derammo

If there is enough interest, we could implement media control buttons in Helios. So then you could have in-cockpit buttons that control your windows music player of choice. It does seem like using hardware buttons like on any cheesy multimedia keyboard is better though, unless I am missing something about what you want to do.

Has there been any movement on this issue or even a response from ED? Typing 8 pairs of lat/long + decimals into the F/A-18C UFC is ridiculous. :) I would implement it myself by just pumping the data into the UFC via simulated key presses, but that feels like cheating. In any case, we shouldn’t need to hack around this issue by simulating UFC data entry if data cartridges are a thing. Even a super simple structure like maybe an optional file in the saved games for each PP (PP1.lua, PP2.lua, etc.) just to hold the position and elevation data would already make it possible to build our own “mission planning” tools and have the result come up as a “data cartridge” once in the cockpit.

I don’t know if the code that handles a unit being destroyed would have access to this information, but it would be nice if a multiplayer client who illuminates a target with a laser gets a ground kill and (partial or full) points if the target is destroyed by a laser guided weapon immediately afterwards. I know it would likely not be 100% accurate, unless “illuminated by...” is already available but even a rough temporal correlation would be fine. After all, if you pointed a laser at the thing and then a GBU blows it up, you did help kill it, even if there was also someone else lasing it or the laser turned off before impact or whatever. This would make loitering with a laser and letting other people bomb more rewarding in multiplayer. Yes, this would count the ground kills twice, as a sort of “cooperation bonus.”

doing some nonsense that probably should not have worked

I think there is room for more than one "MP scene." Let's be hopeful there are enough people who want to play with all the toys (how could that not be?) that we can have servers where it is ok. I for one have zero interest in the "Dogfight only" MP style of play, so there is at least one other person who plays multiplayer and isn't in the "scene" you describe :)

Are there still things broken in the auto start or is that all fixed now?

If you look at the way the weapons are defined (in the respective LUA files) you can see the CBU-87 has more explosive power than the CBU-99 and the Rockeye. This obviously matches the real world data You can also see the number of submunitions that are modeled for each. The CBU-99 and Rockeye are identical except for a probable copy/paste error in the aerodynamic model (I posted this i the Object Errors forum, but there was no response). Like others have said above, it seems like only direct hits from submunitions count for damage, so it matters very much how accurate your delivery is. For example, if you are using CCIP, it is predicting the trajectory of the dispenser until 1500ft, and then.... something? That last 1500ft of travel of the submunitions is going to depend a lot on your flying. I am not sure if the CCIP just pretends that the dispenser is a normal bomb hitting the ground or if there is some model of what is probably going to happen with the submunitions. But I do know that when I fly the steep and fast profile (25+ degreees down at 500kts) I get much better results with the Rockeyes than I do from more level profiles. Specifically, if you can see armor (either because of dot labels or because you are better at it than me) you can CCIP multiple targets in one run, using the Rockeye like a sort of "shotgun blast" to kill each target. Still easier than using Mk82s, even though you don't get many secondary kills. I did not test what happens if you hit closely packed armor, because that doesn't seem to happen in the missions I play online, so it did not matter to me. [edit: didn't do a good job explaining why I am saying this, but this was supposed to be a response to using the "interval spacing" to drop multiple bombs. I found I got better results manually triggering multiple bombs in CCIP, trying to actively target the units with each bomb, rather than just spreading them out. In other words, just using them like regular bombs that are a little forgiving, instead of proper cluster bombs that cover an area.]

being able to lock a unit inside the building suggests it is just like someone above said, and the current code for the 65F is just trivially locking on to any unit being pointed at. This would explain why you can fly at 10,000ft and move the target around a base several nm away and just point at every bright dot and it will lock on to any bright dot that happens to represent a unit. It seems like a trivial implementation without any model of the actual sensor (locking onto an I/R image?)

Not sure if I posted this here already, but here are some videos of AI pilots with F/A-18C and A-10C delivering cluster bombs of different types. Like already explained above, the payload of even the dumb cluster bomb from the A-10C is far greater, and the smart cluster bomb is just hilarious to watch.

I'll try that, but I am having some difficulty getting my desk chair to go fast enough for the F-pole.

Nobody asked for unlimited fuel. It was just a straw man presented by those who are against easy refueling. So let's not focus on that. The flying up to a tanker and then using a radio menu option to auto refuel would be what I would like. I would like to be able to play in a multi player mission with people who ARE able to AAR and want to do so manually. You'd still have to budget your fuel, just like those who are able to AAR manually. Let everyone do it in whatever way is comfortable and fun for them, without giving a huge time advantage to people who use the automatic option. If you wanted to give prestige to manual AAR players, assign a MP score value to each 1000lbs of fuel you get from a tanker. Hard core servers that don't allow auto startups and other cheats/simplifications could just disable this feature.

I wasn't asking what you think I should want. But thanks for taking the time to type it out.

