PhantomHans

Ah, so it IS a form of discriminations that motivates you! I suspected as much when I realized how eager you were to dictate to me what to do with my time, how I should play this game, what I should do when I play, what I should use certain settings for. You know why I don't ever intend on doing what you tell me? Because *MY* money paid for *MY* copy of DCS and I can do what I want with it. And what I want are some scalable difficulty settings for AAR so that I can actually enjoy the product I paid plenty of good money for without the requirement to be able to AAR preventing me from playing a campaign that I paid for.

Why not then? What if I want to pretend I'm refueling? I'm already pretending that it's 1989, pretending that I'm a naval aviator, pretending that I'm flying an F-14, pretending I'm at war with the Soviets... Why can't I pretend I'm refueling? If I turn on unlimited fuel then I don't worry about fuel management at all. Apparently some people here think unlimited fuel is less realism breaking than easy AAR. I can't understand that. With easy AAR I have to save enough to at least get it back to the tanker and into position to take fuel. Although I think the easiest setting should make it essentially automated by AI, there should be settings between that and full realistic requiring player involvement.

Simulations! Yes that's a great way to look at it. I am too tall to fit into the cockpit of many of these aircraft. DCS simulates that I fit. I am too blind to pass a vision check to be a military pilot. DCS simulates I am 20/20. I am too impatient to deal with ground school, flight school, exams, paperwork, trainers, first solo flight, air force academy, etc. DCS simulates I can skip that. If I die in a car crash on my way to work I am dead for all time. DCS simulates I can respawn again and again. Sometimes I forget where the basic gauges are, or the controls. DCS simulates that I can press CTRL+Y to magically know my altitude, speed, heading, or pause to change a setting. In real life time moves at one speed regardless of if it's convenient for me or not. In DCS I can speed it up or pause it to 'cut to the action' or take a leak and grab fresh coffee before taking that cat shot. All of that is okay, but if I lack the skill to complete AAR and DCS simulates that I do have the skill to accomplish it, then I don't like simulations and the whole point is ruined and you're offended personally that I want THIS shortcut? I'm sorry but I think there is plenty of room here for another difficulty option or simplification, and that it should be implemented. If we don't want to offer varying levels of help/crutch then can we simply have a way to go to precontact and let the AI take over the jet temporarily to fuel up in missions and servers where it won't offend anyone?

Yhea I would have to say I certainly do think this community is pretty darn toxic!

I think it would be more accurate to say that I said:

Excuse me but, what? So setting yourself to be invulnerable with unlimited fuel and ammo is for debugging/training/practice/having fun, but making air to air refueling easier completely obliterates the point of the sim? Could it be that making air to air refueling less difficult could also be for debugging/training/practice/having fun? Maybe I have a full time job that can keep me at work 80 hours on a bad week and I want to come home and fly a mission without finding out AAR is part of it and it's going to make me angry or frustrated? Because it has annoyed me again, and I will consider ED's response before purchasing products from them in the future. I'm thinking more like two different systems. For probe and drogue, a difficulty option to make the contact area of the drogue larger, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, 16x, etc. If you "miss" the basket, you should get a grade like "Missed: Low Left" or "Missed: High Right" to tell you how you goofed up, and the basket will be guided onto your probe similar to how aircraft that connect to catapults misaligned are magically guided into alignment before launch. A little nudge to put things into place. You'll have to hold formation to keep taking fuel from that point. For boom and receptacle type, options like "Realistic", "Hard", "Medium", "Easy", "Arcade". At the "Realistic" setting, it works how it works now. At "Arcade", when you get cleared for contact from pre-contact, the AI will temporarily take control of your jet, fly to contact, and take fuel. When tanks are full, the AI will release control, and you'll have to get out of the contact position and move on with the flight. "Easy", "Medium", and "Hard" options would guide the player aircraft into position similar to how misaligned aircraft are handled on catapults, although with less and less force at each setting. You are in control, but if you're drifting too low you'll get a "push" up to help you stay in position, or if you're going too slow a little "push" foreword to keep you on the probe. Edit: Of course both of these would be options the server or mission creator could "enforce" a maximum value for. If they decide that a basket 2x larger is plenty help, Realistic is easy enough to fill up an F-16, then that's all you can get. If they leave it wide open, then you can have yours set for full real, while a less skilled pilot flying with you can have some frustration free fun by getting to have a larger basket or a helping hand nudge him into position.

These are a vitally needed difficulty option. Although everyone else here might be a real true ace pilot naval aviator blocked from becoming the next Maverick only by, you know, not actually flying anything, I am not skilled enough, or patient enough, to take on air to air refueling without blowing the tanker out of the sky. Perhaps it's sad that I didn't buy DCS to learn this skill, but it's an area I would like some assistance with until I'm able to take it myself. I would say that it's a vital frustration reduction setting that is directly linked to my credit card and my ability to pry it from my wallet in the future. This was an option in the old days of LOMAC, it should be an option now. Maybe it could be squeezed in right next to the ability to take no damage, or have unlimited weapons, or jump between the front and back seat of an F-14 in mid flight instantly, or any of those other horrible realism breaking options.

Every now and then, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I've been known to boot up DOS-Box and grab my CD-ROM editions of Falcon 3.0 (technically Falcon Gold...), Fleet Defender, or similar. I hope that when DCS world is that old I can still access all the modules I paid for...... More immediately, I hope whatever the issue is here can be solved speedily and in a manner leaving both sides happy.

