Air Refueling Cheat

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Черный Дракул said:

Following your logic of dynamic/switchable curves not being necessary for gamepad controllers

No, actually I think switchable sensitivity would be a fine feature. Most joystick software can probably do that already. 

[Harlikwin]

1 hour ago, Черный Дракул said:

 

Why, exactly? 

 

2 reasons. 

1. To illustrate that it can be done with a crappy controller

2. To reinforce the point it's a skill problem not a DCS problem. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Черный Дракул said:

Then having the capacity to turn on visual and other aids to train better, as well as other players being able to auto-refuel and whatnot will not impact your experience. 

There’s already an unlimited fuel option. So auto-refuel isn’t needed. ED already said they have no plans to add that in any case. It’s just my opinion but I don’t think any icons or visual aids would help. It would just as difficult, maybe even more so, to fly formation with screen graphics as opposed to the tanker. 

[SharpeXB]

5 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

 

2 reasons. 

1. To illustrate that it can be done with a crappy controller

2. To reinforce the point it's a skill problem not a DCS problem. 

With enough practice, nothing is impossible. Racing sims are way more difficult than AAR and yet there are players using game pads on the top of the leader boards in those. So I don’t doubt that somebody could do that, in fact I’m surprised it hasn’t been posed already. Sure it’s not the ideal control but again it can actually compete with racing wheels in a much more difficult game. 

[Tippis]

8 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

2 reasons. 

1. To illustrate that it can be done with a crappy controller

2. To reinforce the point it's a skill problem not a DCS problem. 

Has anyone said that it's a DCS problem? Has anyone said that it can't be done?

Or is that completely besides the point when the actual issue at hand is that very skill problem and the methods that could be used to address it?

 

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

There’s already an unlimited fuel option.

Unlimited fuel does the exact opposite of what you claim you want, and it most certainly doesn't solve the problem at hand. This has been explained to you in full so you can just stop that mindless drivel. I don't understand how you manage to come to mindbogglingly incoherent conclusion that the second most unrealistic and difficulty-erasing option available in DCS would in any way, shape, or form serve the purpose of offering the increased realism and difficulty that people want to enjoy by having these tools at their disposal.

 

How?! Please, explain if you can. We all know you have absolutely no ability to do so, but please try anyway. It would be hilarious to watch.

 

How on earth do you think that unlimited fuel would in any way help resolve the problems people are having as far as learning the things you are asking them to learn — your suggestion actively works against your own stated intent. It is nothing short of absurd in how logically inconsistent it is. Do you even have the slightest clue how that option works in DCS, or are you as so often just assuming things and then making wild unfounded claims based on nothing but your personal guesswork?

 

 

21 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

ED already said they have no plans to add

…a full-fidelity MiG-29. Or F-16. Or Apache. Or to let people without the SC module play in SC missions. Or a try-before-you-buy scheme. So I guess that puts this idea in very good company.

 

The list of things that “ED has already said they have no plans” for, but which were subsequently introduced to great fanfare, is so long that it would probably break the forum post length limit.

 

2 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Racing sims are way more difficult than AAR and yet there are players using game pads on the top of the leader boards in those.

…aaaaaand as you have also been told whenever you bring up this irrelevant tangent: guess what those sims have? The exact kind of UI and helper systems that people are asking for here. So all you're presenting here is that there is no intelligent or coherent reason why DCS shouldn't have it too. Instead, you're offering a very convincing argument that the things you feel must never ever happen for no reason that you are capable of articulate, actually most definitely belong in the game.

[Harlikwin]

18 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

With enough practice, nothing is impossible. Racing sims are way more difficult than AAR and yet there are players using game pads on the top of the leader boards in those. So I don’t doubt that somebody could do that, in fact I’m surprised it hasn’t been posed already. Sure it’s not the ideal control but again it can actually compete with racing wheels in a much more difficult game. 

