Carrier progress and support!

[Nealius]

Popular demand is whatever their internal board decides amongst themselves. 

[Qiou87]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

As a Tomcat pilot I have no business in the hangar, LSO or Airboss. I have yet to see what ready room is for - if it's new kind of briefing before the mission - it might be fun but definitely not priority. All this is far below glow sticks, taxi marshalling, 'burble' and Tomcat compatibility for me. I guess "by popular demand" they choose different roadmap.

 

I mean I am all for expanding what we can do in DCS ; some people enjoy playing the ATC, so why not the LSO? But like you, I am a virtual pilot, and I bought the SC to launch my Hornet in the most immersive way possible. I don't care about the rest so much. The ready room will depend on compatibility for adoption ; I fly with ~20-30 guys, half of them own the SC, so if the Ready room is accessible to all maybe we will use it - if we can easily integrate a couple of pictures as briefing material, if it takes 30min to set it up each time forget about it. If everyone has to own the SC, its use will be limited to Hornet/Tomcat squadrons, and more relaxed/multiplane groups won't use it.

I respect that some do care about the new features like hangars and airboss and such, and I respect that ED is trying to add variety and depth to air-naval operations - this is great. But this should absolutely not come at the cost of basic functionality ; bugs are one thing, frustrating but fixable, but I am 100% with you: glow sticks, taxi & other "on the deck" features should absolutely come first.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Qiou87

[Callsign112]

19 hours ago, Qiou87 said:

Hangars and stuff like that are all on the roadmap. So is ground crew taxiing you to the cat, which seems like a must-have if you want to spawn 16 or more Hornets in multiplayer. With AI as well, I already see AIs stuck together with 3-4 planes on the deck, so 16 launching properly seems like a dream at the moment.

 

Let's be optimistic for today's announced OB patch: it will fix the launching problems and we will be able to enjoy the SC again! Yeah! *I hope*

Other than the jet that comes with the SC, and the one that comes with DCS world, I don't own any others at the moment. But regarding the AI thing, I'm curious, is this something you have seen all along, or just since 2.7?

 

I didn't do anything special, and I am not very good with the mission editor, but I have never seen a problem with AI taxi and launch using the current Stable Release. The problem I am now having seems to be more with recovery.

 

I have built two versions of the mission you see in the video. The first version includes 12 individual AI jets with their own way-points. The second version contains 20 AI jets (5 groups of 4) with way-points for the leader of each group. It is a lot less work to assign way-points in the grouped version, but it also seems to affect the AI logic.

 

In the version with the individual way-points, All planes spawn, taxi, launch, and recover without a hitch. If I include enemy aircraft in the vicinity, they will even break off to deal with the threat, and then return to their way-point heading and complete recovery. In the version with grouped way-points, the jets still spawn, taxi, and launch without a hitch, but they wont recover completely. I know I have seen similar behavior with infantry units between grouped and individual formations, so I don't know if there is a common thread here between the two types of units in terms of AI logic.

 

Normally I try to keep YouTube videos under 10 minutes, but in this video I wanted to show the AI behavior in actual time for bug reporting purposes. The track file I left in the bugs section, and the video attached here are from two separate runs of the same mission. In the run where the track file was made, there were no more planes trying to land after 3 jets trapped. In the video you see 5 planes land before the rest start looping in a holding pattern.

 

To save you from having to watch the whole video, you can see that there are 16 jets on the flight deck at the beginning of the video, and at 6:05 in the timeline, you see 4 jets spawn at elevators 2 and 4 to complete the formation of 20 planes. Something else worth mentioning is at 24:35 in the timeline, you see a jet drop into the ocean while lining itself up for final approach, and then the next plane to land (4th jet) has what looks like damage on its nose cone.

 

Even as someone who hasn't started flying jets in DCS world yet, the SC is hands down the most interesting module I purchased, and I can see a huge potential in it. Like the other Tech Packs, I think strategically it is a very important piece of the SIM.

 

What I have learned so far is that I can scramble 4 jets in about 3.5 minutes by setting the first group to "Take-off hot from parking", and with the other 4 groups set to "Take-off from ramp", all 20 planes complete their launch sequence in under 15 minutes. But I will have to set all 5 groups to take-off hot to see how it affects the total time.

 

 

 

[Callsign112]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of SP users who like to use the SC in missions and campaigns. Other than that I agree.

As a Tomcat pilot I have no business in the hangar, LSO or Airboss. I have yet to see what ready room is for - if it's new kind of briefing before the mission - it might be fun but definitely not priority. All this is far below glow sticks, taxi marshalling, 'burble' and Tomcat compatibility for me. I guess "by popular demand" they choose different roadmap.

