Tippis

…make use of the ridiculously powerful hardware and memory capabilities of a modern computers to simulate the most basic functionality that has existed in aircraft since before they even successfully got off the ground the first time, and add the universal ability for pilots to jot down notes and annotations on whatever surface is available. You know. As if it was a flight simulator or something. That would be infinitely better than some boneheaded inapplicable non-universal external non-solution that shouldn't even be needed, just to solve a problem that should never have existed to begin with.

Excellent. No argument against then. Your approval of the idea has been noted. Clicking “export as PNG” does not take a long time, even for a developer with access to the source assets and an auto-build tool.

Also, more as a question to @NineLine, before we go off and try to think up other ways of structuring things, I'm guessing that part of this hierarchy is just inherent in how the forum software works? As in, you still want 3rd-party sections because you can set up moderator groups to give those devs a small section of their own to control without that spilling over into other parts and without having to create complex “a bit from column A, a bit from column B” control definitions? Same with the various bug forums that can then be handed out as limited-access control sections to various internal teams. Because if that's part of the logic, that puts some limitations on what other groupings are even sensible and manageable to suggest.

Agreed. This is indeed a “cleaner” look, but that cleanliness is somewhat achieved by sweeping things under the rug that really ought to be exposed. This setup just begs for more threads being created in the first available first- or second-level forum rather than where it actually belongs, because there's little to no indication that those more appropriate locations even exist.

Modding by definition is enabled Eagle Dynamics. By its implementation, it is also supported by ED. By virtue of their official repository of mods, it's even actively encouraged by ED. So it has everything to do with them. This is a good thing, and ED knows it. Good thing no-one is asking for that, then. They do, actually, albeit indirectly. That's why ED are so interested that they are already managing the modders' work. This is just an extension and modernisation of what they're already doing. You've once again completely misunderstood the very nature of the topic at hand and are just pulling random statements out of your lower back without actually having any idea of whether what you're saying is true or not. As always, the “or not” part is the most applicable…

…and as the ultimate signifier of community attachment, they're something the developer can safely jump through some extra hoops for and be assured of utterly insane returns on those investments. There are entire companies that produce rather poorly made games that are made to shine — and that keep the company ridiculously well-fed — simply because of how they embrace the modding community. As such, a tool that makes modding easier; that gives the players more options; that increases the attractiveness of the game; that reduces friction between those who have an interest in mods and those who do not — all of it is such a no-brains thing to do for ED to massively improve the platform and make it more likely that people flock to it and give them money for it. ED is already aware of this since they have made sure a basic platform for user content exists — it's just that it's stuck a decade in the past rather than embedded in the game the way a more modern approach would handle it. One of these days, you're going to have to find someone who can teach you some rudimentary reading skills. Then you'll stop using these deeply idiotic and laughable misreadings of stuff that no-one has ever suggested but yourself. Well… that, or you'll keep using them because you are nothing but a troll who wants DCS to die a slow death of obsolescence and irrelevance. No, no-one is asking them to do extra work to incorporate freeware aircraft. This is just some incoherent drivel you've dreamed up because you have no idea how modding works in DCS and how it affects the game in its three main modes of operation. No, these aircraft don't compete with ED's business since they fall into two categories: stuff that is so commercially viable that they will be turned into actual for-pay products, feeding ED's business of selling them; or stuff that has no commercial viability and which therefore won't yield ED any cash in sales regardless and especially won't be something ED themselves have any interest in creating or selling. No, it is not odd to ask ED to extend and incorporate their user file repository into what could be an updated, integrated, and customer-friendly front-end that would do the same thing you see in a multitude of other games that have started to lean more heavily into the user content side of things.

It's really not. It's how it already works, except there's no optionality to it and you get far more odd substitutions — eg. everything is a Flanker. Being able to select more appropriate fall-back models would make it far less odd than the current situation.

Not so few when you own 40+ aircraft and 5+ devices that all want to auto-bind themselves to those aircraft in various (invariably nonsensical) ways… Don't assume that your non-use of at most one module, and thorough unfamiliarity with that single aircraft (and its settings and options), is somehow indicative of generalisable to everyone else.

