cannot reproduce Aircraft carrier Tacon and ICLS suddenly disappear

[FrostLaufeyson]

Short: During the approach, the TCN and ICLS were suddenly ineffective, but the ACLS was still good.

Long: This is a multiplayer mission with two teams of F16s and two teams of F18s on a cloudy and foggy night. The two teams of F18s were supposed to land on CVN-71 and CVN-74 respectively. Under the guidance of ATC, we captured the Tacon signals of the two aircraft carriers in the dark and prepared to carry out the CASE III recovery procedure. Radio, TACAN, ICLS, Link 4 are all set up correctly and everything works fine. But as I was approaching, all of a sudden, Tacon and ICLS were disconnected. The ICLS symbol in the HUD disappears and the Tacan bearing indicator in the HSI starts to circle. I can still radio with the carrier, and the ACL page continues to function normally, but without bearing guidance, I have absolutely no way of knowing where I am relative to the carrier. At this time, the visibility at low altitude is only about 0.3 nautical miles. All relying on ATC through LotATC, who switched channels in TeamSpeak to guide us and we landed safely. That was really a tough night.

Strictly speaking, I don't want to report a bug, because I can't reproduce it in a single player environment, and the trk file(54mb) and the acmi file(9mb) are too large, and no one will want to look at it. And almost every time you perform a large multiplayer mission, there will be some unexpected bugs that affect everyone's experience. Admittedly, it's a fun to be able to handle this kind of accident when it happens. But no one wants to run into this tricky situation again in the days to come.

I just wanted to put a post here to see if you have encountered a similar situation.

[markom]

Or... you can treat this as equipment failure on the carrier and proceed with the mission.

You should always be able to find the carrier (ground radar + flir are your friends).

While, yeah, things failing is annoying, but all sorts of failures happen irl all the time :-)

[FrostLaufeyson]

2022/8/14 AM11点14分，markom说：

You should always be able to find the carrier (ground radar + flir are your friends).

You're right, but we were all panicking and all we can think of is to contact ATC. No one remembered radar. 

And unfortunately, it was a fleet at the time, we don't know which one is carrier, and the visibility was so low, that even if we know, it would be difficult to land on your own. In other words, when you see an aircraft carrier, it means you're going to crash on it.

This is an retreat mission. We have no other place to land.

[markom]

Sounds like you had... boatloads of fun

[FrostLaufeyson]

Since my post is marked "cannot reproduce", I think I'll just upload the trk file

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nwShJ5afS7AaRJZdLoxwojFZ3LEJQt_x/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FCE8W4RLO4bqqZjBYZ0RligjI9EuXopJ/view?usp=sharing

In the tacview file, I left the formation and turned to the carrier at 22:07, shortly after that the TCN and ICLS disappeared.

@BIGNEWYMy flight leader still have the same problem when watching the full trk file, so I hope you can take a look when you free

[Kang]

On 8/14/2022 at 4:29 AM, FrostLaufeyson said:

Strictly speaking, I don't want to report a bug, because I can't reproduce it in a single player environment, and the trk file(54mb) and the acmi file(9mb) are too large, and no one will want to look at it. [...]

I just wanted to put a post here to see if you have encountered a similar situation.

Yes, indeed. It has been a bug specifically in multiplayer for... years, I guess. Not just in conjunction with the aircraft carriers, although for them of course you can set up the beacons yourself in the ME, but previously also involving fixed ground stations. It is hard to reproduce on command, but it keeps happening.

On 8/14/2022 at 5:14 AM, markom said:

Or... you can treat this as equipment failure on the carrier and proceed with the mission.

You should always be able to find the carrier (ground radar + flir are your friends).

While, yeah, things failing is annoying, but all sorts of failures happen irl all the time :-)

You could, but really... several systems over several ships all failing at once is a bit of a stretch to that, I feel. While I perfectly agree to this treatment as a workaround, it doesn't change the fact that it is a bug.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

we will have the multiplayer testing team try to reproduce it 

thanks

[Spectre VCAW-1]

This actually happens enough to us that our mission builders add a script to the missions to restart the ILS and Tacan in the event they stop working. I am not a mission builder myself, but here is a post in the forums of what to do.

 

 

[FrostLaufeyson]

3小时前，Kang说：

Yes, indeed. It has been a bug specifically in multiplayer for... years, I guess. Not just in conjunction with the aircraft carriers, although for them of course you can set up the beacons yourself in the ME, but previously also involving fixed ground stations. It is hard to reproduce on command, but it keeps happening.

I thought the bug was fixed because something similar was mentioned in a previous changelog, maybe I was reading it wrong

34分钟前，Spectre VCAW-1说：

This actually happens enough to us that our mission builders add a script to the missions to restart the ILS and Tacan in the event they stop working. I am not a mission builder myself, but here is a post in the forums of what to do.

This is incredible hahaha, I never thought there would be such a script
Thanks a lot for this solution, I'll try it in the next mission

[Kang]

On 8/16/2022 at 5:16 PM, FrostLaufeyson said:

I thought the bug was fixed because something similar was mentioned in a previous changelog, maybe I was reading it wrong

As a matter of fact, in more olden days, this bug was much more prevalent and would happen so much that using unit-based TACAN in multiplayer missions was almost entirely useless. There has been some fix to it and it has been much better, but seems it creeps back in.