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Forrestal Update?


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Keep in mind that the Ranger and Indy are not easy modifications considering the hull and deck changes - hence why we're leaving it open-ended for now. The Forrestal and Sara were chosen because data was more readily available at the time, and it fits well for going back in time considering the A-6 and others.

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11 hours ago, RustBelt said:

It's really weird, I know it's the Class ship, but the Forestall NEVER had a squadron operating F-14Bs. Heck even our VF-11 Red Rippers has an AE not NK tail. 


Really Only the Saratoga EVER had B's on her deck. 

 

That's what I meant. Forrestal for the A's and Saratoga for VF-103 and VF-74 B's.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Was hoping for at least a livery change to get an Independence stand-in for the Black Knights. It seems really difficult to get a proper combo of aircraft liveries and CVs without downloading 100GB-worth of user files. 

 

One major concern I have is with the Forrestal being "on par with the Stennis." Does that mean we will not get realistic carrier comms, no LSO comms, and no LSO grading? If so, that leaves us Tomcat drivers high and dry, as ED has no interest in bringing full Tomcat compatibility with the Supercarrier (wrong LSO calls, wrong IFLOLS, wrong grades). In the future they will also probably have no interest integrating the A-6. So for the Tomcat and future Intruder, where are we going to get the proper carrier ops experience if ED won't do it, and HB won't do it either?


Edited by Nealius
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1 hour ago, Nealius said:

Was hoping for at least a livery change to get an Independence stand-in for the Black Knights. It seems really difficult to get a proper combo of aircraft liveries and CVs without downloading 100GB-worth of user files. 

 

One major concern I have is with the Forrestal being "on par with the Stennis." Does that mean we will not get realistic carrier comms, no LSO comms, and no LSO grading? If so, that leaves us Tomcat drivers high and dry, as ED has no interest in bringing full Tomcat compatibility with the Supercarrier (wrong LSO calls, wrong IFLOLS, wrong grades). In the future they will also probably have no interest integrating the A-6. So for the Tomcat and future Intruder, where are we going to get the proper carrier ops experience if ED won't do it, and HB won't do it either?

 

 

Same.  I only really want Ranger and Saratoga.  

 

Ultimately the modex problem needs to either dynamically include carrier via ME or leave it off entirely. 

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11 hours ago, Nealius said:

Was hoping for at least a livery change to get an Independence stand-in for the Black Knights. It seems really difficult to get a proper combo of aircraft liveries and CVs without downloading 100GB-worth of user files. 

 

One major concern I have is with the Forrestal being "on par with the Stennis." Does that mean we will not get realistic carrier comms, no LSO comms, and no LSO grading? If so, that leaves us Tomcat drivers high and dry, as ED has no interest in bringing full Tomcat compatibility with the Supercarrier (wrong LSO calls, wrong IFLOLS, wrong grades). In the future they will also probably have no interest integrating the A-6. So for the Tomcat and future Intruder, where are we going to get the proper carrier ops experience if ED won't do it, and HB won't do it either?

 

 

We should get the Saratoga fairly soon after the Forrestal as well since those two are fairly similar. Independence and Ranger differ quite a bit in terms of islands and masts needing more work. We already have most of the proper squadrons by default with VF-103 and 74 for Saratoga (could even use it for the Reforger campaign) and VF-11 14A + potentially a VF-31 one as well for the Forrestal. 


Edited by Skysurfer
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I'm prepping VF-201 and VF-202 for Forrestal's short reserve training cruise with CVWR-20 in 1987. It was only a 10 day exercise but still IMO a solid basis for scenarios where Reserve squadrons/air wings are activated in a time of emergency, as was done in Korea and Vietnam, and even in Iraq when VFA-201 deployed on the Roosevelt in 2003 to support OIF.

 

I reckoned a scenario where the Kennedy has to return to Norfolk in an emergency and Forrestal is the only Atlantic carrier available to immediately fill in could be feasible for the new Syria/Lebanon region, or for the Caucuses as in theory the Kennedy was usually in the Med, or even PG makes sense. Perfect excuse to do a whole package of CVWR-20 skins, though for now we have no A-7E or A-6E quite yet, nor many of the other support aircraft. But I can at least press the A-6E mod and EA-6B mods into service, have some F/A-18A skins done up for the VA squadrons as they eventually did pick up Hornets, and just pretend the S-3B is a KA-3. That leaves the E-2 needing a couple skins and the SH-3 mod/reskin to add the reserve helo squadron.

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I'm still concerned about getting the full naval experience out of the Tomcat. Put into other words, or rather a chart:

 

Feature Supercarrier Forrestal
Deck crew Supported NA
Carrier comms Supported NA
LSO corrections Not supported NA
IFLOLS  Not supported Supported

 

If the above situation is true, we do not get a full-feature carrier that works with the Tomcat at all, while the Hornet enjoys a near full experience with the Supercarrier. If competition with Supercarrier sales is an issue, then ED should work on integrating the Tomcat, instead of 3rd party devs deciding to omit features. 

 


Edited by Nealius
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10 hours ago, Nealius said:

I'm still concerned about getting the full naval experience out of the Tomcat. Put into other words, or rather a chart:

 

Feature Supercarrier Forrestal
Deck crew Supported NA
Carrier comms Supported NA
LSO corrections Not supported NA
IFLOLS  Not supported Supported

 

If the above situation is true, we do not get a full-feature carrier that works with the Tomcat at all, while the Hornet enjoys a near full experience with the Supercarrier. If competition with Supercarrier sales is an issue, then ED should work on integrating the Tomcat, instead of 3rd party devs deciding to omit features. 

