Tippis

And the counterpoint is that you don't need to get the thing cracked yourself if the game provided the kinds of helper systems that it provides for numerous other “difficult” activities. Having to crack anything yourself is bad design — it's the ultimate proof that there is a gap that needs filling. Giving the player a ladder of difficulty to climb rather than a sheer cliff means that they can learn something rather than having to crack it all in one go. “Need” is, again, not particularly relevant to anything anyway. We don't need bugfixes. We get them anyway because they make the game better. Same with helpers for refuelling. Same as with the helpers for landing that we have. Same as helpers for weapons delivery that we have. Same as helpers for controlled level flight that we have. Same as the myriad of helpers we have for every aspect of the game… except AAR for no reason that anyone has been able to cogently and coherently articulate. There are quite a few that do. In the sim genre, there aren't really any that play the game, but plenty of sims who offer exactly the kind of helpers and hints that the OP and other threads on the topic have asked for: UI overlays, “sticky” or nudging position controls, various levels of control automation. The racing genre is shock full of them. The flight sim genre less so, but that's more of a sample bias problem. No. Because fuel is not a factor. Unlimited fuels helps less with learning to AAR than unlimited ammo does. Or rather, sure. Unlimited fuel can be a training aid, but for AFAC. That is not the same thing as AAR, and you should probably try not to confuse the two. Why not? Why can't they play the game the way they want it? What about those who just can't put the time in — not because they can't be bothered but because it simply isn't available? What about those who can be bothered and have the time, but who just want it not to be a sheer cliff face that goes against one of core design principles of the game? What about those who just want their time not to be wasted on a needlessly and pointlessly obtuse process that could be made much better and more efficient?

That's not actually what they've said, no. You even quoted it yourself so you should know what they said. You know what else they said? That this is the wishlist forum and if you don't like an idea, you don't need to post… Can you instead try to actually make an argument for or against the ideas being posted? If it's so well-worn a topic, you should have some pretty solid ones to offer, right? You realise that this is the best argument in favour of creating teaching aids, right? You're describing the most detrimental and backwards learning environment possible, and asking the OP to just accept this horrible state of affairs as the only way it ever could be… for no clear reason.

Sure, they're quite different. This whole topic has given rise to a bunch of ideas to solve half a dozen related problems over the years and it all overlaps in various confusing ways. By and large, though, I'm mostly highlighting cases — admittedly extreme ones — that wouldn't require nearly as much work as one might think, as a counter to the standard “wasted dev time” spiel given as opposition. If we wanted automated AAR, we could have it with ease. If we want semi-automated flying helpers, then that requires a bit more, and probably on a per-plane basis which makes it a problem of volume, but even there, some of the code to “nudge” or “snap” the player into place already exists. I bring them up mostly because the detractors always bring them up. It's usually this curiously mixed argument of “the game can't help you in any way” yet watching a youtube video is supposed to help you even though it offers even less than the game can. And the standard “help” is always to not look at the basket but to line up different bits of your immediate surrounding — things that will look different to everyone unless they are running a completely static forward cockpit view and if the person showing it off in a video does the same. Almost irrespective of what you're looking for, it's all part of teaching that mental snapshot you're talking about. If you can see the lineup as you will see the lineup — i.e. as your particular setup makes everything show up on your screen with your preferred FoV and seating position and everything — rather than how it appears on someone else's screen with their particular setup, then the game has already done more than the video can. And I'll readily agree that passively watching the AI go through the motions is only a hair's breadth above watching a video of it, and that there are other implementations that could do a lot more good. But the point of bringing it up as something the game could do is to show that whole notion that the game can't help you is bunk. Well… bunk again, for this reason as well. It was always a contradiction to begin with. There really aren't. Yes, there are plenty of missions that put you in the seat of an X behind a Y tanker, but you don't need user files for that — you can set that up in… oh… 15 mouse clicks. Less than it takes you to even go to the relevant webpage section. The problem is, as you point out, that they don't teach you anything because they can't. The facilities needed to do so don't exist in the game. This is where a good set of AAR helpers would allow for the creation of proper missions that teach all the aspects and components of refuelling. The fact that players could conceivably use them to make AAR easier in “live” missions, and some would like this a lot, is mostly a coincidental side-effect. So don't worry — it's not a digression. You actually put the finger on exactly what the problem is and why more mission creation tools and options are sorely needed.

