arteedecco

RELATED thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=103359 IMO (don't kill me! :) ) FSX favors heavies because there is nobody trying to shoot you down and the environment (world) is well... worldwide. Contrast that to DCS (without EDGE)... LOTS of threats... SAMs and Fighters all over, plus relatively small maps. In a heavy you have the RCS of a freight train. Now... it would be pretty awesome if they added lots of features like Inr212 mentioned... primarily the ability to actually transport things and then dump them out... think about combining that with Combined Arms (neat). I think this is where ED / DCS is going, so keep giving them your money like me! :) Cheers!

Okay, I'll see if I can repro, but thanks for looking at it again. So, how do you handle a heartbeat? I find I always want something checked at regular intervals but don't know how to do this outside of MIST? I don't get this... can you provide a screenshot showing the event in the de-brief window? Is this true for MP as well? Completely understand and please don't take my comments to mean I don't appreciate your efforts, because I really do! However, I wish ED would support this with their budget and put more into polishing it and ensuring its correctness. I feel strongly that putting more effort into this area will mean more users, better games, more fun. Yeah, issue I'm noting is that IF you do 1., but then 2. and set coalition back to Neutral... so all airports are neutral at mission start... then even though there are coalition units at the airbase, they won't cap it. You have to move in a separate group. That still seems like a bug to me. You could argue that you should just set the coalition to whatever faction of the vehicles you placed at that airfield at game start, but that's turning a "bug" into a "feature" IMO. Game should see units at a Neutral airbase and run the cap algorithm... it doesn't today. Yeah... maybe I'm doing it wrong. I think it goes back to learning how to check triggers at regular intervals via ME UI... (above). For example, my example of determining if units have been damaged but not destroyed in a certain area (bunch of different groups)... can that be done via ME UI outside of scripting? I definitely like it, but would find it very helpful if you shared your debugging method steps. How do you see if your code is working properly? What log files do you reference... do you output to the display somehow? A set of steps would really boost my willingness to dive more in to scripting. Thanks Grimes!

I wouldn't do it as either/or simply because it'll be a while until DCS Fast Mover is out and in the meantime you get to fly fighters around FTW! I have found FC3 to be pretty educational in terms of A2A tactics and weap employment. It's not perfect, but it's fun and it's still only in Beta. My 2 cents. Obviously understand that budgets can often enforce an either/or decision. Cheers!

No, not saying it would mess it up. In Il-2 your skin was uploaded and everyone connected got it. I was simply saying what you were... IF client already has same skin then they see it, otherwise they see what??? I guess a generic skin when you fly past them WVR?

Yeah... good point. Yarg! The price of beauty! Not a bad solution... at least you get to see your custom skins, though the others would not see them. Good enough IMO.

Heh! "easy" means... the logical solution *seems* easy. I'm 100% positive it's a time/cost/value decision they've made along the line and that revising game logic to address this is not "easy". But what I was getting at is the solution appears to be somewhat simpler than adding a new db and checking against it essentially... but I don't write code for ED! :) At any rate... I actually think the hardest part for them to figure out will be the mission waypoints, since it is calculating timing, groundspeed, etc and then plugging that into the mission computer for the aircraft, which you see when you fly. Not too big of a deal for the FC simple aircraft, but a little more problematic (perhaps) for the A-10C and upcoming DCS finely modeled aircraft. Anyway... certainly seems doable and not too big of a hurdle to accomplish. Would add a lot to gameplay if you could do it like Il-2... select aircraft and skin... even a custom skin, when joining. Love it.

Easy... no db required. Missions (among other things) are actually just text lists describing all the configurations you setup in the ME. The generated mission could simply list available aircraft for each slot. The game just makes the drop-down (or whatever selection method) based on the list for each slot. The game will check if the client has the associated module to see if they can use all of the aircraft made available for that slot.

+10 :thumbup: I don't know why I haven't though to post something like this before. I come from Pacific Fighters and eventually Il-2 as well. You address one of the more annoying limitations of the ME. It seems to me there is no reason you couldn't tie a generic aircraft to a parking spot on an airfield (AND PLEASE add numeric parking spot labels in the ME). You should also be able to generally outline the mission route, operational areas, timing, assets, etc. without having to tie it to a specific aircraft. And in the briefing it would be great if there were a way to generate mission briefings and intel pics, etc. without having to do it outside the ME in MS Paint, for example. You should be able to markup an F10 view that pilots can review during briefing. Anyhow... great suggestion.

