Speed_2

New condition: Unit of type X owned by side Y inside zone/moving zone Z: Bascially, the condition would read like: "If unit of type (drop down menu with options of different unit types, NOT unit types, and an option of ANY type) owned by side (drop down menu of sides, NOT sides, and finally, any side) is inside zone (or moving zone) (drop down menu of zones)" New Action- Spawn group of type or template type at zone or moving zone: Bascially like activating groups, except endless. Under template type, you would define the group's waypoints and composition beforehand. This might make it hard to reference these groups or units in triggers, but with ANY UNIT trigger conditions, it would be easier. New options: AI behavior Basically, sorta like the AI behavior triggers I suggested, except its a new submenu in the AI. Allows you to set overall AI behavior, like detection conditions or engagement priorites. Unit engagable/not engagable- basically, a new flag or unit condition that makes it so that AI or specific AI units/groups will not engage a specific unit, but that unit is still able to move around, be active, or even engage itself. This is great for putting the factor of surprise into missions- for example, you could make YOURSELF not engagable to specific enemy units until a specific amount of time has passed after you first engaged, or you exceed a specific altitude, etc. New condition: Unit is firing/not firing- Basically, a condition to detect whether or not an enemy unit is firing ordinance. You could have it so that this condition evaluates true if a specific unit has fired any ordinance within the last 10 seconds. To make this trigger even better, you would be able to specify the TYPE of ordinance too, and the amount of time after that ordinance was fired that the condition evaluates to true.

While the mission editor in Black Shark is still better in most aspects than that of some other games, like Falcon 4, it is still actually behind a couple mission editors I have worked with. If memory serves me correctly, Janes F-15 had a better mission editor, and that was 12 years ago! I searched the forums, and didn't find a ME wish list thread. I think is important try to make our voices heard, especially since DCS is an ongoing project with the goal being steadily improved over the years. Since there is much that could be done to the ME to make it better, please post here any suggestions you have. I'll start: 3D Viewer: allow us to view the outside world without having to go into the game and try to use external views! Time lapse viewer: allow us to increment the clock and watch how units move on the map. Neutral units: allow sides to be NEUTRAL! In addition, add civilians as a side and allow us to place their units. Allow any type of ground unit to be assigned to any side: basically, I would like to have, for example, Georgian military forces use NATO equipment, or insurgents hijack a T-80. New Trigger- switch sides: Self explanatory. With this trigger, you could, for example, place a civilian vehicle on the road, and have it suddenly switch to insurgents side at the last moment and slam into a friendly convoy in a suicide car bombing attack. Many other uses for this trigger can be envisioned. Frequency-specific triggers: Have a flag be set to true or false depending on frequency of the player's radio. MORE UNITS: There are, for example, almost no crew-served weapons in DCS currently, which is ridiculous! We need mortors, machine guns, Javelins, working RPGs- without them, infantry is basically impotent. Interactive radio: we need the ability to communicate in some form with the AI! For example, your mission is to clear the LZ for an Mi-8 which wants to insert special ops. We want to have the ability to tell the Mi-8 that the LZ is clear and to come on in. Well, first of all, we need a trigger that governs AI behavior (one of my next items on my wish list). But we most importantly need a way to talk to the Mi-8! The next paragraph tells how it could be done. New feature added to game- radio communications list The mission creator is able to define communication options that appear on the list, and when and under what conditions those options appear on the list. A player simply must select the radio option from the list, which sets a flag in the game, and then governs actions of the AI. For example, for the Mi-8 hip case, the mission creator enables the radio communications list for the player when the player is tuned to the right frequency are tuned to the right frequency. The mission creator further defines that if the Mi-8 has not dropped off its spec ops team and is alive, the options on the list are: 1) LZ is clear 2) Hold position 3) Abort mission Advanced AI-related triggers: The following is a list of AI related behavior triggers that would be nice to have: -Set waypoint route: When trigger conditions are met, have the AI follow a specific set of waypoints. If trigger conditions are not met, the AI might follow a different set of waypoints. This would be useful, for example, if the player is escorting a convoy and fails to stop the insurgents setting charges under the bridge ahead. Once the bridge is blown, the convoy will need to turn around, but if the player manages to save the bridge, the convoy can continue forward. -Set detection/engagement rules: I'm a little fuzzy about how this would work. Basically, this is used to determine whether or not a unit is engaged by AI. You could make it so that at night, you are not engaged by enemies without night vision unless you come within a certain distance of them (closer than normal), or an air defense unit would prioritize engaging a ground unit near it over engaging a transport helicopter flying overhead (by setting some sort of engagement priority list). Yes, these are not well defined, but something like this is needed for realistic AI behavior! Setting this up could be as simple as setting a trigger that "unit X is undetectable by unit Y IF conditions Z are met". -Stop/Start/Hover triggers- make a unit stop, start, or hover in the middle of executing its waypoints based on trigger conditions. Debriefing screen: DCS really has a bad, bad, BAD debriefing system, ESPECIALLY in multiplayer. What is needed is better debriefing screen, and among the mission editor options should be options to define the text seen by the player during debriefing based on mission outcomes. Finally, to address the objection that a bunch of complicated triggers like what I proposed would make the Mission Editor too hard to use and learn for beginners, I propose that the Mission Editor have two modes: Simple and Advanced. In simple mode, the capabilities of the mission editor will be pretty much the same as its current incarnation, but in advanced mode, all the new capabilities will be available. Anyway, that's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll think of more. Please, if you have any contribution, post away!

