Tippis

“Supposedly” is not “actually.” And the point is, if you want to create a balanced scenario, you create a balanced scenario. Creating an unbalanced scenario doesn't take away from the usefulness of — much less “poke a hole in” — the idea of having a built-in team balancer that works on the slot selection screen. Again, at best it shows that such a system would be even nicer if it allowed you to defined the balance ratio and/or the margin of error. But that's really it. But coming up with improvements doesn't take away from the foundation. No it's not. It's just good old airquake. It's the way competitive MP has worked for, oh, 40ish years now. You'd have to be catastrophically out of touched to be confused by something as simple, standardised, and common-place. You haven't played many games with team balancing have you? Have you seen any? Because no, that is not something “team balancing in games” uses or necessitates.

The most immediate way of doing it is to use the thoroughly antiquated “prepare mission” function in the mission editor. It only really works with the A-10 and the Ka-50 — all modules after that put those kinds of settings in the mission editor like the OP is suggesting for the A-10. This puts you in the mission, lets you set up your aircraft, and then you can quit out and have those settings saved. What this does is that it creates a set of “device files” for the systems you set up during the prep, and those files are then included in the mission file. This only works for SP but the files that are created are things you can then use in an MP mission. I don't fully remember their names and format off the top of my head, so you'll have to experiment a bit with it — they're fairly obvious and self-explanatory though. You can extract them by opening up the .miz file using any old zip manipulation tool and dig around — they'll be in their own subdirectory in the mission file, and it's best to just extract that full directory. You can then insert them in any new mission you create by using the same zip manipulation and just put that directory back in there. They'll be named after the system, so you'll have an ARC-whatever file for each radio for instance, and in those, the presets will be a numbered (Lua) list with the frequencies exposed as simple Hz numbers. It's very easy to manually edit and get what you want. The limitations to this is that, 1) this is a pretty elaborate process as you may have noticed: create a dummy SP mission, use “prep mission” to create the necessary files, extract them, create the MP mission, re-insert the files. Once you have them extracted once, you can just edit them using any old text editor — no need to keep using the prep mission thing. 2) as mentioned, the method was originally intended for SP and it shows: the files you extract will apply to all A-10s in any mission you import them into, as opposed to the later way of doing things directly in the ME for other aircraft, and have different groups use different settings. Everyone gets the same thing with this method. This is why it has been (often) proposed to just do a revamp of the whole thing and make the A-10s work like any modern module, with all those “prep mission” settings being exposed, on a per-group basis, directly in the editor.

That doesn't really poke a hole in anything, though, other than possibly the mission-maker's self-image of being somewhat competent. Presenting an unbalanced scenario is not an argument against balance. Quite the opposite. If that's the setup for the available spawns, you wouldn't enforce 1:1 participation. Simple. That doesn't mean that there is no point in having a team balancing system — just that it would be made even better if you could define that balance in terms of other ratios or just with an acceptable margin of error.

In our modern day and age where we are bombarded by hype and lofty promises and fail to be met by the final product, it is always nice to reflect on the fact that this is a phenomenon as old as man… doubly so when we're discussing actual bombardment.

…and, of course, APKWS.

It should be easy enough to list that pretty much the same way settings are shown now: either as just one of the listed flags, or - if it's done on a WP/group basis - as a marker next to the available aircraft. The latter would probably be better from a flexibility/mission-making perspective, but I can also see issues with filtering for it in the server list if you're just looking for some quick flying time. Off the top of my head, I can't recall seeing that kind of filter option (but then, I've never had a need to do that so that's a pretty useless non-observation), and if one isn't available, it would mean having to check every server to see if it's an open or a team-balanced slot.

As a general option for any kind of MP game, it's a blindingly obvious one to have. Its use case is a bit more narrow in DCS than in most games, though, since the stuff you can fly is inherently unbalanced - that's kind of the whole point of the planes to begin with. That said, it becomes a bit of an issue when trying to decide where it goes. Normally, this would sound like an obvious candidate for a server option, but seeing as how the server has no idea how the mission is set up, and whether balancing is even possible for a given mission, it might have to be a mission option instead (or maybe even a WP0 option: only allow clients to occupy this slot with balanced teams). The question then becomes one of whether that's necessarily something the mission (or WP) can even control properly. Scripting solutions exist to limit the use of slots, so there's some hope there, but it needs to be either rock solid and well-implemented, with some kind of tolerable ratios and the like, or it might as well be left a scripting solution for the mission-maker to include and tweak that way. So it's blindingly obvious, but its very limited use case also raises the question of how necessary it even is given all the other constraints and the general MP ecosystem. The audience appeal seems less of an issue: it's a special-event kind of thing, and it will be entirely self-selecting. The people who want it will gravitate to the servers (or events / missions) that use it. If it's mission- or WP-based, in particular, it even more clearly signals that this is something that can be swapped out pretty darn trivially, and it's up to the mission-maker to make sure that enough slots of enough types with enough "module balance" between them are available. It would be complete folly to even try to make that something automated and out of the mission-maker's hands. I can certainly see it being stuck on some of the dogfight/gunfight arenas we're running, but it would also be exactly that: a special event setting rather than something that necessarily is on all the time. Sometimes, you want even teams of Viper vs Viper; other times, you want a dozen of one vs two of the other, and if and when it is used, it really needs to be dictated by the mission design (and thus the mission designer) and nothing else.

