Speed_2

Well, too bad that the KA-50 can't carry LGBs.... Not sure what you are trying to say anyways.

drbaker, I'm surprised you don't have an external keyboard. Most people I know, when using a laptop from a fixed location, use an external USB, or even wireless, full-size keyboard. When I was serious about gaming on my old Dell laptop, not only did I have an external keyboard, I had an external mouse (duh), external speakers, and an external monitor, and a joystick. When I wanted to use my laptop for gaming, I'd just hook it up. Laptops work fine for gaming, you just can't try to use the built-in hardware (specifically the mouse and to a less extent, the keyboard) for something they weren't designed to do.

I would have a hard time believing that the Shkval could completely negate the need for bincoulars. One, I don't know what the WFOV field size is, but it seems way too narrow for me alot of times. I would think that something like a pair of 6x32 binoculars would be a good and lightweight supplement to Shvkal in a KA-50 cockpit. Secondly, the skhval has some pretty narrow gimbal limits. Sometimes you need to look out the side! You can also "slew" your binoculars to a target faster than you can slew the skvhal, even with the HMS, and you can keep the Shvkal pointed at a target while you look at a separate target with binoculars. If binoculars are ever implemented, PLEASE DO NOT make their field of view look like two circles joined together, like you see on movies and cartoons, and sadly, even some "simulations" that feature binoculars (thinking Silent Hunter). BINOCULAR FIELDS OF VIEW ARE CIRCULAR FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!

Aircraft down near the ground at 86 miles? That is quite impressive, but not very surprising for a big MWIR staring FPA with decent optics. As far as craters on the moon, those can be seen with binoculars, so not that impressive. Still, this thing sounds like a MASSIVE improvement!!! Nice find of that article!

Just got done testing the mission. It worked great, perfectly stable for the four people flying it. I do believe that hiding the units fixed it! Thanks a million, Panzertard!!!!!

Well, I carefully look back and forth with trackIR on full zoom (the / and * keys on the numpad). That's how I scan for targets. The Shkval really has too narrow of a FOV, you need to use the Mk 1 eyeball.

Ok, I've made the changes and turned the units invisible. I'll be trying it out when I get a chance to see if stability is improved. In the meantime, if anyone else has some insights, they would be greatly appreciated as well!

Thanks Panzertard! No, I never bothered to disable units being visible on the Abris- that's something I do as a step near the end, and this mission was a WIP. However, the CTDs didn't seem to be directly tied to switching the Abris to map mode. Thanks alot for that tip!!! I found out about the CTDs with cone formation myself, but line abreast SEEMS OK, and that's what I've been using. Note that these crashes only occur with clients connected. I'll post both missions. "The Battle of Zugdidi_19" is the one where the host consistantly crashes in multiplayer. The "NEW Battle of Zugdidi_28" is the one I rebuilt from scratch, that is stable for the host but very unstable for some clients. The Battle of Zugdidi_19.miz NEW Battle of Zugdidi_28.miz

Hello guys, I had this multiplayer mission in mind, first, you fend off an attack of around 50 attacking units, approaching Zugdidi from the south in line abrest. Next, you support a friendly armored advance about 15 km to the south. Unfortunately, after building the mission once, then having to rebuild it from scratch AGAIN due to CTD issues, it looks like Black Shark isn't able to handle a battle with 50 units in it. The first go around, the mission, when hosted in multiplayer with clients connected, would consistantly CTD the host at around 4 or 5 minutes. The rebuild, while stable at the host end, would often have clients CTDing. Some clients had no problems and no bugs, but others would lock up and/or CTD after just a few minutes. The computers of the people locking up and CTDing were a mix of new and old hardware, and one of them was a brand new machine. It's not the clients' fault. I was hoping to have a more dynamic and changing battlefield by having enemies and friendlies advancing, defending, and doing battle. Unfortunately, it looks like DCS is unable to handle this. I may now understand why the missions online are so static, without dozens of units advancing or retreating. Does anyone have any tips or ideas as to how to make a stable mission where units actually advance and retreat, I mean, fairly "large" numbers of units like 50?