Nope. I'm thinking I'll start a ME wish list thread, gotta search first to see if such a thread already exists.

I've had fleeing ground targets in a couple of my missions. What you do is have all your enemy infantry be inactive but "visible before start". When the first one dies, all the others are activated and start following the waypoints you gave them. Unfortunately, before they are activated, they will not shoot at anything. What would be nice is if was possible to define ground unit behaviors under certain conditions, like give them a set of waypoints that they follow ONLY IF a certain trigger condition is met- for example, an Mi-8 Hip that waits-HOVERING- till you clear out the LZ for it. Another example would be enemy infantry that is already activated and flees when attacked. Speaking of annoying AI behavior, I have never seen insurgent RPG Infantry fire an RPG even ONCE. Even when a stationary target is just in front of their faces, they will sit there and not do a thing. This, combined with the fact that there are like NO crew-served weapons like mortors, machine guns, or crew-served arty guns (short of the ZU-23) means it is impossible for infantry to take out any thing other than very lightly armored targets. That, all in itself, is a travesty. Do you know how many choppers were shot down in Vietnam by NVA and VC .51 cal machine guns?!

I don't think you can, unfortunately. I've asked the same question and searched in the manual, all I could figure out to do was to lock a stationary target... which is not always available, obviously. It would be nice if you could control the "stationary" speed of the skhval, then you could slew it fast enough to lock onto a high angular speed target, like a jet or a close and fast chopper, but alas, this is also not an option.

ericinexile, there is no need to modify your controller's deadzone. All that you need to do is modify the FMOptions file under the Eagle Dynamics/KA-50/Scripts/Aircrafts/_Common folder. This DOES NOT CHANGE YOUR STICK'S DEADZONE. The way that trim works is that it locks out your stick input until you return the stick to the neutral (center) position. What the FMOptions file does is determine HOW CLOSE to the neutral position you have to return the stick to in order to regain control of the aircraft. My settings are 0.20, 0.20, and 0.4. (pitch, roll, rudder respectively). I have not had controller lockout ONCE since I made these changes, and before, I had it all the time. Some people might say that my settings of 0.2, 0.2, and 0.4 might be too large, and make my aircraft do sudden violent manuvers when trimming, possibly causing a crash- this also DOES NOT happen to me, so I like my settings the way they are.