The only hurdle I can see is whether or not you'll be able to keep the cockpit view. The rest is already in the game. You can take over AI aircraft; you can make the AI take over player (or at least client) aircraft. That's your autopilot right there. The question then becomes one of, is it possible to make the aircraft movement and… I don't even know what to call it, “world interactions”(?) — eg. connecting and disconnecting the nozzle — be driven by the AI but the player still retains the cockpit view and sees what it looks from that perspective? This extreme example would obviously have to have complete player lock-out. The AI is handling the aircraft, so no clicking for you at the moment. It's purely there for you to watch passively without leaving the aircraft. That's also why its utility would be a bit limited in a larger perspective. As a “do this thing while I get coffee, and then I can go back and spamraam” bypass, it obviously fits the bill. As a teaching tool for AAR, though, it can only really show you the proper perspective and sight lines. Other additional tools would be needed to make it properly interactive. So, good and bad depending on the desired outcome. Anyway, the point is, full control wouldn't need to be a big deal either. It all depends on how much you can give control to some other mechanism while the player still retains the cockpit view. It's partially possible already, as we see with tracks, but then track recording and playback is still in a way the player controlling the thing using normal inputs… it's just that the inputs come from the track rather than any input devices. So it's hard to say what restrictions and capabilities are needed and what this one example of having the player just ride along tells us about those limits.

Quite. You'd think that the old-timers had a better idea of what the product they've grown old with is actually meant to offer, but that often seems to be forgotten a long time ago. It's doubly funny since the whole point of a simulation is to make as much as accessible as possible to all skill levels, and that having the ability to match skills and skill progression with various options for what problems you want the user should be subjected to — something that the product description and advertised feature set also highlights.

So what? That just means that there are plenty of ideas on how to solve various aspects of the issue, and that no-one has really come up with a solid argument against any of it. We really can't. That's the trouble with the idea: there is no middle ground between “don't do it at all” and “do everything”. There is no way to create a progression and thus no way to teach it step by step. The tools to do so do not exist. It is the same difficulty every time because, unlike with just about every other task you can set for yourself in the game, there are no helpers that can be employed; no way to break the problem down into isolated chunks; no way to selective make some things hard and others easy. Why? What an odd epistemological or possibly cognitive question. It helps because our brains function that way: learning by example. It helps because you have broken down the problem into slightly smaller chunks and we learn better that way. It helps because it lowers the barrier of frustration and offers more opportunities to get more repetitions in, and repetition and lack of frustration makes the brain happier. And if what you meant to ask was “how” then that has already been answered many times over. There's no point to do that because unlimited fuel doesn't make any difference. You need to stop bringing it up because it shows a profound ignorance and incomprehension of the mechanics involve and the topic at hand. All you're saying here is that, if you want to practice using the game as it is, then the game as it is already is the way it is. It's vapid tautology. It says nothing. It doesn't address the simple fact that the way the game is is not conducive to either teaching or learning effectively. This has been explained in full. Inclusiveness. Ease of creation. More fun. But let's mirror that question: why do you need to keep AAR away from people so much? Why should they not be allowed to do it? And if it doesn't matter, why are you so adamantly against these improvements?

Eh what? Yes we do, exactly because it's hypothetical. Because that means we can freely define how it should work; what it should do. …and it removes the need to manage fuel, which is kind of the whole purpose, so that doesn't actually solve anything. Remember the things you keep mentioning as the things you need to practice to get good at refuelling? None of them actually relates to whether you have fuel or not. So it does not help in practising refuelling in any way and can, in fact, block it completely. Fuel is not the issue when practising refuelling. But an infinite amount of fuel most certainly is an issue when you want to create or play a mission where fuel is supposed to matter. Unfortunately, your realisation is incorrect. The reason why there aren't any of them is because there can't be. There are no ways to create them. The best you can do is make a mission that teaches nothing, where the player can hopefully glean some experience from grinding away, with no help and no feedback as to what they're doing right or wrong. That is not training. That is just guesswork where, with a bit of luck, you get enough right that you can start honing your mistakes into deep training scars. The very thing you are arguing against is the means to make actual training missions possible. Yes it is. There is never any sensible or rational reason to hide skill acquisition from the player. If it were possible to create AAR missions that actually teaches something to players, they should be right up there with all the other, technically far more complex skills that we have training missions for.

It's not much different from how you can lose the cursor in 2D. It shouldn't surprise you in the slightest.