You need to read the OP. Your “helpful” suggestions are as unhelpful and as pointless as always because, as always, you have not taken the second needed to understand the topic at hand. This is not about hardware or volume or settings. This is not “noise” but deliberate audio that needs to be cut out — unless you get a mic/speaker combo like some tinny little conference system, it will not know what output audio needs to be filtered out, and it will not really do what is needed. The OP is asking for an auto-ducking tied to mic input. It's a feature built into Windows, but requires the running program to tie into that functionality (but then, it is often turned off because it is commonly a hugely annoying feature as well, changing your volume precisely when you don't want it to). When they expand the in-game voice chat feature, this is a very obvious and necessary functionality to have built in, and it's something the game should be able to trivially handle on its own: it knows when it gets input; it knows what it's outputting; it controls both fully and can easily auto-mix the two on the fly. For external solutions (SRS, Discord and the like), it would have to either go the Windows-native route or use an external audio interface with an auto-mix function, and that is massive overkill for such a simple request. Alternatively, there would have to be a “duck on PTT” function, where any radio activation changes the volume but that relies on the assumption that the external audio is triggered by the same button input, and that can be unreliable because of how differently various radios are implemented in the different modules — see how different SRS works with the modules we have for instance.

Have you? Or are you just suggesting things without any idea of what they're doing? No, it doesn't do what the OP is asking for. And adjusting the volumes is very obviously not a remotely workable option as anyone remotely intelligent will be able to figure out in, oh, 2 seconds flat.

Pretty much, yeah. The thing that makes TIR so neat is that you're not (necessarily) setting sensitivity or movement speed — you're creating position mapping; a very precise, customisable, and even entirely non-linear translation between sensor position/rotation and camera position/rotation. The way you can make it speed up and slow down (or just not move at all), or, hell, even go backwards if that's what you want along certain ranges of motion along any and all axis of motion means there's no end to the tweakability and fitting it to what feels natural to you. The Tobii software has almost none of that, and what it has is very limited in how you can differentiate between the movement and rotation axes. With a bit if iteration (and a far longer detection range for the head tracking), the sensors can become a really interesting proposition, but without a significant software update, it will never be able to do what TIR can… and TIR truly desperately needs some strong competition.

It's not supported in the same way, say, TrackIR is, where you plug in the stuff run the software, and DCS just picks up that “oh, this is trackir — let's just move the camera depending on what the software is telling me”. Tobii requires you to go through the modern rigamarole of not having any clear manuals and instructions for anything, since it's supposed to be really easy to use (go look at their website and good luck finding any actual information without diving into the forums). But in this case actually requires extra software that you're not really told to install, much less given an explanation for how it's supposed to work. If you hope to just plug it in, install the software when it tells you, and get going, you're treated with a static in-game cockpit view that only responds to regular keyboard camera controls. You can indeed make it work, but it's not nearly as neat or as easily controllable. It's pretty much inherent in how your eyes work — they move around, in part out of your control, and to make it anywhere near stable, you need to add a lot of filtering and smoothing that in other instances will make it feel sluggish. And even then, the built-in stuff is lacklustre so you end up wanting to use third-party solutions to get the kind of fine adjustments you want. Hell, even for the features that are supposed to tie into native Windows functionality, the reliability and functionality is flaky. Tobii (at least the later ones) also suffers from trying to do two things at once, where it does simultaneous eye- and head tracking, but the latter only works at short range. If you have any kind of extensive table- or chair mounted setup rather than just plonking the controller down on the table in front of the monitor, chances are that your head ends up out of range so the head tracking becomes very unreliable, or just doesn't work at all. Meanwhile, the eye tracking works via IR illumination, and this interferes with other similar systems. If you have a TrackIR-style camera/diode/reflector setup, the camera will pick up reflections of the Tobii tracker illumination and cause all kinds of noise, which (if you have it running) means the TrackIR software flips out and makes your in-game head spin… literally. And there is no way to easily just turn off the Tobii short of unplugging it — even if disabled, it keeps illuminating, so you have to put it on a USB hub with a power switch if you want to be able to go between the two without having to yank on cables. It's… suboptimal, let's say. A lot of this comes down to the software and driver end being just abysmally unready for prime-time, and the head-tracking part being more experimental at this point. When it works, for the games where it is natively picked up without any of the external software interfering, it's nice enough. But the set of circumstances for that “when” to be true are just too narrow and inflexible. I bought it on an (expensive) lark with the same hope of not needing to have anything on my head, but it is really just gathering dust now — the inability to just turn it off when not needed means I can't even leave it plugged in for creepy Windows Hello usage.

