twistking

Maybe i'm missing something but the only way to safe a carrier-group (with crowded deck), would be to have a template that combines active units AND statics in one set. This seems rather important (or do i indeed miss something and carrier groups can be saved already?)!

Hi, what would be realistic - or plausible - carrier group composition within the limits of dcs? What are your preferred setups? Would it be realistic to have one carrier, one cruiser (ticonderoga) and three destroyers (arleigh burke)? (going light on diversity to maybe help with video memory ) Where could i find typical formations for a group? How realistic would it be to have the ships only 1 or 2 nm apart? I like to put them so close to give some visual reference when doing Case I approaches, but i suspect that a wider formation would be tactically superior... Thanks!

I think it would be very helpful if the deck could be overlayed with markers in the editor to donate spawn points and maybe even areas that are needed for AI taxi. Only having the spawnpoints shown would already help though. (Since i know that i only need a limited amount of spawnpoints for my missions, i like to use spawn points for static aircraft, because statics on spawn location seems to be the safest way to make the deck "busy" without interfering with AI taxi routes) Of course you can build your deck with trial and error, but i think setting up a carrier group is already quite tedious, so every little things helps and sometimes suboptimal spawns only show in a MP session, because in SP you'll always spawn at the same position... Ideally you could also set preferred spawn position. Basically like on an airfield. If the spawn is taken, the aircraft would be spawned on the next free position...

+1 I think something similar is already in the works. My added wish for this feature would be a small one, namely being able to build your kneeboard for the mission with the planning tool by selecting general pages (for example those from the aircraft/kneeboard folder) and have the possibility to generate pages automatically that holds info that you specify. Frequencies, Maps etc. ... That way you'd have all needed info for the mission without having to look elsewhere and don't have to skip through kneeboard pages, that you do not need for the specific mission (every airport chart for caucassus f.e.)...

You're welcome. Good that it's already reported. Tree removal is a very nice feature for mission editing, so i'm hoping it gets solved.

Are you sure that's the state of things? Because just today i experimented (again) with the tree removal on the caucassus map and while it was really buggy (sometimes no tree removal at all, never tree removal within the boundaries of the trigger zone but somewhat random in the vicinity) when testing in singleplayer, i got the same (buggy) results in multiplayer (somewhat random tree removal in the vicinity of the zone, but not inside of it). The result being the same for all clients (only tested with 2 clients though). So for me the multiplayer aspect did not seem to be the problem, but soemthing else with the caucassus map. It works correct on Marianas map. Should i open another bug report for that?

Fair enough. What i ment was that it's a system that you would absolutely avoid in - for example - an F-5, while it would be more fun to have SAMs that you could "brawl" with a bit even in the lower-tier / older jets. I did not know however that the M uses the same seeker. I was just assuming that the legacy missile had a worse seeker, that would have made it a more interesting missile in that regard, since my issue with the current implementation is its resistance to flares. However this is maybe even realistic with the nature of the seeker and it's just the other limitations (that northstar pointed out) that are not modelled at all...

thanks to both of you! i suspected that HOF was not accesible from the jet so solutions for anything else would be off, but the manual did say nothing about it. so if we get the fuze-setting-menu for the modern jets, we will hopefully be able to hassle the HOFF on the bomb itself and then use these values for the solution...

The manual is really insistent on choosing the 1500 setting for the cluster bombs and i also have the feelign that i got the best results with that setting. Why though? Can the Auto mode not calculate a good solution for any other setting? Or is it just coincidence that i got good results with 1500ft and should any other setting work as good in theory?

Good point and i agree. Good news is, that something like this is possibly in the plans, because it seems rather important for the upcoming dynamic campaign components... The point i wanted to make is that there can be a certain beauty in abstraction of some mechanics, because it can make the simulation more observable for the player and make the player's impact more noticeable. I would even think that it could be good to have different types of ammo, but then it would be needed to have those visually represented. For example SAMs would be transported per piece and small arms ammo would be in a certain recognisable type of crate etc. But even with the current objects, it would be good to have finite ammo in trucks/crates and seperation between ammo and fuel (if this is not the case already). But this is getting off-topic, so go ahead and make your monster thread!