 

I totally agree, but I see this "trend" if you will in DCS to simplify complex tasks, call it "skill replacement". AAR and formation flying  are fundamental skills of a fighter pilot, and DCS is a simulator of that. So I generally regard "skill replacement" requests rather dimly. You wanna be a virtual pilot in a sim? Go learn to do virtual pilot stuff. And really it goes well beyond AAR, its pervasive in DCS. I play on a rather large and popular MP server. Before the clouds came I predicted that they would popular for a week or two, before people would start wailing and moaning about not being to use their TGP to do PP modes (Ironically enough JDAMs were developed specifically to be dropped through cloud cover). Or because they couldn't do VFR navigation or landings. And I was 100% proven correct, there were excuses of course, "oh weather isn't this bad usually, or on this map etc" but the point was people didn't have those skills, and they didn't want to learn them.  

3 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Has anyone said that it's a DCS problem? Has anyone said that it can't be done?

Or is that completely besides the point when the actual issue at hand is that very skill problem and the methods that could be used to address it?

 

 

I mean I still haven't heard what methods besides practice you are proposing. Draw me a picture. Frankly I'm not opposed to better "training" I just don't really see how you would do it, and I think it has a very good chance of becoming a crutch.

 

[Exorcet]

14 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

 

I mean I still haven't heard what methods besides practice you are proposing. Draw me a picture. Frankly I'm not opposed to better "training" I just don't really see how you would do it, and I think it has a very good chance of becoming a crutch.

 

It doesn't really even matter whether something is crutch or not. People can play how they want, turn off the stuff that you don't like. Even a given player might have different levels of "seriousness" across modules. Someone might master refueling one on plane and just use easy mode for another. It's all a non issue, just give people their options.

[Harlikwin]

2 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

It doesn't really even matter whether something is crutch or not. People can play how they want, turn off the stuff that you don't like. Even a given player might have different levels of "seriousness" across modules. Someone might master refueling one on plane and just use easy mode for another. It's all a non issue, just give people their options.

 

Easier said than done for MP where I usually play. Most things you can just turn off unless ED explicitly supports it. 

 

As for being good in one plane and not others that's something I'm well familiar with I can AAR well in one or two airframes, the others, well I need more practice. Simple as that. 

[Черный Дракул]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

switchable sensitivity would be a fine feature

Indeed. With advanced visual aids, voice assists and skillfully crafted training missions this would be a nice approach to how the actual pilots are being trained. 

 

1 hour ago, Harlikwin said:

it can be done with a crappy controller

I've seen a guy beat the whole Dark Souls series in one run without receiving a single hit. Crazy stuff is possible, especially given almost infinite attempts. The soundness of this stuff is highly debatable, though, as well as applicability in our discussion. 

 

51 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

I see this "trend" if you will in DCS to simplify complex tasks, call it "skill replacement"

I've missed this trend. Which tasks were simplified? 

 

51 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

You wanna be a virtual pilot in a sim?

"Virtual pilot" is a nonexistent condition. You can be a gamer, a pilot or both -- but playing a flight game will not make anyone a pilot. A game may be used as an aid in training, but in no way can it be a substitution for it. 

 

51 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

I still haven't heard what methods besides practice you are proposing.

Intelligent practice -- like it's done in actual training, where you are told, shown and corrected all the way to graduation. "Just practicing" is an ideal way to build up your bad habits. 

 

23 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

MP

Server settings are always at the will of server administration, no? If they don't want simplified, automatic, assisted or visual-aided AAR -- they can always not enable it. 

Edited June 26, 2021 by Черный Дракул

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, Harlikwin said:

I totally agree, but I see this "trend" if you will in DCS to simplify complex tasks, call it "skill replacement". AAR and formation flying  are fundamental skills of a fighter pilot, and DCS is a simulator of that. So I generally regard "skill replacement" requests rather dimly. You wanna be a virtual pilot in a sim? Go learn to do virtual pilot stuff. And really it goes well beyond AAR, its pervasive in DCS.

And the question is, why shouldn't DCS have these simplifications? Read the actual product description and what ED are trying to accomplish, straight from the horse's mouth (or, well… straight from the horse's marketing department's mouth, so there's that I guess).