Well, looks like I need to keep in touch more and keep dropping in questions on this forum to get help from you on how to do different things. I'll create a different thread for my mission idea and any advice on how to accomplish the outlined goals would be greatly appreciated. [i'll leave this thread to be about capturing airports]

Yeah, totally agree. It's a love-hate sometimes, but more love than not, or else I wouldn't do it! Which other game offers all this!? I agree with you about the ArmA editor. I tried it back with ArmA 2. It does somethings better IMO. You can load troops into vehicles and into specific spots. You can tell troops to fast rope out of choppers and other really neat stuff. The AI "behaves" a lot better in some respects, but... the scripting is also nightmarish... probably quite comparable actually. Thanks to Grimes and Speed for MIST and for helping out on the Wiki, but we have a long way to go before things are truly usable for all of us.

@Bahger, It seems to work fine in the following context: a.) If you have coalition units on an airfield on mission start, set that airfield coalition in the ME (it *should* be done automatically, but it's good to double-check) b.) If you look at the ME you will see black circles around the airfields. I believe this is the airfield capture "area". So, according to the DCS World Manual for the ME, capture will occur (immediately) if a coalition vehicle arrives within that area (about 2000m, but I wouldn't trust that since everything seems... up for grabs). The capture rules have been updated so now... any faction vehicle can capture (even non-armored vehicles and aircraft). However, if two factions show up at an airfield ... and one is unarmed and the other is armed... the armed one wins. That makes sense logically too, which is a nice turn of events! So yeah, it seems to work fine so long as you follow those two items a.) and b.). The one oddity I've been noticing is that in the F10 view... I click on an airport and it gives me the details for a different airport. I think this is a bug, but Grimes was not able to repro yet. FYI, I run in windowed, not fullscreen and when testing I use one window with DCS World running ME where I make changes to the mission and another, separate window for the DCS multiplayer client to test the missions... there may be some weird interplay going on when saving and playing the mission in MP that is causing this odd issue, but please report it if you notice it as well. Cheers Cheers!

A lot of times what I want to be able to do is create missions that have epic, cinematic sequences. However, it is nearly impossible... or at least quite difficult because there is now way to tell the AI to be "literal". Here is a very very basic example. I created a B-1B and set it to what I estimated to be the "correct" altitude for an approach profile on short (3 mile) final to Kobuleti. I wanted it to come in and land with a flight of four F-16s escorting it in a diamond formation... for show. The desire was as soon as I launched the mission, the B-1B would be setup for landing, gear down, and just follow a smooth profile to come in and land. I also wanted the F-16s to spawn in a nice diamond formation just behind (in trail) and above the B-1B, follow (escort) it to landing, then come in, do the break in right echelon formation, and land one by one. However... what really happens is the B-1B hits its afterburner after nearly impacting the runway... does the break in a climbing afterburner turn and orbits to land. The F-16s go crazy as they attempt to get into whatever position the AI thinks they should be in for "Escort" (or "Follow", I've tried both), despite how I've positioned them in the ME, or what Formation I've set them to in the Advanced Tasks options. There should be an ability to say.. hold the formation I have started you in... and a way to specifically tell them to do what I've told them... LAND... straight in... despite a tailwind, maneuver to make it happen. The F-16s should be told to hold their specific tight formation and then break and land ... So, my recommendation / wish is the ability for more specific control of aircraft, overriding their natural AI tendencies. Yes, this is complicated obviously, but it is quite frustrating to constantly try to figure out what the AI is doing and "fight it".

