Pikey

It differs between comunities and use so the happy medium is hard to find, nevertheless there are crossovers. Also polls tend to be slanted towards those that engage with the community and look at DCS every day passionately, so most likely would miss some groups. Having said that in simplistic terms; Light users of DCS are intested in the obvious superficial details, visuals, lighting, immersion, completeness, configuration. Multiplayer PvP players in balancing (eg missiles, performance data, equality), performance Server admins in server performance, script availability, tools and bugs Enthusiasts in accuracy, detail of aircraft modules Scripters, content providers and modders in Core bugs, ME bugs, changes. So, whilst you could, for example, post that the "floating Statics issue" was the most important to all groups, because statics are a decorative, visual used in both quick start, lessons and DLC, affect content creators and scripting alike, I have a different opinion based on a top down impact approach, in that the core of the game content is supplied by a small minority of people writing public missions or holding public servers and that these people actually keep the fan base loyal because they provide things to do after everyone has seemingly learned how to fly offline and consumed the missions and module content. Some might say this is a very subjective and limited view because every type of DCS user "catagory" (simplistic view) is valuable and the iceberg effect of the vast silent majority of the single player market is the thing mostly sustaining DCS ecomonically. However I disagree with that view! The DCS model is about getting the community to propel its own testing, marketing and content by providing a sandbox and mission editor, open source code in places, allowing 3rd parties to develop and allowing moddable content and a searchable user file repository for skins, units and missions. The people that matter are those people and the squadrons and events organisers and to a certain extent Social Media contributors and YT/twitch. Everyone of these people rely on making NEW content to keep DCS interesting. And by keeping people playing day after day in Multiplayer on interesting servers doing events, people stay and buy more modules to play with. And if you are still with me, the top of that community pyramid are the enablers who make content to use, whether it's a Squadron leader, Server admin, YouTube channel, skinner, modder, addon creator or scripter. You ignore these people and wreck their days at your peril! Because if they get fedup with DCS the entire pyramid comes crashing down, people lose interest, servers get worse, communities get fragmented and the self propelling style of DCS comes to a halt in between module releases. And trust me, get out of the habit of playing DCS daily and it is not like riding a bike! So, put simply, I'd like to see airbase id's solved as a priority; else I'll be taking a break, the MOOSE channel can go to hell and peoples scripting questions can get unanswered, AI CAP can blow up on the floor, Migs can carry on spawning in at McCarran! The server admins can sit there scratching their heads, reducing their available time, ruling out playing on NTTR or using it, because it's so broken, the servers can be taken offline to roll back again, the YT'rs can have nothing to play on, the Blue Flags and the others servers with scripts can roll back again and split the community between 2.5.6 and 2.5.5 and stable (whatever version that is) and finally the players can complain about X server, and the entire thing comes tumbling down and no one watches or cares when the Super Carrier is released because they are playing something else for a break! :) Top down... core first and foremost.

It varies from country to country, and armed force branch to armed force branch and the context to context. There is no single way. There's two things here; a Mission callsign, which can change according to a mission but can often be retained for squadrons for simplicity, and a planes registration number/tail number/modex which is full or abbreviated depending on context and sticks with the airframe. USN generally use tail numbers more often than USAF. Each might use the context differently in ATC operations or military operations. Military operations tend to use a callsign when doing miltary things, but even then, I've heard them use tail numbers when used in a civilian context, ie an intercept of a civilian plane, the interceptor often refers to himself as his tail number when talking to civilians on Guard. I've generally simplified it to that divisor - for ATC ops and civilian usage, use the Tail number. For a military only airport or, using a military radio frequency with a controller that is Military AND performing a mission - ie from the moment you are checked into AWACS, use the Mission callsign. That's probably as clear as mud, I'm sorry, there will be a lot more to it than that, but for simplicities sake and until someone wants to go into the details, it will be enough for now! :) EDIT: FWIW, using tail numbers in the Navy for their ATC boat operations doesnt sit well with me personally. There are only so many numbers you can hold onto in your head and if you begin radio messages with a tail number then mix in a BRAA or a relative bearing from MOTHER, without being very clean and proper on the radio, you are asking for a world of hurt because it can end up like listening to Bingo numbers ebing read out! I never understood why the USN chose Tail numbers that coincided with Bearings on a compass, if they have just started tails with the 400 series up, you would differentiate a tail and a bearing on bad comms a lot easier. However, I'm sure the USN will come back and reason this with "We do our comms properly, the Army had to differentiate because they are stupid" or some such inter-force rivalry banter, so, who cares, it's different, its what it is and it's somewhat pointless a debate in the end ;) EDIT2: I missed that you specified Navy and infered USN in the title. The DCS method began with USAF and the A-10C and it wasn't until Hornet arrived they began to add the tail numbers. Even then, its a bit of a mismatch and as far as software should take it - things like Chief for the ground crew and other USAF/USN missing correct terminology. For the USN, I'm not sure, but I suspect they move from their tails to mission around the time they check into Strike, after the boat and then back after they check in to Marshall, but it's confusing and I dont have too many references.