I actually read this whole thread, because it is reasonably civilized for the most part. It really shows the different types of customers that DCS has. Some toxic jerks were also represented :). But mostly it is a nice survey of how everyone feels about DCS (note you can't even say "the Game" without causing something.) So I am going to add my voice also, mostly for the "this is our community survey" purpose; I don't care that much about automated refueling. I like to play (yes play) DCS in a very realistic mode, because anything less realistic just doesn't feel as good or as cool. If the flight model was simplified (like in other games I have played) then it would not feel as cool. Also, if weapons configuration and delivery were not as complicated as they are, I would not find them as interesting. So no, I don't want to go away and play some other game. That said, I am not a former aviator and I don't care to learn manual start procedures either. That is only because they aren't interesting or fun to me. But I enjoy going online and cooperating with a bunch of others to do certain multi player missions (usually 4YA stuff) and sometimes I would benefit from being able to AAR. I have tried for a few hours but haven't had any success so far, so I typically just fling my plane onto a carrier or airbase (using no pattern whatsoever) and then sit there frustrated while it simulates the time taken for refueling (even though it magically lets me do it anywhere on the airbase or ship.) I pull off the runway so that I am not blocking anyone, of course, but I never taxi to parking or anything, because again that isn't fun to me. Because for some reason it is considered important to have this act take a realistic amount of time, I go for coffee (or the opposite) while the ground refueling is happening. For customers like me, it would be better if you could AAR automatically, even removing the time taken for the actual refueling so I don't have to sit there during my play time watching fuel flow. If this easy mode existed and was allowed in MP, I would use it, because I would not need to fly all the way back to a base or carrier just to get fuel (which again isn't fun or interesting to me.) So I would vote for this feature. I bet there are a bunch of other players like me who probably don't speak up as much because of the reaction it gets on this forum. That said, I also spent (just pulled that data) $717.31 on DCS licenses so far, because I really like this game and will stay with it forever. So yeah, I want my vote to count also, without getting a bunch of hate. Some other types of players don't want ED to spend dev time on this sort of thing, and that's a valid opinion to have. We should all be able to respond to someone's feature request with "spend time on this, please" or "don't spend time on this, please" without dumping on people or telling others that their fun is wrong. Thanks to the others in this thread who patiently try to make this point. I am not saying anything new here, just trying to represent :)

[deleted due to post delay, had already been answered]

Sillyness: lowering gear directly onto the runway while messing around (low res.) Sharing this because I was pleasantly surprised the gear survived this.

PS: I am no longer sure what the 'date' is set to for the maps shown in the last download that I linked. It says 2019 on the pages, but it doesn't clarify if that is just because they are published in 2019 or (more likely) the input date was set to 2019, so annual changes were applied. The format of the date as "2019.0" suggests this is the date input parameter, since that is the format they use in the online calculator. So now I don't know if DCS uses the annual changes (probably do, since obsessed with realism) so maybe you need to use 1/1/2019 as your mission date to match the maps.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert, I just got interested in this thread and did some googling and sifting through the data. The data in DCS files mentioned above is from the WMM 2015v2 data at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/soft.shtml It is very likely DCS uses the C code provided there for download in order to interpolate declination values based on the model. If you want to control what you get, I recommend setting your mission date to the reference date for the 2015v2 file (12/15/2014) then you should be able to replicate the value DCS gets from the model (without adding the "change per year" values that we don't know whether DCS uses.) For example, using this calculator: https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml#igrfwmm [edit: maybe use 1/1/2015 for your mission date instead, in case DCS selects the older model data if before 2015, that might be safer] I think you will find that the entire Caucasus map is basically -6 degrees and the entire Persian Gulf map is -2 degrees. You can look at the iso lines for the 2015v2 data here: https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/data/WMM2015/WMMMaps2015v2.zip Look at the D_MERC map (magnetic declination iso lines, mercator projection)

I'm not making any statements about their accuracy, just a friendly note to the devs that probably this is a typo.

It seems the definitions for Rockeye and CBU-99 cluster bombs are mostly identical. However, reading through them I noticed that ROCKEYE has launcher.cluster.cluster.wind_sigma = 50 and CBU-99 has launcher.cluster.cluster.wind_sigma = 5 Considering everything else is the same, this looks like a copy/paste error? Cheers.

My buddy and I are also trying to buddy lase with the A-10 and drop bombs from the F/A-18. We are using the release build (not the beta) and it appears to be very buggy still. The A-10 laser isn't supposed to burn out but it often just shuts off. Usually the bombs don't guide. They are being CCRP released targeting very close to the laser target (we used smoke rockets to make sure we are on the same target.) Also if I am in the F/A-18, I see my bombs going random places but on my buddy's screen they look like they are guiding (he is the multiplayer host and is running the laser.) I am pretty sure is it at least half broken and don't expect it to work. Tip: You can sometimes use the Laser Maverick for debugging because it will tell you if it can see the laser and lock on to it. PS: When I say "random places" I mean including the bombs "pulling up" and flying upwards like a missile for a while.

are you still making the CH replacement sensors?

has anyone succeeded in smuggling data out of AirdromeData.lua? I would love to stash the info in updateStaticData to some global that makes it out of that context, so I can retrieve it in export.lua and send it to somewhere. I assume the sandbox that runs AirdromeData is pretty tight, but if someone else has already made this work, it would save a lot of time trying to finagle the info out. Cheers, derammo

Sorry, this was operator error. I had somehow ended up with a "Switch" type modifier so I was periodically switching it without knowing, making various bindings work and not work. Sorry for the waste of time.

I'm pretty sure Templar will have already ruled out hardware issue by looking at the rightCTRL+enter controls monitor? If the pedals were actually sending nonsense, it would show there.

I have a button on my Combatstick bound to the Throttle Designator -- Depress (sorry if name is inaccurate) function for F-18, which has the default key binding of <enter>. When I need to hold this down to slew around the Maverick target, or most of the time when I want to lock something up, this does not work. In the control settings, pressing the button correctly selects the right row in the settings, so it is working. I also bound a button on my CH Pro Throttle to the same function, with the same results (works in settings, does not work in-game.) This sounds to me like it "fluttering" maybe? Perhaps it is sending pulses of the key instead of holding it down long enough? Just guessing here in case that rings a bell for someone. I have not done much testing or investigation, because I thought maybe someone knows this is a known thing with an easy fix. If I don't hear anything, I will see if other keys or other airplanes that have a "hold down this key" function behave the same. After that, I will start changing hardware. [edit: I should have mentioned all my other bindings work fine, including ones with modifiers, analog mini stick, etc.]