Hansdampf

Unfortunately I am currently grounded and cannot contribute to testing the new setup… Anyway, the changes announced in this thread sound great and I am really looking forward to fly in the new Blue Flag campaign. I really like the new fuel economy system! Hope it will work out and maybe one day in the future we have a similar system for weapons and airframes! Also I am looking forward to flying the TF-51 and pretending to be in a big transport plane… Still I am wondering about some things: - I am somewhat concerned about the lack of Farps in the mountain area… Maybe it is intended that way but I think two or three additional Farps (somewhere between Vody/Gudauta/Sukhumi and between Beslan/Tbilisi) would be nice. - Do you plan to bring CSAR back? - What do you think about some additional buildable AA units? Some ZSU-23 trucks or similar AA guns might be a nice addition to SA-6 and Iglas…

Out of my (flanker) cockpit it pretty much looks like a constant stream of Mirages so I don’t know how you conclude that it is not a real issue? Well, when that’s the case I would say spawning the Mirage with empty fuel tanks is a fair (and easy) solution…

The whole refueling-thing was introduced to prevent fighter-spam and make the players value their airframe. I was perfectly fine with it: Knowing that after being shot down you have to wait some time before you can take off again makes you fly less suicidal. Unfortunately in the current setup this results in a Mirage-spam. Seems like most of the time both teams just field M2Ks as fighters. It can take off quickly, can outrun most (all?) other planes and has the best BVR missile… so yeah, of course everyone flies the Mirage. Maybe the whole refueling system should be dropped and changed to something else: Let all planes spawn with full fuel tank but force everyone to sit out in spectator slot for 5-10 minutes after dying in a modern Fighter. No idea if it would reduce the M2K-spam but at least everybody is punished in the same way after being shot down…

I like the idea to give recon capabilities to some more popular planes… Although it makes me wonder: why not give the F5s and MiG-21s recon ability (maybe not to the ones spawning at captured bases to prevent some kind of bomber-spam). Seems like we barely see those planes since only the toughest guys risk losing one of their precious lives by flying CAP in an inferior plane. Personally I don’t dare flying the MiG-21 to provide cap… However for a recon mission I would most definitely fly it! It is great to read that you are working on some new (and hopefully awesome) stuff for Blue Flag! Any idea when some of it will be added to the server for testing? Or, in case it is too early to say, can you tell us what kind of features we can expect in the future?

Just a month ago I made the step from a 1080p to a 4k screen (40 inch Prolite X4071UHSU). System: 6600k at 4.5 GHz, 16 GB RAM, GTX1070 (Zotac AMP extreme) I don’t have NTTR but on Caucasus map (multiplayer) I barely drop below 60 FPS with reasonable high settings. Since my system is somewhat inferior to yours I am surprised about your findings… My DCS 1.5 Settings: Textures-High Terrain Textures-High Civ. Traffic-Off Water-Low Visib Range-Extreme Heat Blur-High Shadows-Flat Only Resolution-3840x2160 Aspect Ratio-1.7777777777778 Monitors-1 Screen Cockpit Displays-1024 MSAA-2x Depth of Field-off Lens Effects-None HDR-Off Clutter/Grass-600 Trees Visibility-10110 Preload Radius-119900 Anistropic Filtering 16x Terrain Objects Shadows-Flat Disable Aero Interface checked V-sync checked Full Screen checked Additionally: - Usually I fly without mirrors. According to MSI afterburner they don’t give a hit on FPS in most situations but it feels somehow jittery with mirrors on. - The only reason I have to put shadows on “flat only” are terrible FPS-drops low over forests… Cockpit shadows on medium or high don’t hit fps though. No idea if by now there is a “No shadows on trees”-mod for the current version of dcs? - In nvidiaProfileInspector: max pre-redered frames = 4 (significantly reduced microstutters due to frametime spikes when looking around or zooming) Vertical Sync = force on Vertical Sync Smooth AFR behavior = on Vertical Sync Tear Control = Adaptive (after some testing these settings give me the smoothest feeling when looking around) Flying mainly Mi-8 and Su-27 in multiplayer DCS 1.5 I barely drop below 60 fps and besides some occasional frametime spikes which I couldn’t resolve yet it runs very smooth. Did you try lowering MSAA? 8x seems pretty overkill at 4k… I am sitting quite close to my screen and MSAA 2x looks pretty good to me.