i see! the 65 minutes will also include a well-deserved lunch-break for the crew then... good idea. i think one runs the danger of beginning to over-engeneer simulation features, but having an ammo-cache object that holds a limited amount of ammo but otherwise acts like an ammo truck, would be reasonable i think. maybe also add the possibility to limit total ammo on trucks and we'd be having a more realsitic environment without too much added complexity in setting it up... *edit* to clarify over-engeneering: while it would - for example - be neat (on first thought) to have ammo trucks carry certain specified ammo only, this would make mission editing extremely tedious and wouldn't offer that much more gameplay fidelity, if you think it through. ammo caches that can be resupplied automatically from trucks and generally finite amounts of ammo from all sources on the other hands would be very reasonable i think...

Typo? 65 seems a lot...

You are right, but F-14 isn't singleseat (for DCS i think this is more of a disadvantage) and the F-15 doesn not count, because it still somehow flies like a FBW if the DCS flight model is to be believed (i think it's fascinating, but i'd still prefer a plane with more character...). Mirage III/V ROSE is very interesting. Need to find out more...

I don't have grand expectation, just wanted to share my experience. And yeah, i don't exactly love Early Access, the outdated learning material issue only being one of the reasons. But that has been discussed enough i think...

I'm on stable and i was a bit frustrated with it, but honestly i can't remember on what topics exactly. Maybe i was just unlucky and it were only very specific details that i couldn't find info on; doesn't really matter. Fact is, that it's not completely up to date. It's not that big of a deal for me. The manual was good enough to get me going and i found other sources. The point i wanted to make is more that the experience with outdated youtube-videos was really tedious and not much fun (while i normally enjoy the learning part) and the better the manual the lesser the need for youtube... I think of newcomers here, who might find outdated videos even more confusing. I don't know if having the manuals more up-to-date or generally "better" (i think they are fine) would have a big impact for newcomers, because i'm not sure how many actually use the manuals for learning...

The manuals for the F-18 and F-16 for example, lack far behind the EA progress of the module, so not everything will be covered by them, forcing the user to check out other sources. Compare that with the original A-10c for example, where one document gave you all you need and other sources would be optional or simply to suit one's taste... I don't think it's a super big issue, but as i detailed in the post above, learning the 18 was less fun then learning other aircraft for me, because of lack of an up-to-date manual and a slight dose of negative training from outdated videos... Fair enough, but that point of the video is not exactly important to this discussion, so i decided to not make it a bigger thing by spelling it out. It's very interesting though and well presented, so you might still want to check it out, if you are interested in the topic of learning...

I would appreciate this! Puddles would be icing on the cake, but only having the simple shader effects for hard surfaces and soft surfaces would go a long way... You don't need to run any kind of reflections on those, so performance impact should be neglectible.

You wanna check out the following video, that makes a very good point about those learning styles being a bit of an outdated idea: That said, your original point still stands: It's good to have different kind of media! If it's not to cater to fundamentally different type of learners, than simply because some concept work better in certain type of media, or simply what kind of info the user needs/wants at their specific part of the learning journey (overview vs in depth vs refresher etc.). In a way everybody "hates" youtube tutorials, because they are so ubiquious and are simpyl terrible if you just quickly want to find out a simple, specific detail. But of course they are great to get a first overview, or - that's how i like to use them - watch them after i already learned the concept to make sure i haven't missed anything and maybe get some additional tipps and tricks or anecdotical knowledge. There is however another really big problem with the youtube-learning-culture of DCS and i experienced that only recently when i bought the Hornet (and carrier) during the last sale. Nearly all videos that would show up in the top results were outdated and it often took me soem time to figure it out, since i did not know the exact Hornet EA timeline by heart when browsing youtube. I only found one (german language) youtuber ( @Rakuzard ) who had a complete series of up-to-date tutorials (definitely a recommendation for german speaking hornet beginners! I feel one third of players are german anyway. Why is that?). Problem with the Hornet of course is, that the manual is also very much WIP, so i can see that it could be getting very confusing for newcomers. Even some videos of Wags himself have the potential to add more confusion, since so much has fundamentally changed with the hornet over the years. Of course it's not practical to change or rerecord every video once aspects of it get obsolete. Better manuals are therefore very important and they should be updated regularly, so that they could act as the sole information, if the user so desires. I personally think the Viper manual is fantastic; Or it would be fantastic, if it would be up to date and would cover every function, which it simply does not (did not, last time i checked). I do like how it's structured though: Where it is complete it is deep enough, while still maintaining a structure that's good to quickly look things up or learn smaller things while already in the cockpit with a lot of checklist-type information. I think it would also be nice to have a DCS wikia, where everybody could help with keeping info up-to-date and provide information that wcould go way deeper than a manual ever would. There is so much knowledge hidden in forum posts, that would better be archieved in an open wikia. Of course that should go along a proper manual and not serve as a substitute.