Well, what I think would be nice would be the ability to control ground units more in a RTS style. All we want is an enemy that controls battles and thinks realistically. A human doesn't need to be behind the eyes of every ground unit, you just need one or a couple guys that are controlling them for fairly realisitic play. Basically, you just keep DCS a flight sim, but add RTS-like control of ground units. Think about all the cool things you could do with that!

Actually, it's quite effective against ships.

Wait- what's this about built-in voice communication based on your radio frequency? I didn't think that was in the game?

Here's a thing that may help: Never attempt to engage autohover before you can see your airspeed displayed on your HUD. If you can't see your airspeed on your HUD, some kind of nav system is still warming up, and engaging your autohover will cause you to lose your AP channels. Why, I have no idea. Secondly, because after the AP channels disengage you fly kind of crazily, you have to disengage the now-flashing AP channels before you can re-engage them again, and you have to do it while looking down and not at where the chopper is going, it's a good idea to bind your AP channels to your HOTAS somehow. I have them on my toggle switches on mode 3 of my X52.

I don't buy that arguement. No one went bankrupt because of the dynamic campaign. The F4 Hasbro team was broken up probably because the game didn't sell well enough- I don't remember. G2 interactive quit working on Falcon 4, dumped some members, and reformed as XSI to make a brand new game. And Lead Pursuit successfully resold Falcon 4 after packaging together many of the best community changes and making great changes of their own in 2005. They claim to be hard at work on a new flight sim now, and the vague descriptions of this project that they have provided sound alot like Falcon 5. But to tie the failure of two software companies directly and solely to a dynamic campaign system just makes no sense. In every game that has ever had a dynamic campaign system implemented that I have ever seen, it has only expotentially increased the entertainment value. As far as a dynamic campaign in DCS BS, a Falcon 4-style all out war just simply isn't appropriate given the Black Shark's mission, BUT NEITHER IS A SCRIPTED CAMPAIGN THAT DOESN'T HAVE FACs OR RADIO COMMS YOU CAN INTERACT WITH. However, a dynamic campaign system of some sort would be a very welcome addition to DCS A-10, as the A-10 WAS designed to fight in a total war. And just because Falcon 4's campaign had some failings doesn't mean that ED's would have them too. The MAIN thing that is missing from Falcon 4's campaign system is an overall AI that controls strategy. That wouldn't be too hard to implement- i.e: IF (the number of enemy aircraft entering friendly airspace increases 10%) { CAP_PRIORITY = CAP_PRIORITY*1.1; } See, THAT'S the kind of thing that is missing from Falcon 4's campaign, and it would be an EASY addition.

Well, personally, while this is not what you are asking for, I'd suggest setting the scenery to high but try setting the water detail to its lowest setting. A big problem with the DCS engine is that underneath the terrain everywhere is a water level, and, unfortunately, this invisible water level taxes your graphics, even though you cannot see it. I had a hard time believing it myself until I tried it. Hopefully the devs can find a way to fix this in a patch someday.

Well, are you going at high speed, and then you touch the rudder pedals, hear the sound of something colliding, and then go out of control? If so, your rotors are colliding with each other. You can't use a lot of rudder at high speed. However, your description of "just barely touching" the rudders doesn't sound like this is your problem...

No one has said that, so why are you complaining? The fact that this thread is about people getting bored with DCS, it is natural that we are only pointing out faults of DCS when compared to other games and not the advantages that DCS has over them.