It may very well be. And to be fair, it's been an age since I played around with the full capabilities of that whole thing so it might have been changed/restored since. I know a similar problem still exists when you order planes around in CA, and that could really use some (probably related) fixing as well.

True enough, but it hinges on the guy recording the track doing it properly which is… well… an unsafe assumption to make. In previous threads, some of the “I learned this all on my own so you can too” showed off their skillz in various videos, and let's just say that they were far from exemplary in how it should be done. Still a track, even from those attempts beats watching it passively on youtube, so there's still that. But it highlights how a lot of the bits are there already — they just need to be tied together in fully exposed functionality that lets you build good teaching tools. I really do think it's much less of a chore than the detractors want to imply.

The case I can see for auto-fly is to show the correct visual line-up between cockpit and tanker elements. The whole “don't look at the basket” bit. It can probably be done in other less extreme ways to offer a more flexible option and more teachability in one go, but if we're talking about giving that for minimum effort, just having the AI take over the flight controls fully is probably the easiest route. Having a very fine-tuned Iceman would be another interesting point of comparison. As it is, he's a bit rough on the controls and slow to respond to player input.

I was debating back and forth with myself as to whether I should follow my own advice and not try some kind of cute setup, but I was too slow to edit it out. Sorry about that. I'll just not be coy or vague about this: the switch between flight models I'm asking about is already possible. You can already grab control of and jump into an AI aircraft, flipping it from AI to player flight model, and then jump out of it and flip it right back. The only issue with that is almost completely separate: taking control over AI aircraft make them abandon their flight plan, so the coding needed would be to either just continue what they were doing before the player intruded (which arguably is a needed fix anyway), or — in this case — be context sensitive enough to figure “oh, I'm being activated in a refuelling scenario, so let's refuel from this tanker right in front of me”. Remembering what waypoint they were on, or doing a specific in-flight task when called upon through some UI mean that explicitly says “do this task” shouldn't be a huge coding hurdle. It's a contextual auto-generated pushTask for one of the most trivial tasks in the game. e: In fact, it was brought up earlier, and if we're going for a full-on self-flying scenario, I'm not sure any flight modelling at all is even needed. It's already possible to snap the player in place relative to a moving unit. An extreme case would be to apply that existing functionality to the appropriate position relative to the tanker. Whether you'd want to go that far is of course entirely up for debate. It certainly risks looking ugly. Yes we can. That was the bit I was alluding to, but rather than be constructive about it, I tried to be cute instead. Again, sorry to Grodin for that one. I'm playing semantics to show what a non-argument “not needed” is unless it's padded out with a whole lot more context. Is it not needed because the function already exists? Is it not needed because it's outside the scope of what the game is trying to do? Those are really the only two options and neither applies in this case. Simplified AAR is needed because it is fully in line with the stated goal of the game “to hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator”. If “both hardcore realistic and casual gameplay modes and options” are to be available as key features, why should AAR of all things be excluded from that? Simplified AAR is needed because it provides those who don't know how to AAR a means to still take part in missions where AAR is needed. Consequently, it removes a hurdle for mission makers in that they have to either make special considerations for those who can't, or limit their audience — i.e. it allows for more content for everyone. Depending on how it's done, it also provides a better learning environment for those who don't know yet, and for the mission makers who want to create those teaching scenarios. It provides a lot of things to a lot of people. To almost everyone, in fact. Simplified AAR is needed exactly because it can avoid creating the kind of negative learning that self-guided practice invariable creates. Again, if implemented sensibly, it would create an environment where common mistakes can be pointed out and not made by the learner to begin with. It cannot be circumvented by unlimited fuel — in fact, unlimited fuel does the exact opposite. There is nothing to suggest that it requires much in the way of complex programming. And even if it did, that doesn't mean it's not needed for a myriad of other reasons.

Is it, though? All planes can already fly themselves. All of the ones capable of in-air refuelling are able to do so without any player input. Yes, they have different flight models, but does that mean it is wholly impossible to switch on the fly? Because if it isn't then there's not a lot “serious coding” that would be needed at all.