What GR say should, as always, be taken with a steamer trunk of salt, and neither they nor Simon actually say anything of the kind. Unless you're referring to some completely new source rather than your own invention when your previous assumptions of what was and wasn't said were shown to be wrong… in which case, [citation needed]. Again, you really should stop generalising from yourself and putting your words in other people's moths. …in the same sense as the Hornet is a mod.

Now apply that to yourself. You, more than anyone, needs to learn how to do that since that is the only thing your non-existing arguments are based on. Oh, and just about everyone I've talked to who has the F-14 module has been in both seats. It's kind of the point of the module, after all…

Nope. Quite the opposite: I'd probably have a hard time convincing anyone to be the bus driver for any of those things… If that's the quality of your guarantees, make sure you stay out of the insurance business.

“Apparent” to whom? Based on what? Because here in the real world, it's readily apparent if you bother to look around bit that people actually do that. Again, this is just you making assumptions based on your preference rather than any sort of observation of reality. For the same reason you'd want to play the RIO in the F-14. Or the pilot, for that matter: because it's fun to play with other people, because it's an interesting task, because there's a challenge in the teamwork, or just because it's a lot of buttons to press. What attack planes? The ones that are needed for completely different tasks? The ones making sure that the objective is only lightly defended by the time the BUFF gets there? The ones that are simply too few or too lightly armed to be able to make any kind of worth-while dent in the target? Once again, you're only offering an appeal to incredulity: you refuse or are just incapable of imagining something so therefore it is impossible and cannot exist, even if (especially if) it actually already exists. Unfortunately, in the real world, your lack of imagination is not a limiting factor to everyone else, so these things exist in spite of your wishing they didn't. The BUFF is inherently MP — you even say so yourself, and need to make up your mind — so it very clearly fits in. Doubly so if you design missions that are not airquake (which is what “general MP” must mean to you) but rather ones that are suited to the full set of modules included. That's not something Nick said, though, now is it? That's the interviewer shooting the question down based on his own narrowminded and non-generalised preferences — something that explains why you like the argument because it's just like the ones you're offering, and just as wilfully ignorant and fallacious. Or did you do that thing you do, again, where you didn't actually listen to or read the source you were referencing? Unlike what the interviewer says, DCS isn't actually “ultra-realistic”; it's shock-full of simplifications and shortcuts and systems being skipped over or just not included at all. That's just the nature of the game. What Simon says is that it's not currently their niche. That is all. And in fact, when he tries to challenge some of the assumptions and baseless assertions of the interviewer, he's immediately silenced and being talked over so he doesn't get a word in… If you pay attention a bit, you'll notice that DCS does not only do full fidelity, so that's a stupid and just outright false assumption to base any argument on to begin with. Moreover, who's to say that all crew positions must necessarily be simulated at all, much less “full fidelity”? And guess what — players clearly want that. So why design a module with sufficient fidelity to draw in the crowd, where you can choose to fill additional crew positions as needed? Because it sells. Not to you, perhaps, but you are irrelevant. Your basing your argument on a wholly ignorant view of the game;, on a wholly irrelevant generalisation of your own very narrow preferences; on a catastrophically incomplete level of experience with all aspects of MP, SP, and mission design — anythign outside of airquake, really, by the sounds of it; and now you're also adding outright lying about what the devs are saying to that illustrious list of things that are useless as a basis of any kind of rational argumentation or thought. Again, as always, you are just trolling because you don't want to see DCS be improved by additions that do not specifically cater to your minute and reductive playstyle.

So what? They wouldn't even be playing DCS if they were that fragile since none of the modules, past, present or future, would live up to their standards. Good news: DCS is not limited to a single era. In fact, the way it is set up at the moment, it cannot even be a single era since that's not supported by the collection of units available.

Ok. I imagine it wouldn't be 4-5 of them, but just one that did everything. Any need for them to talk to “each other” would be black-boxed and you wouldn't even see it. Quite simple, especially compared to having to wrangle a full set of wingmen who refuse to do anything you tell them to. What matters is the set of functions and actions that can or need to be offloaded to other stations, and that set is pretty much the same no matter the aircraft. It can be a crew of 2 or 5 or 15 and still be four or five distinct functions: navigation, comms, weapons setup and delivery, maybe ewar — just because there are more people manning them doesn't mean the set of actions is also increased.

