Yoda967

Spot on, @AMEDooley! A callsign should be something that takes an aviator's ego down a notch, unless it's a play on words related to their name. Marvel comics fans may recognize "Cheeseburger" by her callsign...but that one's already in use. Since a lot of good callsigns are acronyms, I suggest "TAGITS," (pronounced "Tag Its") as in, "There's A GIRL In The Sim."

Skypickle, You might try adding a Triggered Action to switch to the next waypoint, activated by the resume flag.

Ed Macy and Charlotte Madison (British Apache pilots who wrote about their experiences in Afghanistan) both describe using Hellfires to destroy buildings. (Macy's "Apache" and Madison's "Dressed to Kill" are both great reads.)

Nice work!

An excellent point, and also great justification for a DCS Ju-87. No doubt, Stukas tangled with I-16s a time or two.

Yes, please. The US M7 (105mm Howitzer on an M3 chassis) and the British 25-pdr would be useful, indeed.

I don't think they're connected. What was happening in my case was an uncontrolled aircraft was pushed a task prior to the "start" task. In cases like that, DCS will simply deactivate/despawn the uncontrolled aircraft. OP's issue appears to be with static assets, rather than uncontrolled aircraft. His terminology is confusing, but I think by "deactivated" he means "uncontrolled and unstarted" aircraft. Those he shows us are working as he wants.

Still have this problem. Works on the ground, but RAlt + \ doesn't work in the air.

One way to do it would be to fly the Tomcats on double cycles, with a CAP launch every cycle so that they overlap. For example, let's say that the carrier is on 1+20 cycles. It's a time/distance problem: since the Tomcats are double-cycled, each pair can fly half of a cycle (40 minutes) out to the CAP station, and half of the next cycle (40 minutes) to return, leaving a full cycle (1+20) on station. Assuming that they fly at max conserve (250 knots), the CAP station can be 160-170NM out. What does that look like, schedule-wise? 0530 Cycle 1 Launch 0610 Cycle 1 CAP on station at 160-170NM 0650 Cycle 2 Launch 0730 Cycle 2 CAP relieves Cycle 1 CAP on station 0810 Cycle 3 Launch as Cycle 1 CAP arrives overhead for recovery 0850 Cycle 3 CAP relieves Cycle 2 CAP on station 0930 Cycle 4 Launch as Cycle 2 CAP arrives overhead for recovery For a 24 hour flying day, that works out to 36 sorties (18 cycles, 2 Tomcats in each flight). Longer cycles means the CAP station can be farther out, but that uses more gas and may mean they need a tanker. Shorter cycles means the CAP station has to be closer or the Tomcats have to fly faster to get on station (which means using more gas and increasing the possible need for a tanker).

Solved it, thanks to a remark @Reflected made in his campaign forum. If you trigger a task to an uncontrolled aircraft before the start task, the aircraft will deactivate. That's what was happening. There are some triggers for that jet later in the mission and I hadn't added a flag to inhibit them until after the it launched. Working with this sim is a constant learning process.

When I was growing up, one of the men in our church had been a P-47 pilot during WWII, and he told a story about taking damage and having his oil pressure drop to zero over open water a long way from home. He kept going, figuring that as long as the engine was running, he was getting closer to home, and every minute closer to home was less swimming he'd have to do. As he pulled the power crossing the runway threshold, the engine seized and the prop came to a sudden stop. When he got home from the Pacific, he moved to East Hartford and got a job with Pratt & Whitney. I've been practicing with the ED P-47D for a while now and today decided I'd build a quick dive bombing mission over Normandy, as number 4 in a 4-ship attack on some fuel storage tanks along the railroad tracks south of Vire. I put a battery of light flak northeast of town and took off from Cretteville. Over the target, I caught the full force of that battery. I broke off my run, assessed the damage, saw that the oil pressure was zero, and jettisoned my bombs and the partially empty drop tank. The plane started shaking. I looked around, and my flight was gone, which meant navigating home on my own. I looked around for a landmark and spotted the coast. I headed towards a familiar-looking bay. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't the bay I was looking for; I'd ignored my compass and flown for five minutes in the wrong direction. I turned north and crossed my fingers. All the engine gauges were reading normal except for the oil pressure. "Well," I thought, "let's see how this damage model does," and I kept going. As I turned onto downwind at Cretteville, I decided not to mess with the throttle setting much. The engine was running fine at 26" MP, and miraculously, the flaps worked and the wheels came down. I kept it high, making a steep approach on final in case the engine quit, which meant going full flaps. At 300 feet, I needed to slow down...so I pulled the power and that was it...the engine quit. Down we went. We hit hard in the field across the road from the airfield, but at least we didn't go into the trees. Oh, well, any landing you can walk away from. One of the other guys in the flight died over Vire. The whole thing made me think of Mr. Knight's story, and how immersive it was to have a parallel experience on my first "combat" sortie in his Thunderbolt's digital doppelganger. So well done, Eagle Dynamics. Thanks for a great experience!