 

it is commonly labelled as a study sim, so tools that let you… you know… study all those fundamental skills make all the sense in the world. When you go out and learn them for real, and if you employ simulators in particular, the process is simplified for you; you're being hand-held and shown the ropes; someone else handles the parts you're not ready for so you can safely chip away at the things you are able to tackle. Simplifications are not unrealistic. They're a completely natural and sensible part of the process.

 

Learning to do virtual pilot stuff sounds an awful lot like you can take advantage of all the benefits of it being virtual and being a sim, such as being shown where to fly, what to look at, what to press and when, and just generally the view you should be seeing out the window — all in a highly interactive way that we can't quite accomplish IRL because holographic projection isn't there yet. Sure, there's also that benefit of it all being virtual that you can crash as much as you like, and blow up the tanker in frustration when it misbehaves, and we can have a long conversation about how much those details help with the learning process… but they're not as great as all the rest of the stuff that is available in DCS.

 

Quote

And I was 100% proven correct, there were excuses of course, "oh weather isn't this bad usually, or on this map etc" but the point was people didn't have those skills, and they didn't want to learn them.

If they don't want to learn, then so what? They'd either migrate towards the servers where simplifications were allowed so they can have their fun — and why shouldn't they be allowed to — or they learn to live without it. Either way, there's no skin off of anyone's nose. And if they do want to learn, those very same simplifications would help them do so by offering a stead incline of difficulty that lets them layer new skills on old, rather than a sheer cliff. There would be an actual learning curve, rather than a cul-de-sac.

 

Quote

I mean I still haven't heard what methods besides practice you are proposing. Draw me a picture. Frankly I'm not opposed to better "training" I just don't really see how you would do it, and I think it has a very good chance of becoming a crutch.

Everything in DCS is a crutch. That's because all of aviation in geared towards offering more and more crutches to lean on. So let's start by dumping that worry as a premise because that's just a mirror of the scene we're trying to replicate. And even if it becomes a crutch for some… so what? You'd be able to shield yourself from the unclean heathens with ease, if their hobbling gait offended you so much, and everyone would be happy.

 

But I'll give you one very simple example.

 

As far back as in FS3.0 (and possibly 2.0 as well, but I don't quite remember any more), there were air gates available to guide you down to the ground in training missions related to landing. We're talking about early-to-mid 1980s — a third of a century ago — and those simple gates have been a flight sim staple ever since, including in DCS. A trained pilot eye won't need them because they already know how it should look at the other end: what angle the runway should be at, what parts should be moving and which should not, and how quickly things should pass by around you. In terms of learning, this corresponds to sitting right up front and taking the scenery in while the instructor talks you through the process and points these things out to you. Much much later, a few dozen rungs up the skill ladder, you won't even look outside because you're staring at ILS needles or some HUD flight path representation (curiously similar to those sky gates, come to think of it).

 

The gates won't necessarily (but can quite easily be made to) tell you things like proper speed or AoA or any of that — we're just talking about a simple method of getting your eye in and getting a visual memory of what an approach should look like.

 

This can already be done in DCS. It has all the tools for that and more: the gates, a pause function to get a full explanation in, highlighting functions to show you what you should be looking at, active pause functions to give you ample opportunity to find what you're being told to watch, even control lock-outs so you can't actually ruin the preset glide path.

 

None of that exists for AAR. The gates can't be attached to a moving object; highlights can't be placed where they need to be (mostly outside the aircraft); pausing will cause the tanker to fly off into the sunset without you; control lock-outs are superbly unsuited for a task that requires control adjustments. The opportunity to get your eye in just isn't there. You can watch videos and static pictures, but unless you restrict yourself to only staring fixedly forward — and assuming the demonstration video/picture does the same — they will not actually show you what you will see, as you adjust your view inside the cockpit to look at all the things you're told to look at. And god help you if you have 6DoF tracking and your head is out of position so none of the prescribed markers actually line up.

 

If they did exist, you could trivially create a step ladder for the learning. First, it just shows you everything, and you can look around to familiarise yourself with the situation. Then maybe we turn the control lockout off so you have to line everything up with what you were shown. Then maybe we turn the gates off, because you know broadly where you need to sit in relation to the tanker. Then we turn the highlighting off — you have to put the thing on the thing by yourself without being actively shown what what those things are. And then we turn the pausing off, so you have to do it all in real-time in one go.

