The mission editor should do rough fuel calculations

[upyr1]

Reasking and I plan to get into more details.

First ideally I would like DCS to either limit where we can place a waypoint or at least give us a visual cue when a waypoint would be too far based on what the aircraft's, speed, altitude, fuel state, and payload would be. This would take in flight refueling into account. So if an aircraft's combat radius for for the current configuration is 100NM, you can length it adding a refueling waypoint or changing the payload.

Next there would be at least one variable indicating time on station and in combat. If there is a real world variable we could use that would be great, if not ED could decide the metric. Either way the variable(s) would assume that this is flying time in addition to the preplanned route. The time would be the amount of time you could spend flying around in combat and return to the flight plan with bingo fuel. 

 

[Lace]

I'm all for anything which improves the mission planning element of the game.

[SharpeXB]

Didn’t you just post the same topic here?

 

[upyr1]

5 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Didn’t you just post the same topic here?

 

yes but the focus became your mindless drivel be gone shoo shoo.  go back under the bridge 

Edited April 9, 2022 by upyr1

[Tippis]

Absolutely. It's something that should be pretty darn trivial (except for one thing…), would improve the editor massively, is very obvious as a part of mission planning in general. As a bonus point, the one thing that isn't trivial — that is, a mission profile display of some sort, with the ability to define ascent/descent profiles — that would be needed to make those calculations sensible would in and of itself be a hugely beneficial addition to the planning capabilities of the game.

+1

 

26 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Didn’t you just post the same topic here?

If you tried to read the OP for once — either of this thread or that one, and preferably both — even the slightest hint of cognitive capability on your part would lead you to the conclusion that no, they're not the same. In fact, one is an expansion of the ideas and critiques of the other and creates quite a different suggestion altogether. But as we all know, doing any of that makes you break out in hives so of course you didn't and instead said something very uninformed and silly, as always…  

Edited April 9, 2022 by Tippis

[Tank50us]

I have to agree with the OP. Something like this would make it easier to know if the AI patrols or ferries your setting up will even be able to last the time frame you're setting up the mission for. As an example, if you have a pair of fighters flying escort for a transport as the transport flies to a base 3hrs away, shouldn't you know if the fighters will even be able to go the distance in a single hop? I mean sure, if you know how the fighter consumes its fuel at every stage of flight you could probably calculate this in your head (or with a calculator), but wouldn't it be nice if the game told you "Hey, this plane isn't going to make this distance" and allow you to plan better?

Hell, if freaking Google can tell me "Hey, your car won't make this trip in one go", the freaking Mission editor should have a similar function for the planes in DCS, including the ones we fly.

[upyr1]

3 minutes ago, Tank50us said:

I have to agree with the OP. Something like this would make it easier to know if the AI patrols or ferries your setting up will even be able to last the time frame you're setting up the mission for. As an example, if you have a pair of fighters flying escort for a transport as the transport flies to a base 3hrs away, shouldn't you know if the fighters will even be able to go the distance in a single hop? I mean sure, if you know how the fighter consumes its fuel at every stage of flight you could probably calculate this in your head (or with a calculator), but wouldn't it be nice if the game told you "Hey, this plane isn't going to make this distance" and allow you to plan better?

Hell, if freaking Google can tell me "Hey, your car won't make this trip in one go", the freaking Mission editor should have a similar function for the planes in DCS, including the ones we fly.

Since you brought up transports, I figure since they have ranges that exceed the map depending on the era the calculations should either be the nearest land off map or assume there is an unseen tanker if an AI plane reaches the edge of the map and disappears. 

[Tank50us]

3 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

Since you brought up transports, I figure since they have ranges that exceed the map depending on the era the calculations should either be the nearest land off map or assume there is an unseen tanker if an AI plane reaches the edge of the map and disappears. 

I was talking about the fighters escorting those transports, not the transports themselves.

[Exorcet]

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

Reasking and I plan to get into more details.

First ideally I would like DCS to either limit where we can place a waypoint

 

While the fuel calculation idea is valid, limiting the placement of waypoint is something that should absolutely not be added to the sim. It's needlessly restrictive and it could possibly interfere with other parts of the sim. Remember some aircraft use waypoints for more than navigation, like targeting or just marking points of interest. Secondly fuel calculations probably won't be 100% accurate and can't factor in for dynamic situations (ie an expected threat turns out to not exist and allows a flight to fly higher and thus further).

Hard coded limitations often just cause trouble.

 

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

 

or at least give us a visual cue when a waypoint would be too far based on what the aircraft's, speed, altitude, fuel state, and payload would be.

This sounds much better. Markers could be placed on the flight's route showing where fuel will hit bingo, or 0, or whatever.

 

[Tippis]

Just changing the flight plan line from solid to dashed if the end WP's calculated fuel state is zero should be plenty.

Or, again if they want to be fancy, it could be a two-stage thing, where it shows both bingo and no-fuel thresholds (but figuring out the bingo value would effectively require two calculations for every WP, and depending on the refresh rate, it could be pretty annoying when you move the waypoints around).

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, upyr1 said:

I would like DCS to either limit where we can place a waypoint

That doesn’t make sense because waypoints can be target locations and not just flyover points. In the case of the Hornet for example it can carry stand-off weapons to strike targets quite far away. I imagine the ME won’t know the difference between these points so any info it gives you isn’t going to be useful. 

3 hours ago, upyr1 said:

So if an aircraft's combat radius for for the current configuration is 100NM

What combat aircraft has a combat radius of only 100NM? Again you’ll find that most all the aircraft in DCS have a theoretical range that’s the size of these maps. What actually limits their range is combat action that can’t really be planned for in detail. If you try cutting it that close like that you’ll just run out of gas. 