I've rebuilt the mission from scratch, and it is happening again. It worked fine for quite some time, but now the problem has returned. DEFINITELY a bug.

Who me, Hoss? Definitely a black shoe. Fire Controlman, actually. On the carrier, my collateral duty was as electrical safety PO for NAV division, which meant I could go hang out on the bridge any time I wanted, as long as I had a multimeter and wasn't in anybody's way. Best place to watch flight ops outside of PRIFLY. On my last ship (a Spruance DD), I was shipboard training team leader and designed almost all of the scenarios we used to get ready for FEP during two workup cycles. Gave me a good reason to go around asking people detailed questions about what they do and why. After I retired, I spent years working in the training community as a war game scenario designer, part of a team that included retired captains and active duty aviators. They taught me a ton.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): Maneuvering the carrier and her escorts is best left to the mission creator, who won't go far wrong if he or she just plots the carrier's course in the ME to within twenty degrees of the wind and sets the speed so that the apparent winds are in the neighborhood of 25 knots. My first ship was USS JOHN F KENNEDY (CV 67). Jagohu's questions are spot on. "Turning into the wind" is a dynamic process and requires a bridge watch team that is on the ball throughout the evolution. Launch and recovery winds are not fixed directly into the wind, but their own envelopes (minimum/maximum speed and a range of headings several degrees to port and starboard of the wind's true direction). There is a book on the bridge that contains "wind roses" that help the bridge watch team determine the best course and speed for flight operations; in light winds, it may be possible to launch and recover without turning into the wind. I don't recall conducting flight ops within sight of land, ever. From a ship-driver's perspective, the closer you get to shoal water (water too shallow for the ship to operate), the fewer options you have if anything goes wrong. I spent a tour at sea aboard USS SAVANNAH (AOR 4), including an Indian Ocean deployment with a carrier. Rarely did we steam along with the carrier; if we weren't conducting VERTREP or UNREP, we were over the horizon, going to or coming from a resupply port. Outside of the occasional photo op, I don't recall ever steaming in the carrier screen. Years later, I was a chief on an Aegis cruiser. Our role in the carrier screen was typically what we called "CV shotgun," where we'd remain about 3/4 mile astern and a bit to starboard of the carrier's centerline. In that position we could serve as plane guard and effectively defend the carrier with our missiles. I have personally witnessed more than one cruiser CO stake his career on keeping his ship at shotgun station, even during synthetic exercises. (When I was on an FFG, we also took CV shotgun, and it sucked; the carrier was always going 25 knots or more, which was a struggle for our ship and meant we had to endure constant heavy vibration and --in the berthing on the waterline-- water rushing loudly along the hull.) One of the tasks I had to learn as a JOOD on the cruiser was maneuvering board...also known as MOBOARD. One of the typical uses of that skill was in station keeping during maneuvers. Without going too deep into the process, inner screen positions are typically based on a RELATIVE bearing arc and a distance from the carrier. For example, that CV shotgun station I mentioned earlier might be 160-180/1000-2000 yards. The outer screen may be 10 to 20 thousand yards out or more and are more likely to be along a TRUE bearing from the carrier, such as along a threat bearing. When the carrier turns, all of the escorts will be out of position and will need to maneuver back to their assigned stations as quickly as possible. My CO's expression for that was, "maneuvering in a destroyer-like fashion." Safe, fast, and on as direct a course as possible. His absolute rule was that at no time would we put our ship closer than 3000 yards ahead, 2000 yards abeam, or 1000 yards astern of the carrier unless he was on the bridge. Maneuvering the carrier and her screen begins with the carrier signaling her escorts of her intent to turn, generally at a specific time, but may be "on execute," which is the naval way of saying, "When I say *execute*, everybody turn." All of the escorts must acknowledge the intent-to-turn signal. On each of the escorts, the JOOD begins working the MOBOARD to calculate the optimum course and speed to regain station, preparing orders to the helm for when the execute order is given. My point is not to make ship-drivers out of anyone here (no doubt, there are quite a few who would be better at that than I), but to point out that maneuvering a carrier formation is inherently and incredibly complex. The process isn't automated IRL, and you can't expect to accurately simulate it by relegating it to a script. In developing my own SP missions, I've noticed that the ship on CV shotgun station maneuvers pretty realistically when the carrier turns, provided it's in the same group as the CVN. I don't put more than the carrier and the CV shotgun in the group; other escorts are in their own groups and maneuver separately. To create the illusion of coordinated formation maneuvering, I set up the carrier's waypoints first, then copy and paste it to where I want an escort in the outer screen, changing the unit type in the pasted group as appropriate. That way, when the carrier turns, the CV shotgun maneuvers back to its station astern of the carrier and the outer screen turns on time to the correct course and speed to maintain station.

