mjeh

I would probably use drones instead of helicopters, since they're smaller and harder to spot. Yes, you can turn the AAA units' AI on/ off with triggers, with condition whether or not the aircraft/ group/ coalition you want to create disco show for is in/ out of a certain zone

:lol:

Excellent suggestion, HiJack, thanks! Yeah, it's a bit quirky. Ledges can be especially tricky, if they're between the JTAC and the target. There's also some reports that some parts of the maps are harder to get JTAC working in than others, I guess this could be an issue with ray tracing or terrain mesh? At any rate, make sure your JTAC is using its sensors by ensuring ROE (rules of engagement) is not set to "weapon hold". Rather use "return fire" or "weapon free".

You can put the mission files anywhere, and specify to DCS where to look for them. By default they're in the saved games folder of your windows user directory. Mine is in C:\Users\XXXX\Saved Games\DCS\Missions, for example. Couldn't say about modman, never used it.

So I've been experimenting some with JTAC functionality lately, and have made some findings that hopefully will be helpful to fellow mission builders; JTAC -> Target visibility JTAC unit should be an armed vehicle, so as to take advantage of the sensors of the vehicle to find enemy units. JTAC unit should not have ROE set to 'weapons hold'. This will in many cases prevent the JTAC from using its senses/ sensors to detect enemies, even in the extreme vicinity. Instead use ROE setting 'return fire'. (I recommend making your JTAC invisible) Obviously, JTAC unit must have clear line of sight to targets to spot them. (Or just tick the 'visible' box in advanced waypoint options, although I have had mixed experiences with using this option) It seems most land based vehicles in this sim have a maximum detection range of about 5'000 meters. In the outter edges of this range, detection may take a while. JTAC -> player communication If you assign the JTAC a FM frequency, make sure you are actually trying to transmit/ receive with the VHF FM radio. (I believe the default key combo is <LShift> + <Numpad -> (that's the minus key on the numpad to be clear) Be aware that the VHF FM radio only operates in the range 30.000 - 76.000 Mhz. I mention this because you may find some references (most notably Cib's guide to adding JTAC that is sometimes mentioned on this forum) that claim you can use frequences up to and including 80.000 Mhz. You can't. JTAC reportedly sometimes takes a long time to respond. One possible explanation to this is if you have a lot of friendly aircraft that are transmitting to radio what they are doing (reached waypoint, defending bandit, engaging bandit etc) then this will slow down all communication over radio to the point where it is useless because radio transmits are stacked up in transmit queue. If you don't have a lot of friendly units hogging up the radio, JTAC should normally respond within ~5-10 seconds. I've attached a simple example mission with a JTAC and two targets for it to assign. The mission is tested and JTAC was found to work in both SP and MP with the 1.2.2.7570 build. JTAC Test.miz

Aye, indeed. Or every civilian flight ever would need a sizeable fighter escort! Or just imagine if they follow through on their hints of a train simulator (!), probably not too good of an idea to drive around in a train with player A-10s around :thumbup:

"Oh so you were doing your finals after a 6hr intercontinental flight in your 737 and got shot down?? No, I've no idea where that AMRAAM came from, honestly!" :music_whistling:

Exactly! It can only serve to bring more people to DCS which is good for everyone :)

Sounds like either the trigger doesn't fire or you're sending the message to the wrong party. What's the trigger logic?

bump! Anyone discover a fix for this yet? Watching vids of GAU runs on youtube is how I got into this sim in the first place ;)

I think the main reason we're not seeing many civilian aircraft developed for DCS is that we have such limited scenery to fly around in. As far as I know, civilian flight simmers like to fly from A to B and take in the sights, or run virtual airliners and what have you

I don't know about a table of ranges, but you can find the values for each individual unit in their corresponding lua file, for tanks they would be located in DCS World\Scripts\Database\vehicles\Tanks Excerpts from T-55 file, for example; GT.WS.maxTargetDetectionRange = 6000; ... --GT.WS[1].LN[3] __LN = add_launcher(GT.WS[ws], __LN); -- HE rounds __LN.type = 6; __LN.distanceMin = 300; __LN.distanceMax = 8000; __LN.PL[1].ammo_capacity = 14; __LN.PL[1].shell_name = {"UOF_412_100HE"}; __LN.customViewPoint = { "genericTankred", {-4.0, 0.3, 0 }, }; The process of going through the files of all the units in your mission is a bit fiddly, but there is definitely some useful info there that may even help understand the behaviour of the AI to some extent. :)

static objects -> structures -> air show crowd or some such :)

heheh yeah, I added a couple pylons to one of my missions to check them out. I have to say, they're flapping around rather ... flaccidly :)

No need to get offended, buddy. My post was supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek, but it's hard to convey that properly in a written medium. The point is if you spend a lot of time with flight sims then it is my firm belief that a trackir (I own a 5, can't attest for the 4) is well worth the investment. If you hack something different together and you're happy with the performance, then more power to you. I, however, opted for a high profile, quality product that is purpose built for what I'm using it for, and with TrackIR that's exactly what you get

Looking good! :thumbup:

You're forgetting F-16. It's used by ANG.

Are you serious about flight simming or not? If the answer is yes, you go buy a trackIR. It's that simple. :)

Yes, if you do the steps discussed above and jupiter is in the right constellation :)

Alright, because I had the problem where my mate that wasn't hosting the server didn't have JTAC radio menu. For some arcane reason adding a waypoint to the JTAC seemed to fix it. But then again it could just be that I waited to unpause till he was in his aircraft the second time around. Easy to get superstitious with the current state of things.

You get this bug even if you give the JTAC an extra waypoint after the FAC-waypoint?

Yeah no kidding, I had to set curvature for the axis.

Thanks for taking the time to review and reply! Aye, I suppose I should start using 'Late Activation' hooks. Old habits and all. I don't think the direct cause is the activation triggers either, this has the feel of improper memory handling and my main suspect is the ATC interaction in this particular case. But then again, with memory issues it is hard to say what exactly is influencing what unless you have intimate knowledge of the engine's inner workings - so it could indeed be caused by anything in the mission. For all I know it could even be that I had some memory corruption from a previous crash and that this was affecting the current sessions. I'll admit I haven't exactly bent over backwards trying to get this to work as it was just a mission I threw together for some quick fun for a buddy and myself. But I figured since it was indeed crashing consistently as we were taxiing I'd be a good lil' beta tester and submit the crash logs. Thanks, I could quote this a hundred times for truth Well, that would certainly explain some issues we've been having. Thanks again! -Mj

A little update, the mission worked fine if I took off before player 2 entered the game. It seems the crash occurs when we're both taxing

if you pull negative Gs while dropping bombs it is quite possible to bomb yourself. :)