[User Mod] - Add countries limitations to Heatblur's built-in F-4E liveries

[Rudel_chw]

Hello,

By default, Heatblur's F-4E includes over 60 built-in liveries, none of which has country limitation active. This means that on the Mission Editor, when I add say an Israel F-4E, I have to wade among the over 60 items liveries list to select one for an Israeli aircraft, like on this pic:

 

 

I know that many users prefer the freedom to put any random livery on whichever country's aircraft, but for me this is a hindrance when doing mission editing, and also kills realism having a USA aircraft with Israeli markings, for example.

So, this Mod restores the country limitation and so Israeli skins can only be applied to Israel aircraft, for example, like on this other Pic, taken with the Mod active:

 

 

The USAF livery at the top of the list, is the default F-4E livery, that is used for any country that has no specific livery available. For example, if I were to fly a Phantom belonging to my home country (Chile), only that single livery would show up on the list. However, it can be noted that now the livery list is a much more manageable entity, instead of the original 60+ item list.

This file is in OvGME format, if you use that Mod manager then just download this file on your DCS Program's repository, like this:

 

 

The Mod is now active at User Files:

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3339344/

 

Note that this Mod does not go onto /Saved Games/ since it modifies the built-in liveries descriptions. It should not affect the DCS Integrity Check flag.

If you prefer a manual install, simply copy the contents of the F-4E-45MC folder that is within the zip file, onto this path:

C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\CoreMods\aircraft\F-4E\Liveries\F-4E-45MC

If you have installed your DCS on a different path, you may need to change the first section of the above path.

This Mod requires only 101 KB of disk space.

If Heatblur adds more built-in liveries in the future, then I will update this Mod acordingly.

Greetings to all,

 

Eduardo

Edited July 5, 2024 by Rudel_chw
Added Mod link

[Wingmate]

Thank you for this, I always thought if you wanted to use any skin/unit that was what the combined task force factions were for. Removing the country restriction effectively removed the point of countries within DCS and made searching for the right skin a pain.

[Rudel_chw]

8 minutes ago, Wingmate said:

Thank you for this, I always thought if you wanted to use any skin/unit that was what the combined task force factions were for. Removing the country restriction effectively removed the point of countries within DCS and made searching for the right skin a pain.

 

Thanks for the kind words ... one item I forgot to mention, is that you may want to modify the description.lua file of the User-made skins that you eventually download, adding at the end of the file a line like this:

countries = {"SPN"}

On this example, SPN is the country code for Spain. Below I'm attaching a list of all country codes currently on DCS.

For example, on the next pic I have a fictional russian F-4E and you may notice that some spanish skins show up, that's because I had forgotten to edit their description.lua files:

 

 

Cheers.

 

Countries.pdf

[LanceCriminal86]

First people complained about country restrictions in the F-14, now we remove them and we have people complaining?

[Marsvinet]

3 hours ago, LanceCriminal86 said:

First people complained about country restrictions in the F-14, now we remove them and we have people complaining?

Two different groups of people. I prefer not having the country restrictions so much that I made a script to remove the country tag from every livery in the base game, allowing me more freedom in different servers. But many others want them for the reasons Rudel mentioned above. You'll never make both these groups completely happy since we want two mutually exclusive features. Easier to just let us fix it to our own liking, since we can do that quite easily.

Edited July 5, 2024 by Marsvinet

[Zabuzard]

Cool mod, thanks for the efforts!

Perhaps the underlying "issue" trying to address here is just that it may not be directly clear which livery belongs to which country just based on the names? If so, perhaps we can just add the country names to the Display Name of the liveries in the editor without adding actual country restrictions?

Cheers

[Rudel_chw]

7 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

perhaps we can just add the country names to the Display Name of the liveries in the editor without adding actual country restrictions?

wouldn’t renaming skins affect existing missions?  … thanks for the kind words.

Also, this thread wasn’t meant to be a "complaint", rather it can be seen as a user customization  

[Zabuzard]

11 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

Also, this thread wasn’t meant to be a "complaint", rather it can be seen as a user customization  

Yeah, I understand. Its always good to have options, people who want country locks can pick the mod and everyone is happy

11 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

wouldn’t renaming skins affect existing missions?  … thanks for the kind words.

Shouldnt, as DCS works based on the livery IDs, not display names.

I just checked in-game and it seems all liveries are already grouped by airforce and have the airforce name in there, for example "F-4E - ROKAF - ...".
So I guess the issues rather arise from not everyone knowing who IAF, IIAF, IRIAF is etc?

[Kalasnkova74]

7 hours ago, LanceCriminal86 said:

First people complained about country restrictions in the F-14, now we remove them and we have people complaining?

Yeah, it’s weird for me too.

IMO it’s fine the way it is. The livery names & types clearly show the nation, and they’re all F-4E Block 45s anyway (which is only correct for about half the color schemes available ). No nation lock = ultimate user freedom in assignment , which IMO is a good thing. 