 

…and we haven't gotten to the really helpful part yet, where you can do the same stepping-up of difficulty for the actual flying. Again, all of that was just for using ancient and pre-existing methods to get your eye in, which keep coming back as the one thing everyone says is the most important thing ever. The tools exist, just not for the AAR scenario. Now let's imagine that similar tools were available, for AAR and everything else, as far as the muscle memory part of the equation, which is the other one thing everyone says is the even more mostest importantest thingest everestestest. Things like variable auto-fly, all the way from complete control lock-out (again) to being magnetised to a track at varying levels, to being let free to do it all on your own. Each step, you are asked to do more and more, but it's a little at a time, not everything at once, and along with the visual aids, you quickly  get a huge amount of granularity in how much you need to “git gud” at to handle the next level. And then there are simple time manipulation tricks — you've done it all and can hook up, but you can't quite remain stable for the full 10,000 lbs transfer yet… so let's make it only last 30 seconds. Next level is to maintain it for a full minute. Then two minutes. Then four. Then doing it upside down in the dark in clouds with a guitar hero controller.

 

It's all practice, but it is directed practice; it's practice where the task is being broken down in its different components so you can practice and git gud at one thing at a time, while also accumulating that total time that you have to grind through to git all gud at all da tings. It's being instructed what to do rather than just let loose with some vague well-intended but ultimately meaningless helpful hints as your only guide.

 

 

And here's the best, and really funny thing: almost all of this functionality already exists in the game. The magnetic track would require a little work, but even there, the foundations exist across a variety of modules. It just hasn't been hooked up in a way that makes it applicable to AAR.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Tippis

[Harlikwin]

27 minutes ago, Черный Дракул said:

Indeed. With advanced visual aids, voice assists and skillfully crafted training missions this would be a nice approach to how the actual pilots are being trained. 

 

I've seen a guy beat the whole Dark Souls series in one run without receiving a single hit. Crazy stuff is possible, especially given almost infinite attempts. The soundness of this stuff is highly debatable, though, as well as applicability in our discussion. 

 

1. I've missed this trend. Which tasks were simplified? 

 

2. "Virtual pilot" is a nonexistent condition. You can be a gamer, a pilot or both -- but playing a flight game will not make anyone a pilot. A game may be used as an aid in training, but in no way can it be a substitution for it. 

 

Intelligent practice -- like it's done in actual training, where you are told, shown and corrected all the way to graduation. "Just practicing" is an ideal way to build up your bad habits. 

 

3. Server settings are always at the will of server administration, no? If they don't want simplified, automatic, assisted or visual-aided AAR -- they can always not enable it. 

 

 

1. So most of the "smart" weapons in the game are a symptom of this, personally I find it vastly more rewarding doing unguided weapon drops and actually hitting something than sipping my coffee lazin LGB's or worse yet point and click JDAMs. The really SAD part is that ED has totally not modeled all the various issues with either LGB's or JDAM's or the "coarser" points of things like TOO modes in TGP's despite a bunch of publicly available documentation. To say that ED's models of these systems is "arcade" level is being generous. But people use them cuz they're "easy", and they use them "wrong" (i.e. not in ways any actually military would) because they have no idea how laughably badly modeled they are. 

 

2. I mean, I am/was a real pilot, so understanding that hey, weather is a thing, or that holy shit navigating from point A to B is a "Skill" is what I'm talking about. Most guys don't care about that and get their E-viagra points by lobbing an AAMRAM at a mig15 and slapping themselves on the back. I guess its "cool" but frankly a sim should be more than that IMO.

 

3. The issue is that there are very limited server options. Most servers are hobbled by trying to put the limited planeset we have in some sort of reasonable context. For example trying to use the Viper we have to represt an 80's era one so it can sort of fit the rest of the planeset for PVP. Well, you can disable some weapons, and you can do things like "damage" systems, but then it takes some crafty "gamer" (yes I mean that as a vulgar term), to figure out all they need to do to break the rules is to "do a repair". 

