Pikey

Yeah, I've no issue picking out scenarios to do. What I need is something that works with the DCS engine and has a lasting player persistence they can keep coming back to the server for. The factions and proxy nature make that pretty complex already... ISIL joining the FSA for a push on Govmt forces in east Aleppo - for as long as that lasts before turning on each other. DCS can't keep up with the factions and its very much infantry driven, which is the worst news for pilots at 15,000feet. The other thing about insurgency is that it pops up and down all over the country with no such thing as a clear front line. Conventional warfare makes sense to people, modern warfare... people think they want it, but it's dreary. The Israeli 80's stuff would be much better to simulate and gives a reason to have persistence on the mission/server. SAMs... nah. You have Damascus and Homs and the coast. Government strongholds surrounding the Russian port and airfield. Players always go for them anyway, but the fighting is not there. I'll model them as they are, but the action would be in the ISIL strongholds and where the action is, like Aleppo, the north, Raqaa, Palmyra in the centre. With the exception of an SA3 ISIL captured near Palmyra and theorised SA6's, ISIL don't have anything bar ZSU's, kintetic and manpads. Syrian Air defence is not something Operation Inherent Resolve is touching, it only kills Russians seemingly. They avoid the Russian areas and Government direct attacks (they successfully proxy those) and concentrate only on ISIL. Apart from that cruise missile attack, which was different and isolated. So, (and I have thought this through a LOT) an imagined realistic modern conflict ends up as: Strike a <oil well/weapons storage/VBIED/fighting position/mortar/tactical vehicle> at grid XYZ. Long flight, drop a bomb pair, go home. Oof. I think players wont like that :/ It seems to play out like a training map, lots of disconnected missions all over the map, no SAM's, no multirole, no air contacts, never below 15,000ft MSL. Dreary? Is that what players want or is it just me? I can randomise that, put scoreboards up but what I really need is a way to make it a game (like some were hinting at, I didnt ignore those posts) Players came back to our server 'RedSands' because the player would actually contribute to an online map, capture things or enable the capture and change the game. That is quite empowering and one of the reasons the BlueFlag formulae has lasted so long. What I need is a "game". A way for players, in this map/scenario, can bring their own strategies ideas and beat the game whilst feeling their contribution is meaningful (unlike real life). I can script pretty much anything I've ever tried to do, but I am at that... planning stage. I considered "Intelligence and reconnaissance" scripts... a way to unveil targets. I considered gaming a humanitarian "score" by how much you protected civilians, delivered food and water via helos, leaflet dropping, searching for C&C elements and using a map to score cities liberation... somehow. But I'm finding this very hard overall to execute and start writing.

The night fighter claimed as many FW190's as the israelis shot Syrian fighters in the largest air combat since ww2. (mid 60's). Numbers are just boggling in WW2, we pray nothing close ever happens again. So it's hard to work out numbers. As to if it could dogfight, does it count if you can sneak up and shoot and run away? I can't imagine it had fantastic roll rates but it could move and go fast and was light, so really, it's a tool with lots of amazing choices and real advantages. I don't think you would rate it on the same criteria that you would a modern day fighter though.

Basically you've discovered the units for each country aren't as fully filled out as they could be. And even when they are, sometimes there are no replacements for the country in question. This has always been an issue. I think the insurgents "country" should have all untis and so should the USAgressors to create two full pseudo countries to use, one in each coalition. Examples: EWR on NATO countries, Civilian ships - only Ukraine and Russia, generic, the only Civil airplane - Russia, Georgia and Ukraine. So on. The coaliton>country>group issue is stemmed form the mission editor and Lua in that these are tables and that mission format is pretty much unbreakable. Still, woudl prefer this not to be an issue, but you can edit the countries_db and I think even if you edit it only on the server, it should be fine.

Point 4, seen lots of behaviour of "ducking under the clouds" and I think it needs a proper bug report.

I don't understand either. Change what you want to change. I think you have confused triggers with Zones.