@Northstar98 thanks for checking! I just tested within the Sim and concluded that the performance has become so good (It used to be more susceptible to flares when i started with DCS) that i couldn't see any of those shortcomings that directly led to the development of the modernized version very early in the system's life. The legacy missiles hit probability was deemed not high enough back then; the DCS version on the other hand kills everything that's not pumping out flares en masse. Like with the first gen manpads, i'm looking at this more from a gameplay and less from a historical accuracy perspective, because the systems we have in the sim are just too strong for cold war jets, while weaker systems would also add much variety for modern jets too. I think currently the 3d model is of the legacy missile, although i'm not sure, since i could not find pictures of the M. I would not really care, if in the future the legacy and M would share the same model even. Of course different models for each would be appreciated still...

Fair enough...

Hello, i'm quite excited about the upcoming Mirage F1M because i did not really know about this mdoernized variant before. I think it's really cool for combining (some) modern avionics and hopefully decent combat performance while still being manually flown and generally a vintage airframe. Now i wonder what other singleseat aircraft are there similar to the F1M in having no FBW but updated avionics to make them somewhat capable in a modern-ish battlespace. A-10c comes to mind obviously (already in DCS. Hooray), Mig-29 (only A version coming, but still...). What else is out there? (single seat, no FBW, updated/modernized to a 90s standard roughly)

@HWasp@Snappy Why do have such a problem with constructive criticism? I'm happy for you that you like the module (no irony, i really am and the OP also seems to like it by the way. me too although i have only seen videos so far), but why shouldn't people point things out that could/should be improved? I think the devs have all the reasons to be happy with the reception so far and there is no reason to believe that they are heartbroken by some people posting feedback in a polite and constructive way.

Based on it's performance, i assume that we have the Strela-1 shooting the modernized 9M31M. To better cater for cold-war jets and missions it would be nice to also get the Strela-1 with its legacy 9M31, as the M version is super brutal in anything that's not packing 200 flares... I'd hope that the legacy version could be "survivable" in an F-5 or similar...

With refenrece to the original request, i would agree that a bit more user control could be a useful feature, but i do not think that cockpit and outside grading should be made seperate controls, because this is not a question of user taste, or image calibration. Cockpit and outside lighting are in a certain fixed relation that should be dictated only by the graphics engine. It does not make sense to have them seperated, sicne their relation should be set objectively correct by the original artist. IF there is a problem and players find a cockpit too dark or to bright, then this should be submitted as a bug report, so that the artist can check if there is a problem with the lighting calculations. This should not be a function of taste or preference since there should be an objective "truth" to that specific issue. I also would propose to change the gamma slider to relative corrections so that default would be "0" and you could then increase or decrease equaly in both directions. You coudl get the same effect as before, but you would simply have different values. I think that the current values are very confusing both to colour professionals and - as proven by forum discssions - especially confusing to novices. You should deal with absolute gamma values only when setting up and calibrating your display. Your display should be set up correctly for a certain gamma before you start DCS. IF your monitor is set up correctly, you should have gamma in dcs on "0". If you have issues with black levels or gamma though, you could either compensate with the gamma, or close DCS and try to improve your monitor calibration. The current values suggest that "DCS gamma" was something that would have to be individual for every user, while it should only be used as a compensation method for badly setup screens, or simply bad screens. The mdoerators are also guilty of paddling the idea that there cannot be objectively correct colours, "because every display is different, so every user has to select the appropriate gamma setting for them in DCS" so everything would be subjevtive. This is of course complete and utter bulls**t.