Yes you would. Stop assuming airquake as the only available mission setup. Not with the same amount of firepower, no. That's kind of the whole point of a heavy bomber, after all… You haven't been keeping up with current events, have you? Jfc that's just insulting levels of not paying attention.

You mean factories, logistics centres, depots, large military installations… cities… Those things that the DCS maps are just littered with? Have you considered actually starting the game and looking at the map every once in a while? Good news: while DCS can indeed simulate the large troop concentrations that you probably wouldn't use a B-52 against anyway, the Buff has plenty of targets where its use is justified and which are present in large quantities in the game by default, or which can be added in the mission editor. …and that doesn't really answer the question, now does it. Oh, and your first ridiculous notion was that by the time SEAD was done (which would be the last thing that happened, after the B-52 did its job and was on its way back to base), the mission would be over (but then, the B-52 would also be done so that doesn't matter, now does it). Now you're trying to amend this by pointing to dynamic war scenarios where, by very definition, the mission is never over, so there would be plenty of room for the Buff to do its thing. You really are just utterly incapable of not stumbling all over yourself and proving yourself wrong aren't you?

…as you have demonstrated in every thread you've trolled, you have no idea how MP works, you have no idea how mission design works, and ultimately have no idea how any part or component of DCS works. Your lack of insight, imagination, and experience does not mean something is impossible — it just means you haven't thought about it because you don't have the prerequisite knowledge and comprehension of the topic to do so. Any aircraft is able to participate in “general multiplayer” for the simple reason that you design the mission to make that possible. Based on what you have described every time you try to keep DCS from improving, your experience with the game and its MP components in particular is some catastrophically poorly designed and incoherent mishmash of units just being thrown together without any forethought or actual design behind it — just a bunch of them dumped into the mission editor to have them fight each other. Basically, the mission designer version of shaking an ant farm and giggling like a simpleton because he couldn't think of something more constructive. As such, you apparently cannot conceive of a well-designed, well-balanced, thought-out, and actually constructed mission that uses its unit composition for a purpose, with a specific goal in mind. No more limited than any other module in the game. They all require the same thing to make them useful. That is your hallucination backed by nothing but wilful ignorance and incredulity — something wholly separate from “fact”, in other words. The fact is that we already have aircraft that can fit more than two players in them. The fact is that we already have multicrew aircraft that operate realistically without the other crew positions filled. Just because you don't know these things doesn't suddenly make your reality-defying assumptions factual. Nope. Because you'd design it not to be. This is a very simple concept that you have yet to understand.

What the game already handles is the ability to make all skins available at once. It handles this the CJTF Red/Blue way, where they're just not restricted (but that's limited to four countries), or it handles it via mods, or it handles it by an ugly lua hack that just assigns availability of everything to everyone. What it doesn't handle, but clearly can since we know those three exist, is the ability to use any skin irrespective of the unit country designation. And sometimes you want that country designation because it does other things. No, I mean country. That's what determines the flag (and also a column in the slot selection), and every now and then you want that. It's one of the three things you mentioned as being a function of country selection, which would be lost if you had to restrict yourself to one of the all-unit countries. That's an awful lot of work once you start getting into the hundreds of aircraft compared to just flipping a single mission option flag and going to town. I'll believe it when I see it. And there's nothing to suggest that it would include such a capability and disconnection from the language designation standard set so far. That's not the argument, though. The argument is, if there is an utterly trivially implemented pre-existing option to make something happen with a single setting, and an unknown-complexity, three-part setting, O(N)-design complexity to end up with the same thing, the former is an infinitely more intelligent way of going about your business. Especially when there's no reason not to do it. The other options could conceivably be implemented as well at some point, but they wouldn't even be needed by then because it has already been handled. Yes it would. They're overrides — they have to be set on a per-group (or even on a per-aircraft, per your suggestion) level. Multiply those three settings with the number of groups (dozens) or aircraft (easily into the three figures for more complex setups) and that's an utterly insane amount of overriding that the mission maker would have to do in order to achieve something that could be far more easily, simply, and robustly done with a single mission option. Yes, the default would be the default but that's wholly irrelevant here because we're talking about how to activate an override — i.e. not the default. So I mean, yes, you're right… of sorts: it wouldn't be three settings. It would be three hundred, as opposed to just one.

