nomdeplume

Did you check what EtherealN said? This is the most common problem people have. You need to make sure your radar and launcher are part of the same group. If they're in separate groups, the radar will be unable to instruct the launchers to engage hostiles. When you have a ground unit selected, you'll see in the properties panel on the right side of the screen "unit <x> of <y>". Click the -> arrow next to the "of <y>" number and it'll add another unit to the group. The unit types can be set independently. Also note that some SAM systems have separate search and tracking radars (SR and TR, respectively), and you'll need a functioning tracking radar within the group for it to be able to launch. Other systems have combined search and tracking radars (usually denoted as STR).

To make the vehicle appear: Create a new group with the vehicle in it at the location you want it to appear. If you want it to move, create the appropriate waypoints. If you want it to be stationary, then no additional waypoints are needed. Set the "start time" in the first waypoint of this group to a time well after the mission starts, that won't be reached naturally (I usually use 9 days after the mission start time; the time is in the format hh mm ss dd). Use the triggers dialog to create a new trigger with the condition(s) "group dead" and/or "unit dead", tied to the appropriate units or groups you want the player to kill. The action for this trigger will be "group activate", tied to the group you created in step 1 above. Creating the unit should be sufficient for a JTAC who has visibility of the unit to be able to detect it. Alternatively, you could use a trigger action on your JTAC unit to direct an attack on that particular unit, and trigger that action at the same time as you activate the group. Do you already have the JTAC functioning in the mission? Getting it to work how you want it to can be quite tricky, so if you haven't already done that I'd suggest doing that first: place the target unit and your JTAC unit, and make sure it can provide the tasking you want. Once you've got that working, delaying the activation of the target unit is easy.

Oh, that's interesting. So TARS itself also provides a push-to-talk function on whatever buttons you configured in TARS? Does that mean if you're not using "regular" TeamSpeak, you don't need a PTT button mapped within TeamSpeak at all? (Not that I'll do that, but just theoretically speaking.)

I could be wrong here (edit: I am wrong here, skip this post!) since I've yet to actually participate in a flight that uses it, but from the configuration setup I got the impression that there are two separate activities here: 1- TARS needs hotkeys or buttons to tell it which radio is in use; 2- A press-to-talk button in TeamSpeak is used to talk, if you don't use voice activation. The TARS buttons are therefore just things you press once. In my case, I've configured it to use the HOTAS Mic switch in the appropriate directions, and modified the game's configuration to require a modifier (the "pinky switch" on the stick) in order to use the in-game radio. My PTT button in TS3 is the "Mic switch in", which is otherwise unused. So my belief of how this will work is that I'll need to first press the appropriate mic switch once in order to tell TARS which radio I'm now transmitting on. Then, when I want to speak, I'll need to press the Mic switch in so as to activate the TS3 push-to-talk. TARS will then magically add some information about the frequency I'm on, and then other TARS-users will only hear me if they happen to have a radio tuned to that same frequency. I won't need to press the Mic switch again until I want to communicate using a different radio. And, pressing/holding the Mic switch in the forward/back/down position won't let me speak on TeamSpeak - it only tells TARS which radio is now active. That's my understanding, but please enlighten me if I'm wrong about any of this.

To make the group not visible at the start of the mission, you need to set their start time to some time after the mission starts (I usually use 9 days; I think the fields are [hour]:[minute]:[second]/[day]). Edit: the start time can be set on their first waypoint (i.e. waypoint 0). If the "visible before start" checkbox is not ticked, the group will not be visible in the game world prior to their starting time. The "activate group" trigger action will cause the group to appear and their AI to be activated regardless of their actual start time. If there's one unit remaining out of 4, then the group is probably 25% alive. I'm not sure if damage to a unit reduces the group's "alive %", but if not then it'd be impossible for the group to be < 24% unless the group was dead. For a situation like this (1 of 4 units remaining), I would normally use "group alive < 45%" or similar. On further reflection: I suspect this issue is related to the above, i.e. all your groups start at the beginning of the mission, and therefore there's nothing to activate them. Please try to stop using the term "re-spawn", as the only entities that can respawn in this game are player-controlled aircraft in multiplayer sessions. If you are activating a new group to replace a previously destroyed group, you are activating a new, different, separate group than the original. From a gameplay perpective it's pretty much the same thing, but from a mission design perspective it's quite different. Activating a group can only be done once to bring an inactive group into the game world. An already-active group cannot be activated. I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If you're talking about the "coalition has airdrome" trigger being used to activate the next attacking group, then there's nothing that limits the trigger's action to only activating groups that are within a certain proximity of the airdrome they're testing. Any trigger can activate, deactivate, or destroy any object anywhere on the map, regardless of the location of the thing it happens to be testing. If that's not what you mean, could you try rephrasing the question?

