MBot

At the suggestion from NineLine I am putting this here, even if it is not strictly a bug. The newly added Lavan island is missing the structures of the Laval oil terminal and the Lavan refinery. With a capacity of 5.5 million barrels, Lavan is the second largest Iranian oil export terminal and the largest in the area of our map. It would be desirable to have the terminal as a target. I don't think that a lot of details or custom structures are required. Simply placing the oil storage tanks would be sufficient. Thank you for taking it into consideration.

Progress is good and steady, but it is a long way :) This is already fully integrated with DCE.

I haven't talked a lot about new features, but here is something I would like to share. As you might be aware, since the beginning I have been using some custom tasks via scripting in order to get AI behavior that is not possible through the ME alone. Namely to let all aircraft within a flight to attack separate static/scenery objects simultaneously. This works because via scripts you can task individual units instead of just whole groups. Now I think that the air-ground AI is probably the worst AI area in DCS. One thing I always disliked is how after dive-bombing from medium altitude, aircraft would linger around at low level, doing seemingly pointless maneuvering right over the target. This is mostly due to formation keeping requirements: 1. Immediately after dropping ordinance, AI wingmen maneuver to rejoin their leader. This alone already requires various maneuvering and since the leader is maneuvering off targets on it's own, it results in a ballet of dumb lingering over the target. 2. One of the *major* flaws of DCS AI is that flights cannot climb unless all wingmen are in formation. Since after dive-bombing the flight is thoroughly out of formation and rejoining takes ages, all aircraft will egress the target at 1000-ish meters and stay at this most dangerous altitude for miles and miles over hostile territory. The simple solution was to extend my custom tasking from letting all aircraft individually attacking, to also sending them the the egress point individually, where the flight eventually reforms again. After dropping bombs, all aircraft now directly turn for the egress point and since they are considered single-unit groups at that moment, climb right away to their assigned altitude. This has resulted in a huge improvement of efficiency and safety in medium-altitude dive bombing against defended targets. All aircraft from a flight dive into the threat zone from above, drop their bombs and climb out towards the egress point and to a safe altitude in a matter of seconds. DCS AI is still causing me headaches, especially in ground attack. But dive bombing now works pretty well :)

AI aircraft refuse to attack SAM-armed ships with bombs, even when under "Reaction to Threat = Evade Fire" and/or with ship's weapons turned off. AI won't even attack static object versions of SAM-armed ships (which are no threat). This precludes bomb attacks on warhsips docked in port. BombShip.miz

AI will not attack the new static objects Oil rig and Gas platform (perhaps because they are set up as heliports).

AI should place bomb salvos to bracket target instead of aiming the first bomb on target.

A first small step in the right direction would be the addition of for example AN/TPS-43 for western countries (and Iran), instead of having to construct coalitions with Russian EWRs.

Fixed in latest beta, thanks a lot :)

No, not from me. DCE's ability to support sensible helicopter missions is marginal at best. Perhaps this will be something to revisit when we get the Hind.

I don't see them turning, I see them climbing, which is part of their engagement behaviour.

Also is the lastWaypoint stopCondition working when using it for a scripted task? I can't get it to take effect.

A long time ago I made a mental note to use pushTask() only, as setTask() doesn't work (acts like resetTask). That is apparently still the case. Is that even an acknowledged issue? I just came across an interesting problem with Enroute Tasks applied via script. Apparent the scripting engine treats them like regular tasks, in that the action needs to be completed before the next action will be executed. Since Enroute Tasks are not meant to be "completed", this prevents all subsequent waypoint actions from being executed as long as the Enroute Task is active. This only happens with Enroute Tasks applied via script, within the ME it works.

Not in regards to AI. Once the AI has detected a target via AWACS/EWR and engages, it is connected to that target until it is destroyed or leaves the engagement parameters defined in the Mission Editor. It is not possible to hide again at this point.

Signed. SA-7 and S-60 57mm AAA are in my opinion the most significant ground units still absent from DCS. Very widespread throughout the USSR, the Warsaw Pact and Proxies. More AAA would then be "nice to have", especially Oerlikon 35mm and Bofors 40mm L/70 for the Persian Gulf map (both in use by Iran, UAE and Oman), and KS-19 100mm as the most widespread heavy AAA.

I haven't tested the Harrier yet, but I am under the impression that the whole carrier spawn system is still heavily work in progress anyway. So best will be to wait for the final implementation of carrier spawns and then adapt to that. Right now I have disabled uncontrolled aircraft on carriers, so aircraft are only spawned for immediate start-up and launch. It is pretty ugly as I hate to see AI spawing out of nowhere, but at least aircraft won't block each other. Once the Tarawa is sorted out by RAZBAM, this should hopefully also work with the Harrier.