You're probably thinking of Defense of Batumi, by Dragon, it's available for download on these forums.

Um, artillery works just fine. You put them 25kms away, tell them to attack this area, they just keep shelling it. I wish I could make them stop, but I think the only way to make them stop is to deactivate them, which would remove them from the game world, which is not what I want.

One of the guys in my virtual squadron had the crazy shkval problem. I finally convinced him to send me the track, and as soon as I took control of his chopper, the problem went away. I diagnosed it as a controller issue. He took shvkal slew OFF of the ministick on his X52 and the problem has not occurred again.

Hey guys, I was curious if there was a way to adjust the shkval slewing speed? I was trying to engage some air to air targets last night, and I couldn't even keep up with this one Mi-24 that was crossing across my nose at about 2.5km. I was thinking it would be nice if you could press some kind of button to get the shvkal to continue moving at the speed you were slewing the gates without requiring further input. If not, is there any way to increase shvkal slewing speed? Question two, can the shvkal be slewed analog, or is it only fully left/right/up/down? In other words, could you bind the shkval slewing to, say, a joystick, and then move the joystick only halfway in one direction and get half of the shvkal slewing speed? Final question, say you lock a moving target, then you either kill that mover or otherwise break lock, and then wish to lock a different target near the mover. Well, your shvkal is gonna keep on moving at the angular velocity of the previous mover, making it tough to lock on a target with a different angular velocity. Is there any way of setting the shvkval slew back to zero WITHOUT resetting or re-boresighting the shkval?? Thanks for any help, Speed

I've tested it many times. If you try to engage autohover before the whatever speed indicator appears on the HUD, it will disengage the autopilot channels. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. I believe this has even been mentioned on these forums before, something about "Doppler Nav Sys", whatever that is.

If your autohover starts making the aircraft go crazy, immediately look to the autopilot buttons. They will probably be flashing, you need to reengage them. To avoid flashing autopilot channels, do this: 1) When you get the low rotor speed warning, HEED IT and reduce collective 2) Do not engage autohover immediately after taking off! You have to WAIT until you get the airspeed indicator on the HUD before it will work! If you engage autohover before the airspeed indicator has appeared, it will disable your autopilot channels and your aircraft will go crazy. 3) Do not use autohover at very low altitude (you already mentioned this I see)

Realistic difficulty, it can happen in any mission. That said, since I pretty much only fly in multiplayer, that's where I've only seen it, and since I always host, I have always been the host when it happens.

Hey guys, I've experienced several bugs in Black Shark, but the most annoying is when the game stops responding to input. It usually happens after respawning once or twice. Basically, I get in my new chopper, and the game does not respond to any input besides track IR/pan view. Not even zoom view works. I can still see stuff going on around me, I just can't do anything except pan my view- I can't even go external views. It only seems to happen after using crash recovery. Anyone know if there is a fix at all? When you're running as host, it really sucks! Running windows vista 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 2.8 GHz, 8GB RAM, nVidia GTX 260, 1.0.1a patch.

Martillo1, It's actually less realistic to fly WITHOUT zoom. True your Mk1 eyeball doesn't have zoom, but it has a much higher resolution than your monitor with your view at the normal zoom level. Someone with really good vision can see objects as small as one arc minute, or 1/60 of a degree. However, if the normal zoom level is 66 degrees across horizontally, and you have a 1680x1050 monitor, then that's only 2.4 arc minutes per pixel. Furthermore, factor in that you are not sitting with your eyeball up to the monitor and you may degrade your visibility a bit more. IMO, to keep it accurate, you SHOULD be using the zoom to make up for having to view things at a lower resolution than what you would IRL. I WOULD like to know though, if KA-50 pilots are ever allowed to take binoculars into the pit. Seems like a pair of binoculars would help them alot.

