Save feature for SP missions is essential

[ignition22]

I fly the campaigns as single missions and if im far into a mission and something goes wrong will often just skip to the next rather then play it through again. For me a save option would align with how I tend to play games but the ED people say its not practical so its all moot point I guess.

[Martyn]

I'm one of the biggest supporters of saving and persistence, but not in the way that has been described and it was is being asked for. Single player saving a complete moving state with missiles in the air, is asking too much. If you don't have 60 mins to sit un disturbed, then sims are not a good choice of a hobby, they take time to master for which you also require to spend time learning. There is an available pause button for single sorties, if an hour is too much to replay and practice your take offs then it's a problem the sim cannot solve, and you need to.

 

This is very insightful. It's just a simple choice between fulfilling my duties as an employee, father and husband, or enjoying flight sims as I have always done. Why did I never realise it was so simple?! Can you tell my boss, wife and son, or do I have to? :megalol:

 

Seriously, I do understand where you're coming from so forgive my flippant response, but giving up the hobby is not a sensible argument.

 

Look, I don't enjoy 10-minute gaming experiences. I enjoy lengthy hobbies that require investment and learning. I like board games - especially long ones. I like video games - especially long and in-depth ones. I like flight sims - and doing everything properly from start to finish. But my life has changed a lot over the last 20 years so I no longer have as much time - or large chunks of it - as I used to.

 

The Mi-8 Oilfield campaign has a mission length estimate in the briefing screen, which is brilliant. I could use it to plan when I could attempt the next mission to avoid disappointment (essential when some are 2+ hours). But when a mission goes wrong after a hour, I might still have an hour of time left. But that's not enough to replay the entire mission. So I have to park it until the next available time slot. Pretty disappointing.

 

When I watch a film on TV or DVD and have to stop halfway through for some unexpected reason, I don't start watching the entire film again the next day. I carry on where I left off. I can do this in practically every other game or sim I own, just not DCS. The situation isn't perfect in the likes of FSX/X-Plane either, so I fly those less often than I would like to as well. Same reason. But I'm not giving up...

 

I do pause the sim as a temporary 'save' feature sometimes, but that'll only do for short interruptions. I'm not going to leave my sim paused from one evening to the next while I go to work, letting my CPU & GPU churn away at full speed, as that's a complete waste of energy.

 

On the other hand, saving the state of a very complex mission that can last days or weeks, at least in a progress sense on the map, has been done so many times. Literally even wrote my own, which took a while since I had to learn a scripting language and how DCS works underneath to do it. But it's been done enough to push it into the realms of normal nowadays.

No issues with that but that's dealing with a different kind of problem.

 

I just don't understand a save that you were at some days ago, sitting down to do some flying and then jumping into a situation you barely remember when you press start. Just start a mission when you have the whole time to complete it, rather than expect to stop after 15 mins and think, "It would be really cool if I didnt have to do the start up again". Who wants to skip things based on some achievement criteria? Surely the important part of the whole experience is the immersion of doing the entire thing? Why would you want to jump back in, just to land, or just to skip taking off, some of the best parts about the sim.

 

This is nothing about being good to finish a mission and using a save state to get your criteria. I hope not anyway, because if it is, again, try something else that you can complete in ten minutes rather than an hour to ninety.

I agree - returning to a save can be confusing. Some might use it to skip the startup sequence, but that's not really what most of the above conversation was about.

 

The immersion comes from doing the entire thing - yes, absolutely! But when the mission triggers are glitchy, or the game crashes, or your cat/dog/goldfish/child/llama walks on your keyboard after 2 hours and causes you to eject unexpectedly, surely you can accept that a save feature could be beneficial?

 

The simple fact is that I ALWAYS start a mission when I have time to complete it. But if I don't complete it - which can be quite common - there is usually not enough time to attempt it again; sometimes not for several days, sadly. Or, when there is enough time, I might not have enough willpower to sit through an hour of starting up and flying the same route, listening to the same story dialogue for the 'nth' time...