Well, why don't you try to steer it in a more sensible one? Let's all try to stay away from the incessant trolling that shut those down and instead have a sensible discussion. As in: rather than just naysaying and going for various ad-hominem fallacies, present an actual rational argument against why this feature should exist, or the pros and cons of various implementations. And again, remember what DCS is supposed to do: “to hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator”. How is something that would hold the hand of novice pilots not needed for AAR when it is available in so many other places? If you want to make it an argument of prioritisation, then argue what the priorities should be to make sure DCS achieves that design goal. If you want to make an argument that it might be something the game needs, but the effort is just too much, then show why that is — the amount of programming that would be needed to create any of the many suggestion implementations, and how that would steal resources from everything else. “Not needed” isn't an argument — nothing in DCS is needed. New modules aren't needed. New mechanics aren't needed. Performance improvements aren't needed. Bug fixes aren't needed. After all, you can just work around them…

Again, as has been described, that does the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. Removing all ability to manage fuel is not a replacement for wanting more complex fuel management. It's an idiotic suggestion.

Of course it will. It will help people who want to take part in more complex missions but wouldn't otherwise, thereby entrenching them more in the game and giving them more reason to play more and practice more, especially with friends. Making practising and learning fun. It will help people by smoothing out the learning curve and creating means to actually teach AAR. making practising and learning easier and more efficient. It will help people by creating more complex content for everyone. …and just because they did it the dumb and inefficient way, all others who follow must categorically do the same? No. Tradition is bunk — hazing as a tradition doubly so. Doing something badly is not an argument in favour of keeping doing it badly. It's an argument for improving how it's done. No-one is trying to change simulation into arcade. Quite the opposite. They want to experience more of the simulation because they like simulations. That's why they are here. As it happens, one of the best ways of improving a simulation is to increase the number of means and methods in which an increased number of situations can be broken down in learnable and teachable bits. As a bonus, it also lets everyone enjoy it more, together. That's an extraordinarily poorly designed AAR practice mission. Hence why better tools are needed. …and guess what makes that practice be vastly more efficient? Helpers that show you what you should be looking for so you can get your eye in for what's right — what the world around you should look like — so you don't have to guess or, worse, learn the wrong things. Conversely, if the opponents could come up with an actual argument against this addition, they wouldn't need to resort to fallacies.

Only if by “needed” you mean the barest minimum to force people to learn thing poorly, inefficiently, and invariably the wrong way. If by “needed” you mean tools and methods to actually let people practice in a structured way and to teach them one step at a time, then no, there aren't and much more is needed. Needlessly making things a chore and a grind and make players turn away from parts of the gameplay is, by definition, never needed.

Only really in the sense of “here's a tanker — try to connect.” The game doesn't really allow for much more, and that's part of the problem. Whereas other things that you need to practice a lot have all kinds of functions and triggers and shortcuts that you can employ to create a smooth learning curve and to create missions that actually teach you whatever it is, AAR does not. Because teaching and learning AAR properly is apparently “arcade”. You must absolutely do it the worst way possible because… Lots of things aren't “necessary” for the game. Like the Hornet, for instance. Completely unnecessary. So that one really needs to not be in the game and the devs shouldn't waste any time or effort on it… right? Or maybe you want to include them anyway because it brings something to the experience. In addition, as maps get larger, AAR will become more and more natural to include. And you don't want to exclude players from having that experience for no good reason, which in MP in particular means that you need to cater to a number of different skill levels and playstyle choices, preferably without cutting out a different category of players in the process. This is why anyone with even the slightest shred of understanding of the game knows that unlimited fuel is not a workaround: because it cannot be selectively applied and because when it is included, it breaks all fuel management. Removing fuel management is not a replacement for requiring fuel management, but in a more complex way. In fact, it does the exact opposite of what you want. It's quite silly to suggest otherwise.

This idea is meant to help people who like playing simulations and the only reason to be against it is if you don't want others to like the same thing. So I take that as an approval. Again, the OP is asking for something that lies fully in line with the core intent of this game and which lets everyone get more out of it. With a bit of luck, this time it won't be trolled to death by naysayers who can't articulate a good reason why it shouldn't happen. So yes. After all, that's what the wishlist forum is all about.