So, have you actually placed a new neutral playable group into this older mission? It didnt really make sense what you said about adding new groups breaking something, triggers always dynamically update their names and targets if you change the names of either groups or the trigger name. You can see for yourself, but before you mess around, copy the mission in windows (not the ME) as a backup. Any time you save a mission in the ME, any new stuff (or bugs) will get introduced. From the copied miz, go change things and see.

The major issue I have with a modern Syria Map is the presence of complex ROE and Russia in the air, meaning that either its a hot air war and it's unrealistic, or I put up drones for people to shoot and that's just a training map where they dont shoot back. I don't have a solution other than to ground the RF coalition and somehow just deal with SyAF interdiction and air policing. I don't have a good idea for how to do that yet, since it's not a conventional war. There's a reason ED made two coalitions and fake IFF, it's the only thing that works well in public multiplayer! :) Another problem is, trying to connect COIN/SCAR/CAS missions into a persistent story. I don't want to make a sterile training map, I want to have something that players can come back and say... Oh look ISIL are pushing at the airport in Aleppo, need to provide air support there, and the next day Free Government forces have cleared Aleppo... or not. The old Blue Flag formulae of 'capture the map' doesn't work with this scenario. Humans being objective based, I'd like to make a game for them. The issue with players getting involved in a ground war is that all the units look the same, people will get frustrated and just shoot anything and unless there's pretty good direction from scripting, folks won't feel part of any point and will have 45 minutes of circles looking through their TGP's. There are no real air defences to speak off, no real distinction on wether a T-55 is from the Free Syrian Army, the Government forces or captured by ISIL (or even others). I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't know how to create a persistent game from an Insurgency. Capturing airfields was so much more straight forward.

Is anyone thinking about how to approach a scenario for the upcoming Syria map for a server? I've been scratching my head on it for two days. I'd rather head back to 1982 but then Hornet, Viper, have huge weapon limits (no aim7 for the Viper) and Jeff was just a twinkle in his mums eye. Anything modern is COIN/Strike with no Air Combat and complex ROE that means you cannot be accurate and require a fantasy setting. Modern Air to Ground is also a bit dull (in my opinion, other will vary), being a fairly permissive environment above manpad altitude. All you will see of combat will be based off a tiny screen. We don't really have great insurgent units without using a mod. I was considering an alternate timeline Syrian campaign but the thorn in the side is how to work with Russia realistically in a scenario that didnt include WW3. Then the scenario goes from far fetched to silly, and this might feel a bit of a detractor for some. I'd be interested to hear what people are looking forward to on this map. I know I'd be weird and like to try operation Mole Cricket, because that was the largest scale air combat since WW2, probably the most significant single military action that happened in this place. If you turned up on a public server hosting Syria... what would you want to do or see?

This would be a defect for the bug forums.

No, this would be done by editing the lua and breaking the IC. However respawning the group would achieve the same thing and you would not notice unless you were interested in partly damaged states.

Yes, and there are an equal amount of people that claim they rely on the countries and available units being setup perfectly by ED, at least in the disagreement I had on this topic. ED use a mixed approach to this giving most playabe modules to any country, whilst restricting basic units in the countries DB file and not overly breaking their backs on how it looks. Once in game i never saw anyone be interested in countries, Just plane skins and whether or not it was shooting and they could shoot, which tends to support yours, and my feelings that countries are pointless, just add the unit and tell the editor what country it is without constraint. If you try to put the same country on two coalitions you have it greyed out or error. You have to remember this is a mission editor only constraint. You can spawn with scripting any unit as any country. But I guess you arent wanting that path. Effectively, I always have Ukraine and Georgia with the US to get all units on one coalition (except the Chinese asset pack who will not), and for the other coalition I make do with Russia and usagressors. But then I've being doign this for a decade and hoenstly It's not worth fighting it, just get the units down in the coalitions and care nothing for the flag else you will be sore from asking. That and the coalition changer mod.

If you just put the unit name of the carrier in there as a string, it's an airbase. There are a few peculiarities with airbases and ships/farps that are also airbases, they have two ID's and some things return unexpectedly. Your second attempt returned the object, the SetSquadron wanted the name.