The green X's also show up on the TGP. Not sure about the Maverick display.

Create the group as normal, then while it is selected, hit the templates button in the toolbar on the left side of the editor. Then enter the name you want to use for the template and press the save template button. If I recall right, there's basically two sections to the dialog you get when you activate the Templates option; the top bit lets you load an existing template (and once you've selected the template, clicking on the map will place a new group using that template), while the bottom bit allows you to create a new template from the selected group.

How many tests did you perform? You may have just gotten unlucky and it's giving the appearance of always doing the same thing, even though it is random. Alternatively, there may be some kind of issue with the random number generator, such that it's always giving the same results. As an experiment, have you tried copying the flight plan one or more times so there's several independent groups following the same path, and see if they all do the same thing? Also, it might be worth double-checking there's no other conditions enabled for those tasks. The times that I've used the probabilities they've seemed to work okay for me.

No, the AI is not capable of commanding a player.

If you want to use patches, you should first check what version you're currently running, and then download all the subsequent patches. In more recent versions of the game you can see the full version number in the splash screen that appears when you launch it. If it only shows three digits (e.g. "1.1.1") then you've got an older version; you can find the full version number by going to the mission editor and selecting Misc -> Credits from the menu at the top. However, I would very very strongly recommend just downloading the full installation of the latest version (1.1.1.1) and just install that. There's no point using patches when you're doing a new install anyway, and it just introduces needless complexities. I'm not sure what you mean. If you're being prompted for a password when you click the download link, it's probably because you're trying to download from an FTP server which is full. When it refuses to allow access, many browsers interept it as a request for authentication. Just try a different mirror for that file; or use the torrent at the very bottom of the page.

Check you're specifying the game directory and working directory properly - the game won't launch if the working directory is set to the "bin" directory the exe itself is in. It needs to have the working directory set to the base directory of the game. It's also possible it could be a permissions thing, as AHK probably doesn't launch things with admin permissions, which you might need especially if the game's installed in the default program files directory. You could try running the AHK script itself as an administrator. You could try this variation if you'd prefer; add at the very start of the script: dcsdirectory = C:\Games\DCS A-10C(adjusted to suit your system) and then replace the line that launches the game with: Run, %dcsdirectory%\bin\dcs.exe --net-mode gui, %dcsdirectory%If you're still having problems you could remove the bit of code that shuts the game down completely - that way you'll know for sure that it's not the script. However if it's exiting immediately I don't think it could be the script, since the launch process takes well over a minute. Edit: this is pretty OT for the thread, so if you still have problems send me a privmsg on the forums.

To log in to the master server you'll need an account at www.digitalcombatsimulator.com. That will be the username and password you need to enter when prompted by the multiplayer UI.

Most likely it uses the same format as the client setting value, so I'd try setting the client to whatever you want (DSL 128) and then checking the network configuration settings file to see what it saved there.

This would be because Windows keeps the application open after it's crashed, in order to be able to collect debugging information from it. You can prevent this behaviour with a registry change, see here. I'm not 100% sure this will work for all cases, but it should at least allow the program to actually exit if it crashes. Short version: Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting in the registry. Create a new DWORD key called DontShowUI, and set the value to 1. You'll probably need to reboot before it will take effect. I use an AutoHotKey script to send mouse click events to the game window in order to launch the server. It's not especially robust (e.g. if it fails to login to the master server for some reason, it'll just keep blindly 'clicking' ineffectively). AutoHotKey and similar programs can also check to see if DCS.exe is running, rather than having to try connecting to the port. I've attached a simplified variant of my script which might give you a starting point. Should work for a 1024x768 resolution (in windowed mode). If you use a different resolution you can comment out subsequent parts and adjust the coordinates through trial-and-error, which is how I built it in the first place. The position it clicks on to load the mission is 3 file/folder names down from the top of the list. The game remembers the last used mission folder and defaults to that location when you click on the 'new server' button. launcher.zip

Do not know, check your computer for viruses and malware, I guess. Working fine for me. What happens if you type fighter-collection.com into the address bar rather than follow a link? Or even typing http://fighter-collection.com ?

Oh wow, I completely ignored the great big images in the center of the home page. Sorry! Regarding the purchasing page, you might want to try it in Firefox - it's less forgiving of unclosed tags than IE. If you click on the dropdown to the select the mission for BS2 or FC2 you wind up at digitalcombatsimulator.com. Thanks for answering my questions, the Basic Flight Training Qualifications campaign for the Warthog looks interesting!

