PhantomHans

Something like this would be my preference for this, instead of the current "on rails" behavior of the AI... However given the limited time available for development, the difficulty in implementing various degrees of assistance that can be slowly rolled back, for example like slowly raising and then eventually removing training wheels on a bicycle, I would be perfectly happy to accept the current "on rails" behavior of the AI. My premise here is essentially that, at least in Single Player where by the very definition of the mode only a single person's entertainment is on the line, it should be common sense for DCS to have some accommodation to help through certain tricky maneuvers. Note for example that the AJS-37 Red Flag campaign suggests enabling labels or immortality at the beginning of Mission 3. These are not forced upon the player. The player is given the option to go onwards with full realism, or to accept some help to make the experience more enjoyable.

Related to this, is there some reason the RB-74 can't be loaded on the outer wing hardpoints? They can take the RB-24 series only, currently, and it seems odd to leave them without the AIM-9L as an option given how they are apparently ONLY used for AIM-9s?

I'm not familiar with this one. Although this isn't my ideal solution, it sounds like close to what I am looking for. Unlike some DCS users, I'm into this for something called "entertainment". That does mean that at some points in time I do want to go "I'm not in the mood for this right now." and be able to tell the AI to "fill it up at the tanker and I will take control again when the tanks are full" or "fly the pattern and I will take it back over on final". What I'm looking for basically is an "AI Assist" option for non-combat activities that can be enabled or disabled as a difficulty option, and then activated by the player at the appropriate time, ideally while staying in the cockpit view. There are other ways to do this that are aimed at helping players gradually improve skills, but these options are more complicated, require more coding, and are equally hated by the community.

Yup! That seems to be exactly the request! There are assorted reasons for doing this at assorted times.

Wish: A feature to temporarily hand over controls to the AI while in single player missions, using the radio comms menu. When told to "rejoin precontact" by a tanker, a menu option to allow the existing AI to take control of pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle to fly the jet to precontact position, contact position when cleared to do so, and to hold the jet at contact position until the player resumes control through the radio menu by selecting "Abort AI Control". When given directions to marshall on a radial by the supercarrier module, a menu option to allow the AI to take control of pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle to fly the jet to the marshall point, and orbit there, until player takes back control by selecting "Abort AI Control". When given directions by ATC to enter the pattern or fly a vector, a menu option to let the existing AI take control of pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle, fly the jet into the pattern, and even execute the landing and taxi to parking unless aborted by the player. These functions are already existing functions that the AI performs. This request is for an option in single player only, thus rendering no competitive advantage in multiplayer, and no impact on those who do not wish for this feature in their own game. The intent of this feature is to make the various campaigns available for purchase, many of which require holding at marshall points, flying the pattern, landing, refueling, and so on, more accessible to players with less frustration. DCS is a computer game and accommodation to facilitate enjoyment is an expected feature of computer games.

Did you adjust his settings before that point, like to set programs or quantities? Maybe I just haven't been in a position where I needed them and thus he hasn't been deploying them.

I have been repeatedly assured by the totally non-hostile community here, that if you want any changes to AAR, especially anything to make this game real fighter pilot career fun or enjoyable, it's a YOU problem, because DCS isn't just a flight sim you play for fun, it's a LIFESTYLE, BRO! Do you even AAR!?

About the F-14D and APG-71... I'd love an F-14D. I'd love to pay for it, I want to encourage HB to make money. My vote would be to make it as realistic as possible with the information that we have. Approximate things when it's appropriate, and fall back to modeling it as it is on the F-14B / AWG-9 where and when it's the best you can do. The important thing for me would be to admit when an approximation was made, and to explain how and why. Its one thing to sell me a simulator and say "all of this is as real as it gets!" when you know it's not, and it's another thing completely to sell it to me and say "This is as close as we can get, and here's why"... Most of what interests me about the 14D is front seat stuff anyway.

Er, no... More like "Please don't make it like the F-4E, my computer begs for mercy and crashes when I play that!"

