Mission Editor: Custom Carrier Parking Positions

[SomethingAncient]

Please: I'd like to be able to adjust where each aircraft starts on any carrier. I know there's literally a parking_id variable in the mission file, so if we could just please get access to this variable from the mission editor? I've tried editing the file myself (copying a mission I created, unzipping it with WinRar, using notepad++, then making the changes, saving, compressing, and turning it into a .miz again), but the moment I get it compressed and back as a .miz file, the game refuses to acknowledge its existence.

I'm probably doing something wrong, but I don't know what, am having trouble finding relevant searches online, and think this should be in the editor anyway... it just seems like an obvious thing to have since people want to make missions their way anyway.

I would really appreciate if this could be added, or if someone could let me know how to successfully re-compress and get a working .miz file.

[sirrah]

3 hours ago, SomethingAncient said:

Please: I'd like to be able to adjust where each aircraft starts on any carrier. I know there's literally a parking_id variable in the mission file, so if we could just please get access to this variable from the mission editor? I've tried editing the file myself (copying a mission I created, unzipping it with WinRar, using notepad++, then making the changes, saving, compressing, and turning it into a .miz again), but the moment I get it compressed and back as a .miz file, the game refuses to acknowledge its existence.

I'm probably doing something wrong, but I don't know what, am having trouble finding relevant searches online, and think this should be in the editor anyway... it just seems like an obvious thing to have since people want to make missions their way anyway.

I would really appreciate if this could be added, or if someone could let me know how to successfully re-compress and get a working .miz file.

Additional parking spots (for instance parking on the bow) has been requested many times since SC release.

Although I can imagine it'd be a lot of work to get this done for AI (AI pathing is already tricky right now), I do wish we could at least have player/client aircraft start anywhere we want on the carrier.

 

Pretty sure ED stated that they have no intention adding such feature (I don't have time now to search for that reply, but you'll find it somewhere in the early pages of the SC wish-list subforum.

[Northstar98]

+999999999999999999999999

Last time I tested, if you beach an aircraft carrier such that a portion of it is hanging out over land, using the start from ground/ground hot options will spawn you appropriately, on top of the carrier's deck. So it looks like all we'd need to do here is to remove the placement restrictions preventing mission editors from placing aircraft in water.

The AI pathfinding will need to change though (right now they don't really pathfind - they just have fixed routing from A to B and if there's something in the way, they'll either get stuck, or will just crash into it).

Quote

Pretty sure ED stated that they have no intention adding such feature

I haven't seen this, but if so, it means carriers are going to remain incredibly limited and it isn't at all realistic.

Even for the Supercarrier, 16 is far less than what could realistically be achieved:

Right now we're limited to static aircraft to populate the deck as we see fit (unless you have a go at editing the RunwaysAndRoutes.lua file), which means those aircraft are decorative only and can't be used for anything.

For the Forrestal-class it's even worse as there you only have 8 spawn areas, the real thing is nowhere near as limited (even if I just count aircraft that could taxi without support from the deck crew - of which I count 28, excluding aircraft on catapults):

Edited September 25, 2022 by Northstar98

[sirrah]

Response from BIGNEWY:

 

The above was a slightly different wish, just to be able to choose a different startup slot, but if even that is not planned, I don't think starting from the bow or stern will become an option any day soon...

 

But who knows, perhaps the dev team will change their mind at some point

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by sirrah

[SomethingAncient]

I was just wishing to even use the preexisting parking places to spawn where I wanted without having to use AI or static objects. As noted in my first picture (I tested by adding one at a time) the jets get added in this order. When playing, the first jet I pick always starts in position 1, but then every spawn after that spawns in position 5, then 6 if 5 is taken at the time. I'd like to spawn my jets in positions 7-12 first. These are all positions that the AI has pathing for/works with, and it works with the a-4 mod as seen in the photo.

Though I'm starting to suspect that maybe the jets don't have pathing so much as an algorithm that calculates where each is, how much space it has vs needs, and where it needs to go? I don't know, and it's quite confusing to me why we can't get access to this variable in the mission editor, but I do know that the mission file literally has a ["parking_id"] = "1" automatically on every jet set to the carrier when starting from parking hot or ramp (cold). Things like land bases will have their parking_id actually different from each other (I have a couple of mig-15s in spots automatically assigned 18 and 19 in the same file), so it does seem like these are positions that just need to be accessed from the UI to be useful.

