Exorcet

Use night vision. Lights in the night are just big beacons that let the enemy know where to shoot.

I remember being able to use aircraft jump to control wingmen and then return to my own aircraft in the past. This no longer works because now your original plane flies off to the nearest airbase when jumped out of. This is very problematic as it restricts jumping to a situation where your aircraft is destroyed unless you can jump back before the AI manages to get shot down or land. Example in the attached track, player aircraft is set to fly straight and then orbit in N-S orientation, but when I jump it goes RTB. AI_jump_route.trk

That narrows mission selection. If you can't reliably refuel, you're not doing a long distance mission. On the other hand, an assist would mean that any mission is open to being flown. It has not even really been defined yet, so how could that be? Also, since unlimited fuel seems to be accepted, AAR assist seems like it would be an ever more acceptable assist since it doesn't just wave away a problem and take all effort out from the player. Unlimited fuel simply removes fuel from the sim, unrealistic and does nothing for skill. AAR assist allows for fuel management practice, requires the pilot to fly the plane, and also allows the pilot to get a feel for how refueling fits into a mission if it's used to refuel mid mission. That's something that random tanker practice doesn't get you. MSF Simulator isn't an arcade game. War Thunder has an arcade mode and a sim mode. Whatever you want to classify them, a refueling assist in DCS does not remove realistic refueling from the sim, not does it alter flight physics, weapons, AI, etc. DCS is still going to be DCS even with assists, which are already part of DCS by design. Let's say the same for dynamic campaigns. Stop spending time asking for more features and just build them yourself. Besides, practice refueling doesn't provide all the benefits of an assist. So then a refuel assist should be fine as the same logic is followed, except it doesn't remove important physics like the change in aircraft performance with fuel weight, or the need for the player to manage fuel. This topic comes up often enough that it's probably impacting a large number of players. If you want to go by % of player base then this should probably be somewhere on the higher end of priority. Not only does it impact refueling, but mission design. When it comes to development resources, this is why I'm a proponent of using what already exists. The AI knows how to refuel, so one possible form of refueling assist is AI control. Minimal work needed to add to DCS. Another option is expanding the range of the fueling probe. Yet another is to transfer fuel by proximity. The code already exists in part since it's needed for airbase refuel/rearm and supply truck rearm. This won't be a heavy project in all likelyhood. And then ED is going to improve refueling code anyway so it's good time to add an assist which should bring down the resource cost by lumping it with another project. Absolutely. The best part, the AI remembering the flight plan is how to it used to work. I'm not aware of patch notes mentioning the removal of this, so I'd assume it's a bug that they forget. If that's true, then the code for auto AAR is already in DCS. If the change was intentional, it needs to be reverted as taking control of wingmen without sending your original plane off into the void is a very good way to get around AI limitations.

The benefits have been listed before. If the barrier to AAR are lowered it allows players to approach AAR more often and to practice more often. Instead of being required to choose between a refueling practice session or flying a mission an assist allows players to do both at once, effectively making it possible to practice refueling in any session. Exactly, so there is no reason why assists don't fit here, which is pretty obvious given the very many other assists that already exist. Meaning what exactly?

One of the other explosion triggers uses mass TNT as the explosion volume. This might be similar. Did you try checking the DCS manual for an explanation? Switched Condition trigger with a flag counter. Have the flag count up to a certain value and reset, or have the flag continually assign random values. When the Switched Condition trigger is met the artillery should trigger. Example: Trigger 1 > Continuous Action > No Condition > Flag Increase by 1 [Increase does not have to be 1, can be any value that makes sense for your mission] Trigger 2 > Switched Condition > Flag value is maximum > Flag set random value (0, 0) [This is using flag random to set flag to 0 by setting the min and max random values to 0] Trigger 3 > Switched Condition > Flag value is maximum > Shelling Zone It is a bit cumbersome, but for this like setting artillery timing or flashing SAM sites this is what needs to be done.