 

I have no issues with the start-up, shutdown, en-route flying or 'switchology'. I enjoy it more than the combat. I would say DCS is almost a civil flight sim for me with a sprinkling of combat thrown in. But like everyone, I have limits of patience and time.

 

Is is a pointless argument anyway if it's not coming any time soon, but the fact remains that a single-player save feature (even with some compromises such as not all states being saved exactly) would go a long way to improve the DCS experience for many. There were enough +1 comments in this thread to prove that :)

[ngreenaway]

-snipped long post full of words and ideas-

 

Perhaps there is a solution in place that may mitigate some of the issues, at least with replaying missions. Oilfield campaign had two features that I wish were incorporated in all campaigns, the time estimate for missions (for much of the reasons you mentioned) and the background random radio chatter which added hugely to immersion.

When playing thru the ka-50 deployment campaign, it would suck spending a half hour or more to get to a target area, only to get shot down in the ensuing firefight. On subsequent attempts, I found the controls to speed up time reduced the blow to morale at retracing that half hour of flight over and over and over again until finally getting the mission done right. That time compression or whatever the control is called (I'm at Lowe's right. Is, & not at my desk) is certainly implementable in other modules (if it isn't already? Dunno) more easily than introducing a save feature and all the complexities that come with it

[David OC]

How about not asking for a save, perhaps an easy way would be to add the ability / option for the mission builder to have a new start location in the part 2 of that mission.

 

From the Manual

"If mission total values are 49 or lower, the player will fall back one stage. If the value is 50, they stay in the same stage. If the mission total value is 51 or above, the player will advance to the next stage. By populating a stage with multiple missions, each with different values, you can create a campaign that flows back and forth according to mission results.

If two missions are assigned the same value range in a stage, the mission will be randomly selected.

The assigned value range of a mission within a stage is listed in the Range column."

 

 

At the moment you can have a randomly selected mission.

49 or lower, the player will fall back one stage

50, they stay in the same stage

51 or above, the player will advance

 

So if there can be an easy option to have a side mission if at the 50%

 

The player can chose to start at mid point of that mission (If only available and setup by the mission builder)

You choose to replay said mission / play from part 2 of the same mission where the mission build wants you to start from.

[Sandman1330]

 

 

Well said.

[Martyn]

When playing thru the ka-50 deployment campaign, it would suck spending a half hour or more to get to a target area, only to get shot down in the ensuing firefight. On subsequent attempts, I found the controls to speed up time reduced the blow to morale at retracing that half hour of flight over and over and over again until finally getting the mission done right. That time compression or whatever the control is called (I'm at Lowe's right. Is, & not at my desk) is certainly implementable in other modules (if it isn't already? Dunno) more easily than introducing a save feature and all the complexities that come with it

 

 

The time compression - if I understood you right - is a standard DCS feature across all modules as far as I know. You mean that one with LShift-Z (normal time), LCtrl-Z (accelerate time) and LAlt-Z (slow time), right? That's a good option for aircraft with autopilots, though I wonder if it would cause any glitches with AI if pushed too far.

 

 

Now that I think about it, years ago (1.5 or earlier) it used to make things run very quickly if you were not careful with the use of LCtrl-Z, to the point you couldn't even hope to control your aircraft, but now it doesn't seem to go as fast - perhaps the simulation rate is effectively capped to avoid weird behaviour if pushed too far.

 

 

I seldom use it, mostly during replays (when they work) or on occasional practise missions which I might run multiple times, where I want to skip to the action. But definitely a good option on some campaign missions if replaying it for the hundredth time.

[HiJack]

Yes, can we please have save mission state? Even if it breaks old saves every time DCS is updated it would be a massive help for single player missions. They can be longer, have different tasks, etc. It would be a game changer! :)

 

EDIT: Here are the older discussions we had on the subject.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=174017

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=162243

Edited September 7, 2020 by HiJack

[ebabil]

They clearly stated that there won't be a save feature