I used to share a building with those guys in Edinburgh. What Rockstar spent in pizza alone could have bought ED. And they also sent them all on a holiday for one of the GTA's. I'm not sure I understand this thread though. Price has little to do with anything. It's all about wether you want something enough. Just look at peripherals for the sim market. If you are going to complain about 60 dollars, are you OK with 600 for a joystick?

Sad but expected. I would have to say, "i'd pay for Cyprus" How could we go about still championing the idea of getting Cyprus added if we are likely to buy the Syria map on it's existing features?

As was replied, in MP (CLIENT) no, in SP (PLAYER) maybe, using cockpit arguments. But I have no idea what they are.

[subject to change as developments continue in the SC EA period.] This has been asked for a couple of times in Discord. The madness that is Airboss + Super Carrier comms is quite intense for those not experienced with either. “We like some Moose Airboss features and we have DCS: SuperCarrier but I don’t want both ATC, especially at the same time” What are the overlapping features of both? How can I integrate Moose Airboss with Supercarrier? What changes will there be to Airboss now SC is released? What are the overlapping ATC and handling features of both? Airboss only: https://flightcontrol-master.github.io/MOOSE_DOCS_DEVELOP/Documentation/Ops.Airboss.html Equal Tarawa + Stennis handling, saving grades to disk, ‘Skipper’, Carrier information, deck to wind, recovery windows, integration with tankers/CSAR helo, Marshall Holding and queueing for player and AI. Skill levels/verbosity, Case3 offsets, policing patterns and feedback on Case1 from either Initials or Marshall, relies on no API - must use unit positions and Menu, downloadable voice packs and choices for LSO and Marshall. SC only: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/modules/supercarrier/ Superior auto contextual menu handling, quality voice overs, deck crew auto configuration, integrated (case switching is automatic, rather than script initiated, Menu is direct DCS API). Keybindings, especially for Ball call!! (Note that ATC is only a minor part of the product) Overlap: LSO callouts in the Groove, Landing Grade, some of the Case3 dialogue, initiation ATC calls from Menu. There may be other items. How can I integrate Moose Airboss with Supercarrier? They don’t integrate. Neither has awareness of each other, there are no API’s in the SSE currently for any of the DCS ATC functions. To get missing features of one or other you must have both. Additionally, you cannot switch off the ATC for SC and it is required for initiation of deck crew configuration. What you need to know is how you can use Airboss in a minimal way. Common Tips: Remove the LSO sound pack for Airboss. You will lose the “Paddles contact” and go around handling, but otherwise not have duplicate calls. Create a sunrise checker for your Recovery Windows to automate the change from a case 1 to a case 3 zero offset radial depending on the daylight. (I started some code for this, and I left it half finished so cannot provide a working sample yet) Choose to handle AI or not, depending if you want to use detailed Marshalling calls and stacking that works reasonably well. https://flightcontrol-master.github.io/MOOSE_DOCS_DEVELOP/Documentation/Ops.Airboss.html##(AIRBOSS).SetHandleAIOFF By default AI will be handled and put into relevant holding patterns by Airboss. There is now a fight here since AI in DCS changed. Finally, most of the simplistic ways of using the extra features of Airboss and ignoring most of its menu, is to use the menu item in Airboss of “Request Emergency landing”. This allows the grading to be saved to disk without creating any new event Handlers. There is an EH out there you can try to work through. Note, Airboss and SC give reasonably fair gradings, in as far as perfect scores have been tested on both and are in agreement. Marshalling The Airboss Marshal exists in a fuller format and is not implemented for Case1 in SC comms, as of now. Case3 is not enforced by SC. Because Marshall comms may be attractive, it adds to the difficulty of finding a process that uses both SC and Airboss. Case I Marshall Choice 1: Ignoring Airboss Case 1 Marshalling can be fully automated by using squadron designated altitudes in the stack and ignoring Airboss, but if using Airboss you may come into conflict with squadron designated altitude blocks, because Airboss stacks up from 2000 feet regardless, including AI. So, avoid AI and you are good to avoid any of the Airboss interactions. Choice 2: Working with Airboss Use Airboss and be at your designated stack no later than 10nm (see you). Remain in your designated stack until Airboss gives you Charlie deck and you can break the deck. Call