So, the bases just remain "Neutral"? I don't see that they correctly flip to the appropriate faction at start on the F10 map... do you? Seems similar to the MIST documentation that says to set a no event trigger at the beginning to load MIST... for whatever reason. << there are too many "for whatever reason" and gotchas with the scripting and ME. I spend most of my time troubleshooting things instead of creating missions. I believe the "price of entry" for new (heck even intermediate) players to create rich, dynamic, multiplayer content is still way to high. I have been playing since 2010 pretty consistently and the ME is still very difficult to use to do more than just add a bunch of units driving or flying to go blast. The trigger, unit, group, management is pretty rough. Ha! Typical... take your car to the mechanic and... the "rattle" can't be reproduced. I wonder if you can repro if you a.) start DCS World, open ME, open miz, b.) open DCS World MP client, start new server, c.) load the mission in the MP client and let it run for a minute or two, disconnect, but leave new server page open in MP client, d.) Switch to DCS World ME window and make an edit to the mission... move units around, add units, change airbase coalition from Red to Neutral (net zero difference, but saving in between iterations), and save mission, e.) load mission in DCS World MP client and run mission... in F10 map click on airport icons to see "faction" / coalition and note whether or not it's showing correct airport name for what you clicked. Depends on what you need to do with the data. If you simply need to figure out if the group might have suffered some losses and they are in a zone simply use a combination of "part of group in zone" and "group alive less than" conditions. Yeah... I was trying to avoid the added level of complexity as then I have to debug scripts, but I probably will have to. Thanks as always for the great feedback. Why why why, can't they update the ME manual sufficiently to properly document in-ME scripting, the scripting engine, gotcha's like you mentioned about airbase capture, how long it takes to capture an airbase (how many seconds???)... every time I want to build a new mission I have to get out my Capt. Crunch Decoder Ring and reinvent the wheel. Heck... even VRS is coming out with an SDK for their new SuperBug TacPack and they have a 600 page wiki! Here is how to make effective documentation: http://api.jquery.com/ Thanks for listening... I love this game and have all these grand ideas for missions and I just can't bring them to life! I admire those of you who know your way around well enough to do it *relatively* quickly.

I gotta say, I'm feeling more and more confident that DCS Fast Mover will be out before Mig-21Bis.

Mission file (attached). FYI, I have all modules installed and most up-to-date 1.2.3 patch and I am testing in Multiplayer. Part 1 Kobuleti set in ME as Blue Coalition and Senaki-Kolkhi set as Neutral. I have RED forces stationed on Senaki and in the F10 map the Country never changes... always says Neutral. Additionally, if you check the triggers I have a switch condition setup to test if airfield is Red coalition and it never fires even after 10 min. Plus, Kobuleti, which has Blue all over it is listed as Neutral. Tearing out my hair, please help. Part 2 What's the best way to test if a bunch of groups in an area are damaged but not dead? Thanks. [EDIT] Looks like if units are stationed at Neutral aerodromes on mission start then they do not capture, indicating you must either set aerodrome coalition in ME OR have unit(s) of same coalition arrive at airport after mission start. This ought to be fixed. The logic should be... If aerodrome Neutral and units present within range, test aerodrome coalition assignment against the coalition of units and then capture aerodrome accordingly. Shouldn't require unit arrival to trigger that logic. [/EDIT] [EDIT] Okay... it seems that in the F10 view when you click on an aerodrome, it actually shows you the info for another, different aerodrome. At least that's what it's doing in the second attached file, _base_capture_testv3.miz". What is going on? Wonder if it is possibly due to me having DCS World Client AND DCS World Multiplayer Client BOTH running during testing??? Sometimes I see the F10 view work properly for aerodrome info, but mostly it doesn't work. Could it be due to trackIR interference or something??? Just grasping at straws. I think it's just plain bugged. [/EDIT] _01_under_attack.miz _base_capture_testv3.miz

Don't get your hopes up too much... yet. Currently the first module to be released looks to be the UH-1 Huey. It will feature multiple seating locations for a single human player, but currently the code-base provided by ED does not support multi-human players in same vehicle. My guess is that this feature (multi-human, single vehicle) will be coming and based upon how long it appears to be taking these 3rd parties to release their modules (1 - 2 years) it may just work out to where the code supports multi-human vehicles as the F-15E gets close to finished. Current roadmap for ED is: get FC3 and CA out of Beta and released, then get DCS Fast Mover ("Fighter") out the door... EDGE who knows... and then ... other stuff. My guess is FC3 / CA and Fast Mover by end of year with multitudes of updates... hopefully EDGE. Like you and everyone else I would LOVE to see multi-human playable craft... it would really bring the SIM to a whole new level. I personally consider this multi-human playable craft feature to be a critical piece as it opens up the field for 3rd parties and for multitudes of craft. Crew coordination would also cast an even wider net and haul in more players to the SIM since you wouldn't necessarily have to be the "pilot" in order to play... WSO / RIO positions. I have plenty of friends that would love being gunner. Cheers!