 

 

 

Well, you have to remember that the Hornet didn't come with the SC. The SC is a seperate full price module (albeit with discount). Personally I still maintain that the SC should have been free or at least had way more features to justify it being a paid module. Like, why can't we choose spawn locations? Why is the launch crew always present at every catapult and only runs away as you enter the groove? It is so very limiting for mission building without some elaborate workarounds and tricks. Let alone night ops or the light transition bug. I personally would much rather prefer the Forrestal if I can choose 4 spawn locations, have a properly calibrated FLOLS and working ACLS as well as no launch crew just always standing there no matter what. Some aspects of the SC are obviously good but most are simply unrealistic and not very good (wrong comms at times, lack of certain frequencies and the lack of any dynamic deck marshalling to the cats). 

 

Overall having a free, high fidelity Forrestal and Saratoga for everyone in DCS is an awesome thing and really fits the time period of most dcs jets quite well. 

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I have carrier comms and the LSO calls/grading on the regular Stennis, so I would expect them to work equally on the Forrestal. Not that the carrier comms are very well done for that matter, the LSO calls any help beside stating the obvious or the grading ever working correctly... Most of the time I simply ignore doing the scriped comms and fly zip-lip anyway.

 

The only significant thing missing from the supercarrier will be the very cool deck crew, which while being a shame, is mostly eye candy. Hopefully, this could be added to the Forrestal later.


Edited by MBot
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50 minutes ago, MBot said:

I have carrier comms and the LSO calls/grading on the regular Stennis, so I would expect them to work equally on the Forrestal. Not that the carrier comms are very well done for that matter, the LSO calls any help beside stating the obvious or the grading ever working correctly... Most of the time I simply ignore doing the scriped comms and fly zip-lip anyway.

 

The only significant thing missing from the supercarrier will be the very cool deck crew, which while being a shame, is mostly eye candy. Hopefully, this could be added to the Forrestal later.

 

 

Yeah agreed. I'd sure be open for SC-like features later on but right now I just want the thing finally released after like a one year delay at the very least.

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  • 2 weeks later...

One thing I'd like to see is at least some animated deck crew that will at minimum do the launch animations (the cat crew doing the thumbs up, and the shooter doing his thing), and them getting out of the way when a plane comes in to land. The interactive stuff I don't mind missing as much.

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6 hours ago, Tank50us said:

One thing I'd like to see is at least some animated deck crew that will at minimum do the launch animations (the cat crew doing the thumbs up, and the shooter doing his thing), and them getting out of the way when a plane comes in to land. The interactive stuff I don't mind missing as much.

 

Well, 4 years ago (bloody hell, it's been that long) HB did do these:

 

7.jpg

 

Sourced from here, with a load of screenshots.


Edited by Northstar98
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Sounds like statics.

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Yeah, my "conspiracy theory" is that ED took that work and tweaked it into the Super Carrier deck crew 😉

 

But remember that Animated crew is portable to any carrier, the only thing that would be lacking would be de Catapult crew and directors...

(and teh LSO and breifing spost yeah, but eye candy wise I mean)...

 

 

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I have one big wish to HB. Please configure your carrier to have as many spawn positions as possible, including at the back end of the ship to serve catapults 3 and 4. For single-player it just so important to have to have sufficient space to spawn Alpha Strike sized elements from a parking position (versus spawning AI on the catapults, which looks lame).

 

I am fully aware that these extra spawn positions will block the landing area. For single player this is a non-issue, as this can be managed by the mission designer (schedule no landings when a big strike is to launch). And for multiplayer, honestly, when was the last time that you saw more than 8 guys spawning simultaneously on carrier outside of an organized group event? Small number of players will always spawn from the lower numbered parking positions if free, and these can be set up to be outside of the landing area. Organized groups events with large number of players that spawn in the landing area should be able to coordinate no landings during mass launches.

 

So please, do not be shy to put as many parking positions as possible on the landing area.

 

1024px-USS_Forrestal_(CV-59)_underway_at

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There's a lot of problems with developing tightly spaced parking spots, ex.:

1. They fit only one type of aircraft (or the biggest possible) and since we have more, we end up with bigger parking spots for smaller a/c and wasted space.

2. For the opposite direction parking we'd need crew function to move us back.

3. Even if the parking spaces are made free (same as puting statics) the problem #1 gets fixed, #2 stays but needs new really smart AI taxing to get to the catapults and to the parking spaces.

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I am not proposing opposite parking spots though, and the parking spots should be spaced to make it work in DCS anyhow. What I am hoping for is that space at the back of the ship (on the landing area) is used for additional higher numbered spawn slots.

 

ED's supercarriers are set set up with parking spots for ongoing flight ops where no parked aircraft blocks the landing area. I want to set up cyclic operations for large strike packages which requires spawning aircraft from the landing area. I as the mission designer am able to accommodate the fact that landing on the carrier is not possible 100% of the time.


Edited by MBot
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3 minutes ago, Swordsman422 said:

I'd like to be able to define the parking spot for every aircraft or static placed on the ship just like you can with airfields.

 

That is a good wish, but this is outside the control of HB and something to bring up to ED. But defining parking spots on the landing area is I think something that HB can actually do.

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Since this will have Stennis feature parity, you can already place statics as you like and thus "make" it spawn you in a certain spot (afaik). 4 Spawns is also more than enough for most coordinated MP missions, let alone SP with a full package. 

 

I just want the thing to finally come out after numerous delays...


Edited by Skysurfer
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13 minutes ago, Skysurfer said:

Since this will have Stennis feature parity, you can already place statics as you like and thus "make" it spawn you in a certain spot (afaik). 4 Spawns is also more than enough for most coordinated MP missions, let alone SP with a full package. 

 

No, AI can only be spawned from the defined spawn parking positions (statics cannot be turned into active units). The Stennis (and the Supercarriers) do not have nearly enough to launch a large strike package.

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