That depends entirely on how it's done. If it's done correctly — and in line with what the devs want DCS to be — then it will be a set of helpers and teaching tools that will let you break down the problem into smaller chunks and chip away at them one at a time. Correct positioning; correct eyelines; correct control; correct process. As it is right now, you can only ever have everything thrown at you at once which is the worst possible situation and leads to even bigger training scars and bad habits simply because you're winging everything and can't get a feel for how each component is done correctly. Minsky's idea of “proximity refuel” will help get the process down — especially if the box is variable. This can be read through, but doing it helps more. The OP's idea of generous basket snapping helps with control — you still have to fly formation. This needs to be ground out, and can't really be done any other way. The idea of some kind of auto-fly helps with correct eyelines — how should the picture look to you when you're set up properly. This is something you think you'd be able to just watch, but what you see with your setup and what others see with their in their fancy youtube videos will differ. Correct positioning is the bit you can finally tackle when everything else is in place and you don't need any more helpers. It relies on all the previous parts being in place. As it is right now, trying to design a mission to teach this will immediately jump the player to the very end of what they should be doing. Also, the idea that this would take a lot is… questionable. All the pieces needed for proximity refuel already exists in the scripting engine. They just need to be hooked up as a single option. Basket snapping actually already exists too — it just happens to be very ungenerous. Telling the game to extend that zone should be trivial unless DCS is so horribly broken it needs to die anyway. Auto-fly already exists. Just not for players. It could be further enhanced with more UI element control similar to guidance gates (which are currently restricted to static positions and only to “player,” rather than “client” aircraft), which would help in telling you what to look for and what to line up. This could conceivably also help with the proximity box if it were made a bit more dynamic. Again, this is something that largely already exists. So I'm left wondering what this supposed immense effort is meant to come from? Remember what DCS is officially and explicitly meant to be: “The ambition is to hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator”. Providing the tools to teach AAR is fully in line with the core concept of the game, and in line with how many other aspects have been given more and more training options over time. Realism isn't even an argument here. The thing about plans is that they change. That's the entire point of the wishlist forum: to change the devs plans so they do something else.

It is. But at that stage, you're not looking at dots either way so it's not really a factor. The problem is that much farther out, you might not be able to see them but they definitely can see you. With the new system, you may be able to see them sooner than you're used to, but you see them at the same time as they see you and the both of you see each other later than was possible before.

It would be useful regardless. Being able to store and share settings just makes it insanely so. Whether SP or MP makes no difference — it's a function of whether or not you have everything preset in the mission editor, and whether all those settings are exactly to your liking. That isn't always the case, no matter whether we're talking about MP or SP. In fact, it is almost never the case. On top of that, a proper DTC implementation would gather up all the bajillion settings that are currently inconsistently scattered all over the Special options tab, the kneeboard, the F10 menu, and things that should be pre-programmable but that are only available as in-flight options — things that can't even be set in the ME. That's the critical component you're missing here: you're assuming that the mission editor covers everything and that everything can be given to you via that method. That isn't the case. So no, you're not given all these things in SP. You either have to set them up before you know what the mission is, or you have to sit on the tarmact and fiddle with the onboard computers or some hacked-in kneeboard UI. And like you say, these things wouldn't be done in the cockpit — they'd be given to you. Hence why a unified DTC interface is needed.

So basically, you're saying that the problem you claim exist doesn't actually exist, because you have already solved it fully to your liking. So how does this solved non-issue in any way, shape or form make the OP's suggestion “dumb”? Are you seriously suggesting that a single key press the only thing that is keeping the game at the precipice of becoming a shoot'em-up? Because that's all the OP is asking for: to not press F10. Nothing changes about DCS in the process. At no point did it become more or less of an arcade game. Your own suggestion already shows why.

You realise, of course, that adding a map to the game that the game already has doesn't suddenly turn it into this, right? It's a UI quality-of-life improvement, not a complete rework of how the entire game operates from its very core.

Anti-air sure. Regular ground units that have no business firing at — much less hitting — aircraft? Not so much. A bunch of them have pretty much perfect aim and no launch or firing warning — you just hear a “clunk” out of nowhere as their laser 23mm cannons rip holes in your engine. Or they launch ATGMs at you from beyond max missile flight range. They may not have all the capabilities they should have IRL, but there's also an annoying abundance of capabilities that they definitely don't have for real. It's very likely that anti-air have actually been given a bunch of limitations and “anti-abilities” to make sure they can't aim as well and that they're restricted by their on-board sensors (or lack thereof), whereas a number of ground units (and some air units, although tat has largely been cleaned out) just have perfect knowledge. It makes some sense from an optimisation standpoint: why have them process a bunch of stuff to make them worse at a target they shouldn't even engage with the weapons they have… but then the AI doesn't know that it shouldn't, so when it does, it does so exceptionally well.