I couldn't agree with you more on feeling that you are just a single chess piece in a bigger game during a Falcon 4 campaign mission. Falcon 4 really creates that feeling with all the activity that is going on- missions are very lively and unpredictable. Now it's true that part of this activity is caused by the frantic pace of the dynamic campaign, but not all. You can take off on a BARCAP and never see a single enemy, or you can be hopelessly overwhelmed and have to bug out or die. Just like in real life, and unlike DCS, no one has gone through and balanced the missions or tested them to make sure that they are doable. If you fail because the mission is impossible or you get shot down, you don't have to fly it again- the war just goes on. Compare that to DCS, where I don't get nearly the feeling that I am just a single unit in the larger game. In general, there is not as much air activity or ground activity, and missions are more predictable. Feuerfalke, as far as running the air and ground wars, you can do it from the UI in Allied Force. Right click on the map on the area you want to send up a flight and hit "Add package". Clicking on ground troops will give you their current waypoint and you can move it so that they advance, defend, or retreat. In the ATO, you can remove packages- heck, you can even tell aircraft you see on the UI map to return to base. You have A LOT of control, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. In non-allied force versions of Falcon, I don't believe you can run the air war in a campaign (you can still run the groud war), but I do believe that "Add Package" still works in TEs.

No, it is well known. Falcon 4's campaigns feature horribly unrealistically powerful enemies (DPRK with hundreds of MiG-29s and veteran pilots? GIMME A BREAK!) AND you fly many more missions than is realistic, and the wars take much shorter than they do IRL. It's compressed. I would definately PREFER the option to play a more realistic campaign, but they don't exist. As far as it not being realisitic to have both an RTS and flight sim in one package, there is only so far I'm willing to let realism go. Should I have to sit through 6 hour briefings before every flight? Should I have to train for years before I am even allowed to step into the pit of my virtual jet? Should I shoot myself in the head when I die in game?! I mean, don't be dumb. Realism MUST have limits. And, as far as the dynamic mission generator goes- it's dumb as hell. It follows no real strategy. I think it is MUCH more realistic to be fighting an air war where there is an overall strategy, rather than flying in one where no strategy exists at all. I mean, go look for yourself- you'll see the dynamic mission generator tasking aircraft to do CAS missions in an area where 40 MiGs are patrolling, or it will task a flight to take out an airbase that has NO enemy squadrons based at it when there is another air base right beside it where three squardrons of MiG-29s are based. Or, the worst example of them all, enemy aircraft will be all over friendly airspace, and not a SINGLE BARCAP mission will be created, even with the sliders set to max on defensive counter air. So if you want to fly and be part of an air war that has an overall direction and intelligently responds to enemy actions (just as a real air war would), you HAVE to task the missions yourself.

I agree. It should. It was about time over five years ago that someone came out with something that is clearly better in all aspects. I'm hoping that DCS eventually becomes that. DCS A-10 is going to strike a massive blow to Falcon 4, that's for sure- and it's a good blow to strike, as we desperately need a new fixed wing modern combat sim. I'd agree with this IF you could make the majority of vehicles and aircraft human controlled.

I'd agree with this also. While Longbow 2 was not even remotely close to realistic compared to DCS BS, it taught me how rotory aircraft fly.

Which is exactly my point- isn't that about a third to a half of the land on the DCS "map"? I'm not complaining about the fact that they use less detailed land areas on the edges of the detailed zones we are supposed to fly over to avoid the edge-of-the-world issue. My problem is that if the theater is not extended, the size of the detailed area is going to be a hinderence to realism starting with DCS A-10. Well, my point was that it's EASIER to find, not impossible. What happens if you have multiple escorts? Then you have to look through the briefing to see exactly which. This is a VERY minor point anyway, so it's silly to really even debate it. The vastly better reason that Falcon 4's mission creation and package system is better is that it is MUCH easier and quicker to modify and add flights and packages. Never said that, I said "You'd have to be retarded" a very common and informal way of saying "one would be dumb to". That does not imply a specific person is dumb. Is there any way to jump into control of a flight in the middle of that flight's mission? I can't imagine how, because an aircraft that is designated as being able to be player or client controlled does not fly unless the player or client is in it. Please tell me if I'm wrong and detail how this is done. Can you manually add flights from the F10 map in DCS in the middle of a mission? Because you can in Falcon 4. There's more reason than just that that makes being able to join mid flight a good feature. I can't count the number of times that our wing has scheduled a flight, and then a person shows up late after we have already taken off. That person simply jumps into the cockpit of the bird that he would have taken if he hadn't been late. It's not as fun or realistic as being on time, but it's better than not flying at all! It's a "pro" for many reasons. Really, you're having a utter lack of imagination to not see how this is an excellent feature. What "points"? I was only aware of one point that you had an issue with not being realistic, and I think I have sufficiently detailed why it is a good feature. But still not nearly as varied as what a true dynamic mission generator will give you.