DCS ATC Inbound and see you immediately after, when commencing and call Airboss emergency landing in the break. Case III Marshall Choice 1: Use Airboss for the Marshall handling and ignore SC’s call of your assigned stack Airboss will handle a good Marshall and track both AI and players. With a 0 degree offset, both Airboss and the DCS ATC will end up being different. At this time I favour Airboss for the timing aspect and it will also warn you if you wander off. You will need to ensure you handle AI which is on by default. Your process would be to follow Airboss Marshall and commence calls and then call Commence for DCS ATC and emergency landing for Airboss inside 5nm. Choice 2: Ignore Airboss Marshalling You should probably set AI handling off in this scenario and let DCS stack the planes how it wants. Warning, Case3 is chaos in either case due to the changes of giving AI some more realistic Case3 approaches. Especially with different airframe types and approach speeds. At least it was last time I checked. The process here would be to call inbound to both SC ATC and Airboss, then follow DCS instructions and menu right up to less than 5nm, at which time call for an emergency landing from Airboss. Landing Case1 Utilize Moose F10 “Request emergency landings” whilst in the CCA. You can even call them on the boat (thanks to TonyG for this tip). The next position expected is the groove or somewhere to the stern of the boat, for Airboss, thus you can skip the majority of Case1 menu “faff”. You still need to tell DCS you are inbound. The process would be: Call emergency landing <5nm, call DCS “inbound”, Report see you at 10 and your ball call on a keybind. Case3 Currently you MUST align with DCS Case3 for a zero offset case3 recovery. You should set this up with your recovery windows. Until offsets are implemented with SC ATC, this has to be the way. Implement recovery windows using daylight checks to automate the swap. These functions are available in MOOSE COORDINATE class and UTILS. Due to more comms overlap in Case3, recommend using an Airboss ‘Emergency call’ to land, inside 5nm from the stern of the boat. What changes will there be to Airboss now SC is released? Airboss was day one release ready for compatibility and week 1 tuned for deck adjustments when Super Carrier was released, so that it worked, in principal. However, SC massively overlaps Airboss features and a previous feature hole in the ATC communications and toolsets around the carrier. Airboss was in existence for some years now as a mature module for MOOSE. The development time of Airboss was exceptionally long and has benefitted from enormous amounts of player feedback over its lifetime. It is not a simple “script”. DCS Supercarrier is still in its early EA lifecycle, with partial feature delivery and some items like AI handling changing on a weekly basis. This is expected, if other DCS EA periods can be used as guidance, for quite some time. Not soon. It would be madness to develop on such a fluid base. Changes to work around DCS’ implementation of Super Carrier ATC and AI handling would be worthless until the final feature set is established. Even then, it may be that the features begin to so occlude each other that Airboss may be completely sunsetted and only ever be relevant for Stennis and Tarawa. We simply do not know how or when SC will reach that stage. There have been numerous suggestions around breaking out some Airboss features like Skipper, recovery and wind handling and intercepting the DCS landing grade. Whilst this seems like a great idea, we miss that only the full Airboss provides any Marshalling instructions to players, which is a large and very unique ATC implementation. In comparison to Super Carrier, which fakes the frequency changes and does not guide the player or deal with any case1 stack or police the Case3 stack or do offsets at all. Therefore, we can say the time is not right to do any “Airboss lite”, at least in the current SC implementation. My experience and advice isn't final on this. If you have sugegstions, experiences, processes that work for you, please input to this thread and if it looks good, i can update the wall of text.

Mig-19

You cannot force anything on a client in multiplayer via scripting. You might be able to do something to a Player, but that's not what you asked for. You can set the radio default and you can put the channel in the briefing. Radio item is a menu item for the f10 menu.

https://flightcontrol-master.github.io/MOOSE_DOCS_DEVELOP/Documentation/Ops.RecoveryTanker.html Otherwise you will need to do something quite complex with moving the CAP.

ah, if you want me to break this for you try a smoke effect. Statics can be very odd behaving.

yes he is fixed and will also fire torps at moving targets. It's still heavily WIP though.

