Sandman Simulations

You are right about that. As a recreational general aviation pilot my opinion is bit biased... I love just flying these planes. But in DCS these aircrafts are quite complex and well modelled. I think (and hope) that someone who has interest and patience to use hours after hours to learn how to operate and fly F-14 will have patience to fly missions where timeline is even bit realistic, enemy is not waiting within 30 miles from carrier and just flying your aircraft right is important part of the mission.

Thank you again for your comments. That mission has been quite a pain in my a**. During making of the campaign there has been changes in AI fighting capability and missile behavior both affecting difficulty level of the mission. Mission that was perfectly playable was way too difficult in next test. So it's nice to hear you found it enjoyable.

Good you made it. In what situtation freezing happened?

Hi and thanks for the file. And nice to hear you have finally been able to pass the mission. Unfortunately I have no competence to interpret log-file to find the reason for freezing. I think there is list of units in the mission... It's possible that AI stucking can cause problems but there must be something else too. I have seen AI stucking on cat, on deck, on elevator, colliding in hangars and tell me what but never that has caused freezing.

I still haven't found anything from mission what could be reason for this behavior. This particular mission should not be very demanding for hardware and there is no complicated scripting. Only pure mission editor based stuff. But I'll keep searching

I will run more tests about this but at the moment I have no idea what could cause this.

I have not been able to reduplicate this crash problem. Does this happen to you with other missions or some other campaigns? Is it mission 2 or Night Requalification mission 3? If anyone else is having same problem pleas report.

Hi, And thank you for feedback. Nice to hear you have enjoyed missions even with those pilot voices. To get side numbers match with ATC is on fixing list, but as you said it would need custom skins to get variations for numbers. At leas at this point I have no resources for custom skins. But never say never.

Thank you for your feedback. Nice to hear you have enjoyed the campaign. It was quite a workfull year and of course work continues with some found bugs. But maybe at some point I'll find time for something new.

Good to know. I must do some testing. But it's true that A-A tcn hasn't been working normally lately

Damn but thanks for telling. Unfortunately if I change starting position of player it will change some AI starting positions too. I found current configuration most reliable to get the whole squadron launched. It's again balancing for playability and realism. Only way to be sure AI won't mess things up is to set AI start from air but it's not good for immersion. I took risk of constantly changing AI behavior in couple of missions where there are multiple flights participating same mission. I really don't like empty deck as you may have noticed. About SA. As you said in Mission 4 feedback you hate using F10 map as it is not realistic to see units on map. I agree it's far from realism. There is also some compromise made with that. In some missions (like mission 4 boats) there are units that are very difficult to find. Unfortunately it's quite difficult to get any dynamic bearing information for the player so I have set those units visible on F10 map. In real life there could be a possibility to get better SA by asking certain information from AWACS or like asking your wingman where the hell he is. At the moment there is very limited options for this.

Tanker name was wrong but TCN was set to 22Y as it was supposed. No idea how it could have shown something else.

Thanks for the report. First time might have been some random AI flight crash. During campaign testing there has been no CTDs so I can't have no idea what could cause that.

Thanks again for comments. I'll check things in your list when I get back to DCS from worktrip in few days.

Due to worktrip I'm unable to test this before saturday. Last time about 1 week before release mission worked normally. If you are able to try it again, please report does it happen again and if you are able to tell did someone crash or stuck with AAR.

Hi, There should be two F-15 flight, two Hornet flights, two Tornado flights and two Tomcat flights so total 8 flights. Are you able to see from mission replay has some smart ai-pilots crashed for some reason before wp 2?

That shouldn't be problem.

Thanks again for your feedback. Mission length is a difficult compromise. Many players like realism but get bored with 1,5 hour CAP flight if it is not full of action. Some missions are quite long and there is no 1 hour dogfight for player. I have tried to create things to happen around even if not directly affecting player. I'll check why Tanker name and TCN is not right. There is another tanker returning to the carrier and there might be confusion between them. AI planes crashing is embarrassing and unfortunately as you said there is little I can do about it. Things like AI stucking on carrier deck or runway can be prevented by setting AI to dissapear before recovery or start already in air. That's ok if player won't know that. But unfortunately there is so many things changing AI behavior that after every game update new problems might arise and old ones might be solved. It is an immersion killer too when happening at the end of the mission but it can destroy whole mission if happening at the beginin. Lately there has been known problem with Hornets stalling if they must make steep turn like when approaching tanker. Then they keep stalling all the way to the ground. I hope it will be fixed soon. It's not a problem to player an larger area map with briefing material. Problem is it should be zoomable to give any useful details. I'll look if I can find useful zoom level. In those old Tomcat days pilots had paper charts...

That's a matter I did think about a lot when started building this campaign a bit over year ago. Sorry to hear that voice-over quality has been so immersion-killer for you. And again, like about landing checklist, you are not only one to say there could be some work to do. At beginning I did some tests with human voice "actors", quite fluent English speaking friends. Quality was sometimes ok but it was clear that speaker was non-native. Also not everyone willing to try had voice fitting for this purpose. There was also a problem that every time I fixed campaign so that I had to change some voice-overs I had to reach the same "actor" again. Of course voice-overs should be done last but I can tell there is no point when campaign needs no fixes anymore. Mostly for those reasons I decided to use computer-generated sound actors with some editing. By the time I didn't found a perfect program for the purpose and had to use quite a lot of time trying to make voices sound better - not enough according to your experience. Afterwards I found out that there is a very large community willing to participate voice-acting as you said. There is still that campaign-fixing problem but I have now seen quite many developers using this method with very good results. I just also found a much better program for quite-humanlike voice generation with natural emotions and so on. Expensive as hell of course but maybe worth the money. But I haven't been able to use it in this campaign.

I still has to work with it to stop Jester looking for missing items after landing. Also wave off -situation is a bit difficult to make work perfectly. And yes, maybe even bit faster could be better.

How about something like that? No more bolters because you forgot the hook! If you have everything right on downwind, pilot will just call checklist items. If something is missing, Jester will tell you to check the item. Try with that .miz file. Landinglist test.miz

I still couldn't find reason for that. I tried with simplified radio too but it should not cause the problem. Are you having same problem in other missions too? Hearing AWACS or something else you should not even if on another channel? Please report if someone else is having the same problem.

Thank you. Nice to hear! About landing checklist. I'll try to find right parameters so that pilot could just call the items in row and Jester would notify if something is not right. Like "check flaps" if flaps are up. Can't promise I can make it work.

Hi, and thank you for your feedback. You might be right about landing list. I know in real life it really goes like you said. My argument for challenge type list reading was to get single player pilot to check all critical items when Jester won't do it for you. But you are not only one who has said it will take too long time. I will think about changing it. About AWACS calls on mission 1 and 3. There should not be any AWACS radio traffic on departure channel (preset 2, 328.0 MHz) or approach channel (preset 5, 255.0 MHz). AWACS should be heard only on Preset 3 (225.0 MHz). Can you confirm neither one of your radios to be set on preset 3 and still hearing AWACS calls? If you leave either radio on preset 1 (259.0 MHz) you will hear BARCAP flight calls.

I will check that. Thanks.