21 minutes ago, Tippis said:

 

 

If they don't want to learn, then so what? They'd either migrate towards the servers where simplifications were allowed so they can have their fun — and why shouldn't they be allowed to — or they learn to live without it. Either way, there's no skin off of anyone's nose. And if they do want to learn, those very same simplifications would help them do so by offering a stead incline of difficulty that lets them layer new skills on old, rather than a sheer cliff. There would be an actual learning curve, rather than a cul-de-sac.

 

 

 

I mean at this point I think we are talking past each other. I don't really have a problem with learning aids in the game like gates or whatnot, I just don't think they are all that helpful is all.

 

In the case of server, people abandoned it en masse in protest, till it was changed. And it was. End of story. Its just human nature. I suppose maybe 10% of the pilots on the server could do that stuff, and were willing to teach the other 90%, but those guys "knew better" and stomped their feet till they got their way. A similar problem exists in DCS in general with what I will term "the hoggit" effect. Which is a bunch of petulant, ignorant players will demand some unrealistic thing in the game and cry and wail till ED caves and gives it to em. 

[SharpeXB]

34 minutes ago, Черный Дракул said:

like it's done in actual training, where you are told, shown and corrected all the way to graduation

Yeah but real world levels of instruction can be a little ridiculous or impractical in a game. Just consider the type of instruction that’s necessary for using a firearm or driving a car in the real world. You don’t need that kind of handholding to play a shooter or racing game. In a game you can wreck your million $ jet many times over and kill yourself repeatedly with no consequence. 
Lots of players in DCS seem to want outright handholding, not mere instruction. 

[Tippis]

53 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

I mean at this point I think we are talking past each other. I don't really have a problem with learning aids in the game like gates or whatnot, I just don't think they are all that helpful is all.

I don't think we are. I understand that you're not opposed to them, and I'm trying to give you an idea why I think they would be helpful: because they feedsdirectly into how skill acquisition and tacit knowledge transfer works and always has worked.

 

Tbh, I think the only point of contention is that you're worried that people might abuse those tools to make their life easier outside of practice, whereas I couldn't give a hoot if they did. Good on them for having fun, and I and the people I fly with will set our missions up the way we want them (which is far from a static thing).

 

Quote

In the case of server, people abandoned it en masse in protest, till it was changed. And it was.

Is the problem, then, that there just aren't enough people interested in the most restricted and “realistic” (being mindful of the ridiculousness of using that word in relation to most things in DCS) style of gameplay to reliably fill a server? That the interest in running a server with everything turned off is continent on a steady flow of clients that just doesn't exist?

 

If the “petulant, ignorant players” are off in their corner doing their thing, does that actually conflict with your doing your thing in your corner? Because if not, I don't see the problem. And if it does, then I'm (honestly, actually) sorry to say that your interests are so niche that ED realistically can't cater to them — there's just too few of the likes of you. They will cater to what gives them the cash to keep the doors open, and if those interests don't align with yours, there's not a whole lot that can be done about it.

 

As I think you know, I'm all in favour of more server (and mission) options, and also fixing the bugs that keep people from being able to pick their own options where none are enforced by the server. I firmly believe that the only places where that would cause issues (pure PvP) is already such a specific and self-selecting slice that it won't be an issue, simply because those who'd want to PvP would also want those options to be universally enforced on that server.

 

19 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Yeah but real world levels of instruction can be a little ridiculous or impractical in a game.

…but those levels of instructions would also not be needed, exactly because of the reasons you list. That doesn't mean that modelling in-game instructions after how real-world instructions are set up is a bad idea. They're set up that way for a reason. Not copying that methodology in the game just means that the game fails utterly to teach the things it wants its players to learn.

 

Oh, and again, shooters and racing games have tons of hand-holding, whether you need it or not.

 

19 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Lots of players in DCS seem to want outright handholding, not mere instruction. 

That's a very good reason to give it to them.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Tippis

[Черный Дракул]

29 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

But people use them cuz they're "easy", and they use them "wrong" (i.e. not in ways any actually military would) because they have no idea how laughably badly modeled they are.

