need track replays Pathfinding PLEASE

[chief]

Can ED for once and for all PLEASE fix the pathfinding of units in CA. This has been on going for over 1.5 years and nothing has been done about it. I dont need to send track files. I am sure you have received hundreds of them by now. This issue has ruined the MP part of the game on servers otherwise the game would be fantastic (other than the other module bugs). 

[Hawkeye_UK]

I've lost count the number of times this has been reported however the latest thread (first link) got closed so no further discussion can be had.  After a 2 min review of other topics posts ive included just a few to give you a flavour of how widespread this issue is being reported, there are many more over the last 15 months all relating to the same issue.

 

Surely after a year of it being reported on what is a fundamental game breaking issue for combined arms and thus any attempt to be able to have a moving MP ground battle why is this still not being given any resources?  ED's own mission statement of providing a digital battleground of air land and sea just doesnt seem honest right now.  Enough is enough  @BIGNEWY @NineLine  what is the update from the dev's?  Saying its been reported, 12 months on is now not good enough.

 

The point of sales information is;

 

"DCS: Combined Arms gives you control of ground forces during the battle. Use the Command Map to move ground forces, set artillery fire missions, and control the ground battle. Assume the role of a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) in multiplayer and designate targets for player-controlled close air support aircraft, or directly control armor vehicles or air defense weapons and engage the enemy. Play DCS: Combined Arms as a real time strategy game, a first person armor warfare game...... DCS: Combined Arms supports both single player and multiplayer gameplay. When in multiplayer, different players can take on different roles such as artillery commanders, tank commanders, pilots, JTACS, etc. DCS: Combined Arms allows you full control of the battle. All roles can be changed dynamically during the battle."

 

it would be a fair assesment at this stage that ED are misleading customers at the point of software purchase.  Appreciate you might not have looked at it in this light but that is the harsh reality.  It does not allow you to control ground forces effectively during battle and there is currently no communication from the company on when this will be resolved.  It really is totally game breaking on what is a fully paid module and its an issue on both MP stable and open beta branches.  We have this issue on Caucasus, Persian Gulf, Normandy and Syria ( not tested channel or Nevada but id assume the same).  Needless to say you dont need me to reinforce that this is a serious issue that has potential to escalate quickly.

 

Its been reported numerous times by both customers, beta testers, closed beta testers (looking at who has been reporting on this issue) and even third party campaign developers.  Customers are loyal and patient, alot of people reporting on this are experienced and valued open beta testers that are passionate and help evolve the product and DCS brand.  However there comes a point, especially when no clear communication on resolution that this tolerance runs out, especially with it still being for sale.  What is being done and what resources are going to be placed on sorting out this MP car crash.

 

Have you raised it with the senior management team, are they aware so that they can escalate and task ? If not why not?  Do we need to tag them directly into this chain given the potential implications going forward on nothing being done?

 

Pretty clouds are sure nice and ive no doubt sell modules, but not when a server can't run with any element of a ground force with tac command without the server totally freezing and lagging out whats the point!  I know of hundreds of users of our server that have bought into Combined Arms over the years and they can no longer use it.  It's fair to say no more reports, track files, video's or screenshots are required.  

 

A clear statement from a senior representative from ED is required i would suggust at this stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Hawkeye_UK

[BIGNEWY]

Hawkeye_UK

 

appreciate you are constantly frustrated, we have reported issues, as always if you want to report an issue please include a track replay showing the problem.

Its the only way we can get any thing fixed by having examples of AI broken. No point jumping on a bug report thread with a long complaint about AI and not having a track replay example for us to check. The problem maybe specific to the mission or the bridge or the object. 

 

 

6 hours ago, chief said:

Can ED for once and for all PLEASE fix the pathfinding of units in CA. This has been on going for over 1.5 years and nothing has been done about it. I dont need to send track files. I am sure you have received hundreds of them by now. This issue has ruined the MP part of the game on servers otherwise the game would be fantastic (other than the other module bugs). 

 

Please attach track replay examples when reporting an issue.

 

thanks

[Hawkeye_UK]

So on the first linked post on my earlier message that contained tracks, indeed you replied to me on the 30th July 2021 you thanked me for them?

 

shortcut for ease;

On the other posts there are also many other examples of tracks?  How many more tracks of the exact same issue do beta testers need to provide the dev's before they take the issue seriously.

 

Dont get me wrong we will bend over backwards to help if we can get some offer of assistance from ED on this issue.  Even if this means jumping on the MP server in real time we could show you live examples of how it freeze's and lags out the server.   If you let me know your schedules on what time you could be free im confident we could arrange something for you guys to work with and understand deeper.

 

Keen to assist to get this issue resolved, as it's killing gameplay and equally its not good for you guys either!

 

 

[BIGNEWY]

We have many AI issues reported. 

 

If you are making a report a track replay is always going to be needed, we need to check if it is different from what we have already reported. 

Some examples are not AI issues but terrain / object issues, this is why in each case we need to see examples. 

 

I could easily just mark all these reports as reported and move on, but we dont, we want to see each example so we can check it. 

 

thanks

[Kirkwood]

Just now, BIGNEWY said:

We have many AI issues reported. 