Around a minute into my SC mission, the jet parked at spot 1 disappears. This is consistent and repeatable. I have seen it happen with another mission I'm developing, as well. The mission is under development, and has been working for a couple weeks without this happening, and I'm not sure what trigger I might have applied to make that aircraft simply vanish before it...I've ripped out all the triggers pertaining to that aircraft that I've added since the mission was working, and the jet still disappears. Is this some random bug? 306 disappears after 1 minute.trk

Very nice work!!

I'm certain this has been asked for already, but can we please have TACAN for the non-carriers?

YES! This would be far preferable to making multiple missions to serve as "outcome branches" as the current campaign structure has it. I've been thinking since EPSOM was released that it would be a huge benefit for story-driven campaigns to have the ability to lose a wingman in action and have him stay gone throughout the campaign.

Rato, Thanks so much for doing these! They add so much immersion to the campaign I'm developing, and the static HH-60H looks great parked right where it should be at the island.

Mac, you may be right. Since we're in the realm of MP, I'm not much help, I'm afraid. Maybe one of the guys with more MP experience can offer some insight. Sorry.

Is this an AI Hornet? Which parking spot did it start from? Players can choose which catapult they taxi to, but AI aircraft do not; each parking spot is tied to a specific catapult. This graphic shows the paths (marked in blue) from each spot to its associated catapult: https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/File:Carrier_in_model_viewer.PNG An AI aircraft will hold if the catapult it must use is occupied, and it should resume as soon as that catapult is available again. You can minimize this by adjusting the two start times...either starting the first aircraft earlier by a few seconds or the second one later. (Trial and error seems to be the only effective approach here.) I have seen some reports of a bug with the Tomcat/SC combination that results in the Tomcat sometimes getting "stuck" in mid launch cycle at the catapult. I don't know if that's fixed. I haven't seen it myself in quite a while, but IIRC, it helped to change the Tomcat's start time slightly.

To add to what Grimes said about the AI aircraft not landing, is there a parking spot available for after the E-2 lands? Is the path to that parking spot clear?

Yes, please do post screens!

Ghostrider, Yep, you really do have to keep that area clear around the island. It's unfortunate, because that's where the helos should go. Yes, when starting uncontrolled AI aircraft, they spawn cold and have to go through their startup sequence, which can be anywhere from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. I'm glad you found that parking map. I was going to link to it, but was later for work than I realized and figured I'd come back to it when I had the chance. The Operation Persian Freedom campaign is payware, so unfortunately you can't dissect it, but it does have a lot of great ideas (like the F10 menu control of wingmen and optional "conversations") and there is a sample in User Files (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/filter/user-is-ChillNG/apply/).

Ghostrider, I have yet to be able to nail down the placement of aircraft on the flight deck since the latest change to the SC module in a satisfying way. As of now, AI aircraft are placed in the order they're added to the mission, and you can tweak that by selecting LATE ACTIVATION and placing them with a trigger in the first few seconds of the mission. The downside of this approach is that for a couple seconds at the beginning of the mission, you have AI aircraft popping in from nowhere. The upside is that the player aircraft will go into the first available parking spot, so you can put your player jet where you want simply by late activating any aircraft you want to be placed in higher-numbered parking spots. I should add that this is my approach for single-player missions. I haven't done any MP mission development, so if you're doing MP, hopefully one of those guys can chime in. Developing launch spacing takes a lot of patience. I start by developing a launch sequence plan, so I can get the E-2 up first, followed by the tanker, but also so that I can have each section lead launch just before his #2. (I also don't use the DCS wingman scheme, but an F10 menu scheme I picked up from Chillng, which he uses in his Persian Freedom campaign.) With the launch sequence in mind, I develop an initial round of start triggers for each aircraft and run the mission, watching the movement of the aircraft on deck, and adjusting the start time triggers to get the launch times I want. Sometimes, you'll get some taxi conflicts, and you can generally solve that by delaying the start trigger of the aircraft that's later in the launch sequence plan by ten or fifteen seconds. Good luck!