4 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

+999999999999999999999999

Last time I tested, if you beach an aircraft carrier such that a portion of it is hanging out over land, using the start from ground/ground hot options will spawn you appropriately, on top of the carrier's deck. So it looks like all we'd need to do here is to remove the placement restrictions preventing mission editors from placing aircraft in water.

The AI pathfinding will need to change though (right now they don't really pathfind - they just have fixed routing from A to B and if there's something in the way, they'll either get stuck, or crash into whatever's in the way).

 

 

Okay, if that's all that would be needed, I have to ask: why aren't we allowed to place jets in the water anyway? I mean, when creating a mission, we want to create working missions, so jets that go sploosh right away would be a minor thing we'd probably take care of and make sure start on deck anyway... I'm certain there's got to be some reason that I don't have the knowledge of, but this all seems like (and I'm not an expert, so I'm probably wrong) minor fixes or changes that could be done fairly quickly to create an even more realistic sim.

Or maybe, if possible (and in the future), have the carriers (each one) use its own topical overlay mapping of some kind that we could draw ourselves? Like, the program parses different colour boxes and lines for parking and pathing, with a set amount of colours predetermined by DCS? Then, for each mission, we could change the overlay map and it would just follow it? Bah! I'm probably giving some poor programmer a headache just by typing this. I'll provide a picture just to make the idea clear, anyway (second image).

Really though, my wish here is to be able to determine which spot I start in. There are 12 working spots here, so why not let me determine which one in the mission editor? Even if I get a solid 'no' I'd like to know why something that seems so simple can't be done or is so much more work than I might think it is.

Edited August 23, 2022 by SomethingAncient
Clarify a few things.

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, SomethingAncient said:

I was just wishing to even use the preexisting parking places to spawn where I wanted without having to use AI or static objects. As noted in my first picture (I tested by adding one at a time) the jets get added in this order. When playing, the first jet I pick always starts in position 1, but then every spawn after that spawns in position 5, then 6 if 5 is taken at the time. I'd like to spawn my jets in positions 7-12 first. These are all positions that the AI has pathing for/works with, and it works with the a-4 mod as seen in the photo.

Though I'm starting to suspect that maybe the jets don't have pathing so much as an algorithm that calculates where each is, how much space it has vs needs, and where it needs to go? I don't know, and it's quite confusing to me why we can't get access to this variable in the mission editor, but I do know that the mission file literally has a ["parking_id"] = "1" automatically on every jet set to the carrier when starting from parking hot or ramp (cold). Things like land bases will have their parking_id actually different from each other (I have a couple of mig-15s in spots automatically assigned 18 and 19 in the same file), so it does seem like these are positions that just need to be accessed from the UI to be useful.

Ahh I see, you're after the ability to specifiy the parking spot to use and yes I agree.

1 hour ago, SomethingAncient said:

Okay, if that's all that would be needed, I have to ask: why aren't we allowed to place jets in the water anyway? I mean, when creating a mission, we want to create working missions, so jets that go sploosh right away would be a minor thing we'd probably take care of and make sure start on deck anyway... I'm certain there's got to be some reason that I don't have the knowledge of, but this all seems like (and I'm not an expert, so I'm probably wrong) minor fixes or changes that could be done fairly quickly to create an even more realistic sim.

Yeah I agree, I would like the placement restrictions removed (even if only optional) and leave it up to me to make sure stuff gets placed in a sensible place.

However, since this relies on beaching the carrier, I can't test it while the carrier is moving, though seeing as we can land aircraft on carriers and there's no problem there, I don't see why this couldn't work.

[sirrah]

2 hours ago, SomethingAncient said:

 

Really though, my wish here is to be able to determine which spot I start in. There are 12 working spots here, so why not let me determine which one in the mission editor? Even if I get a solid 'no' I'd like to know why something that seems so simple can't be done or is so much more work than I might think it is.

 

Again, see the thread I linked. This is the exact same wish as yours and BIGNEWY said:  It's not planned".

I still hope ED will make it possible at some point. Shouldn't be too much work to add I'd expect. Then again  I'm no coder..

[Exorcet]

This seems like a really big omission, especially considering that the Supercarrier is a paid add on. Organized parking is burried in the code somewhere because you can achieve it by adding aircraft in a specific order, but that shouldn't be necessary. I also hate that the priority spots are so close to the catapults and require super tight turns with little room to line up. Selectable parking on ships needs to be a priority addition.