The health pools of the ships and uboat are known, I've reported this. The best workaround for now is to set a trigger on the hit and then do an explosion on the object to create extra damage. This is because the full damage modelling is being queued in development progress, if I understand correctly.

Then and now DCS was, until last week, made of two coalitions, Red or Blue, 1 or 2, and that was it. Nothing in between, nothing ambiguous, no problems to solve, my radar shows enemy, I shoot. For as long as IFF has existed in DCS, stemming from FC3, a failed IFF return on a target will automate a change in HAFU for the track to Hostile. On F-14 - you see Jester IFFing and turning ambiguous to Hostile, on F-18 you see once you STT an ambiguous track, it turns red hostile once it fails. Same process exists, even AWACS does this on the SA. It's wrong, there is no such thing as a hostile return, there is only nothing. With the advent of Neutral coalitions, you see this magic mode4 IFF even more obviously, in that, somehow Civilians or military of independant Coalitions will now identify as ambiguous and the enemy don't have the magic replies to do the same. It's fairly obvious that this is an important 'game' function to keep multiplayer anonymous server play somewhat functional, without blue on blue breaking it and turning into a frustrated game of "demolition derby". Yet Multiplayer anonymous play isn't the only way DCS is played and there are plenty of folks who like to do things more logically, that do not want to pollute the L16 network with non combatants marked for destruction, or even have AWACS do that for you. What is more, since people wanted neutrals and that request was granted, there must be people who want to see neutrals as neutral, not as 747 drones. And, year on year in DCS we have also seen the rise in popularity of controllers, whether ATC, Weapons Directors or hybridised support roles on the radios, guiding players. Why change what we have? Well apart from the realism aspect of; enemy aircraft do not have beacons that respond with a 'shoot me' directive, the current model of IFF in DCS prevents any gameplay where the visual arena is important. And in a simulation game where the visual arena is so good looking, where the flight models actually mean something, and an entire strategic and tense decision making process in realtime is simply absent. From an amazing game, it's a real shame for groups of organized players and single players to miss out. What changes are you requesting? - It will never work for anonymous multiplayer, that's OK, let's never force change. - A Server>Mission>Player inherited difficulty setting where IFF does not upgrade ambiguous HAFU's to Hostile, It leaves them where they would be in the real world, you respond as a military friend, or you simply do not respond. - An option to disable AWACS (computer) from upgrading HAFU's to Hostile, and only relying on player Classification, which may include offboard decisions via LotATC (or even the F10 map). - Relevant Server API controls for offboard ID management. (simple upgrade/downgrade on unit) so the L16 network can be managed by humans. What gameplay advantages would this give us? - Where missions have neutral planes, the human now has to think before shooting. They simply don't know if a bogey is hostile and require to work on that either individually or as a group. For players wanting to be told, they can leave the default settings from what we have now. - Where no other offboard sensors are involved, we would now be able to have intercept missions on unknown random contacts. This gives a lot of tenseness to the gameplay (if you have never tried this type of mission, it is a lot of fun). Interceptors cannot really do their role in DCS until we have the correct underlying setup for cold war behaviour. All the other tools are there: ROE for AI, Tasking. - Neutral player sides can now exist in organised multiplayer. They can go around, act erratically, sow confusion and give controllers and pilots problems to solve. Their hostility and behaviour can change, but if they aren't part of the encrypted MODE4 members, they aren't going to reply to an IFF. To give you an idea, some online squadrons host events with live ATC and live WD's. Throwing civilians into the mix gives the ATC and WD's more to actually do and to use the IDCRITS properly rather than have AWACS or radars automatically do magic IFF. - Air policing becomes a thing you can do with more game support for correct IFF and coaltions. Let's remember, the world isn't always in the state of hot wars, it's in a persistent cold war state in most places, with airspace management, cheeky violations, exclusion zones, even Superbowl airspace to be cleared. This is far more common to see, than all out brawls. The CAM mod is very popular, the RAT script is very popular. People want to see civilians even if they don't want to be civilians. The people asked for, and got, a neutral coalition. There is something quite fun about pulling up alongside a 747 and escorting it, equally so, trying to identify the tail number of a small Cessna wandering where it shouldn't. We don't want to see these as hostile on a datalink, let them remain ambiguous and do the work ourselves. - It will get people more used to the real perspectives of ROE and Classification, since we can apply most real world processes to DCS, except this one, this one we cannot. This is a list of things I quickly thought would become usable properly once an option to have realistic IFF becomes possible. If you aren't interested in this, that's cool, it shoudn't affect you as a server setting, but you could use them if you liked: Have intercept randomness with more tense gameplay and not a magic screen that tells you that a brick is going to shoot Practice intercepts, stern conversions, VID's, eyeball-shooter, IDcrits Use ROE that isn't "Weapons free" Missions Designers that don't have to make complex invisible Red planes on that coalition or mess about with tasks and scripts Enjoy using human controllers that can help a classification process and be contributing members to a network Use the interim classifications, spades, rider, gopher, outlaw, bandit so that they mean something, rather than, when on LotATC, asking the plane if it returned hostile interogation, then upgrading your trackfile and cheating Just have what it should actually be, rather than pretend

