Tippis

Yes there will be. In fact, there already is, and always have been, a number of other options. Again, this is just some assumption you're making based on what can only be a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how DCS multiplayer works. Either that, or you wilfully skipped out on the other presuppositions that invalidate your “problem”. The simple fact of the matter is that you imagined problem is just that: imaginary. The game has already solved it. The problem doesn't exist.

We have two “SA-18”s in the game: the Igla and the Igla-S. The latter is not an SA-18, but the SA-24. Not that it matters because both use the exact same unit and missile definitions so it just ends up being a way to use labels separate two different skins. This happens a lot with anti-air in DCS.

Nah. They're just obsolete. SA-13 is from the mid-70s Shilka is from late Ordovician. The “SA-18” we have is identical to the incorrectly named SA-24, which we also have, and which is from 2004. That said, yes, most SAMs are a bit too weak and easy to defeat, unless we're talking about the naval systems. This includes the MANPADs.

If we're allowed to feature creep, add auto-downloading with server white/blacklisting as an option on top of that.

Lolno. That's not how multiplayer works; that's not what is required; and that is not what dictates what you can and cannot use. They'd be able to use it just fine. You should know this already since it has been explained to you on multiple occasions.

Quite. Chances are that a huge portion of the benefits with this kind of feature could be handled via the trial program. If it's that good to be in the back, it will show within that period and then be worth-while to pay the price of admission for. Alternatively, if there is a genuine argument to be made for the backseat not being worth it, it almost sounds like it would be better to just allow for a trial extension — you can't fly it, but you can pick backseat slots (assuming the server is set to allow trial accounts). It comes down to a pretty standard cost-benefit analysis in that case: how much is lost in sales from backseat-only people staying free vs. how much is gained from a potential increased interest in flying the module now that there are plenty of jester replacements?

I guess we should just shut down the entire sim genre then since it's apparently not worth-while ever developing any features that go into it. The biggest issue has always been control syncing, so a lot of it comes down to how much duplication and redundancy there is between the front and the back seat. It sort of goes both ways: if there's a lot of the same, then on the one hand, it's already there and largely done, but on the other hand, it means more that has to be synced.

What do you base this assumption on? Have you been paying attention to the hubub surrounding, say, the UH-1, the Mi-28, the F-14, and the AH-64? Your bet doesn't jive well with how some of the most anticipated, celebrated, and talked-about things added to the game in the last year have been exactly that supposedly “largely unused” feature. So? Is anyone suggesting that it would? Also, as always, what do you base that assumption on?

It's not an assumption, nor is it irrelevant. It's not an assumption because this very thread shows that such preferences exist. It is not irrelevant because it's the very heart of the topic: does a market exist for the proposed kind of module? The relevant non-assumption is also not a personal preference. It's just a statement of fact, again as the thread itself demonstrates. The preference for realism, community and interaction is indeed a preference but again, that preference is exactly what creates the market interest. As such, it's quite worth bringing up and discussing, whereas preferences to the contrary don't really ad much of value. It matters how many would buy a product; it much pretty much none at all how many wouldn't. And no, I'm not going to keep my thoughts to myself. That would rather defeat the point of all of us being here to begin with. However, I'm not going to conflate that with some imaginary problems, nor am I going to make faulty generalisations from my preferences. In fact, I'm not going to use my personal preference as an argument for (or against) anything beyond the regular ‘+1’ answer here and there. So sorry, you don't get to backseat-moderate this one — you're simply going to have to live with how I rip apart weak attempts at argumentations. Nah. Especially not when it comes to his standard procedure of trying to shut down any and all discussion about features that would not benefit him for spurious and nonsensical reasons.

It's far too trivial to operate and fly (and especially land) to really teach you anything about the warbird experience. The only things that would translate is that you hear a constant droning from the propeller, and that you need to prime your fuel system. In all other aspects, you might as well use the Albatros or Aviojet — at least those have some quirks in their flight dynamics that you need to manage, and you also actually have to manage your engine.

No-one said it was. And you know this, how, exactly? Your posting history only ever shows one consistent theme: that you are wholly unfamiliar with the new player experience and will argue against anything and everything that would help them. So what imaginary well are you drawing this fantastical assumption from?

You do realise that you can run multiplayer without connecting to one of those servers, right? That if for some reason you don't want to run Open Beta, you can still use your multiplayer-only module just fine. And that, in many cases, you wouldn't want to use a public server anyway? So that's not even remotely a problem. Also, you do realise that you never have to have dual installs, right? Especially not if you run the beta branch.

Setting aside the rare accuracy of this statement, what you “think” is irrelevant. Do you have any actual numbers to support your random assumption? Any sales figures for the modules we already have that do exactly this? The “problem” you're stating is not an actual problem — it's just your personal preference. Others prefer realism, and community, and interaction with other players, and being instructed rather than fumbling around blindly with all the ill effects this entails.

