Servers with correct carrier's WOD

[Tusky]

Hi all!

I've noticed that very very few servers have aircraft carriers with optimal Wind Over Deck (WOD): 25-30kn.

Even though I can understand the issues for server with long mission times (e.g. the carrier might eventually strand or access enemy areas), there are a few tricks that can be used such as:
- have the ship on a course parallel to the coast
- use actual wind to reduce ship's speed
- have the carrier respawn once it reaches a predetermined position (an alert message would help, too)

If the mission has no wind, just set the ship at 27-28 kn on whatever heading and it will create it's own WOD regardless of course; once the map limit is reached (whatever it is), just send the ship to a new waypoint.

If there is wind and you don't want to use the tools available online (here's one: https://magwo.github.io/carrier-cruise/), you can always jump onto the LSO platform view with LALT+F9 and check the real parameters (pag.51 of the Supercarrier manual for more information) and refine them if needed. You may want to have 0 or a very low axial wind component (without wind with the carrier at 27-28kn, the axial component is 4kn starboard - that's better than WOD at 10kn!)

If anyone is aware of servers with carriers with optimal WOD, please add it below.

Thank you!

 

P.S. Maybe someone (hopefully) will want to adjust the carrier speed and position in his/her mission.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Tusky

[Maverick87Shaka]

Hi @Tusky,
As a server admin I can guarantee that make carrier ops enjoyable within the complex scenario of a 24/7 server is really challenging.

BTW what I normally try to do is set a linear path for the carrier, or with a really small variation in terms of degree of its path in my server missions.
Then I have a script that on each server reboot, randomize the cloud preset and assign a random wind speed between 0 and 5 m/s ( less then 10 knots ) and a random wind heading but between  +/10° maximum using the carrier heading as reference.

Hopefully adding wind speed and carrier speed that is set to 15 knots, you should have at least a minimum of 15knots of headwind, to a maximum of 25 knots if you are really lucky and get exact wind direction among the Flight Deck. In the worst scenario you will have a crosswind component that should not exceed 2.6 knots.

But it's not always possible due to map constrain, no long enough path for the lifespan between each server reboot and so on.

This is what we've done so far in the server/map where we can, it's a trade-off of course, but trying to make our server fun to play for everyone, and not to much boring since you can experience day by day different condition, and not always the same weather.



I know it's not perfect and we're still open to suggestion and improvement

If you're EU located (for ping) and wanna try, our server are called like this: [ITA] Banshee | <server name> , and the best one to try carrier ops and this weather script is PersianConquest.

FlySafe!


 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Maverick87Shaka

[Nealius]

Airboss script is the best solution for this at the moment. Have the carrier doing a box pattern and add the patrol ad infinitum line, then set automatic recovery windows for the duration the server is up. Players can either launch/recover during a known window, or they can manually open a window through the F10 menu.

[Maverick87Shaka]

27 minutes ago, Nealius said:

Airboss script is the best solution for this at the moment. Have the carrier doing a box pattern and add the patrol ad infinitum line, then set automatic recovery windows for the duration the server is up. Players can either launch/recover during a known window, or they can manually open a window through the F10 menu.

We've tested several times and unfortunately doesn't work very well to be honest for a 24/7 server.
Carrier goes all around and it's a kind of "unpredictable" since it's based on players action, and believe me, in 6 hours of server of running time you can find carrier completely to the other side of the map, with new player spawining 200nm away from the actual conflicts.

It's nice to have in a relative short squadron mission, and we've used a bit, but for that scope, the mission editor can easily calculate wind speed according to the carrier course and it's done, without using airboss script.

 

[Tusky]

Thank you for the reply @Maverick87Shaka

Being Italian myself, yours is one of the servers I check regularly; we've already exchanged a few messages on Discord in the past about carrier parameters. The fact that I've opened a forum thread is because having so few servers with usable carrier is really a pity. Nevertheless, being an amateur mission designer myself, I fully understand the map restrains...unless you use Mariana or maybe South Atlantic. 

A few suggestions for your server:
- maybe increase the speed of the carrier a bit (20kn would be ideal) in order to increase the chances to have WOD between 25kn and 30kn?
- as suggested above, if the mission is too long, have the carrier respawn at the starting point once it reaches a certain position in the map (a warning message wpuld help)

Just throwing some ideas for the sake of discussion, of course...  

And by the way, thank you for the servers! 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Tusky

[Nealius]

19 hours ago, Maverick87Shaka said:

We've tested several times and unfortunately doesn't work very well to be honest for a 24/7 server.

Without any server restarts within that 24 hours? Honestly DCS as a whole isn't really well suited for 24/7 servers, and seems to work best with server restarts every 4 hours or 6 hours. 

[Maverick87Shaka]

18 hours ago, Nealius said:

Without any server restarts within that 24 hours? Honestly DCS as a whole isn't really well suited for 24/7 servers, and seems to work best with server restarts every 4 hours or 6 hours. 

Yes with restart every 6 hours
with 24/7 I mean a server that is always open to public. That's why carrier become impredicibile, and if you have other mission or other stuff running in the rest of the map, it's a problem have a carrier that moves "freely" commanded by a script like airboss.