[Northstar98]

On 8/25/2022 at 12:06 AM, Exorcet said:

This seems like a really big omission, especially considering that the Supercarrier is a paid add on. Organized parking is burried in the code somewhere because you can achieve it by adding aircraft in a specific order, but that shouldn't be necessary.

It's a massive gaping hole of an omission that drastically limits your options. Both selecting a parking spot out of a pre-determined list and being able to just spawn wherever you like are solved problems for airbases - an aircraft carrier isn't really all that different in terms of the basic fundamentals, apart from the fact that it moves (which considering we can land on moving carriers with more-or-less no issues), I don't really see what the issue is.

And yeah, the file you're after is the RunwaysAndRoutes.lua for whatever ship you want to edit. Aside from replacing some of the values (say, swapping slot 1 with slot 4) you can't change the order, but you can change how many there are and where they are.

Unfortunately though, you can't reload this file within a mission (which would allow for something more akin to cyclic ops), so you're stuck with a single configuration for the entire mission. It would be useful to have at least a takeoff configuration (allowing aircraft to be parked over the landing area) and one suitable for landing, with the landing area cleared, with parking perhaps over the bow catapults.

On 8/25/2022 at 12:06 AM, Exorcet said:

I also hate that the priority spots are so close to the catapults and require super tight turns with little room to line up. Selectable parking on ships needs to be a priority addition.

Absolutely and as it stands none of the carriers support cyclic operations and you're severely limited in terms of how many useable aircraft you can have up on deck, especially if you're going to have an AI BARCAP flight, AEW aircraft and a tanker. On the Forrestal, if said AI BARCAP flight is a 2-ship, then that already cuts the useable aircraft in half.

It also means it's impossible to replicate what a more realistic deck would look like, which I can only do with static objects, which are eye-candy only and unuseable.

Another compounding problem is the lack of pushback functionality - yes this is not something a pilot would do, but who says I can't pretend to be an aircraft handler before pretending to step into the aircraft?

Edited September 25, 2022 by Northstar98

[SomethingAncient]

On 8/23/2022 at 9:31 AM, sirrah said:

Again, see the thread I linked. This is the exact same wish as yours and BIGNEWY said:  It's not planned".

I still hope ED will make it possible at some point. Shouldn't be too much work to add I'd expect. Then again  I'm no coder..

Yeah, I think that answer is a bit lacking, which sucks. Hopefully in the future. Thanks for providing the link.

[Baco]

I have never been able to place 12 Player (Client) panes on a carrier at once . If you reach a maximum of 4 aircraft on deck the rest get delayed flight. his makes using carriers utterly unrealistic. We NEED a feature to solve this  either with start on deck option and lete the Mission maker deal with it or more usable spots on deck.

[Robo]

HERE IS
Custom Carrier Parking Positions
How to place your plane anywhere on the carrier.
Follow the Picture for Parking Number

1: Make one or several plane groups of the wanted number of aircraft spawning in front of you. Takeoff from ramp.
2: Name the group *AI
3: Go to trigger, Click New Trigger, Name *Remove AI
4: New Condition -> Type: Time More: 1s
5: Action:New -> Action Deactivate -> Group *AI
6: Create Your or Client aircraft.


 

null

[upyr1]

On 8/23/2022 at 1:36 AM, Northstar98 said:

+999999999999999999999999

Last time I tested, if you beach an aircraft carrier such that a portion of it is hanging out over land, using the start from ground/ground hot options will spawn you appropriately, on top of the carrier's deck. So it looks like all we'd need to do here is to remove the placement restrictions preventing mission editors from placing aircraft in water.

The AI pathfinding will need to change though (right now they don't really pathfind - they just have fixed routing from A to B and if there's something in the way, they'll either get stuck, or will just crash into it).

I haven't seen this, but if so, it means carriers are going to remain incredibly limited and it isn't at all realistic.

Even for the Supercarrier, 16 is far less than what could realistically be achieved:

Right now we're limited to static aircraft to populate the deck as we see fit (unless you have a go at editing the RunwaysAndRoutes.lua file), which means those aircraft are decorative only and can't be used for anything.

For the Forrestal-class it's even worse as there you only have 8 spawn areas, the real thing is nowhere near as limited (even if I just count aircraft that could taxi without support from the deck crew - of which I count 28, excluding aircraft on catapults):

 

I'd love to see overhauls on the spawn points, the second photo which looks like an ODS Alpha-strike is how I want my deck to look when I have a large mission