Exorcet

The unlimited fuel trigger just might be a mandatory one for any moderate or more length mission. Not just for wingmen, but AI in general. I've noticed strike fighters refusing to drop bombs because of fuel when their range would extend significantly by dropping the bombs and becoming lighter. The AI as now simply cannot fly efficiently. That said if you're looking to conserve fuel without setting it to unlimited always do the following: -Formation set to group close, the tighter the formation the less fuel AI will use during turns. -Fly high, optimum altitude varies with plane, but higher is generally more efficient. Over 30,000 feet for jet fighters. -Plan your route. Not only waypoint, also plan for orbits. Your AI wingmen will respect orbits you create in the mission planner and I've noticed that they can't use mil power for planner orbit that require AB when order to hold position through the radio. It doesn't make sense, but it happens. -Keep your wingmen out of combat. The AI seems to do OK in cruise. In combat they use ludicrous amounts of fuel. -If performing AAR, refuel yourself first. If you refuel first then the AI have more fuel to spend flying instead of flying formation with you at the tanker.

I've seen some of the mods mentioned and I think they're great, but people will fill different niches. I'm in the vanilla mission niche by choice. I'd expect most new players won't be looking for mods anyway even if the base game has limitations since they may not immediately run into them. If you've chosen to work with mods you've gone down a different path them me and you can produce content for people that don't like what I offer. In the end, we have a greater variety of content that covers more end users. At least that's how I see it.

That's interesting. The primary issue I've faced is taxi time as the AI only ever taxis at 16 knots. It doesn't matter if 100 bombers are coming to wipe their airbase off the map, they take their time. I sat down and played with wind settings until I found one that was a good compromise and have used it since. I guess I was lucky that I didn't put the wind high enough for this to happen. The parking situation can be frustrating for sure. Iran has a decent amount of airbases, but the usable number can shrink fast when you consider parking and AI taxi routes. I've also felt the limitations with transports as they're an important aircraft type if you want to have lively campaign. I've resorted to air starts and despawns in some cases as a workaround, also starting/despawning aircraft from the missing airports on the map, but I prefer to have ground based start up and taxi if possible. And ending a flight with a landing waypoint is just plain faster than setting up despawn triggers or adding a lua script to the destroy the unit at the end, even if only slightly faster.

Just from my own experience on the other end, meaning as an end user, I tend to avoid modifying my games unless I feel a real need to. I appreciate when things are kept simple and I may avoid content that require mods even if the extra steps are simple. I'll also add that I intend for some missions to be modified by the end user if desired, which is probably simplified by leaving mods off the table.

There have been lots of campaign features present in other sims over the years that could be nice to add to DCS. Jane's USNF had maintenance too. You had a limited number of hours after each mission to spend on repairs, and if you didn't repair wear and tear carried over to the next mission. You also had limited airframes. The F-22 Lightning series had limited weapons and you had to choose your ordinance carefully per mission. Then of course Falcon simulated the entire logistics chain. DCS does have a pretty cool warehouse system, but it doesn't really tie into gameplay very much or at least I haven't found ways to make it very meaningful outside of removing specific weapons from a mission. I guess it's more of an online feature.

I never use mods as I aim to make vanilla DCS missions for maximum compatibility and ease of use. I also like to have as much control over the content that I create as possible, so even when it comes to stuff like Lua scripts I'll prefer to write my own rather than use someone else's, just so I understand as much as possible what is going on under the hood. This basically.

I just tried to follow the F-16 manual climb for a similar load to yours, had to guess at the DI since I don't have it for JDAM and the smart rack. But it took 20 minutes to reach 30000 ft while the manual says it should be around 8.

Made a quick example mission with triggers. Worked best using the STOP CONDITION > Is User Flag False to get the attack to stop. AI_Commands.miz

Might be related: Although optimum climb isn't Mach 0.82 from what I remember. It should be 0.9.

I've done something similar creating radio management triggers for wingmen. Instead of controlling attack tasks I had flags setup to make wingmen change radio channels. You can change a flag setting as many times as you want throughout a mission. You just need to make sure the corresponding trigger is setup to read or use the flag more than once. So ONCE triggers out out. Switched condition or Continuous action should both work as they check conditions more than one time. Having the mission uploaded here would allow us to see exactly what you're trying to do and provide more specific advice.