You pretty much asked for that one, though… And you can't really chastise people for doing the same thing you are.

Hmm. The question would be how the other stages would work, then. Or perhaps rather, how logical should they be? It might still be possible to steal code from the zone destruction trigger, except instead of randomly replacing buildings with their destroyed models on a percentage basis, you'd switch them to black-out (i.e. daytime) textures. If you'd want it to be more realistic, with specific buildings getting grid prioritisation and others always being dark because you'd want to hide them (or because they're low-priority), things would get trickier. Also, come to think of it, I don't actually know how the destruct zone affects things like power pylons and their collision warning lights.

IRL you mean? It's because once launched, the difference in movement and heat makes it reasonably easy to reject flares as not the target you were going after to begin with. In DCS, however, pretty much the exact opposite is true: pre-flaring does not really affect target acquisition, whereas flares after launch are — as previously mentioned — just die rolls for whether or not the missile should randomly go after them or not.

Should be easy enough with the current model too: just swap the structure textures from the regular nigh-time, full-bright ones to the (equally) regular day-time textures, except they also show at night. The only conceivably tricky bit would be to have it only apply to a trigger zone, and even then, the trickiness is mostly from the perspective of how unreliable things like destruction zones and clear-object zones are in multiplayer.

I mean what's even the point of putting instruments in if the pilot doesn't use them to fly?

Yes there is. It's just not immediately obvious how it works. On a flight, set two waypoints as the anchor points for your race track. On the first of these waypoints, set the action Perform Task > Orbit, check the “racetrack” box. It is this combination that makes the racetrack work. You need both waypoints to define the track, but only one action. You also should not set any other actions on the second race track anchor point. You often also want to set some kind of stop condition — a specified time, duration, or trigger flag depending on your needs — for the orbit action, otherwise the AI will happily follow the route until it goes bingo, and then fail to fuel manage its way back to an airport. If you want any specific settings (reactions to threats, invisibility, radar usage and all that), it's better to set that up on the waypoint immediately preceding the orbit waypoint. Basically, keep the two racetrack-defining WPs as clean as possible. You can also use triggered actions to break the flight out of the racetrack loop, using “skip to waypoint” to send them off to where it needs to go next.

Quite. There's some very odd interactions between that non-breaking setup and the way its flex box setup is… well… set up, that causes the whole thing to collapse in on itself. I'm seeing this in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Haven't checked any other browsers.

This needs to be highlighted. One of the most common limitation that is always brought up by almost every developer in relation to heavier aircraft is that more than two engines is horrid, for… reasons. Whether clearly explained or not, that reason must sill temper any and all expectations for rumoured future modules. Unless they have been contracted by an outside party to create a new engine sim (similar to how the Yak and CE2 came about), it's supremely unlikely that this rumour would yield a modern 4+ engine aircraft… or even a 3-engine Junkers. This quite significantly reduces the odds of it being a modern aircraft.

That's also true for everyone clicking ‘no’. This is what makes your poll wholly devoid of any value or usefulness. Yes, let's see… There are currently 49 entries on the E-Shop > Modules page. 3 of them (A-10C, BS2 Upgrade, Hawk) are listed, but not actually available for sale. 6 of them (A-10A, F-15C, MiG-29, Su-25, Su-27, Su-33) overlap with a single group purchase. 5 of them (the C-101CC, C-101EB, L-39, Mi-8, SA3242 integrations of NS430) serve no purpose because the base module doesn't work. That's 35 or 40 in total, depending on your tolerance for non-functional jank. On top of that, there are 5 terrain modules. And there are a myriad of campaign modules. So what does my unsupportive, not-yes-voting, horribly miserly license list (available to anyone at https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/personal/licensing/licenses/ if they want to review their position) say? Oh. I am sure this is a pitiful number compared to the boundless benevolence of the truly supportive customers wanting to help grow the game. If you ask nicely, I'll give you the addresses to the two servers I'm hosting on my server and bandwidth as well. And the community wiki I've set up for the people who play on those servers. Just be aware: part of asking nicely will be to stop relying on some deeply flawed assumptions you're holding as true at the moment.

All true. No matter how you cut it, you simply can't draw any equivalence between the funding model and the “support willingness” of the customer — either way, you're giving ED cash to keep their doors open. At best, your preference may give the vaguest of hints as to whether you skew more towards supporting for past or future output, but even then, any such interpretation would rely on very naive notion of how income from module sales is used.

It's also worth nothing that, as I was hinting in my response above, clicking NO in this poll doesn't necessarily mean you're opposed to a subscription model. It's just that the options provided are… lacking, let's call it, and they're also marred by how the suggestion itself is phrased to make it block out all kinds of potential support votes. It's not just that the OP's opinion is just an opinion, it's that his opinion hinges on a rather silly assumption that is reflected in the poll itself, which ends up doing something pretty rare: it makes the opinion objectively wrong.

No, but that answer comes from completely different reasons than the ones listed — none of those apply to my answer.