Edited April 9, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

That doesn’t make sense because waypoints can be target locations and not just flyover points.

…in which case they should not be marked as waypoints, but as something else. They're separate things for a reason, and there are a number of ways to handle that in the ME.

 

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I imagine

Maybe you should actually take the time to check how these things operate before imagining things and using those fantasies as a replacement for a factual basis for your argument.

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

What combat aircraft has a combat radius of only 100NM?

One that you set up that way. Just like he said. Just because you don't fly any of the multitude of aircraft that DCS has on offer and just because you have never had to do any mission planning for them doesn't mean that the situation you're having a hard time imagining does not exist. Argument from incredulity is a fallacy for a reason.

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Again you’ll find that most all the aircraft in DCS have a theoretical range that’s

…entirely theoretical and not actually applicable to the practical use of said aircraft, especially not once you add in things like loitering time, marshalling points, loadouts, package coordination etc etc etc. That's why you need — and why mission planning uses — these kinds of tools to make sure that you have plenty of margins for the plan you're putting together.

Again, you're not really giving any intelligent or cogent reason why such tools should not exist and why DCS should not be made a better game and a better simulation of actual mission planning by having them. You're only offering assumptions based on wilful and admitted ignorance, with no logic connecting any of that to your conclusion that the game must under no circumstances be improved.

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, Exorcet said:

While the fuel calculation idea is valid, limiting the placement of waypoint is something that should absolutely not be added to the sim. It's needlessly restrictive and it could possibly interfere with other parts of the sim. Remember some aircraft use waypoints for more than navigation, like targeting or just marking points of interest. Secondly fuel calculations probably won't be 100% accurate and can't factor in for dynamic situations (ie an expected threat turns out to not exist and allows a flight to fly higher and thus further).

Hard coded limitations often just cause trouble.

 

This sounds much better. Markers could be placed on the flight's route showing where fuel will hit bingo, or 0, or

2 hours ago, Tippis said:

Just changing the flight plan line from solid to dashed if the end WP's calculated fuel state is zero should be plenty.

whatever.

 

This would be the best option 

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

That doesn’t make sense because waypoints can be target locations and not just flyover points. In the case of the Hornet for example it can carry stand-off weapons to strike targets quite far away. I imagine the ME won’t know the difference between these points so any info it gives you isn’t going to be useful. 

When you set up a bomb map object you get a marker you place over the target. This could be a target waypoint that will show up on your nav computer as a waypoint and get treated differently by the mission editor and the range of your missile gets factored in.

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

What combat aircraft has a combat radius of only 100NM? 

One with that amount of fuel. As I said earlier the numbers wouldn't based absolute numbers  they would be based on your current configuration.  As I stated earlier there would be a variable listed called combat time which would be fuel over what is required to fly the waypoints. For example if a plane has a combat radius of 300 nm given the current fuel load and the total flight is 50 nm you have a combat time variable to represent the remaining fuel. The burn rate would be higher than cruising 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

there would be a variable listed called combat time which would be fuel over what is required to fly the waypoints.

What you would discover is that the fuel consumed in combat would be so great that it would make attempting these detailed calculations pointless. 
Do you actually fly any aircraft modules in DCS or just play CA? Cause you don’t seem to have realistic ideas about their range. 

Edited April 9, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

What you would discover is that the fuel consumed in combat would be so great that it would make attempting these detailed calculations pointless. 

Quite the opposite. This is exactly why such calculations are needed and why you can't use theoretical ranges as the basis for anything. This is also why bingo settings exist, and why it's helpful to have a tool to calculate the value of that setting — something you have to completely pull out of nowhere at the moment. Oh, and since we're talking about time as a parameter to input, the fuel consumed would be a known value and would ultimately provide exactly the kind of margins that this sort of planning is meant to provide.

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Do you actually fly any of these modules in DCS? Cause you don’t seem to have realistic ideas about their range. 

Irony overload.  

Edited April 9, 2022 by Tippis

[cfrag]

7 hours ago, upyr1 said:

shoo shoo.  go back under the bridge 

Careful - trolls eat shoes. You may just have attracted one.

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

What you would discover is that the fuel consumed in combat would be so great that it would make attempting these detailed calculations pointless. 
Do you actually fly any of these modules in DCS? Cause you don’t seem to have realistic ideas about their range. 

I do fly different modules. I also read posts and articles about military aviation. If things worked how you think they do mission planning would be impossible. However in the real world military officers plan missions  consisting of multiple aircraft types from different bases. So real world guidelines exist which should be part of the mission editor. 

Edited April 10, 2022 by upyr1

[SharpeXB]

31 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

 However in the real world military officers plan missions  consisting of multiple aircraft types from different bases. So real world guidelines exist which should be part of the mission editor.

Sure, a Google search will find you these procedures if you wanted to know. Of course the missions we fly in DCS are vastly more simplistic. 

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Sure, a Google search will find you these procedures if you wanted to know. Of course the missions we fly in DCS are vastly more simplistic. 

Just because you don't use the mission planner doesn't mean it won't be useful to program into dcs. Now go back under the bridge 

Edited April 10, 2022 by upyr1

[MAXsenna]

16 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

Just because you don't use the mission planner doesn't mean it won't be useful to program into dcs. Now go back under the bridge 

 

You know he feeds on wishes!

Makes him un-bored....  

[upyr1]

47 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

You know he feeds on wishes!

Makes him un-bored....  

He ran out of Billie goats