This is probably a better angle to approach it from. If it's just stats syncing between installs, any old existing cloud solution will do that already — just link the directory in. On its own, it's not creating a whole lot of effect for what would require a fair amount of back-end infrastructure work on the server side. The question is rather, what other opportunities and uses would it open up that would potentially benefit a larger segment of players in a larger set of situations. Some open APi to pull these kinds of stats from a central source? Metrics for the campaign, mission, and server developers to see how their stuff is used? Or just as an excuse to harden the logbook functionality a bit since it's… not entirely reliable?

For some reason, the mind drifts to visions of black pots and kettles...

Now there's an idea for something that should be controllable server-side. Does anyone have a hookup with Virpil or Monstertech or some other company that does chain mods?

There are some salves and ointments, but they're really more relief than an actual cure. But close enough.

That worked.

Yeah. It's just not showing when logged in. If I break out the DOM navigation tools,. I can find it and even fiddle with it to make the selection menu appear, but the “Themes” dropdown link and text node is just outright missing. Note how “Language”, “Privacy Policy”, and “Contact us” all have proper links and everything in the node tree, but no “Themes” — that list item just contains the menu, and since the link to make it pop up doesn't exist, it doesn't show and can't be brought up to work properly. But again, this is only if logged in — when I log out, it shows up just fine. So… “odd” is quite right.

Where? Even with everything off, searching for themes yields nothing. e: Huh… it shows up when not logged in, but disappears when logged in and when it can be saved.

I'm not seeing it. Is this something that I'll have to turn off all my adblocking to reach?

That's largely an unsolvable problem, though. If people want to communicate, no amount of server control will be able to keep that from happening and any in-game tool can almost by very definition be circumvented by using out-of-game tools instead. While there's certainly merit to having options to control and restrict what those in-game comms allow for, it's more that this is good design for all such communication tools just to keep house, to prevent annoying cross-talk, and to just make it a bit more user-friendly by reducing what the client can do wrong. That's all fine, but it's worth being realistic what it can and can't do, and at the top of the “can't” list is preventing players from going beyond those restrictions if they really want to.

As a more customisable (but also more work-heavy) variation of this, you can also use simlinks and the -w command line option to set up two different Saved Game\DCS directories, one for pancake and one for VR, where you very deliberately pick and choose which portions should be shared and which should not. So maybe the Config directory is unique, but the Input subdirectory is linked; the shader directories are specific, but things like missions and scripts and liveries are linked. It requires a fair amount of command line work, but it lets you be very precise in what you want your setups to do (and not do) differently. But as others have suggested, the launcher is probably the most handy way of doing a lot of these things.

…and if you read how that “like” is used — what it is referring to — you'll quickly notice that there is no suggestion that the ground unit component should be an FPS. The first time it is even mentioned is when you bring it up, not the OP. So that's just something you invented by (as always) not reading properly and instead just conjuring up something that was never asked for just so you have something to complain about.

…so, again, your constant whinging and trolling is useless and worthless, and the mods have told you so on multiple occasions. So why are you so incapable of listening to them and, ultimately, to yourself?

No. They are just asking ED to do things you have no interest in, and for that reason and that reason alone, you take it upon yourself to troll those thread in spite of repeatedly being told by the mod to stop doing so because your input has no meaning or value. Most of the things you are on a holy quest to crap on are things that would drastically increase ED's — and everyone else's — ability to create that content. This has been explained to you in full on multiple occasions, and unless you have deliberately chosen to ignore this well-established fact, you know this by now. So that's not the reason you're doing this. And don't try that “3rd party can do it” nonsense. You know as well as everyone else that you complain about those suggestions as well. Anything that's suggested that does not directly affect you, or anything that removes some perceived advantage you have to make the game more equitable, approachable, and interesting to more players, you start trolling the hell out of it. Your posting in the wishlist section is worthless, pointless, useless, baseless, bereft of any and all understanding or insight into how DCS works, and wholly ignorant of the ecosystem and community that exists around it. There are easier ways of getting the ban points to rack up, you know, if that's the end goal you're after. And it's either that, or you're actively trying to ruin DCS and ED's business. Either way, go away. Your presence is a net negative to the forum and the game.

…therefore, even more reason to make it as open, welcoming, and hassle-free as possible. Since you can't think of anything better that ED should devote their resources towards, this is as good a feature as any — probably even better than most.