 

I am just trying to catch up with the discussion here. Is the bold text something someone said? My understanding from the general discussion points on this topic, and the quotes below are that the current long list of issues the community is experiencing are a priority and are being worked on, but they are separate from the development cycle of the product itself. 

 

"Regarding open beta, it is a public testing build, there will be development ups and downs during development. We hotfix when we can, sometimes like now we are dealing with more than one issue, and we are waiting for other major issues to be fixed before we patch."

 

"The reality is this whole process takes a long time, is super complex, and requires hundreds of man hours to test, we do our best, sometimes things go well, sometimes they dont."

 

I completely understand where the OP's frustration is coming from, but something doesn't make sense here. Given how important the F18 project is for ED, it doesn't make sense that they would just suddenly stop supporting the SC. They gain nothing by delaying the SC, or keeping it in a crippled state.

 

My feeling is that the problems they are facing today are more complex then they appear, and I am wondering if we aren't seeing a snowball type effect from issues that were present before the SC launch. Again, they gained nothing by delaying the SC launch date, but whatever the issues were, they were big enough to make ED take it on the chin and suffer the community uproar that followed.

 

Clearly, the SC was missing a number of planned features at its launch, and some of the "work in progress" like the hanger were pushed back as a result of unforeseen issues, and probably in part due to the level of blow-back from the community. Since buying the SC Tech Pack, I took the time to read the entire 112 page SC discussion from start to finish, and I could almost palpate the frantic tension as ED worked to resolve whatever background issues were causing the SC release delay.

 

But as a community, I think we need to keep things in perspective. Things like Marshaling and F14 compatibility are bugs that need to be addressed ASAP. But glow sticks belong in the "product development" bin. I don't think the hanger has been prioritized over glow sticks. I think the hanger has been in development long before the need for glow sticks was recognized. Call it an oversight if you will, but glow sticks appear to have missed the initial feature list. But as I have asked in a previous post, does the importance of the hanger have anything to do with player spawn points for large missions and MP? TBH, a lot of people seem to be knocking ED for working on the Hanger/Ready Room/LSO/Airboss without knowing the included functionality of those features, and which were probably works-in-progress before the SC was even released, and before issues with Marshaling could be detected. 

 

Does anyone know how much of the current delays have resulted from things like updating the core of DCS. I did a google and found out that DCS was first released in 2008. It would be unreasonable for anyone to expect that the engine running DCS back in 2008 could still be capable of running it today. If the demand is to continually improve the immersive experience with more accurate simulations of real world objects, then the work needed to allow that has to also be done at some point. ED has a responsibility to fix what is broken, and they have nothing to gain by neglecting that responsibility. In terms of supporting a more immersive experience, I am surprised that more people don't seem to recognize how important the Tech Packs are in tying the whole SIM together, and in some ways, are more important than the jets they fly.           

 

[markturner1960]

Out of interest, how does the AI do in following RL procedures for a case 1 recovery ? Would you mind uploading your missions? 

 

 

 

[Callsign112]

This is the grouped mission from the video. I added some enemy aircraft for your viewing pleasure. Like I said, I don't own any of the American Jets yet, so I would be interested to know what happens when you add yourself into the mission.

 

It would be interesting to see what happens if you made one of the planes from the second group player controllable. So after the first 4 jets scramble, you taxi to a CAT with the second group. The thing I am most interested in is to see if we can figure out what happens to the AI logic when a real player is added to the mix. Does the addition of a real player confuse the AI logic somehow, or does the real player break the AI logic by doing something he/she isn't supposed to do? I know with the infantry, you can break the AI logic given to infantry just by driving behind them. So it would be useful if you could use this mission to see how the AI react to your plane. 

 

As a suggestion, you could watch the AI plane that you make player controllable to see how it would taxi up to the CAT. You could then try to mimic the path it took to see if anything changes, and then change what you did the first time to compare.

 

 

F18.miz

[Stearmandriver]

8 hours ago, markturner1960 said:

Out of interest, how does the AI do in following RL procedures for a case 1 recovery ? Would you mind uploading your missions? 

 

 

 

To be honest, they do pretty well at both case 1 and 3 recoveries.  I know we all like to criticize the AI (usually with good reason), but this mostly works.  In Case 1 conditions, inbound flights will marshall overhead until the last jet of the preceding flight has trapped, then they'll hit the inititial and break the deck with always a perfect interval.  Now, if you're lead with an AI wingman, you'd better fly a textbook pattern after the kiss-off or he will cut you right off; they fully expect YOU to fly a perfect pattern with a perfect groove time too ;).

 

In Case 3, they'll marshall and push on-time, and Marshall will assign your push time to fit you correctly in the stack.  Once again, if you fly the correct profile, your interval will be perfect on preceding traffic, and the next AI will have exactly a 1 minute interval on you. 