This would be a nice option to have and ties in with another request which is vehicle maintenance levels. Aircraft could be set to be in worse or better condition for a number of reasons from simulating a worn down military, or fluctuating logistic support during a long campaign. This absolutely needs a disable option, as was already suggested, though as the variability could make bug reporting, testing, and practicing a lot harder.

Coming out of another topic on DCS COIN missions I decided to play with the editor a bit to get a better idea of how to set up the missions as I mostly focus on air to air. I randomly decided to test embarking and found some issues. First, disembarking troops have a tendency to run forever after leaving the vehicle. It looks like they might be running for the bullseye but I didn't investigate deeply. This can be fixed by giving them a waypoint after the embark waypoint but I feel like this shouldn't be necessary. Secondly disembarking does not work if the disembark task is not the last waypoint of the transport, unless a hold task is also given. Without the hold the transport sits at the waypoint forever and doesn't deploy troops. Tracks attached. test_embark_forever_run shows the running problem test_embark_no_embark shows the transport refusing to deploy troops test_embark_success shows a successful embark and deploy using workarounds (add 1 second hold for transport, add waypoint for embarking troops) test_embark_forever_run.trk test_embark_no_embark.trk test_embark_success.trk

You'll probably want to practice working with triggers and flags if you haven't already. The ground AI isn't very dynamic on its own. You can make them move around and engage in various tasks to a degree with commands like Hold, or go to waypoint, or passing them tasks to shoot at points or engage certain targets. While this can work to an extent, it's also a bit tedious to do. My suggestion for mission building is to set up one semi complex mission with features like this and then when ever you want to make a new mission, start from the prebuilt mission with many triggers etc. That way you can save some work. You may spend a lot of time on the original mission, but hopefully not so much on subsequent ones. Pick your map wisely since we don't have an easy way to copy between maps. Something useful for more than COIN is learning how to set groups to spawn randomly as it makes missions more fun to replay because they become dynamic. Do this by setting multiple groups on the map with "Late Activation" checked. Then on the trigger page you can set triggers to assign a random value to a flag and then make each value of the that flag spawn a different group in the mission. Also a tip on the suppression idea that you mentioned. Don't use deactivate, unless you want the group to vanish forever. You can instead turn the AI off. This leaves the units in the mission and allows them to be turned back on.

This is long, long overdue. It's needed everywhere for every aircraft. ED doesn't want to populate every map with every airport on it. OK, fine, but at least let users fill in the gaps. I appreciate the work done on maps, but Hormuz for example would benefit greatly from Chabahar, Bushehr, Al Udeid, Doha, and Prince Sultan. Not only would the variety of starting locations be nice, it also allows for wider areas of aircraft coverage without resorting to in air starts and allows the maps to support more aircraft. DCS airbases sometimes have limitations that make handling large volumes of aircraft difficult, so a large number of bases may be needed even if the bases on the map have a lot of parking. If we do get placeable airfields they should probably come in a few different sizes. All of them should have taxiways connecting to both ends of runways, otherwise a number of AI taxi issues might spring. Parking should also be available near both ends of the runways, again to facilitate known issues with DCS taxi behavior.

Bandar Abbas is a weird place. Not only with the large aircraft parking issue, but there are only 3 spaces on the south end of the airport. If the wind blows the wrong way the AI will spend forever taxiing for takeoff. Because of this I've been forced to use the same weather for nearly every mission. DCS airport operations need an overhaul.

I'm not sure about this. The vehicles may have safety systems to prevent catastrophic failure, like blast doors for tank ammo storage. And generally a random bullet won't cause a fuel tank to explode anyway. Bombs are a different story.

By making practice more accessible since you no longer have to choose between a dedicated practice session or flying a mission with refueling. Says who? So now practice isn't important because it's not the part you deem randomly important? If you're going to refuel for the sake of flying a mission instead of just randomly hooking up to a tanker, all of the things I mention matter and should be covered in training. If you want to make AAR into some kind of contextless minigame, you can ignore them, but not everyone wants that. You're wrong, but then you've been wrong every time you're tried to bring this up. Not at all. So let them have it.