This issue sounds very serious and should definitely be raised in corresponding topic. But overall, guided ordnance over unguided one is what makes modern aviation modern -- no wonder people tend to use it. Also, it doesn't look like some intentional simplification by ED -- just not modelling some aspects of employment. And I'm sure that with enough encouragement and information they'll not be opposed to implementing all the problems with it. 

 

35 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

a sim should be more than that IMO.

DCS has a long way to go even up to one specific 22 year old game that is not-Flanker, so yes, that is correct. But even in the perfect world where everything will be implemented, a proper training for gamers is what will bring their behavior closer to what's expected of a pilot. And since we can't have an instructor, but have a flexible and interactive system, a complex aid system is the best way to replace him at least partially. It's already done in some areas and there's no reason not to do it in all the others. 

 

45 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

The issue is that there are very limited server options

Again, if this is an issue, it should definitely be raised in corresponding topic. Hacks, as you have mentioned with the "damaging specific system" idea, might not always work -- they are hacks, after all, so asking ED to implement the required stuff is definitely a must. But seriously, in the worst case scenario (which is easily avoidable with implementin one more option to not switch on, which ED will most certainly do) there will just be some more successful air refuels -- and that will only happen if ED will (by some malificent will) force every server to having both options open. Having noobs air refuel like a pro's will not break anything. 

 

18 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

real world levels of instruction can be a little ridiculous or impractical in a game

Yet these are required to learn the skills. And if the game can provide a better model of learning these -- like aforementioned aids -- that's an improvement, at least over blind practice. When you can see not only that you've missed (or don't even see that!), but even how much you've missed -- that's a great feedback to have. A human instructor will do that for a pilot trainee, but a player seing what he is supposed to "hit" with the plane will do a comparable job. 

 

24 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Lots of players in DCS seem to want outright handholding, not mere instruction. 

This is exactly how many of interactive training missions work in DCS -- and I can tell that's a good thing. 

[SharpeXB]

5 minutes ago, Черный Дракул said:

a player seing what he is supposed to "hit" with the plane will do a comparable job. 

And you can see exactly this by watching any of the dozens and dozens of YouTube videos on this subject.

[Tippis]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

And you can see exactly this by watching any of the dozens and dozens of YouTube videos on this subject.

Lolno.

That's not actually how recorded video works, you know.

[Harlikwin]

1 hour ago, Черный Дракул said:

This issue sounds very serious and should definitely be raised in corresponding topic. But overall, guided ordnance over unguided one is what makes modern aviation modern -- no wonder people tend to use it. Also, it doesn't look like some intentional simplification by ED -- just not modelling some aspects of employment. And I'm sure that with enough encouragement and information they'll not be opposed to implementing all the problems with it. 

 

I mean its brought up as a problem for YEARS. The main issue being the absolutely terrible ground damage models and AI. Most "kills" IRL on armored ground targets are mission kills, not modeled in DCS, hence the absurd requirement for pickle barrel accuracy. Its been brought to ED's attention for literally a decade or more. 

 

1 hour ago, Черный Дракул said:

 

DCS has a long way to go even up to one specific 22 year old game that is not-Flanker, so yes, that is correct. But even in the perfect world where everything will be implemented, a proper training for gamers is what will bring their behavior closer to what's expected of a pilot. And since we can't have an instructor, but have a flexible and interactive system, a complex aid system is the best way to replace him at least partially. It's already done in some areas and there's no reason not to do it in all the others. 

 

Again, if this is an issue, it should definitely be raised in corresponding topic. Hacks, as you have mentioned with the "damaging specific system" idea, might not always work -- they are hacks, after all, so asking ED to implement the required stuff is definitely a must. But seriously, in the worst case scenario (which is easily avoidable with implementin one more option to not switch on, which ED will most certainly do) there will just be some more successful air refuels -- and that will only happen if ED will (by some malificent will) force every server to having both options open. Having noobs air refuel like a pro's will not break anything. 

 

ED has also been quite recalcitrant in this area. So far they have made 0 effort in engaging with the PVP community to implment any of this. It would as simple as having a switch to disable such things as: Datalink (l16, L4, L17, or TAKT), JHMCS etc... I mean at the end of the day a Blk50 will be a blk50, but the 1991 version is quite different from the 2007 version, same for the hornet. 