 

It's really fun to come back from a Liberation mission without being fully aware of the other (AI) flights out there, and to be sequenced properly to the deck.  Sitting on the deck after shut-down, canopy open, and hearing jets overhead, looking up to see another flight breaking the deck etc...  it's really good stuff. 

 

Yes, the SC has issues.  Yes, the current multiplayer launch bug needs fixed yesterday.  Yes, it's asinine that work on eye-candy features like a ready room is being prioritized ahead of usability fixes like lighted wands. Yes, AI occasionally goes stupid on the deck.  Yes all of those things. 

 

... This is still far and away the best simulation of naval air that's ever existed on a desktop sim.  I mean, nothing else is even in the same league. If you like carrier aviation, you REALLY need to try it! 

[Nealius]

I concur, recoveries are mostly okay other than some aircraft parking over the foul line on the Patio. It's spawn, taxi, and launch that's all buggered, and has been since day one. 

[Callsign112]

14 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

To be honest, they do pretty well at both case 1 and 3 recoveries.  I know we all like to criticize the AI (usually with good reason), but this mostly works.  In Case 1 conditions, inbound flights will marshall overhead until the last jet of the preceding flight has trapped, then they'll hit the inititial and break the deck with always a perfect interval.  Now, if you're lead with an AI wingman, you'd better fly a textbook pattern after the kiss-off or he will cut you right off; they fully expect YOU to fly a perfect pattern with a perfect groove time too ;).

 

In Case 3, they'll marshall and push on-time, and Marshall will assign your push time to fit you correctly in the stack.  Once again, if you fly the correct profile, your interval will be perfect on preceding traffic, and the next AI will have exactly a 1 minute interval on you. 

 

It's really fun to come back from a Liberation mission without being fully aware of the other (AI) flights out there, and to be sequenced properly to the deck.  Sitting on the deck after shut-down, canopy open, and hearing jets overhead, looking up to see another flight breaking the deck etc...  it's really good stuff. 

 

Yes, the SC has issues.  Yes, the current multiplayer launch bug needs fixed yesterday.  Yes, it's asinine that work on eye-candy features like a ready room is being prioritized ahead of usability fixes like lighted wands. Yes, AI occasionally goes stupid on the deck.  Yes all of those things. 

 

... This is still far and away the best simulation of naval air that's ever existed on a desktop sim.  I mean, nothing else is even in the same league. If you like carrier aviation, you REALLY need to try it! 

Maybe this is part of the problem then. As you can see in the video, from the first group starting its landing sequence, the first plane gets waved off, the 2nd and 3rd hook, and the 4th, which is rejoined with the 1st, keeps looping around until a second group breaks off from the holding stack and starts to land ahead of them. I have sat and watched planes get waved off for nearly an hour, so there appears to be no end to the loop.

 

It probably has nothing to do with it, but after working with infantry and ground vehicles a bit, I noticed that AI logic (way-points, attack commands) can be easily broken with player interaction. And AI logic for grouped formations is the worst. If something unexpected happens to one instance of the group unit, it really messes things up. 

 

But it is funny how I haven't seen problems with taxi/takeoff, but have nothing but problems with recovery, and you guys seem to be finding the opposite. Knowing how player interaction can mess up AI logic, I wonder if some of what is being reported isn't something the player is doing him/herself. If the parking slots are numbered, couldn't ED just have the player select/click the slot they want AI/Players to spawn into from the ME? The other issue might be static objects. They have highlighted safe zones (green area) in the manual where you can put personnel and equipment, but AI also use some of this area to taxi to and from. 

 

 

 

[draconus]

18 hours ago, Callsign112 said:

If the parking slots are numbered, couldn't ED just have the player select/click the slot they want AI/Players to spawn into from the ME?

Because of aircraft of different sizes the parking spaces can't and shouldn't be static places. Maybe the carrier areas (like sixpack) and order could be commanded instead? The placement is not optimal anyway unless we get possibilty to turn around/back off.

[Callsign112]

8 hours ago, draconus said:

Because of aircraft of different sizes the parking spaces can't and shouldn't be static places. Maybe the carrier areas (like sixpack) and order could be commanded instead? The placement is not optimal anyway unless we get possibilty to turn around/back off.

Accounting for different planes should be quite easy to do. Have the player first designate the plane (F18/F14/E2C ect...) for any given slot, this in turn would affect the number of spaces still available for spawn, and or if the selected plane will even fit in the desired slot.

[wilbur81]

On a positive note: I'm getting WAY better performance on board the Supercarrier in 2.7! This is a good thing because overall performance for me in 2.7 is degraded.