 

If you are making a report a track replay is always going to be needed, we need to check if it is different from what we have already reported. 

Some examples are not AI issues but terrain / object issues, this is why in each case we need to see examples. 

 

I could easily just mark all these reports as reported and move on, but we dont, we want to see each example so we can check it. 

 

thanks

Apologies for chiming in randomly on a path finding thread but this caught my eye.

 

I know in the past there was a general attitude that trackfiles must be for mission that contain no lua scripting at all and a single trigger at mission start, is this still the same? I have been hesitant in the past to provide the trackfiles from our server directly for 2 reasons:

• It contains minimal scripting, a little over 150 lines of Lua, nothing that interacts with AI at all. It just reads back unit name & location info.
• The trackfiles tend to be quite long, sometimes upto 8 hours. I do not wish to soak up valuble dev time by subjecting them to this.

 

Anecdotally, this would appear to be isolated to Multiplayer only from my own experience and your own comments in previous threads where you could only replicate in the track by not touching anything. Seemingly aswell only when the host client (be it old client with gui or dedicated server) is remote.

 

On a side note I have some spare hardware laying around so will be spooling up public server this week dedicated to the path finding issues, with a limited 1 hour mission, CA only, no scripting and a public site where players can pull the track files from after each session. I intend to encourage the community I am part of to use this for testing, maybe we can tick off a few of those objects causing problems and maybe even catalogue a few scenario's.

 

In another perfect world it would be interesting to see some deeper debugging/logging access available to the community so we can save you some work. It's amazing what frustration can sometimes drive people to do.

[BIGNEWY]

21 minutes ago, Kirkwood said:

• It contains minimal scripting, a little over 150 lines of Lua, nothing that interacts with AI at all. It just reads back unit name & location info.
• The trackfiles tend to be quite long, sometimes upto 8 hours. I do not wish to soak up valuble dev time by subjecting them to this.

 

If the scripting is part of the reason for the bug include it of course, if the bug can be seen in an example without the script its better. Either way we can rule out if it is a scripting error or a AI issue solely 

 

8 hour track replays are not good for us, for debug we need short examples if possible, if it can not be reproduced any other way we will do our best but long track replays generally create problems. 

 

If you see any issues from your session make a new post with the track replay so we can take a look.

 

thanks

[IkarusC42B Pilot]

7 hours ago, Hawkeye_UK said:

I've lost count the number of times this has been reported however the latest thread (first link) got closed so no further discussion can be had.  After a 2 min review of other topics posts ive included just a few to give you a flavour of how widespread this issue is being reported, there are many more over the last 15 months all relating to the same issue.

 

Surely after a year of it being reported on what is a fundamental game breaking issue for combined arms and thus any attempt to be able to have a moving MP ground battle why is this still not being given any resources?  ED's own mission statement of providing a digital battleground of air land and sea just doesnt seem honest right now.  Enough is enough  @BIGNEWY @NineLine  what is the update from the dev's?  Saying its been reported, 12 months on is now not good enough.

 

The point of sales information is;

 

"DCS: Combined Arms gives you control of ground forces during the battle. Use the Command Map to move ground forces, set artillery fire missions, and control the ground battle. Assume the role of a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) in multiplayer and designate targets for player-controlled close air support aircraft, or directly control armor vehicles or air defense weapons and engage the enemy. Play DCS: Combined Arms as a real time strategy game, a first person armor warfare game...... DCS: Combined Arms supports both single player and multiplayer gameplay. When in multiplayer, different players can take on different roles such as artillery commanders, tank commanders, pilots, JTACS, etc. DCS: Combined Arms allows you full control of the battle. All roles can be changed dynamically during the battle."

 

it would be a fair assesment at this stage that ED are misleading customers at the point of software purchase.  Appreciate you might not have looked at it in this light but that is the harsh reality.  It does not allow you to control ground forces effectively during battle and there is currently no communication from the company on when this will be resolved.  It really is totally game breaking on what is a fully paid module and its an issue on both MP stable and open beta branches.  We have this issue on Caucasus, Persian Gulf, Normandy and Syria ( not tested channel or Nevada but id assume the same).  Needless to say you dont need me to reinforce that this is a serious issue that has potential to escalate quickly.

 

Its been reported numerous times by both customers, beta testers, closed beta testers (looking at who has been reporting on this issue) and even third party campaign developers.  Customers are loyal and patient, alot of people reporting on this are experienced and valued open beta testers that are passionate and help evolve the product and DCS brand.  However there comes a point, especially when no clear communication on resolution that this tolerance runs out, especially with it still being for sale.  What is being done and what resources are going to be placed on sorting out this MP car crash.

 

Have you raised it with the senior management team, are they aware so that they can escalate and task ? If not why not?  Do we need to tag them directly into this chain given the potential implications going forward on nothing being done?

 

Pretty clouds are sure nice and ive no doubt sell modules, but not when a server can't run with any element of a ground force with tac command without the server totally freezing and lagging out whats the point!  I know of hundreds of users of our server that have bought into Combined Arms over the years and they can no longer use it.  It's fair to say no more reports, track files, video's or screenshots are required.  

 

A clear statement from a senior representative from ED is required i would suggust at this stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Beautifull thread ,truly.