Adding Human Controlled Aircraft in a Multiplayer Flight

[Vosene]

Probable bug when using the mission editor to create a multiplayer flight.

 

When you add an aircraft and select it as client for a multiplayer session (as per the manual) and try to add further aircraft to the same flight you can't select client for the additional aircraft.

 

When you try to fly one of these aircraft in multiplayer you don't get any payload or waypoint information.

 

Only way I can find to add additional multiplayer aircraft is to create a separate flight for each aircraft and setup the waypoints and payloads separately, which is very time consuming.

[Dusty Rhodes]

Not a bug but a feature. You cannot add a wingman to a helo set to Client. Limitation of the sim. For each additional AC you want set to Client, you have to add another group. Always been this way and I doubt it will change anytime soon.

[Ramstein]

yeah, I found that out the hard way,,, I spent a lot of hours trying to find out the feature/bug wasn't obeying my commands. Too bad you can't call the other helos in for support...

 

:noexpression:

[Dusty Rhodes]

If you have other choppers in there that are Clients then they only take off with someone in them. If you holler for help and they don't come runnin, I would find some other wingies to fly with :)

[Dusty Rhodes]

I do wish that if there is no one to fill the slot, that the AI would fly the flight. But that is a wish list item.

[Vosene]

Not a bug but a feature. You cannot add a wingman to a helo set to Client. Limitation of the sim. For each additional AC you want set to Client, you have to add another group. Always been this way and I doubt it will change anytime soon.

 

I was able to add wingmen to the same flight as the client aircraft in the Mission Editor but other players didn't get the payload or waypoint information when they joined, presumably because they were unable to join the same flight and Black Shark just allocated them a 'helicopter' that wasn't in the original mission. Might it solve the problem if you were able to select client from the pull down list for every aircraft in a flight or is this a more fundamental coding issue?

 

I really hope this is something ED can sort out. It's a very time consuming 'feature' to have to set up a new flight for every person you want to fly in multi-player. It would be some undertaking to write a large scale multi-player mission the way it is at the moment.

Edited April 29, 2009 by Vosene

[nemises]

... there can only be 1 client in a flight..

if you want multiple people, then you must create mutiple flights..there is no "workaround" for this ..it is as designed...

You can add AI heli's as wingmen in a flight, not clients..

 

..spare a thought for the guys that make Large multiplayer maps , as you can see how painful it can be creating each and every flight with each and every waypoint / flight name... it is a labour of love.

[Jack McCoy]

This is so lame! Ok, whatever engine limitation there is, the mission editor is very good, but could be made a lot better we all agree.

CTRL-C

CTRL-V

Wouln't that be nice?

CTRL-SHFT-V (paste *special, with options to select Units / Units-including flight plan)

 

And it's not just a matter of being lazy; with multiple flight plans, the ABRIS or PVI coords don't match between helicopters. Don't reply "IRL, PVIs from different helicopter drift differently."

 

If the community is to thrive, put the right tools in our hands. From now on, we'll be using the Mission Editor far more than ED themselves.

[EtherealN]

Jack, you can use templates very easily to achieve that. Not a two-step like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, but rather three step - select, create template, place template.

 

EDIT: Oh, and they do drift differently. :P Also, each GPS/GLONASS receiver will have different errors.

 

As far as being each other's wingmen, you just need to set your self-ident when you start, and it will work just the same even though you are technically different "flights".

[coder1024]

yikes! I guess you could call that a feature if you want, but honestly, that sounds like a rather big bug. I'm still learning the sim and haven't yet jumped into multiplayer, but being able to have multiple human pilots in a single flight of helos sounds like a very basic requirement for multiplayer in such a product. I mean, if you're gonna fly with a couple friends you're gonna want to be in the same flight and be able to send each other waypoints (I mean the info you send with the datapad to the rest of the flight), etc. Hard to believe that wouldn't be allowed.

 

Maybe that's something that will get addressed in the patch?

[Jack McCoy]

Jack, you can use templates very easily to achieve that. Not a two-step like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, but rather three step - select, create template, place template.

Do templates copy waypoints (position-speed-altitude-type-), target points and fix points? I haven't seen it.

EDIT: Oh, and they do drift differently. :P Also, each GPS/GLONASS receiver will have different errors.

If drift is intended, it should be coded - not rely on the ability (or inability) of mission designers to position at pixel precision, the same waypoints over and over. (4 x 6 = 24! It adds up!)

As far as being each other's wingmen, you just need to set your self-ident when you start, and it will work just the same even though you are technically different "flights".

Yes.

