Rearming simulator someone

[Tippis]

More seriously though, this actually got me thinking.

 

Skip the whole arming and repair business — that's a sideshow. What would be handy would be something that has proven more and more needed, often requested, and which would get around a whole lot of headaches that the module developers are facing: the ground crew in total, including armaments.

 

The IC debacle once again raised the awareness of the long-needed DTC functionality in a whole bunch of aircraft. Various modules use the most inane and silly methods to handle things like weapon release settings, laser codes, burst and ripple amounts etc. A unified DTC API and UI is needed for 7 player-flyable modern aircraft — and probably more in the near future. Another 5 have some kind of programmable weapons or release systems. By the sound of it, this number will increase pretty soon as well That's 12 out of 21, more than half, and that proportion will only increase over time.

 

A DTC system like in [game that must not be mentioned] would in other words be sensible for half those modules, but less so for the other half which rely more on manual settings or even mechanical modifications. Even for the computerised ones, many of them still require some manual ground adjustments to get the weapons to work as intended, and then there's the ever-popular violent row about what systems can be wired into where, and who's doing the wiring for whom. At the moment, that's all done via an incongruous mess of faked on-board systems, half a dozen implementations of kneeboard and keyboard shortcut manipulations, mission editor settings, “Special”-page settings, and module developer whim and preference.

 

So what if all of that just died in a fire, was buried in the desert, nuked, and sent into space, and then replaced by a visually interesting — maybe even gameplay-reliant — system of adjusting onboard systems, stores, and even entire aircraft, including storing data to DTC for the planes that used those. Want to wire in those much hated/loved hardpoints for extra HARMs on the Viper? Do so in the ground crew interface. Want a different laser code on your GBUs and APKWS? Dial it in ni the ground crew interface. What new tyres and a slightly less perforated wing? Pick some in the ground crew interface. Want to get unstuck from the grass because ehm… “your brakes didn't work (yes, that'll work — they'll believe that)”? Drag the plane out in the ground crew interface. Want to define multiple flight plans and nav points and mark air defences and draw lines on your SA/TAD/whatever page? Draw it in the ground crew interface on the map, and load it onto a DTC from the ground crew interface. Pre-program your radios? Same. Etc etc etc. Or just load everything from presets (which can be defined and save with the mission, similar to the largely abandoned “prepare mission” function). If it's unified enough, and built on common APIs that all the third-party developers will hate, it wouldn't even have to be done on a per-aircraft level — the same preparation presets would work for them all…

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and then I woke up.