Check out AMVI in Italy https://www.amvi.it/. Whilst they might be unable to take on completely new folks (I have no idea about that), following them and their community in Italy is very much worth while, they are busy doing lots of things, get involved in many cross squadron activities and are generally a useful resource for Italians. There's also a vast amount of European squadrons you can plug into as well as communities based around servers rather than flying organised where you can share information on Discord. The ED Discord might be a good place to start also.

Well, you don't want your forum name to give out half of your login credentials with your financial info and products owned. Or maybe you do.

There's literally nothing in common with the AV-8B, the FRS1 cockpit is steam punk, with a radar scope on the right and that radar was max 20nm for air (ish) and very good for ships. It shares nothing with the AV-8B, I have no idea about the flight model, but it's scratch development, rgith down to the airframe.

No pressure ED, but I am definitely going to judge you on this patch more than any other in the last 10 years. I'll know exactly, from the broad array of new issues that I have come to know intimately, what you think is important and our differences will be written in stone after all the apologies, acknowledgements, commitments to look at MP, reddit posts and forum noise. It matters not, whether this patch is an iteration that is fully inclusive or partially hitting the marks, or whether this is Open Beta or not, I will know every line of code you touched from the last version and what you've attempted. I will check off what you have changed against what was newly broken and know for sure, everything you thought was the most important on that list and that will absolutely show your skills at listening, understanding and executing. For what it's worth, i'm easily pleased, very patient and know the product intimately, right down to the open code level. I only desire the old working things back as they were, as soon as possible. It's not an outrageous request. Happy if you defer the release another week also.

The problem is clearly OB being mainstream and there are a number of reasons. The first one is that it's often not that different or compelling than the Live branch. So why wait? Until that is, you get the last patch, which was visually beautiful on top and underneath an utter disaster with very strong game-breaking levels of errors underneath especially in MP and for mission builders and scripters extending the game past "Quick start". The second is multiplayer itself. The most obvious cause is that because of the above and because people want to see and use new things, servers go up on MP. It becomes dominant, therefore anyone who is on the fence has to choose between Live and OB and goes with what the servers are running. Before long that's the absolute Status Quo, people go with the MP common branch. Individual users offline can go between whatever suits them without any surrounding impact. Squadrons however have to keep together on the same version. This is absolutely required. You just have to see what two people on different DCS versions did for the Pilot/RIO relationship on certain versions. Same with other items of incompatibility and that also builds into server instability - joining, leaving, lagging and bringing the entire thing down. And sometimes OB and Live just aren't compatible because of a module change or a network code change, which is fairly common because modules and assets arrive at a steady pace and are always introduced through a DCSW update. Until the servers move back to Live, the multiplayers will stay where the servers are. If you are multiplayer or streaming something new, the version envy kicks in also. "He has what I want, so i want it to". Pretty normal reaction. Human nature won't change. Something has to be "different" to change the current way OB is used. People cannot make good choices by themselves, they will stick with the crowd. The crowd only needs a slight majority and then the ones on the fence or people caught up in the push tend to just go along with it. Case in point... you want to build a community because you have a good server and idea and you want a good server to play on too, with the public. Why would you put it on Live if most of the people are playing Open Beta? Did you choose that? No. But are you caught up in that? Yes, and the situation propels itself, maybe you work on someones script in OB and its changed and you have to keep on OB, or you support some community scripting or thing, or you make a mod and the textue and lighting changed so you need to fix it on OB, or you stream and want to show new content...there's just too much compelling for OB and the negatives are stil not enough to push people off until it gets so bad that you simply cannot play on it or there are no servers. And no matter how bad it get's, people will still try! They stream with these static planes 30 feet in the air just to show the new lighting effect, or they remove features on the server with statics and carry on, or whatever to keep it moving. Whilst some people say you cannot fix humans I believe that you can decide exactly what you want them to do, you just need courage. There will be complaint, moaning, wailing, and all sorts of backlash, but in the long run, if you want to produce a better product and have it seen looking better and being talked about positively, you have to reduce the exposure of your testing by force, because people know no other way of reason. They will hack it around, find workarounds, show that SCUD flying improperly liek a cruise missile, uncomment the code to enable neutral coaltions, and generally life finds a way. Only way is a very serious and mandatory change and I just dont see it ever happening because of one thing... Eagle Dynamics needs us to test and dont want to damage that. They have to find the right mix of somewhat playable versus unplayable, and keep us testing for them to cut costs. Or they could spend 1000 space bucks on glaasses for their testers so they can spot that an airplane static is hovering 20-30ft in the air.