“As long as it works” is exactly the point: what can be done now is fragile and may very well suddenly be gone from one day to the next. So why not let the game inherently handle it, the way we know it can? Option one, add: …a switch that removes country restrictions — we can discuss if it should be a group flag, a mission flag or maybe even a server flag — which is already something the game can do, as shown by the workarounds. Option two, add: …a switch that changes the displayed country on a group (no idea if this is even possible in the game, so it might require coding new functionality) …and add a switch that changes the instrumentation units on a group (this can be forced in game options but need to be moved and possibly recoded to be group-specific) …and add a switch that changes ATC language (there is obviously something that picks the language, but it's unclear to what extent this can be overridden with new functionality) Exposing something that already exists vs an unknown amount of coding of new functionality that may or may not even have existing hooks or might require some very ood changes to core assumptions, and which necessitates the mission creator to fiddle with three things per group rather than just set it as a general mission override.

Maybe, but that's a hell of a lot more work than what's being suggested here — something so simple that it can already be uglyhacked in with user modding. There's pretty much no reason not to have this option, given how it's a single switch for some that's already there as opposed to adding three different switches that do something completely new. There are literally no downsides, and I don't even see much in the way of argument against it other than “there are workarounds”. The thing about workarounds is that they're… well… workarounds. They generally point towards something not being sensibly done since it needs to be worked around.

While the general sentiment is fine, I just want to reiterate a crucial point here: it does change things.

As a non-default unlock option — i.e. everything works as normal unless you check an unlock box in a group's unit setup tab — I could see the use where you want to split similar-looking planes across three coalitions and thus three countries. You can sort of do it already between the CJTF Blue / Red, UN, and USAF Aggressors but you get into some oddities related to how countries work that way since there are a few details such as ATC language and what counts as “native” instrument units that are tied to the exact country fielding the unit. All four of those go for English / Imperial, and if you want some other mix, you'd be restricted as well. So yeah, as an optional override, there are a few edge cases where it would be handy. For just generic MP where countries don't actually matter, it can be dealt with well enough with the four all-unit “countries” already. Of course, there, as always, the trick is to have a conversation with the mission maker what you want out of the whole thing and in particular, what you want to be able to offer to the clients. This would hold true with the all-unit countries just as well as it would with a skin override toggle.

It's not quite as binary as that, other than the reflection limit providing a lower bound below which a radar can never see its targets, but those are low enough that it only ever effects incoming weapons for the purpose of missile defence (the SA-15 has a ridiculously low reflection limit, which is why it is able to engage pretty much anything slung its way). For larger things and/or for particularly crappy radar systems, you can occasionally see some reduction in detection range but most of the time, it's a case of “oh no, I'm being detected at 65nm inside this nominal 70nm threat zone”. All planes are spherical cows and while all sensors have some attenuation at extreme ranges, in most instances it's a largely forgettable effect and you're better served by trying to stay within the notching closure speed bracket (usually <10–15m/s radial velocity relative to the sensor). And that's if we're dealing with a class of objects that the sensor is even allowed to detect to begin with — like how gliding bombs can be detected because they're technically missiles in the code, whereas free-fall bombs can't be because they're classed as… well… bombs. But on the other end of the scale, you have some really funny effects caused by the same simplifications, like IR SAM systems trying to intercept MLRS rockets because they, too, belong to that “allowed to be detected” missile class and have a signature stat that the IR sensor can resolve. So yeah, sensors in DCS are a bit… interesting.

Oh, that's easy: it doesn't. It's a fixed “reflection” stat that is compared against a radar system's “reflection limit” to see if they can see the thing or not.

Parts of them, probably, although there would really only be one or two era-appropriate aircraft. All of them, probably not — that would require something along the lines of 4× the size of any of the terrains we have now, with detail all over rather than along just a narrow corridor. It's too big and too spread out to really fit within the (semi)conventional 400×400 NM box. .