Refuel is exactly the same. Easy refuel means you can regularly play missions that involve refuel and become accustomed to the process, and not just the immediate refueling, but fuel management and finding the tanker. Not only could an easy refuel option be a helpful earning tool, it could easily be better than unlimited fuel. People are only OK with the existing option because they're in the sim already, not because of their utility. Not to mention that it doesn't really matter if it helps people train or not. DCS doesn't exist to make pilots. Not when it can be a training tool or a tool to help mission makers simply their missions.

Sorry for misunderstanding then. Although the concept of a final release is complicated by DCS itself being an evolving product. The Hawk would just continue to become more and more broken as DCS was updated which is why it needed to be pulled. On paper this shouldn't be the case anymore as ED would take over. Hopefully the issue is resolved and we never find out.

There are a whole host of things that can happen to "unfinalize" your product. This could range from the company you bought it from running out of a money to an asteroid destroying the Earth tomorrow. There is always risk. It's unfortunate but true. At least in this case the risk was labeled on the package that you would be spending money on something that was not in a finished form. I'm not saying that you have to be happy about things going wrong, or that we shouldn't try to come up with a better system. But thinking that you should get the final product no matter what and never have to think of things that might get in the way of that is extremely unrealistic.

It's gone because it was the module that caused the change to take effect. Anyway, on the whole Razbam subject there is a lot of information going around, but not enough verification for my liking. This thread is a good example. We don't know what's happening with the Strike Eagle, and I'd be suspect about claims with supporting evidence.

Ever since the Hawk ED has required control over the module code to continue development in case of issues.

Flags have names so they can be distinguished from one another. Flag 99 is the flag that is called 99, flag 60 is the flag that is called 60. They can have alphabetical names too. The names are arbitrary and user created.

The F-4 will dominate the MiG. Some of the factors that made the MiG threatening in reality like RoE and missile reliability may not be present in DCS. The MiG-23/Mirage F1 will be the fighter to use to go against the F-4. Fishbeds should avoid Phantoms and try to go after Tiger II's.

I've only scratched the surface of scripting, true, though I do know that some of the things I've requested are possible with lua (and even the built in trigger system). I actually do have a fuel monitor script, a few simple event handlers, a couple of short flag scripts, destroy script, and even a simple AWACS script. Part of my wish here is to have everything in an integrated GUI. If there are existing scripts for these tasks I'm open to looking at them though. I've seen DML though I haven't looked into it as a mission monitoring tool. Another idea to consider, thanks.

Mission making can be a big task and some complex missions can involve a lot of testing. It would be nice to have tools to make that testing easier. Here are some common issues I've faced: -The need to time accelerate during long missions -The inability to see flag settings, unit fuel states, radio frequencies, or other mission parameters unless set in the mission beforehand -The inability to hide/unhide units on the map -The inability to show labels for testing purposes -The inability to manually activate triggers -The inability to set immortality/unlimited fuel mid missions -The inability to destroy units at will There can be more than one solution for these problems. A few solutions that I've come up with: -Allow player to fly AI planes - Simpler flight model means faster time acceleration, also being able to take control of AI units might help understand limitations they face like fuel management and sensors -In mission GUI that displays flag and trigger information and allows the user to edit them -In mission GUI that displays unit health, fuel, weapons, visibility settings, and radio settings -Some way to launch a mission in a test mode that overrides mission settings like labels There may be better ideas and if so I'd welcome them.

It's not the only one either. This one might be even worse and hasn't received any attention:

If you use the option "HIDDEN ON PLANNER" for units in the ME, they do not show up on the planner when launching a mission. However, if you click the detection/threat rings buttons in the top right the rings will show around those units, revealing that they exist.

The track system doesn't prevent rewinds, you just need to run time backwards in your physics equations and they will work in reverse. There may be some issues with smaller details like handing the addition or deletion of objects from the sim, like weapon detonation, which would need to be figured out.