What type of update do you want if there is nothing to show? How would you know if anything had been changed without revealing the entire detail of everything to it? I'm interested, do you want a picture of a random town. Has it occurred that they dont want to show it incomplete with any detail because that will raise questions on "why X features/location/airport" is not included" from the potential customers, in the middle of development when the work has been scheduled for a very specific amount of airports/locations and when these forums get hold of specifics then they just want something else/more/different? And finally, by debating this and discussing it, you realise that generates discussion that propels the marketing, so mystery is part of the entire process? Basically it goes like this... Wags shows a video of a Hornet... in the background is a Mi8 parked and you breifly glimpse at it and then everyone is talking about it and getting excited. It's called teasing. FOlks always fall for that! :)

Again missed the point (three times, its in the title too) that it's not banned from MP, it's removed from public browsers. Still being available, you can still play multiplayer in OB, but you need to use the ED website or have the IP to find the server. It reduces the public MP and large servers should choose to use Live instead. It doesn't need to be a game breaking bug, your two examples are a vast understatement of what OB contends with. I genuinely hope that you can acknowledge the less obvious and more complex bugs. In fact, the non gamebreaking defects in OB, that don't immediately get pushed to Live, sit around in OB for weeks and sometimes multiple months. Some of the apparently not gamebreaking bugs I've reported on that have been in multiplayer for weeks: Datalink Frame loss (in VR - frames halved) In MP, frames almost always worse, so we get it worse. Late activated units on all 3rd party modules appearing on radar as false contacts (old one but jeez how they missed that it was crippling) IFF coalition bugs and DataLink (the one thing you dont want in public MP and recurrs often) I could go on there are plenty to pick out, there's too many bugs sitting around in OB that don't stop the "visual element" of the game that ED prioritise over core functionality of Multiplayer games, and that has been the last decade of direction at ED, fix the visuals, leave the under hood and MP. They wouldnt be excusing this oversight publically if it were not so. So, who gains from fixing multiplayer issues? No one, we live in the OB branch and take what we are given and endure a low quality game which gets fixed and pushed to Live where the more single player folks recieve it and wonder why there are no servers on OB to play on. The benefit of testing in production is utterly pointles. Why test and fix it if we have to play it anyway and then say that "this is fine, it's OB, we don't mind reporting bugs" (and playing with them). What maniac actually says that on a public forum?! :) And the personal loss? You are a fortnight behind these MP issues and have to wait 2 weeks for a feature/module which you can access and play in OB anyway, earlier if you like? Is that a lot to really lose? I don't think so, but until the main servers actually run on the Live branch you have no choice and will never see it any other way and that is not your fault! I'm currently still unable to play online, I have to look ahead because I have a server to test on, I have a the Moose scripting community to support who are all doing the same thing, trying to make OB work and failing and finding bugs, my server is literally deceased of activity because the community is now split. On Tuesday 11th of Feb (prior to this patch) our Discord shows three Discord pages of takeoffs and deaths: 149 basic player events. (you can join RedSands Discord to see, it's all logged publically). Yesterday only two people even logged on, 16 player events. That's a decimated player base. Is two weeks wait because ED don't test multiplayer really worth the absolute mess that is on OB? You know they don't test OB and expect us to, right, else they would have seen the flying static units 20 feet above the ground in a few seconds. Everyone in this community has a responsibility to uphold a standard of quality of gaming and We have a duty to expect more and stand up and hold people accountable for our own contribution to this mess. As long as folks are happy to expect less, and as long as ED doesn't do any useful testing on Multiplayer (if they did, they wouldnt have released this) and as long as servers update and attempt to run OB immediately, we will have this continuous cycle as unpaid QA instead of actually getting to enjoy the sim as it should be. It just takes two weeks of patience to improve it, that's not a hard ask. Put the MP servers on Live branch and test for the MP community yourselves so that at least those servers can warn ED! How is that not a better solution? :) OB should be for testing not playing! (excuse the tone, im not meaning to be confrontational, just passionate)

yes but ive not done via the ME. If you have Moose then I can show you that code. SET task puts it to the top of the queue, push on puts it in the queue and this can be confusing. Still confuses me.