 

yikes! I guess you could call that a feature if you want, but honestly, that sounds like a rather big bug. I'm still learning the sim and haven't yet jumped into multiplayer, but being able to have multiple human pilots in a single flight of helos sounds like a very basic requirement for multiplayer in such a product. I mean, if you're gonna fly with a couple friends you're gonna want to be in the same flight and be able to send each other waypoints (I mean the info you send with the datapad to the rest of the flight), etc. Hard to believe that wouldn't be allowed.

 

Maybe that's something that will get addressed in the patch?

 

This is not a big thing, and might have deep roots in the game engine architecture, like the scoring system (points/mission fail, etc.).

 

We are able to communicate as desired, it's just that most people fail these days for lack of knowledge of the systems and their usage.

[EtherealN]

Do templates copy waypoints (position-speed-altitude-type-), target points and fix points? I haven't seen it.

 

Ah, no they don't (I think). Fair point.

 

If drift is intended, it should be coded - not rely on the ability (or inability) of mission designers to position at pixel precision, the same waypoints over and over. (4 x 6 = 24! It adds up!)

 

Well, you should have taken note of the smiley-face. I wasn't being entirely serious. :P

 

But drift IS coded, and the drift means that you don't have to put waypoints at the same spot. If your flight of two were placed as a flight of two in game technical terms, you'd still have differences in spite of the actual coordinate being exactly the same to an exactness of a third of a millimeter.

 

That was my point - from the perspective of having waypoints match up exactly, getting them into the same flight on the map editor will have no benefit. (It will however induce other problems with spawning routines and so on.)

 

All of that said, I'm not an expert mission designer, but I've made a few for my own enjoyment. And really, it needs to be reiterated: "pixel precision" is absolutely worthless. There is no point in attempting to get it, since no-one will be formation-flying with only the autopilot anyhow. Rather, the flight leader will be flying the route and the others will be flying his wing - and most often the flight leader (if he is worth his salt) will not be truly "following" the route anyway. He'll have gone through the terrain topology and analyzed the threat picture and decided on specific features in the terrain that he will take advantage of through the route.

 

So, drop pixel precision. It's extra work that fills absolutely zero purpose.

 

but being able to have multiple human pilots in a single flight of helos sounds like a very basic requirement for multiplayer in such a product

 

Like I said in the post before yours: you just need to set self-ident and you're set. You'll be part of the same flight no matter what the mission designer placed you as. And if your buddies get shot but there's another friendly wing out there, you can attach yourself to that flight with another flip of the self-ident.

 

The functionality for the player is there, you just need to know how to set up your datalink. The only people suffering with the current functionality is the people designing missions.

 

*EDIT*

Small disclaimer, since some bits up there can be misinterpreted: the post above is fully and only based on my own experience gained through playing DCS, LockOn, reading the forums and so on. It is entirely possible that I have misunderstood how things work.

[Jack McCoy]

Yes, precision is one thing, and agreed it's not very important. I don't want a copy for the exactness of the positioning. Just to save some repetitive work.

 

But to the mission designers, each human pilot (client) slot requires the same amount of work and clicking. 4 clients => 4 times the work!

 

It took me 30 minutes to setup a sandbox multiplayer mission - for one player. Good enough, given my experience. The second player, 20 mins. The third, 20 minutes. The fo... :)

[EvilBivol-1]

This is a "feature" long on ED's own list of things to improve. After all, they build missions and campaigns, too. :)

 

We'll see.

[joey45]

This is a "feature" long on ED's own list of things to improve. After all, they build missions and campaigns, too. :)

 

We'll see.

 

 

Good point that...

[Jack McCoy]

Let's not forget that all this is due to the fact that we can't put more than one client per group. If we could, there would be hardly any need to copy the same waypoints/fix/tp from one group to the other(s).

[EtherealN]

Yeah.

 

I speculate that the reason why the system works like it does right now is the way it handles spawning - it always spawns the entire flight. In single-player that's allright, since the flight will either just be the player or the player plus AI wingmen. But in multiplayer, having several players in the same flight would require that all players start at the same time.

 

Depending on how deeply nested that is in the code, it might be pretty non-trivial to fix. But as EvilBivol-1 said, they're making missions as well, so when the engineer resources are available I can definitely see them looking to "fix" this.

[coder1024]

Like I said in the post before yours: you just need to set self-ident and you're set. You'll be part of the same flight no matter what the mission designer placed you as. And if your buddies get shot but there's another friendly wing out there, you can attach yourself to that flight with another flip of the self-ident.

 

The functionality for the player is there, you just need to know how to set up your datalink. The only people suffering with the current functionality is the people designing missions.

ah ok, thats a relief. I'm not deep enough into the sim yet to understand how to do what you described, but as long as there is a way to be in the same flight and use the datalink with other human players and see them on the map, then that's workable. Having a hassle on the mission design side is annoying, but as long as you can eventually get into the same flight then its not as big a problem as I thought when I first read this.