Then what is the area of the map that is fully populated and "part" of the theater? It's not, that's one of the advantages of DCS. I may have exaggerated a little bit, but perhaps I felt the difference between the replayability of a dynamic campaign and the replayability of a scripted campaign NEEDED exaggeration- it doesn't even compare in my book. Frivolous? Ok YOU can spend the hours and hours organizing and linking different aircraft in the same package in DCS. It's mostly a mission creator and structure perk advantage that Falcon 4 has over DCS, but that's important when you are creating your own missions, or trying to figure out what flight out of the myriad of friendly flights is your escort. You'd have to be retarded not to see the advantage of being able to jump into a flight at any time. It is most advantageous in testing missions. It would really really suck if I had to edit the mission or fly it all the way through every time I wanted to test a certain part of it. It's also a perk you can use to your advantage in the dynamic campaign. Since AWACs does not vector aircraft to intercept enemy aircraft, it can be very advantageous to jump into an F-16 on BARCAP and intercept some enemy aircraft that are about to strike a high value target. I do not do this OFTEN, as I like flying a mission from start to finish. Still, it's a perk, and it's just plain dumb not to list it as such. First of all, it's just dumb to say that because something is in HAWX, it's not a good idea. That is what you are implying, and I know for a fact that you are smarter than that. Secondly, how would I ever know what was in that game? I wouldn't touch HAWX with a 10 foot pole. No, it's not. All missions in single Falcon 4 dynamic campaign are different from each other. You're just describing being bored of the game. That's different. You don't think that REAL pilots over long conflicts got the same feeling that you describe, that the "exact enemy package differs by an aircraft here or there, and the name of the city below us changes, but... It's the same mission." Compare that to DCS scripted missions, which, ARE truely the same mission. Sure, you can put SOME random elements into it, but only a few random elements unless you want to spend forever making a mission.

When did I ever say that "F4 has so many wonderful campaigns?!" You're putting words into my mouth I NEVER said. Campaigns and theaters are DIFFERENT things. The campaigns only work correctly in Korea and Balkans. Other than that, I use the "messy" Tactical Engagement editor (which you apparently never learned how to use correctly) to create very fun tactical engagements. Such as this: That's my personal simulation of ODS, several hundred sorties- maybe 500 or more, I don't wanna count- over about 5 hours. Imagine trying to make something like this with DCS's CURRENT mission creation system... OMG. Or the ultimate in a LONG, fun, historically-based mission: Operation Opera (Israel's 1981 strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor): Now DCS does have the advantage of having triggers, but Falcon 4 does have SOME triggers that run autonomously, such as "if the runway is destroyed, then the flight is cancelled prior to takeoff". Both of these missions I have flown in multiplayer several times, with great success. So don't downplay the value of Falcon 4's addon theaters. As it stands, I just don't see DCS heading in the direction that will give it capabilities and content like what Falcon 4 has, and it concerns me, but the future is yet to be written. I'm itching to see what info ED releases on DCS A-10 in January. And please, for god's sake, don't think I am saying Falcon 4 is a BETTER sim than DCS. Parts of it are better, and parts are worse. BUT, Falcon 4 has been flown for over 10 years now, and DCS would be wise to learn from the best features of Falcon 4 that have kept it such a lively and replayable game over all these years, and I'm NOT JUST TALKING about the dynamic campaign. If DCS doesn't do this, then it's quite POSSIBLE that one of the two other realistic combat flight sims SUPPOSEDLY in development- the secret project from Lead Pursuit or Fighter Ops, will eventually steal the market away from DCS.

That's why you have a time compression system that actually works, and the option of whether you want to take that three hour flight or not. With a dynamic campaign, you get to pick and choose your mission you want to fly, so if you only like short missions, then you only choose short missions to fly. You can even MAKE your own missions, especially in F4 AF. It's incomparably better than the DCS system.