 

As for AAR, its really not that hard to learn. Just takes time and effort, just like carrier landings, should ED put in some magic "autoland" cuz new players find landing hard and can't be bothered? Or does that take something away from a flight simulator. I'd argue the latter.

 

 

[maxTRX]

If ED decides to come up with a crutch, they'd better test the on/off checkbox and make sure that it works. I don't feel like editing some lua files every update to disable the damn thing.

[Tippis]

13 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

As for AAR, its really not that hard to learn. Just takes time and effort, just like carrier landings, should ED put in some magic "autoland" cuz new players find landing hard and can't be bothered?

Carrier landings are pretty darn trivial though, and most of the relevant planes already have autoland… so that was perhaps not the best point of comparison.

[Harlikwin]

9 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Carrier landings are pretty darn trivial though, and most of the relevant planes already have autoland… so that was perhaps not the best point of comparison.

 

I mean it is in a way. If you can't land a plane, you shouldn't be playing fighter bro slinging AAMRAM's or JDAM's... Same with AAR IMO.

[Tippis]

1 minute ago, Harlikwin said:

I mean it is in a way. If you can't land a plane, you shouldn't be playing fighter bro slinging AAMRAM's or JDAM's... Same with AAR IMO.

One of these is not like the others.

[Harlikwin]

Just now, Tippis said:

One of these is not like the others.

 

They all take some level of skill and understanding. Most people just don't want to put the effort into one of them IMO... As a reward, gun the tanker after you top off... 

 

[Tippis]

1 minute ago, Harlikwin said:

They all take some level of skill and understanding. Most people just don't want to put the effort into one of them IMO... As a reward, gun the tanker after you top off...

That's not what sets the one apart from the other though.

[Черный Дракул]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

And you can see exactly this by watching any of the dozens and dozens of YouTube videos on this subject.

You can see how someone else does it when watching a video. And practice is something you have to do yourself. If you could see the sweet spot, the envelope, the recoverable and non-recoverable envelopes, could feel the throttle adjusting your speed in tanker formation, etc -- you would receive immeasurably more feedback than just assuming (aka guessing, and guessing wrong) these things. As such, with the same practice you could accomplish far more, or require less practice to get to the same level. 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

I mean its brought up as a problem for YEARS. The main issue being the absolutely terrible ground damage models

Well, that's the drawback of Flanker damage model that models everything with HE. Unlike Maddox Games' IL-2, where everything was modelled through shrapnel (giving overall far better results, but producing weird artifacts at HE pressure wave ranges). At least nowdays ED is updating the damage model -- who knows, maybe shrapnel for ground units is still possible. 

 

2 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

ED has also been quite recalcitrant in this area.

Well, there's only one way to improve this. 

Anyway, as was mentioned before, for a study sim to be a study, aids of all sorts are required. Some are provided, while AAR ones are not. And considering

2 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

As for AAR, its really not that hard to learn

-- only if you're learning it right, where the effect is multiplied. 

 

2 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

should ED put in some magic "autoland" cuz new players find landing hard and can't be bothered?

I totally don't see it as a problem of any kind. This won't give these new players any edge against experienced ones, right? Especially considering ED is first and foremost PvE game and cellular automatons won't object. 

 

2 hours ago, Harlikwin said:

If you can't land a plane, you shouldn't be playing fighter bro slinging AAMRAM's or JDAM's

I disagree: there's no reason not to have fun, even if you're just started and don't have understanding of landing/AAR and skills for it. And seing a newbie autolanding is way better than tripping over his burnt frame on the runway. 

[freehand]

2 hours ago, Tippis said:

Carrier landings are pretty darn trivial though, and most of the relevant planes already have autoland… so that was perhaps not the best point of comparison.

Carrier landing was one of the most difficult things todo when the f18 arrived just check out jabbers video so it is very good comparison. 

 

That being said I have no problem with aids for people because after all it's just an option some one can use as long as ED do not take any longer than 3 seconds to incorporate as they have more useful things to-do with there time 

 

On a serious note does not bother me ether way. 

Edited June 27, 2021 by freehand