Not sure if this is a bug or I'm just confused, but I'm curious... I think in Missions 2, 3, 4 and 5 so far, my F-14 has come loaded with a single AIM-54 front left, a single AIM-7 center aft, a second AIM-7 right glove, and three AIM-9s. Is this an intentional reduced loadout or something perhaps thrown off by an update? (Edit: I am aware that an AIM-7 aft was possible with AIM-54s forward and that peacetime F-14 flights were rarely with full loads or even AIM-54s. Just curious if this was intentional here or not.) In Mission 5, when viewed in the mission planner, the F/A-18s appear to be carrying one wingtip AIM-9, a pair of AGM-88 loaded inboard on one wing, outboard on the other wing, and a single dual rail AIM-9 launcher with a single AIM-9 loaded on it. That's pretty unusual and asymmetric, and I don't see why they'd load the dual rails just to put a single missile on when the wingtip is empty. Is this caused by opening the mission in the planner when I shouldn't or is this a bug due to pylon numbers changing in an update? Loving this campaign though and can't wait to get going on Mission 6 when I'm off in a few days.

None. Tried deleting the Metashaders2 and FXO folder contents several times while adjusting graphics settings and eventually it just decided to start working. No idea why.

Looks like that may have been the issue. Managed to get around that one and then suddenly had DCS just hang up and stop anytime I tried to load Mission 5 at the "Sim Post Start" point. But managed to get around that one as well eventually. I'm loving the campaign so far and hoping there will be others like it out there.

I can't even get this mission to load. Constantly freezing at "Sim Post Start". I started turning graphics down but even with my settings at "Fleet Defender" I can't get the mission to load! I tried opening it in the mission editor to poke around and all I noted was a real odd loadout on the F/A-18s. AIM-9 on one wingtip, Harpoons on different pylons, a twin AIM-9 rail with a single missile on one wing? Makes me wonder if my F-14s are loading with the correct weapons now...3x AIM-9, 2x AIM-7, 1x AIM-54C? But won't matter if I can't get the mission to load. Starting to think the SC module is bugged badly.

You would think that answer would seem...I don't know? Almost obvious? I tried the waist cats first because they seemed clear. Nothing. I tried going up to the clear bow cat. Nothing. After a circle around the flight deck lining up on cats I eventually realize that the crew up at the blocked one has a pair of signal lights out and are waving me their way. Okay...Fine...I guess there's something I don't realize going on here... Nope. Boom! I don't know why but after restarting the mission with SHIFT+R I found them doing the same thing, already waving me up there to launch as soon as I start. Today I try the campaign again and the crew on that catapult was NOT already waving me in to launch there and I was able to get the waist cats to launch me. Not sure why I had the problem the first time around.

Mission One: Carrier crew directs you to a catapult. You hook up, and then launch into parked aircraft, resulting in an instant death. This makes the remainder of the mission unusually difficult to complete.

While learning the mission editor I, apparently, accidentally deleted all of my US Air Defence templates. The Patriot, HAWK, reinforced HAWK, etc. How can I restore or recover those?

In the case of the 23 I would be happy to have, for a start, older weapons available. For example the ability to load 4x Atolls and pretend it's a MiG-23MS, etc. The ability to downgrade existing aircraft would be excellent, even if it doesn't get us a 100% faithful rendition of something older.

With the current inclusion of the F-14A (And, hopefully some day earlier versions of it) as well as the upcoming F-4E, I would like to request some more AI only cold war aircraft. I understand that all of these take time and that making new AI aircraft can take away from other opportunities, but I'm hoping it may be possible to leverage some existing assets to make more AI aircraft to oppose our new player ones and cover a broader era of the cold war. For example: The MiG-23MS, equipped with the RP-22 radar (currently found on the MiG-21Bis in game) and armed with R-3S, R-3R, and R-13M 'Atoll' missiles only. Used by, among others, Libya (two lost to F-14s over the Gulf of Sidra), Iraq, and Syria. The MiG-23M, or MF, or ML, earlier predecessors to the MiG-23MLD already found in game. These would be similar but less capable, as they're older. Older MiG-21s, again with the F-4E upcoming, would be great to get as well. There are a whole TON of variants, but perhaps the MiG-21F-13, the 21PFM, and perhaps something else like a 21S, M, SM, MF, SMT, etc would be excellent earlier cold war aircraft. Admittedly, there are a ton of variants after the 21S that just keep getting closer and closer to the existing 21Bis, so it may be best to just pick one and run with it to cover a whole range of variants. That also probably makes the F-13 and PFM more interesting than the later ones.

I'd like to see an easy refueling difficulty option, or perhaps even some steps to walk us through this. I have tried many, many, many times to refuel the F-14 but at this point have decided that I simply haven't got the skill or time to make it really happen. Ideally, a "Game" mode where the player could somehow select or indicate the tanker, initiate refueling, sit back, and watch the AI do the whole dance, hook up, take on fuel, etc. When full, display a "Refueling Complete" message, deploy the airbrakes (if any) and return control to the player. The next step would be an "Easy" mode that guides the player aircraft into position and hookup, but still causes disconnects if they apply too much power, slow down too much, stray away too far, etc.