I don't think AN/AAS-38A needed AN/ASQ-173 to drop your own LGBs, as you don't need a laser spot tracker to track your own designation. The aircraft already knows the target coordinates through AN/AAS-38A alone. I think AN/ASQ-173 was only required if you wanted to find someone else's laser destination (such as from a wingman or FAC).

You can also play with sortie rate in your loadout, which determines how many of your ready aircraft are actually available for tasking for a given mission. This is also affected by the mission duration in camp_init as well as the day/night capability of the loadout. Let's say you have 10 ready aircraft. Per default a 80% availability probability is applied to each aircraft to account for maintenance, so on average 8 airframes will be available for tasking (could be more or less though). Let's say your loadout is day and night capable (24 hours), the mission duration is 2 hours and the sortie rate in the loadout is 3 (per calendar day). This means that each of the 8 airframes will have a 0.25 chance of flying within the span of the next mission (3/24*2). So on average, 2 of your 10 ready aircraft will fly per mission (but could be from anywhere between 0 and 10). I hope I remember the math right, this is all from top of my head :) If you don't want to deal with all of this you can just push sortie rate to 99 and get most of your aircraft flying per mission, though at an unrealistic pace. Just as a heads-up, I am nearing completion of a major update of DCE with several months worth of work. The biggest thing is probably to make DCE fully compatible with carrier operations, but there are also many other fixes and improvements. Do not expect anything fundamentally new though. The principle functionality remains the same, but there are changes and updates throughout which will require adapting of existing campaigns. I currently do not plan to port my old campaigns. Just to let you guys know. I hope to get this out before the end of the year. The first campaign will be for the Hornet and the Gulf.

The maximum detection altitude of the P-19 radar has apparently been reduced to 6000m. This causes SA-2 and SA-3 sites, which in DCS rely on P-19 to function, to be unable to engage targets above 6000m.

Even though this relates to carrier operations, I can see that the mods don't want this in the F/A-18 bug subforum. But why move it to the A-10C forum instead?

When AI is ordered to attack with laser guided bombs with REL QTY>1 it releases weapons with a very large interval between bombs. Only the first bomb guides on target, the remaining bombs land about 1000m long each. AI attacking hardened targets such as bunkers with multiple LGBs simultaneously is not possible.

Here are some more issues with the on-map scenery bunkers: -The bunkers at Tunb Kochak, Abu Musa, Havadaraya and Al Dhafra AB seem indestructible. The are not destroyed even after taking sixteen GBU-10 hits. The bunkers at Bandar Abbad Intl, which have the same scenery object name but are apparently a smaller scaled variant, are destroyed ok with two GBU-10. -The bunkers at Tunb Kochak, Abu Musa, Havadaraya and Al Dhafra AB get logged hits by GBU-10, but GBU-27 or Mk-84 direct hits are not logged at all. -The bunkers at Kerman Airport are not recognized and attacked by AI using the Attack Map Object task.

When an AI aircraft taxies on a maneuvering carrier, is slides off the deck and accelerates to infinite speed. See attached track. Carrier_AI_Taxi.trk

When dropping a bomb salvo with bombs from a combination of VER and parent racks, only the bombs on VER are released. upon selecting the bomb on the Stores page again, the remaining bombs on parent racks are released immediately. Reproduction: -Select a loadout with a combination of VER and bombs on parent racks (for example 2*Mk-20 on stations 2/8 and a single Mk-20 on station 5). -Create a weapons program to drop all weapons in one ripple single salvo (in this case QTY 5/MLTY 1). -Fly a CCIP attack -> Only bombs from VER are dropped. -Select bomb on Stores page again -> no action. -Select bomb on Stores page again -> Remaining bombs are dropped immediately (pickle button not pressed).

With this small mission pack I wanted to create some naval oriented signature missions for the Viggen. All missions involve some element of reconnaissance and strike. The missions are fairly straightforward and represent how I imagine the Viggen would have been used in war. Randomization is built in where possible, so hopefully they offer some replayability from time to time. Included are: 1 - Pest Control - Anti-ship strike on Soviet Tarantul III-class missile corvettes. 2 - Utan Spaning Ingen Aning - Naval reconnaissance mission to provide target coordinates for a strike on a Krivak-II class frigate. 3 – Big Game - Wing sized attack against the guided missile cruiser Slava. 4 - ÖB:s Klubba - Strike of the E1 Attack Group against Soviet invasion fleet. The missions should be COOP compatible. Scripts should adapt to client aircraft (including client reconnaissance). Just go into the Mission Editor and switch aircraft from AI to clients according to your number of players (aircraft that are not taken by humans should remain AI). Important: Remember to switch client loadouts from "RB-04E for AI" to regular RB-04E. ViggenAtSea.zip

In addition, there is also a problem with the TOT fin. Note that the TID indicates I am 21 seconds behind schedule while the fin in the HUD advises that I am too fast.