Exorcet

Checking in again

As a reminder we do have the cargo command to add weight to AI aircraft and limit their performance:

Just to point out it is not limited to VR:

I'm not sure I'd count on that without at least the issue being acknowledged. I've had Wingman 4 missing for literal years. It is not aircraft or mission specific. As I mentioned 5 years ago, I haven't checked every possible combination, but in general the bug is that there is no way to issue commands to Wingman 4. Finally found a wing 4 command in the L-39 Then there is the secondary issue of "Second Element" only being available on a few planes, like the A-10C

Not sure if you're aware but there is a plane jump feature that allows you to take over allied player controllable planes at any point in a mission. There is/was an issue with it recently that prevents makes swapping back into your original plane problematic, but if you're trying to recover from a crash or being shot down that's a non issue. In your case you could jump into a wingman's plane and keep flying. Now of course one limitation to keep in mind is how the mission is designed. I typically design my missions with this in mind. Other missions may be designed around the original player aircraft (ie triggers for the player unit specifically) and those missions may not progress properly after a jump where the player aircraft is destroyed.

This came up in another topic so I might as well check in again. @NineLine@Flappie@BIGNEWY Any update on this?

It is, or was, a great feature for many things. However ED seems to have forgotten it. I mainly used it to control wingmen when they AI couldn't figure out how to do a task properly. The key to this was that the feature used to make your plane follow assigned waypoints when you jumped out of it. At somepoint either intentionally or due to a bug this changed to fly straight back to the point where you took off. Now if you try to manually control your wingmen to make up for AI limitations, your plane will light burners and fly back to base wasting your fuel and putting your plane who knows where. I filed a report here: But it has been quiet. I've never used it to refuel but, assuming your plane doesn't RTB, I think it could be used for that if there was a refueling waypoint in your route.

More DC news is good and I also agree with the comments on UI and it goes back longer than 12 months. DCS has seen some great additions, but how they were done has been very hit or miss. Add default unit speed for air unit waypoints > now you lose information if you ever change a plane in the ME, terrible for missions that serve as templates to be edited. AAA random fire > is a per group trigger that takes a lot of work to actually setup as multiple AAA firing over a wide area Air unit afterburner force on/off, with no way to easily toggle this dynamically via radio Moving Zone trigger for many years limited to detecting on units and not groups or by coalition Etc I think some discussion should be had on how to implement new features in a way that makes them easier to use.

Using the comms menu for this doesn't sound great. We have a plane jump command that lets you easily swap out your plane with an AI one. Not exactly the same, but it's a lot smoother than jumping through comms menus. And speaking of jump it's been neglected for a while. It's useful for many things and should get a bit of maintenance. It's not only great for having the AI do portions of flight for you, but it allows for the use of wingmen through human control to get around their AI limitations.

Some of my proposal goes a little beyond the scope of what was requested here definitely. Though if we can have some additional functionality for, ideally, little work, I think that's a gain. My dummy target idea fits there. It's more than you need to get AAA to shoot into the sky, but it also provides some additional benefits for other situations. All good ideas.

It's a really obvious problem with large distances because the buffer becomes huge, so it makes sense why you're running into the issue. I'm fairly sure ED confirmed the buffer but I don't know where that confirmation is as it was a while ago if I'm remembering correctly. It should be pretty easy to test and confirm at least.

This can be done in a few ways currently. I think I did it by making multiple fire at point tasks and then swapping between them. Of course, this is far less convenient than just baking the behavior into the AI so this suggestion is still very valid. The ability to fire AAA at will was a great addition and a case of ED listening to player requests, but the implementation was lacking. It's unfortunately a bit of a common theme and why I tend to be long winded in my requests. We need to not only discuss what DCS needs, but how these new features should work. The current fire at point can stay for compatibility reasons and the small niche cases where it's all you need. In addition is might be nice to have a new version of it that picks a random fire point within a radius, or an option to add this to the current trigger. However this still limits its use on a per group basis, meaning it requires the mission editor to potentially spend large amounts of time adding repetitive triggers. To solve this problem the trigger could perhaps be applied by zone, allowing it to influence many units at once, or we could have dummy units that would trigger AAA or other designated units to engage. These dummy units would be invisible and invulnerable and could be scripted to follow a path in the mission or move randomly within a zone. They would allow for more complex scenarios than just a random trigger and could be expanded for other purposes, like creating a radar return that even players could see.

I was not aware but good to know that the ability to fix the briefing exists and I will be looking into this. Still unfortunate that ED hasn't addressed this after so much time though. It was a change they made intentionally and people have complained about it for years.