But what about when the exceptions become the rules and the rules become the exceptions? Fair fights between fighters have become a thing of the past, at least from a western perspective. I hope we never see them again either, because about the only place I can imagine where we might see it would be a major conflict between Russia or China and the US. Weren't there some decent India-Pakistan dogfights in recent years though? Maybe Georgia vs Russia might have some decently fair dogfights/BVR engagements? Does Georgia even have the money for a decent (but small) air force?

It will become more and more the rule in the future, with long range missiles and bombs. You are less handicapped in BVR by heavy weight than in close range fight. You keep SAYING that you cannot do effective A2A with bombs and tanks, and I still disagree, because that is a BLANKET statement, and while right in some cases, is completely wrong in others. Again, the F-16 with the bomb load would have absolutely no reason to jettison his weapon load to engage a MiG-21 at 25 miles with an AMRAAM. Those F-18s probably just lined up on two non-manuvering aircraft and closed to within winder range. Again, no reason to jettison, but you can bet they would have had those MiGs suddenly started to turn nose-hot to enter a turning fight. So both aircraft are engaging in effective A2A combat without ever having to jettison ANYTHING. If you look through at the recent air to air engagements that the US/NATO have been in, they have all been very lop-sided like this. In a lop-sided engagement, the superior aircraft often has no need to jettison anything, as the engagement happens at very long range or against poorly trained pilots. With new even longer range AAMs, this becomes even more true. I mean, what is the possibility of there actually being a "fair" dogfight, against equally-matched opponents IRL? India vs Pakistan, or Greece vs Turkey is all I can think of right now. As long as the US has the F-22 and actually uses it over a battle area, honestly, no foreign aircraft really has a chance. Now, maybe if a F-15 came up against a SU-27, that would be a different matter, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. Besides the nuke danger, major powers actually getting into a war with each other is bad for business, you can't make $$$ if trade is shut down. As far as the USAF using the F-15E for air superiority, yes, those situations I was envisioning were desperation, or last-resort scenarios. If you've really got a Battle of Britain type battle for air superiority, I would think that perhaps the mudhens might be sent up. If for some reason, AWACs decides that a flight of enemy aircraft MUST be taken out, and by chance, the F-15Es are the only ones that could make the interception, I would think it possible they might be ordered to do so, but I don't know USAF doctrine reguarding such scenarios, if there is any. You think that I don't understand the difference? I mean, I thought that point was so obvious it didn't need stating. OF COURSE no one should engage in aggressive A2A with bombs aboard, but fuel tanks SHOULD be kept for as long as possible without risking the aircraft. The entire point has been lost I think. What I say, and still contend is that the F-15E is an excellent ground pounder, and would make an decent to good energy fighter. That it should not do both offensive A2G and offensive A2A at the same time should be such an obvious point that it need not be stated, as this applies to all aircraft as well. Furthermore, that it does not engage in offensive air to air IRL is a moot point as what virtual pilots do with their virtual aircraft is their own business.

Well, I've got to be always right, I gotta edit the post to make sure I am :) Edit: Besides, I'm quickly becoming an arrogant, realism-obsessed DCS Black Shark junkie :P Edit2: I guess you're right, all the TRUE "arrogant, realism-obsessed Falcon 4 junkies" are still over playing Falcon and won't touch DCS with a 10 foot pole because they have an irrational hatred for everything Eagle Dynamics because they made the "sin" of producing the "arcade-like" LOMAC.

Well, back on subject, if we can't have the F-15E, I'd take the F-15C. I think it would go better if we had an A-10C and F-15C, the two would make a good match as the F-15C could protect the A-10s as they hit their ground targets. And anyone who doesn't want an F-15E is underestimating the sheer awesomeness of steering a bomb over a datalink to a target. Just think of all the cool weapons we would get, CBUs, Mks, paveways (GBU-28 5000lbs!!!), JDAMs, JSOWs, GBU-15s/AGM-130s, Mavericks... mmmmm. Not to mention, an aircraft that would be a mean energy fighter EVEN WITH CFTs. Heck, if you're doing BVR, an energy fighter is better than a turning fighter.