I prefer "Operation Wood chopper" badum-tshhh.

And todays news is.... Objects 74363485-74363877 were placed in two new towns on the south edge. Stay tuned for tomorrows update, it is due to have objects 74363877 to 74363993, and we can look at how the village takes shape around the stream. Seriously, terrain updates are not easy to do it's absolutely soul destroying work.

Pretty good logs for over a day running. They were clean, not spammed and without error bar the RAT object. I strongly suggest the problem is in DCS running the game for that long. Carriers do stop if they detect an obstruction, and you lose access to the controllable, that was reported ages back, especially happens when the escort crosses path. With dynamic wind anything could be happening, but from the logs, it's not scripting.

I do this reflexivly because on the Tomcat it does work and also gives you lateral control on the centreline without tocuhing rudder. But they are pretty big surfaces and on the Hornet I can't get any lateral movement, no increased noticeable braking. I can only go by my gut feeling, it's better a pilot responds, but I'd say it should have more noticeable effect than it does. Of course. I simply do not know, but there is documentation and process around this point that wouldnt have been written unless it was actually useful, so the question is very worthwhile.

Wording... but, we've been doing unmanned deepstrikes for 20 years +. What do you think a cruise missile is? :) Expanding unmanned units to include more helicopters, interceptors and things we do not already do it absolutley on the agenda, but the decision process is not in the realms of being taken away from battlefileld commanders any time soon, and that decision process, or AI is what I believe Musk was inferencing We will see more of the same, but the day a script chooses to automate killing humans without a human in the loop, is the day I ask the planet to stop... because I'll be getting off.

Not sure about recently, but I do recall posts about it. It's not that it hasn't been implemented, its more that it would cause havoc and unpredictability. I have seen it and it works, but generally I've had just as much success with using "invisible". Use it if you want to, because the way it is modelled is that blue and red still hate each other and white, the new coalition is ignored and ignores everything, so its kindda pointless that way. As for deciding what AI can shoot at, they dont regard buildings, they just regard "statics" and even then need to be forced to attack statics through the tasking system, they prefer to rampage on actual units. You can get them to attack themselves using the Tasking system also. The main issue around coalitions is the stupid magic mode 4 IFF that shows everything on your coalition as friendly and with IFF enabled and everything else as hostile. 3rd coalition will break a lot of scripting for sure. A lot of people have been expecting red or blue only for th elast ten years and wrote thigns that way.

I know this issue quite intimately. There are quite a few scenarios where you can think you changed the ROE but its sitting under another task that is superseeding it. The only way to reliably set it is to set the task to the controller rather than queue it. I can do this better with Moose and scripting, the ME kindda fails at manipulating tasks and options back and forth. You might enjoy this for a bedtime read though. https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/Mission_Editor:_AI_Tasking

Also affects GetAllAirbases(), GetAirbaseCategory() and most likely a whole swathe of stuff cascading out of there.

A lot of times versions are incompatible (not always) on multiplayer. Multiplayer version is dictated by the server admin. If the server admin runs OB, that does not give you the chocie. So, not, if folks want to run MP, they aren't free to decide, they have to go with what is dictated to them.

Don't be sorry to disagree. I've never seeked agreement myself, it's a very detestable trait! ;) But, do come up with a suggestion that can be achieved that allows public testing before it reaches multiplayer mainstream and doesnt require an NDA. Make sure you understand you can play MP and SP on OB and have free access to it. Make sure that your reasons are not about you, yourself not having access to mainstream servers on OB. Majority of people want access to OB. The OP suggestion does NOT change that. Majority of people playing multiplayer want the latest things. The majority of people want a stable environment also, without bugs. Since that is clearly incompatible, how do you feel as a multiplayer using OB, in testing and supplying feedback for the mainly single player market? Does that make you feel used and getting less for your money? Are you really OK as an unpaid tester getting less quality than others? What about the people that don't provide feedback? How many bug reports are actually filed comapred to how many people don't want to be an active part of that process? How much does it hurt to have 2-4 weeks of testing from another community before you get to try X feature/product? Is that a big thing? I put it to you, and the folks that are on OB, that they have absolutely no desire to test software unpaid. I do not believe there is any point in Open Beta for the customer and that ED benefits from that by giving us less testing. And that is why I propose a movement to the live branch, driven by the key server admins. The behaviour is nothing but common sense vs greed, but whilst all the key servers run on OB, what choice do we all have? None.