When you play with a 2:1 advantage and one red player in a Su-33 ruins your day… Well, maybe the coordination of your team isn’t half as awesome as you pretend it to be? Anyway, I don’t understand the drama about giving Red 27ERs. We had several rounds in the past where Blue spamrammed the sh.. out of Red. What is so wrong about having one round where Red actually gets some better equipment and is not the inferior underdog?

It is a pity that this testing period is so long and is dominated by “winning-team-joiners” who degrade the whole concept to a dull coop mission for blue. In the end it is essentially pointless for either side to play with these odds… Guess we urgently need round 10 to start before the traditional red players forget this server exists! In previous rounds I think greg and xcom did a good job persuading certain groups and squadrons to change sides to provide reasonable balanced numbers… The only problem remaining was that during European nights blue often took half of the map without any opposition. Luckily some Russians did the same for red during European morning so that the battle continued more or less unchanged in the evening when server population was high. I definitely think there should be some kind of script which prevents capturing when team balance is extremely off (3:1 or worse). It totally undermines the whole PvP concept when one team can capture points without any opposition. Concerning kill messages: Maybe we can get kills reported with a delay of a few minutes or additionally just reported to the two engaged players? That way it is important to visually confirm a kill while not being completely denied the opportunity to send your kind regards to your victim/killer… Might be a possible compromise?

Congratulations for finding a sponsor! Hope the new server runs fine and some issues can be solved with it! Do we have to put Blix-advertisement on our airframes now? ;) I agree it seems a little weird to have Bf-109s and Fw-190s in this scenario… It is a pity that there are no Soviet planes available in DCS to fulfill their roles. Will transport choppers be available as well? I know they don’t perfectly fit in the scenario either but there is a lot of fun and strategic depth lost when you leave them out. Also in this low-tech environment they could for once be used as CAS-platforms.

Well, in the previous rounds (1-7) it worked out somehow. During the European afternoon/evening it was reasonably balanced. At EU-night it was all blue and in the morning/noon all red. In average it was all balancedish. So yes, there was no need to limit the teams. However, round 8 was a little different. Seems like every evening the server was full and the blue team had a (sometimes huge) number advantage. It is nice that Blue Flag is so popular but when one team has to play 40vs10 too often don’t you think that is a problem? As written above, there are other options instead of limiting the teams and BS already tried some (Additional AI-fighters, making bases non-captureable when no opposition is present…). Limiting the teams would just be the simplest way of solving the “full server – 40vs10”-problem. I hope Greg/BS will post the player numbers/statistics soon so we can have a look on the true numbers and not rely on feelings and anecdotal evidence/screenshots…

Big thanks to the buddyspike team for trying out the Nato vs Soviet scenario! Ever since Blue Flag 1 I thought it would be a nice idea to try this. It is a pity that the player numbers shifted extremely towards the blue team but with all the fancy new modules being western planes this was kind of expected. Unfortunately with only western planes being released in the coming years it’s going to be tough to motivate players to play red in this kind of scenario. I wish there were some soviet/eastern modules coming out in the future... Maybe putting the Mirage on red might be an option? Anyway, I think BS did a great job in balancing out advantages and disadvantages of the available airframes. I don’t understand why people are so unhappy about the weapon restrictions. Sure there might be some tweaks necessary but these restrictions are definitely necessary to make the older planes a viable option (and also to balance the different air to ground abilities of red and blue). I think the main two issues in this round (and blue flag in general) is the extreme imbalance in player numbers and the fact that one team can conquer the map without any opposing players being online. So here are my ideas to address these issues although I have no idea if these could be implemented. - Easiest way to address the imbalance is probably to limit the teams. Maybe not perfectly 27vs27 but restricting one team to a maximum of 30-35 players would at least prevent these silly 45 vs 9 situations… - Flexible weapon restrictions: If 1 hour after server restart the average player ratio is 3:1 or worse the smaller team gets more modern A2A weapons until the next server restart (ERs and ETs for Red or Aim-120s for blue). Maybe the smaller team could also be allowed to build BUKs instead of KUBs. That way the outnumbered team stands a better chance fighting back. - Invasion of AI ground forces: The outnumbered side is supported by their corresponding AI-army. So if red is outnumbered extremely (or not present at all) a small army spawns in the east and attacks the airports around Tbilisi. When blue is outnumbered something similar happens at Anapa/Krymsk/Novorossiysk (maybe some ships and an amphibic assault?). I know moving and fighting AI-units are an issue in DCS so to simplify the idea: If one team fights 15vs0 or 40vs5 for a while, some of their inland airfields/citys/farps changes side spontaneously. This would especially be useful in preventing one team from conquering the whole map when no one of the other team is playing. If it is player vs AI anyway it could at least be a challenge… Keep up the good work! Looking forward to the next round!