Unless you consider finding the tanker with something like TACAN, and remembering to set your radios properly to communicate, or managing fuel to know when to go to the tanker. There is plenty of training value. No it's not.

There isn't anything unfair about a refueling assist since refueling isn't a competition. Though if the person running the server wanted only people who could AAR, then the option to disable it would be needed. You'd have to get 1000 yards from the tanker, requiring more skill than using unlimited fuel, so it would still help even if you make up an arbitrary number. And as for disabling it online, there is no real need since it doesn't provide an advantage, but the option should exist to suit the needs of whoever runs the server.

Depends. I think it would be nice to have a way to force disable it.

It helps by making AAR more approachable. More missions can be built around AAR, allowing more practice, allowing for faster learning. It has been explained many times how it is helpful.

OK I guess we're getting somewhere if you can see that development can be planned in an ordered fashion now. You're not in a position to say that unfortunately. It's a reasonable concern to be sure, but not something that can you can say with certainty without information on how DCS is developed. Where is the counter for these disagreements? In any case since I'm not the one arguing for majority rules, I don't care how many people agree or don't. What I care about is finding solutions to various user desires. Something more helpful and less short sighted than "I don't personally want this, so it can be never be added." You know even less what works for them, so your advice isn't worth much. Feel free to share it, but try to realize when it's not helping. Learning AAR gives you no authority because it still doesn't make you the person requesting the feature.

OK, but where does the idea that AAR assists can't coexist with all these other things come from? If you want a really, really simple example of both coexisting with no negative impact to your list, here it is: Add DC, AI, damage, SAM's first, then add AAR assists later. This is why the against argument seems so ridiculous. Wanting something more than something else is absolutely reasonable. Acting like adding a specific feature will shut off other features of the game makes no sense at all. Being completely against something without even considering a workable solution for all sides comes across as being against something for the sake of being against it and nothing else. Based on what though? ED is not a 1 person developer. Work on one project does not mean resources are taken from another. If people were genuinely interested in friendly discussion I'd expect that people would at least make room for an idea instead of trying to shoot it down at every opportunity. Also what if a large portion of people disagree with you? Does that mean your desired features should be barred from the game? People that like to speak for other people are the kind of people that probably shouldn't speak for other people. I think it's fine to give your opinion, but if someone else says that their ways work better for them, well people generally know themselves better than strangers.

That's actually a complicated question. If a new feature takes nothing away from the sim it's fair game. Adding Mario Kart banana peels to DCS isn't something I'd care to have, but if I didn't have to use them then they are as good as non existent. No reason to care about of them if you don't like them. Unfortunately though, ED have limited resources so sometimes choices need to be made on what development work to prioritize. I'd like to see this done with back and forth communication between ED and players We as player have wants while ED knows its own budget and time constraints. To effectively make a realistic list we could ask ED what resources it would take to add a feature while they could let us know what resources are available. Shouting "no, never add this" to an idea right away is of no help. Well look at that, the feature that is ridiculous to expect in a simulator, was in a simulator. This is from the Jane's USNF manual. Not a DCS level sim for sure, but something that took a good few steps to represent realistic air combat for its time. Aids fit in perfectly with simulators because simulators allow us to control things that are beyond our control in real life. So all the things you mentioned are totally fine for DCS. Now if people were asking for these things we'd need to decide how to prioritize them for inclusion as I outlined above. Some things may end up low on the list. That's the nature of finite resources. An outright no however doesn't make sense very often. Maybe. No reason to be upset about it though. No there was a perfectly reasonable request for an assist that with met with off topic replies. It doesn't seem arbitrary when it's a popular request with a lot of community support. And the reason for wanting a refund was more to do with people denying training aids to new players than anything else.

That option exists to level the playing field, but the newsletter mentioned degraded error correction for RED side. I'm not sure if that means always or only when unrestricted SATNAV is unchecked.