RedSands. It's no big deal for the server. It is for the dozens of people using it. Just multiply users by all that time and effort to upgrade, then downgrade, all that annoyance, disappointment, and dont think about yourself, but what you cause to the masses. It's software genocide. in parallel, consider a Microsoft patch that went wrong. It's not one person, but many. No one would know any better if it had always been this way. The only reason people want OB is because that is where the MP base is. It's a self fulfilling prophecy caused by the server admins. People are being limited in how they look at this. They consider OB to be required for MP. But only because MP == OB. So they consider losing OB to be a loss. If there was no MP on OB, you wouldn't lose anything. In fact it would be the reverse, you would have to lose to move to OB which is precisely the point people are not having the vision to see. MP would still be available to play under the original suggestion, in multiplayer, it just wouldn't be shown on the server list (Barely anyone read and comprehended that in the OP). The effect's intent would be to allow MP to exist somewhere other than OB and give people a real choice in how much they wanted to see the the OB new effects. Jump through hoops to go to OB, make it harder to exist on, whilst taking nothing away but the server listing. People begin using a "live branch" mindset, use MP, the most fragile of areas to have change on on the more stable tested branch, get out of testing for the single player market and reverse thigns to have SP test the majority of issues first and a smaller testing group on OB for people who insist its the only way to exist. I'm not sure I've seen many folks actually comprehend the way the issue manifests.

Yes, same. If you want to fly in a permissive environment, with no threats, learning systems and delivering spot on without a worry, on a single player environment or pve server, the A-10C is a luxury ride if you can accept long times to climb out. To have any chance of survival in high threat environments you either choose a Hornet or something that is fast enough to run, which the Harrier at least offers that to, with a pretty impressive payload. Plus it's so interesting in it's STOL that gives it another world of play over the others.

'Somewhat' agree. For basic interception duties, peacetime or full convential war, a drone has the "potential" to be faster to the point of the intercept and accept a greater amount of risk than human equipped interceptors, but I'm not so sure about 'fully autonomous', ever. There is so much issue around detection and identification, MITL comms being degraded or unavailable, ECM heavy environments, and state level interference with code and chip technology that I can't see a way to guarantee armed drones be allowed to carry out any life threatening persecution of threats with deadly weapons. Maybe the US could sign that off eventually but it's a long way off to say, hey we are giving this machine the ability to kill people by itself AND it can operate without a man in the loop, fully autonomously. AI is still written by humans, it still fundamentally has a human at it's heart wether it is realtime or not. Whether we scapegoat a developer or a soldier with a rifle, a general or a politician, blame eventually lands on someone human, AI is simply a projection of human intention, but written in a flawed way. But there can be a use, some scenarios can accept it. I would say any scenario where the human makes the decision to use lethal force and then the machine carries it out, is already abundantly used and "autonomous", in this case, can be extended further and further afield. We already have vast distances across the globe where this has been done for many many years, so much of this is in the wording. Specifically on fighter jets, I have some doubt. We operate gliders and very small manned vehicles all across the globe. Some of these without electronics. People fly where they shouldn't all the time, wandering across the superbowl, losing comms, no transponder. Visual recognition is not strong enough to be infallible. Without a way to identify a target, autonomy is useless.

I still maintain that the amount of servers on OB is a big problem. I hated rolling back our server, but so many people want to be on OB that it does impact MP population if you remain on the live branch. If the server population remains wanting something, they don't really care for common sense, they will follow things like BlueFlag, 104th etc etc. and if those servers dictate the MP playerbase then how can MP admins reasonably grow something or stop this cycle? Will people just say, well I'm not going to play multiplayer because that's a stability disaster? No, the MP community will follow the herd.... Blue Flag updated, so will I so I can play on it. Then.. rollbacks and backlash. Whilst I agree it's not for admins to cure ED's PR issues, there is a sense of responsibility of contributing to that cycle. So, given the quite postive desire for OB from the above threads, there is literally no point in having a stable branch for the MP community. MP servers NEVER revert to stable, they always revert to the last known good version. Saying anything else is mutually exclusive. So I find there's a lot of hypocrisy going around at worst, and at best, we are forcing ourselves to have a less enjoyable time with updates, taking more risk and giving ourselves the headaches. And I dont agree the testing is any better. Who are we testing for? We are living in it?! It's mainly the single players that choose Live branch, because there's no choice for them in MP (you can read the confused posts about server lists and lack of choice) I'm sick of testing after the last ten years, I really need a break from it. But no one seems to want a change.

Mirage 2000C. First turn is insane and allows you to spend everything. Hornet is OK, little underpowered in some comparison but more forgiving than the Mirage at slow speed. Viper i've not tried anything hard, it's got the most power so it should be a little more vertical than the others.