North American RA-5C Vigilante Great read here I've always been in love with this unique plane. You could do the various iterations of it, not just Recce. Has that weird bomb bay out the talicone of the plane. "The Cadillac of carrier airplanes" Same engines as F-4, but clean, no externals, lots of gas.... zoom! The trick would be in simulating / modeling the RAN position (backseater). Also... those GE J-79-lOs would need to properly put out a nice long plume of soot when not in A/B to be realistic. Don't even see that w/ the Russian fighters in DCS World / FC... which we probably should. Anyhow... love the idea!

Ack! Yeah there are a lot of gamers more attracted to the other non-high-fidelity games because a.) they already have the console platform, b.) the price of entry is low. I really feel like the DCS series can bring some folks back primarily because it is so dang beautiful. ED also is continuing to support the FC (Simple Flight Model) approach for a while yet to help ease people into the genre, which is great.

I would be happy to pay more for ongoing content and updates. It's not an either-or argument. The sim is amazing in what it does AND there are things that it could do better; things that have been done in the past by other sims quite well. It would be awesome to have a third party dev up a series of campaigns. In-fact, in the third-party forum I think I read about someone hedging towards making a whole training campaign... Good points @SiThSpAwN It does make the mission a lot better when everyone can't just launch with 8 AIM-120s, get splashed, get a new plane with 8 more AIM-120s, etc.

Absolutely right. Everyone is entitled to their own "wrong" opinion :) (joking). What I was saying to you is similar to what Exorcet mentions, join date doesn't mean much. Also, getting opinions from fresh eyes is usually useful. I was encouraging you to provide some constructive feedback. I mean, you appeared to be defensive about his statements, which to me implied you really like the SIM. So I wanted you to post what you love about that SIM that make it so you don't mind not having dynamic campaigns.

No reason he can't express his criticism. I absolutely love the SIM and ED for making it, but it doesn't mean I don't have things I'd like changed. Add something to the conversation rather than jumping on him. Help him see why you like it.

Yeah, in DCS there is a server list for MP. You can still just connect directly to IPs as well. You're right, I didn't understand how Falcon did it. That's interesting, but seems like a good compromise would use something similar to what I mentioned previously where the campaign is recalculated between flights, not live. You still get a varied set of missions, but it's more "turn based" instead of real-time. Would be very very awesome if the battlefield commander from Combined Arms was integrated into a more complete SIM where you could effectively manage a campaign, or delegate certain parts to AI... It is worth noting that Combined Arms does allow for some of this battlefield management today, which is pretty neat. However, it is certainly not a finished product IMO.

I challenge the statement that, "most of the people who regularly play" are in virtual squadrons. The vast majority of the people I regularly interact with do not belong to virtual squadrons and I am online 2-3 times per week. It's a real shame to see all the locked-down servers online every night after work when a lot of us get to play. I have mentioned in a few of my posts to other threads that the ME needs a significant overhaul... something along the lines of a whole new module (a whole new SIM of sorts). I agree with @Troutish on most of what he says. Falcon 4.0 did it with "great graphics" for its time, so I don't accept your argument. Have the sim build-out campaign / missions between flights, so it does not interfere with the game-play. This is effectively the same as having a human build out a new mission between flights except the machine does it much quicker.

Not necessarily "stupid" always. People play w/in the limits of the SIM. If you make it so community can enforce standards everyone will abide and those who don't are out. Just need the tools to be able to do it effectively. Best solution... SIMulate RL... why don't people go up and shoot off 8 AIM-120's in RL? << there are multitudes of reasons. On the flip side in RL, you're not operating as a solo artist, you have threat briefings, you have tons of assets and AWACS... you don't need to shoot 8 AIM-120's and you're lucky to see a bandit! Frankly, in RL if it were me vs. Su and I was certain that it was just he and I... he'd get the whole 9 yards!

^^ Agreed. Both solutions are useful here. So many other great titles have successfully implemented scoring systems that are consistent, customizable, and functional, even accounting for users switching sides, logging on / off, etc. Don't think the wheel needs reinventing, or that it is at all unreasonable to ask for a scoring system that is more robust. I'll forgo naming off the slurry of titles that have it down pat.