Water for this map would be extremely valuable, even if the terrain between is extremely low quality. The ability to fly from carriers and to perform long flights is only a plus.

For what its worth, DCS does have enough tools to make ground combat not completely sterile, but the stumbling block there is that it relies on the mission creator to do everything and it can be a lot of work. Also while a lot of what you said is true, not everything goes as it should in the real world. Yes, ground units probably shouldn't be standing out in the open somewhere, but mistakes or just plain bad judgement can be made. Making AI human intelligent is a tall task, though hopefully that will change in the near future with recent AI developments, so we do have to work with expectations less than perfect. Just in case, I will also stress that I don't think DCS is free of problems at all. Some are pretty glaring too. The problems should be pointed out to ED to address, but we also have to compromise a little with the reality that DCS is complex.

Yes. My position is that weather variation should come to DCS and is an important element in real life flight/mission planning, but we need some control over how much it can vary otherwise we risk breaking missions. The same can be said for things outside of weather too. At some point ED made random AA missile launch range a default setting for fighters. While I can see the usefulness of the setting, it's rendered almost pointless because the randomness ranges all the way from max range to weapon NEZ, so it results in BVR fighters potentially holding missiles until they're so close that they have no chance of avoiding missiles fired at them. That option needs a slider to limit the range of possible random values.

I see it as a map like any other. By offering unique terrain it has value. My biggest concerns at the moment are size, airbase layout, and the availability of water for carriers. If historical Afghanistan in DCS doesn't seem appealing, then create a fictional scenario.

AI aircraft need waypoints and actions in those waypoints to function. If an AI has no waypoints or reaches the end of its waypoints, it will try to land at the closest non hostile airbase. You can find the actions by clicking ADVANCED (WAYPOINT ACTIONS) and adding them to the list. Some are added by default based on the TASK assigned to the AI. The default CAS action is a way to get the AI to act, but I don't recommend it. Most of the default actions give you limited control over the how the AI acts and can make them do weird things. Instead you can use tasks like Search Then Engage to give the AI a mission and better control how they operate by limited range of engagement, weapons used, targets assigned, etc. Keep in mind that the AI has to find a target before engaging. Detection abilities vary with different units. If the AI needs to search an area it helps to give it an Orbit waypoint action to make it fly around a specific waypoint or pair of waypoints. This can be a lot to take in if you're new to the ME, but if you provide more details someone can set up an example for you easily. Or you can share a mission file and have someone add units to it.

You may not necessarily want to preserve the mission (and even if you do, opening it causes no damage, only saving does), but instead want to get information out of it. In that case being preventing from opening the mission is a massive hindrance. Keeping the mission open also makes sharing a lot easier since the person you're sharing it with doesn't need to know what mods are required. You obviously can't share for the purpose of running the mission, but you might for troubleshooting. I don't disagree that it can protect the mission from damage, but it's still a bad way to do it since it also keeps you from accessing the mission at all. Yes it would be frustrating to accidentally save over a mission, but preventing that doesn't require locking the mission. There should be protection of some kind, but I'd rather it not be totally preventing the mission from being open as that just causes additional problems/work. If the functionality is reverted, there should be a checkbox to disable the file locking at the very least. I like having the name changed to prevent accidental saving if the mission cannot be fully loaded, there just needs to be a way to make that clearly visible to the user. Maybe forcing the save button to show a dialogue that explains the issue with the mission.

Having the ability to open any mission without needing to install additional files is very helpful. Locking the mission file completely isn't a great solution to preventing accidental changes, instead there could be a popup box warning about the missing mods as well as affixing a suffix to the mission file name so that if it's saved it can't overwrite the original file unless the user intentionally uses "Save As" (though if people don't notice the file name change, it could cause some confusion). A checkbox option like @Elphaba mention could also work.

This has nothing to do with the MiG-29. It's the conditions that change how the vortices look.