About campaigns, I pitched it to Reflected, he seems busy and not interested at the moment. For those not familiar with Fleet Defender, it was an early F14 sim focusing 100% on air to air. It came with six campaigns, each lasting 6 to 16 missions, depending on how the progression branched. Three set in the "North Cape" map, a larger (more coverage south) version of the DCS Kola map. Missions were all set during full on war. "Fighting Withdrawal" was a campaign centered around your CVN with escorts fighting your way south under growing Soviet pressure. A Soviet fleet (The Kiev and Moskva helicopter carriers with YaK-38s, Kirov, and escorts) are sailing south towards you as your fleet runs, Bear bombers are trying to pinpoint your fleets location for an attack, Badgers will launch a mass missile attack if you do a bad job, etc. The Soviets invade Norway and take it over. "Return to Norway" was a campaign about your CVN, having been reinforced by another CVN, protecting an amphibious landing to retake Norway, and attacking the Soviet fleet. "Kola Strike" was a campaign about attacking Soviet targets on the Kola peninsula, all the way up north. Fleet Defender did have special missions in those campaigns that would be great ones to script and add voice overs to, like the TARPS escorts, penetrating Soviet fighters to shoot down their AWACS, intercepting a MiG-25RB recon run, etc, and other oddball missions like the Soviets launching SU-17 and SU-25s in an Alpha Strike against your carrier group because you shot down their bombers early on, but then did poorly on following missions. Reflected did a fantastic job with Fear the Bones. It's a cinematic experience and I highly recommend it to everyone. If you don't have it yet, go get it and play it. What I want now is something a bit less scripted, a little random, to let me relive the days of Fleet Defender, where every mission is "Master Arm On!" and all about shoving missiles in faces. About FORGE elements. I like them but they can break the immersion. When I'm pretending it's 2005 and I'm on a flight as a bomber to go drop LGBs in Iraq or Afghanistan, a well worn salty cockpit with tape and wires holding stuff together seems really quite fitting. When I'm pretending it's 1984 or 1979, somehow it seems like some of the wear and tear and FORGE elements are a little bit out of place. I don't want them removed, just an ability to set how likely they are to appear, or for example to make tape less common than wire, etc. Edit: Fleet Defender also had many faults. Garbage flight model, wrong weapons on many enemy jets, no air to ground ability at all, F-14B only, and it's from like 1992 and ran on DOS so, yhea, graphics... I wouldn't mind having some rare Air to Ground missions added in to a remake to spice it up a little, and TBH we would need AI flown A-6/7 to really do it all up right. It also featured three campaigns in the Mediterranean. One (El Dorado Canyon) was set during the 1986 bombings of Libya, starting with the bombings that night, and going into a 12-ish mission campaign about Ghaddafi trying to fight back. Missions ranging from HAVCAP on the E2C to helicopter escorts to rescue hostages, to attacking a giant swarm of MI-8s and MI-24s to eliminate enemy leadership as they try to flee. "Carrier Duel" started off peaceful and within a mission or two turned into the cold war going hot, with your CVN facing off against the Kuznetsov and its MiG-29K/SU-33 fighters. The third one was "Powder Keg" and I don't remember it well. There was also a Pacific Theater expansion I never had. What I'm missing so far from the F-14 module is a good canpaign set during the heyday of the F-14 where the gloves are off and I get to fight.

As of the latest patch, my own personal wishlist: 1. That the F-14 module NOT be allowed to require more and more system resources. Or, if it becomes more complex, there is added a simplified simulation option to reduce load on older PCs. 2. Early F-14A models, perhaps even a version without TCS. 3. The F-14B upgrade with the new HUD. 4. An early F-14A with the IRST system, if enough documentation exists to make it possible. 5. An F-14D, some day. 6. Campaigns! Please look at making some cold war gone hot campaigns. I want to relive the days of Microprose Fleet Defender. 7. Cockpit options. A way to select or deselect FORGE element randomization and a way to get various levels of wear.

I know there's a CM's menu in there to tell him HOW you want them to deploy, including to set them to "tight" so he won't pop them. I am starting to think his default behavior is now "tight".

Did Jester stop deploying chaff and flares? It has been a long while since I flew, but for some reason I seem to recall that Jester would deploy chaff and flares, sometimes even too eagerly. Now it seems like he isn't putting them out at all? Do I need to give him orders or something or set him up during the cruise to the fight? Would be GREAT if we could get a simple .cfg file somewhere to allow us to pre-program our settings for Jester. What we want our default chaff/flare policy to be, how aggressively we want him to chaff/flare, how we want our bomb ripple quantity and interval, etc.

Meh, if anything, although I regret the loss of the F-14, about all I can say is that I understand why it happened. The jets were old, worn out, and beaten up. Even the latest production F-14D models had lots of old tech in them, and some of those were updates of old F-14A airframes! My regret isn't that the F-14 was retired, it's that the ST21 proposal (or something similar) wasn't built.

I've been screwing around with some old mods for the F-14 module. Things like the dual AMBER racks that allow pairs of AIM-120s to replace AIM-54s, etc. A problem I seem to be running into frequently is that I can make multiple missile racks work, but I will be stuck with the entire rack AND submunition 3D model permanently attached to the hardpoint. I can't get the missiles to disappear when launched nor can I get the whole thing to jettison when empty. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts, my starting point for this stuff has been DSPlayer's series of F-14 weapons mods, and they had the same issue when I first loaded them up.

If you guys do a good job with it, and if you keep the resource demand similar to the F-14, I will gladly jump all over this thing and even pull out my wallet to get the F-14BU at a reasonable price as an add-on module. It may even be an opportunity to draw more consumers into the F-14 experience if they try it and decide they would like more by buying the original F-14A/B package. The F-4 module is great, but my computer simply can't handle it and I have given up on it for now. I do love me some Tomcat though...Just saying...

Apparently the bug is with DCS being unable to handle Windows 10 updates. If you are in offline mode and Windows 10 installs an update, or perhaps enough cumulative updates, without having changed any hardware or reinstalled windows, DCS will think it's on a new PC and lock you out if you're in offline mode when the updates happened. It then locks out all modules as well so you're left with nothing.

This error happens even with DCS installed on a single computer, without any hardware changes. Seems like a serious fault ED needs to fix.

I'm quite happy to see the upgrade B coming.

Already seems to exist been launching them off the F-4 and F-14 with a little modding of the loadouts. On the F-14 you have no idea if the missile is tracking or not at the time of launch, ofc...

I got to Mission 2 of Part 2, and right about the time I realized I was being told to CAP right over an active SA-2 site pretty much abandoned this campaign. After Mission 1, just too painful to be bothered to continue.

It seems like all they did was fix the going vertical part. The Iron Heel mission where you bomb the runway and then go 2v2 with SU-27s is a real nightmare when your AIM-54s are guaranteed to miss.

Yhea the AIM-54 behavior in TWS is sucktastic. It has made some campaign missions basically unplayable. I guess asking ED to fix anything is just too much these days.

Ah, no. I didn't see where that was listed as a requirement. I won't be buying that map.

Shows up but is grayed out and I can't start it. I DO have the community A4 mod.