exist in DCS. Because campaigns can have branches that are dependant on the outcome of missions, debriefings for a mission are usually part of the briefing for the next mission, at least in campaign scenarios. If you want to include the sort of debriefing you describe then the best way to do it is probably to send the player a radio message from high command or something detailing how well or poorly they've done.

Thanks for setting all that out so clearly :thumbup: if you don't mind I'm going to keep a copy of this post as a mission writing AI 'cheat sheet'. Good stuff. In fact this should be a sticky in the mission designers sub-forum.

Reaction to enemy fire has been a problem for the AI in DCS for a long time now. strike aircraft in particular have a depressing tendency to jettison their loads and run at the first sign of trouble. This combined with the incompetence of AI SEAD can make for a frustrating experience. SEAD is much better left for player-controlled aircraft, though as it is now the only aircraft that's effective at it is the Su-25T. The Viggen can do SEAD to some extent, with meticulous mission planning and balls of steel on the part of the pilot, but I don't think we'll see a truly effective NATO SEAD platform until we get the F-18. Ultimately this is a problem for mission designers: relying on the AI behaving in a rational manner is fraught with danger. Relying on the AI for mission success can produce a very frustrating player experience.

OK cool. Having both the C and E models as 'DCS' level modules would be awesome. Now I just need my DCS Su-27SM :)

Could be totally wrong about this but I was under the impression that the Eagle that BST were contemplating was the E model...?

For this mission: Priority 1: You and your flight need to kill the enemy fighters. Priority 2: Once the A-A threat is gone, send in the Su-24 SEAD aircraft. Priority 3: Once the A-A and SAM threats are both gone, only then send in the strike aircraft. You'll have to manage your fuel carefully but you should have enough. To check if you can refuel at an airfield, look at your F10 map. If you're red, then you can only refuel and/or repair at airfields that are marked in red on your map, not neutral or blue ones.

I'll offer some comments from the perspective of a Flanker driver. 1) If you have to merge with a Flanker, something has already gone wrong. 2) You have a better T/W ratio, especially at low weight, better acceleration and better climb rate. Consider using the vertical. Trying a 1C horizontal fight against a competent Flanker driver is not a good idea. 3) Mk.1 eyeball is the order of the day. The Flanker will likely be using EOS rather than radar to track you so you won't know where he is unless you track him visually. 4) Be ready to pump out flares at a moments notice. The off-boresight capability of the R-73 together with the helmet mounted sight means that a missile could come from an unexpected angle. 5) If the Flanker driver does get behind you, use your superior roll rate to remain unpredictable & deny a gun firing solution. 6) Energy excursions, especially high-alpha ones, can use a lot of energy in the Flanker. If you see the Flanker doing any theatrics in order to get a missile off or his gun on target, and if that move is unsuccessful, then you have an opportunity and likely a significant energy advantage. Use it wisely.

Ah, you're correct of course, no earthly idea what I was thinking there :doh:

Exactly that, but bear in mind that most doghouse plots are specific to a certain configuration, i.e. all-up weight. IIRC the plots in the Su-27 manual are calibrated for an all-up weight of 21,400Kg - the same weight that the AOA/G limiter is calibrated for - so consequently a heavier total weight means lower turn rate and less weight = higher turn rate fora given G & airspeed.

This. Missile penetration values are quoted as being against RHA - rolled homogeneous armour which is just steel plate essentially - not the composite armour modern tanks have. The frontal armour of an M1A1HA or a Challenger 2 with the Dorchester applique packs could very easily be way in excess of 1000mm RHA equivalent.

If you want a turn indicator in terms of degrees per second, there isn't one. The yellow needle in the VVI appears to be a turn co-ordinator, though it doesn't appear to be calibrated in any particular way (flight manual page 36). I'd surmise that the turn/bank indicator needle is really designed for enabling the pilot to conduct 'standardised' turns for navigational purposes. It's only accurate up to 500Km/h TAS, after which it becomes fairly inaccurate, and more so as bank angle increases. This was discussed before in this thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=161686

Excellent piloting and two very good landings. Very nice training videos :thumbup: The only recommendation I'd make for what you were doing in the videos is that if you're cruising then the best throttle setting is 85%-87% RPM (depending on altitude) in order to get the best combination of speed & fuel efficiency. I'd recommend reading these threads for why: Fuel efficiency experiments: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=147556 Flight range analysis: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=151731 As far as AOA on landing is concerned, 7-8 degrees is absolutely fine. The only time where maybe I'd consider going higher would be for a very heavy landing on a short runway where I wanted an absolute minimum speed touch down and a short roll out. Even then you'd have to be careful not to go above 14 degrees pitch to avoid tail strike.

IIRC we'll get DCS World 2.5 before work starts on the PFMs for the MiG-29 & Su-33.