This. This software is exceptionally complex. Each plane, the depth to which it is modelled makes checking it all patch on patch impossible. The game engine, the DLC, the updaters, the shop, the art assets, just so much. Instead, ED have said many times they rely on the public and the current OB process, which they recently expanded. The QA guys work flat out, the forum mods work flat out, the devs work flat out, and everyone cares about having a good product. Which it is, but moans about imperfections, which are normal, in software. Every now and then there is a clanger. No different to all the whoopsies I've seen at work. So imagine when someone goes into an inspecific rant because they want to vent but they don't actually provide any detail about what the problem is? It's hard. The mods must be made of titanium with Teflon coating. Hour after hour going through Discord, here, reddit. Looking at posts that are too vague to act on. We are lucky, larger companies tend to outsource the entire front line staff to a call center specialist overseas. Instead we get some humans, that you know care. All i'd say on this thread is, you know what, frustration, slips out, but if you took your time to be frustrated on the forums, you will have way more success and impact if you put a track down, steps to reproduce, explain the issue and get detailed with an issue. The rest is hot air and get's ignored pretty quickly!

Quick guide/stimulus for mission creation for The Channel map. So perhaps you want to recreate one of the 20+ raids on a famous German Liquid Oxygen factory or... 'whatever else' but when you start researching it you realise there are some generic buildings not looking quite the target you expected. It's very simple to rearrange the map a bit in some cases. I'll do it fast with pictures. In most cases you can eventually find the target locations because you have Google maps, coordinates and so on. But the main issue is creating the target to be less generic. Well the tools Scenery removal and scenery destruction do a pretty good job. Then some imagination from object static placement and you are done. In this example I found the Liquid Oxygen factory the Third Reich were intending to create LOX and store V2's from locally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockhaus_d%27%C3%89perlecques It is just a cut in the trees with generic domestic buildings at in the map. First, we remove the buildings, leaving a blank canvas. Ironically, I wanted some rubble too, so I mixed a Scenery remove all, with a Scenery destruction zone and got a hybrid of open area and a few rubble patches. Then you can combine statics that appear like things they are not. - Cargo 'Trunks long', 'Trunks short' and 'Pipes long' These are great for building construction items. Copy and paste. - The Static 'Outpost' - can look like a half contructed building - You can merge statics into the same space. 'small warehouse 3' I got some sort of half-built concrete thing. - Scatter some trucks, misalign things, check nothing is hanging in the air and you have something that is strongly representative of what it was, for the purposes of having a target. It's probably good enough for a low level flyover, for 25,000 feet, it is perfect. And let's face it, the RAF had no idea what was going on here, but figured, if it was worth so much trouble to build, they needed to put as much effort into bombing it twice a month for a year. I'm still tuning AI for this but I'll attach the miz when I get there.