Well, here is where I disagree. You say that the F-15E is not multirole because it can't do A2A that well while it is carrying air to ground munitions. Well, neither can the F/A-18, or the F-16, or the MiG-29SM. If an F-15E went up with an air-to-air loadout, it would do just fine. The real reason the F-15E is not a multi-role fighter is simply because it NEVER goes up with a pure air to air loadout. However, people playing flight sims have no inhibition against taking their virtual F-15Es up and doing air to air all day long. Furthermore, scenarios can be envisioned where the USAF WOULD send the F-15E up with an air to air loadout, or F-15Es are retasked to intercept some flight of incoming bandits because they are the only aircraft in position to do so. JDAMs are pretty cheap, so no crying should they have to be jettisoned. I also disagree with you about an aircraft having to be absolutely clean to engage in effective BVR, as it really depends on the opponent, and the exact situation. It would be ridiculous to jettison everything to engage a MiG-21 with an F-16 when the MiG is 25 miles away. Unless it's like a MiG-21-93, all he's got is short range missiles and a short range radar. When engaging in long range BVR fights against R-77/AMRAAM armed opponents, you're likely going to want to get as much speed and altitude as possible before you launch your missile, so as to give your missile extra range, and then turn around immediately after firing OR after the missile going pitbull. However, should you wait till your own missile goes pitbull, the enemy, if he immediately turned away, may have an active radar homing missile going pitbull on YOU just as YOURS goes pitbull, and you just spent the last 20 seconds flying straight towards his missile and have no hope of escaping it (short of actually spoofing it, which, depending on who you talk to, may be very difficult to do with current generations or ARH missiles). So, in such engagements, it may be that the only intelligent manuver to do is to fire your ARH missiles at long range and immediately turn around to outrun the enemy's incoming ARH missile(s). The result of this tactic is that you spend a LONG time in afterburner, and, if you immediately jetisonned your fuel tanks at the beginning of the fight, you may get into trouble.... it all depends. One final thing. You mention conformal fuel tanks (CFTs). I've always understood that CFTs were PERMENENT fuel tanks blended into/onto the body of an aircraft, hence, conformal. I may be wrong about this, though. Edit: looks like I was right about CFTs, check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_Fuel_Tanks Edit2: But, reading that article, it looks like I may be wrong about the strike eagle. I always thought those tanks under the wings were drop tanks, but if they're permenent, then the F-15E WOULD be permenently slightly crippled in BVR, and crippled WVR. Edit3: I now, I may have come full circle and finally understand why you mentioned CFTs :) Edit4: I guess those things under the wings ARE drop tanks, just looked it up, the CFTs are on the wing roots... kinda hard to see.

Oh I know they are not technically multirole... but they do have the AA capability that the F-15 has. The reason they are not multirole is the air force doesn't want them to do multirole. But- us players are NOT the air force. So while in RL the only tasking they ever get is air to ground, we can play them in DCS as multirole aircraft. The F-15E would just be the perfect DCS add on as it has both awesome ground pounding and air superiority performance, AND the front seater/back seater interaction that would be so overwhelmingly kick @$$ in multiplayer.

I'd freaking KILL someone for DCS F-15E! There's your multirole... and you get the pilot-copilot/weapons officer interaction in multiplayer too! Think how fun it would be to have a human pilot flying the plane, and a human copilot manually steering the AGM-130 through a window of the target building using the datalink! Heck, I'd pay $500 for a game like that...

Mildly overclocking your processor may help, it helped me. The biggest tip that helped me with my FPS issues was the water and shadows tip. HUGE difference, like 3-4 times better FPS than before.

Ah, I get what you are saying. The bugs we experience are likely partly caused by other programs, but not all of them, as we have some of the same issues and wildly different machines. Probably discussing this more would just get this thread even more off-topic.

Lol... and YOUR post wasn't intended to be offensive towards me?! Sorry, but I generally reply with anger when someone purposely offends me or insults my intelligence...