Here you go... The device which is not recognized (or rather recognized and not added) by SRS would be this one: 88888888-0000-0000-0000-504944564944 Instance: fdc7b200-e21d-11e5-8003-444553540000 Frogfoot clientlog.txt

I have a similar problem: None of the buttons on my throttle are being recognized. (Suncom SFS converted to USB with Arduino and MMJoy2). However, the buttons were still recognized in version 1.1.0.0 so maybe it is related with the reintroduction of keyboard support and the fixes for the other joysticks/throttles? I cleared all the keybindings, deleted and reinstalled simple radio but nothing worked so far… Anyway, my PPT button is on the joystick (which is recognized fine) and up to now I never had to change radio in the middle of a dogfight so it is not such a big problem… Another question: is there any way to have the overlay working with DCS being in full screen mode? I just see the overlay when DCS is windowed. When I alt+enter to fullscreen it disappears, which is a true pitty since windowed DCS just isn’t fluent for me. Last but not least thank you for this nice tool! Compared to TS it adds much more to the immersion when flying and it made me learn how to use the radios in the MI-8! :thumbup:

Personally I don’t mind unbalanced teams and I don’t think it’s worth complaining about it. We saw this weekend that it is possible to fight back being reasonably outnumbered (something like 30 vs 15 or even 30 vs 10). There are times red has this advantage, at other times blue has it. When the smaller team is well organized and focusses on defending it is still a tough challenge for the bigger team. Some smart man mentioned in an earlier blueflag-thread that these moments of imbalance actually lead to the dynamics of this event and I totally agree with that. If teams were permanently balanced 1:1 the whole campaign would be a rather boring stalemate. I think it is all fine as long as in average each team has a primetime where it holds the advantage… Unfortunately, since all the fancy new modules are on the blue side, it seems like the red primetime shrunk significantly (though it is hard to tell after the first weekend. Things might still change as they did in the past! I hope so, because I really like the whole Nato-vs-Soviets concept!) I think the real issues here are the times when the whole exciting PvP-event is turned into a rather dull coop-mission (when teams are like 40 vs 5 or 10 vs 0). It is just silly that one team (no matter which team!) can conquer half of the map without any significant opposition. In the past I remember there were some attempts by the buddyspike team to introduce some mechanics to prevent this from happening but unfortunately they never worked out. I hope one day there will be a working solution for this.

I understand your frustration and also agree with most of the negative points you listed earlier in this thread. However, I think you exaggerate a little bit here. Sure, choppers will have a harder time but it is not like they spawn upside down and without rotors now… Who knows, maybe the MiG-21 pilots who profit from model enlargement will give you escort and one day save your little chopper from an F-15? I will be more than happy to serve my team as chopper pilot when needed. At least I won’t run out of lives when I do so. :D

I am really happy to read the last announcements of Ciribob and Greg! Following this thread the last days was quite frustrating and somehow poisoned the anticipation of the next round. Being a part time chopper pilot reading about the AI fuel transports really lifted my mood… Already looking forward to escorting these transports! I hope this feature doesn’t cause any problems with server stability! Also great that CSAR will be available again. Maybe it will be more important than fuel hauling this round… Although I would personally prefer weapon-restrictions like last round I also remember that the first rounds of Blue Flag were a great fun… These Aim-120s are annoyingly painful but they will definitely not spoil this event for me. The same goes for model enlargement. I am not an expert on the topic but I think having it on small is a good compromise. As I understood our MiG-21s really depend on it so the Choppers somehow have to adapt to it (being even more sneaky or just operating with proper air cover…). I think the buddyspike team is putting a lot of effort in this project and the last rounds have been great events. Of course some changes might favor one or the other side but without mixing up things a little every round blue flag would become boring. I really hope the red pilots who plan on passing out will change their mind… Maybe odds are not in our favor this round but especially when that is the case every red pilot is desperately needed! Please don’t leave your comrades alone in the fight!