The kneeboard is overly difficult to use and needs an overhaul for sure. Taking radio info and populating it as it does waypoints on the map would be great. A page for the briefing should also appear. ED still kept the pause they added to the brief page that breaks immersion after so long.

We absolutely need placeable airbases. They don't have to integrate well with the terrain, half the static objects don't already anyway. I disagree with no needing spawn points though. AI access is important, especially when ATC is so basic and it's easy to clog airports.

From my understanding there is a 50% buffer. That is If the range of STE is 10 miles, the AI will chase enemies up to 15 miles. This is done probably to avoid the AI committing and disengaging constantly if a target is flying right on the border. It's good to have, what isn't good is that the 50% is hard coded. I think that's the solution here, allowing us to change that 50% buffer to anything we want. Probably the ability to set it in miles too, not just %.

Absolutely. There is a ton of potential variety from variants alone and they would allow more accurate historical simulations.

This would be a great addition, but some level of automation is required here to avoid tedium and make the most of the ability. Having to set waypoints for every missile individually is going to be a lot of work. A couple of solutions to this problem would be: -Have an option automatically generated waypoints, they could be generated by attempts to maximize distance from air defenses or to avoid certain terrain (flat, mountains, water, road, city, etc) -Instead of adding waypoints per missile, have universal waypoints that can be referenced by all units. This way you can put down one waypoint and direct all bombers to use it for their missiles instead of putting down one waypoint for every bomber/missile. This would basically be this suggestion:

This has been needed for a long time, hopefully it will be part of the communications overall ED announced. There is a lot missing. Fuel/weapon/aircraft status as requested here The ability to contact second element consistently among all modules The ability to tell wingmen to change frequency without the use of triggers Better ways to direct wingmen to targets And of course some rearrangement of the menu to make issuing commands and communicating smoother

Your line of reasoning makes no sense. The FC F-15 is a limited product by design. People have been asking for a FF F-15 to get around that limited scope, and you're wrong in the first place assuming that no one asked additions to the FC F-15 anyway. The answer to the FF F-15 was also no until rather recently, just as a reminder. The threads are marked "Not Planned" not "Never". There is no harm is casual discussion anyway. Why discuss? Because people want to engage in discussion. We're on a forum.

I think most of the drive is simply from the fact that FAST packs are part of the C's equipment. Not getting them is like not getting AIM-120's. I'd like to see them eventually, if not part of the original module then perhaps as additional development later in the life cycle.

It would be a revision. Yes, the mission editor used to allow far more zoom out and was vastly better because of it. Then this was changed and I've been asking for it to be undone ever since, over many years. As stated accessing the edges of maps is needlessly painful with the new restrictive zoom option. Going back the original wide zoom out would be a vastly better.

So, getting a HOTAS for DCS is pretty common sense, but even in that case you don't necessarily eliminate the keyboard nor the issues mentioned in this thread. We have a fair number of aircraft at this point and they don't all function this same. My current setup is pretty nice for the teen series, but the Viggen with its extra control stick, has proven a bit problematic. So some adjustability on how the keyboard functions is nice. I am planning to upgrade my HOTAS at some point and hopefully I'll end up with more non key inputs for planes like the Viggen, but it's always nice to have a fallback for whatever reason. In the past I've also done limited DCS on a laptop for testing or whatever. Having nicer keyboard controls for that situation would also come in handy.

I kind of understand the sentiment, but realism is the entertainment. When developers take the realism out and we get something like Ace Combat, the fun leaves with it. DCS is a simulator though and that naturally comes with the ability to turn things on and off unlike reality so the end product can be altered to fit different wants. Personally I want to see everything as an option at least. A simulator doesn't have to enforce realism all the time, and users may seek different scopes of realism like airframe simulation vs life of a pilot simulation, but it should offer maximum realism for those seeking it. I'm here to get as close as possible to flying X, Y and, Z. Annoying drawbacks included. You don't need to have first hand experience. A good deal of the design process for these aircraft avoid reality. Computer models aren't perfect, but they're quite good at this point. We know how most of the physics works and beyond that there is information out there about the end product that skips the how and why and simply tells you what it does. You can reference these things and you'll know if you're on the right track or not.

I agree that these things are important though I wonder if they wouldn't be better as static objects/ground units rather than permanent map features. DCS is a sandbox so the maps can be used for a variety of purposes and so having the option to remove these objects can be a good thing. It would also mean that we could reuse the assets on other maps.