The ' key (apostrophe) will open the score dialog in-game, and you can score both your score and the mission result. The score is just based on the number and type of kills you have (same as MP scoring), the mission result is the score assigned by the mission creator and therefore anything higher than 50 means you've 'won' the mission.

Are these missions going to be single-player or multi-player, or a mix? I think you guys need to have a look at your HTML on the mission purchase page - think you've probably not closed a link tag somewhere as the entire block from the BS2 cover is linked to the DCS site. Also if the missions you're listing in the dropdowns on that page are actually available, maybe you should put up a page with information about them?

x86 doesn't have a Program Files (x86) folder... and just because it may have been installed in Progra~1 x86 it doesn't necessarily mean it's the 32-bit binaries. Regardless, I would recommend you uninstall the game and install it in a directory other than Program Files (of any type), as this folder is "extra protected" by the system and often seems to cause issues for people. It's a little bit of a pain but it might save you more troubles later on.

Is your pilot's profile in the logbook set to be immortal or not? If it's not set as immortal (or maybe it's invulnerable? I can't remember the exact wording) then when dead the profile can't be used anymore.

Yep it's quite annoying. I have found that if you click on one of the units in the F10 map you'll see their path, and last time I encountered this issue the path would stop at the area they were having problems with. So, you might not need to actually wait for them to run the whole route in order to find out if their path is okay or not. Won't help with the load time, though. I found that tanks (I was using T-55s) were particularly sensitive to the steepness of slopes, and would stop the group from proceeding while other vehicles were perfectly happy.

Okay, I think I've worked it out... it only works properly if you have either rotate_miz_after or restart_miz_after enabled. If neither of those are set, then the function which determines how much longer is left in the mission returns nil, and there's another function invoked whenever the server is deciding whether to pause or resume which tries to do some calculations using that value. If it's nil then a script error is logged and the processing is interrupted. I worked around it by just setting the mission restart time to 600 minutes and now automatic pause/unpause works properly and so does the MOTD.

You will need a separate license for a "dedicated" server. i.e. when you host a server, you need to be logged in to a valid account with an activated license key. If you then run the game yourself (on a different computer) you will need a different license key in order to be able to log in to the master server. Due to the network compatibility, you can host missions for either aircraft (Ka-50 or A-10) using either sim. I have two DCS Warthog licenses on different accounts at digitalcombatsimulator.com (because I got a duplicate account when they merged the accounts with the LockOn site), so I use one of them for my server and the other on my PC for playing. If you've bought both Ka-50 and A-10, then you can run one on the server while you fly with the other. The main issue you'll have with finding a dedicated server host is that there is no "dedicated server" version of the game. If you want to host a server, you need to run the full multiplayer UI, which means the computer it's running on needs a somewhat decent graphics card. Most dedicated servers will just have a very basic on-board graphic chipset which likely won't even allow the game to start up properly. So, if you do go that route, make sure to discuss your needs with the company before committing to renting a server. Another option is to look into colocation, in which case you'd buy the server yourself and then plunk it into a datacenter somewhere nearby (or far away, if you're willing to pay for shipping and for someone to install and configure it for you). That way you can control the hardware, test it out at home, etc. I definitely wouldn't look into a proper dedicated server until you've established a definite need for it. Since most of the flying is done cooperatively latency isn't much of an issue - I've played pretty happily on servers with 300ms+ latency. So, I'd just host it from home if you've got the spare bandwidth. ED have announced they're working on a dedicated server but that was back in like March 2011 I think and I haven't heard anything more, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Still, it may show up one day and then it'll be much easier to arrange hosting of the game in a remote datacenter.

I'm having the same issue as Dragon, automatic unpause doesn't work. Everything else seems okay -- although I think it's not showing the MOTD text. Certainly it's not doing it 2 minutes after someone joins, like I have it configured to.

The DSMS issue is caused by using the 'prepare mission' option. This allows you to change aircraft settings (waypoints, weapon profiles, etc.) and they'll be saved when you exit from 'prepare mission' and reloaded whenever you load the mission. However if you later change your weapons payload with the mission editor, you'll still have the old weapons inventory + profiles you saved earlier with 'prepare mission', and you'll get problems because they no longer match your actual payload. It's better not to use 'prepare mission', or at the very least not use it until you're 100% happy you're not going to be changing anything else with the mission. You can remove this data from the .miz file by opening it up with a zip archiver (or just rename it to .zip and use Windows Explorer's built-in zip handling) and deleting the relevant folders from it. Only the 'mission' and 'options' files are needed for the mission itself.