[Wingmate]

3 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

I just checked in-game and it seems all liveries are already grouped by airforce and have the airforce name in there, for example "F-4E - ROKAF - ...".
So I guess the issues rather arise from not everyone knowing who IAF, IIAF, IRIAF is etc?

The first and last phantom skins are not grouped with their respective airforces. The first phantom skin is a USAF separated from the rest of the USAF skins by several counrties. The last skin in the list is labeled as an RF-4EJ and is likely being alphabetically sorted last rather than with the other JASDF paints.

Personally I have no issue with knowing which country is which based on their airforces acronym. My issue (and it is relatively minor) is that in making missions I have always used the aircrafts country as a filter to help manage the list of skins, for example maybe I am looking for the Israeli skins for the F-15 if I select Israel as the country, or maybe I am looking for a Finnish F-18 so I select Finland as the country, it makes it really easy to to find the in the mission editor especially if you have a large number of liveries. If I was making a different mission for myself and my friends just to hop in a jet and fly without trying to set up any kind of scenario I would use the Combined Joint Task Force Blue or Red as the country as the have no restrictions on what livery (or plane) you can choose, which I thought had satisfied both use cases and it was on the mission creator to provide that option if people wanted. As it stands for DCS there really is not alot of point for choosing a specific country (in my view at least) aside from it made large lists of liveries a lot more manageable.

As I make skins for the phantom I will add country tags to them for my own sanity (what little there is left after staring at photoshop for hours anyways).

[Zabuzard]

Makes sense. Perhaps this is better suited as a request to ED to add some form of checkbox next to the livery selection that removes country locks? Then all modules could put in country lock on the livery and users can always access all liveries if desired regardless - without the need for module makers to decide or users to rely on mods. Best of both worlds, so to speak.

Edited July 5, 2024 by Zabuzard

[Kalasnkova74]

47 minutes ago, Wingmate said:

My issue (and it is relatively minor) is that in making missions I have always used the aircrafts country as a filter to help manage the list of skins, for example maybe I am looking for the Israeli skins for the F-15 if I select Israel as the country, or maybe I am looking for a Finnish F-18 so I select Finland as the country, it makes it really easy to to find the in the mission editor especially if you have a large number of liveries.

I follow your reasoning, and that’s how I used to manage liveries. Then I tried to build a campaign with a Red Eagles MiG-21 flying for the USAF. You can guess the problem.

Also, some liveries correspond to nations that either don’t exist anymore or would align with both sides of a combined task force depending on the timeframe. If you have a USSR vs Imperial Iran scenario, Iran would be on the U.S. side. Obviously after 1979 under the IRIAF they’d be on the other side.  

Now add in mission scenarios like escorting a defector who needs to be considered “blue air” despite flying a “red air” asset, and you can see having the freedom to assign liveries without national ties is a useful capability. Of course, the trade off is less straightforward livery organization for more clear-cut Red v Blue setups.

[Rudel_chw]

6 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Shouldnt, as DCS works based on the livery IDs, not display names.

 

Hi,

I did a quick inspection of one of my missions, and while the field is named "Livery_id", it actually contains the display name, like this:

 

["livery_id"] = "UK - RAF CXISqn FG.1 XV528 'Black Mike' (by Macintyre)",

 

So, renaming a livery will actually impact missions that use it   

[Rudel_chw]

3 hours ago, Wingmate said:

As it stands for DCS there really is not alot of point for choosing a specific country (in my view at least) aside from it made large lists of liveries a lot more manageable.

 

I have to agree .. the Phantom cames with over 60 liveries, and that list is merged with whatever custom liveries we may have at /Saved Games/ ... on my case, this adds another 30 entries to the list:

 

 

Then, if for example I add a background static phantom at my home base, I get to wade through the 90+ liveries list, seeing just 10 at a time:

 

 

When filtering by, for example, "UK" y then get a much more reasonable list:

 

 

 

same thing on the rearm window:

 

 

I completely get the point that most multiplayer DCS users can't really decide which country their client slot will have, but for a Single Player like myself, having the ability to quickly select a proper livery for my airframe, it is a good thing

Best regards,

 

Eduardo

[Zabuzard]

I mean, there isn't really any need to defend a mod. It is there for whoever wants to use it and these people will appreciate it a lot, so thanks for making it! :)

In terms for addressing the issue outside of mods, the best approach would probably be if ED adds a checkbox or similiar next to the livery selection that would allow users to toggle country lock on and off.

[Rudel_chw]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to let users know that I updated this Mod today, to cover the new spanish Air Force livery that Heatblur added on today's DCS update.

 

Eduardo

[Northstar98]

Personally I'm with Rudel on this.

Personally, if everything is going to be available to every country then what really is the point of selecting one in a mission? If I want to have a condensed list I can do so by selecting the appropriate country and if I don't I can select CJTF and have everything. This then becomes mostly a mission editing problem.

I wasn't aware of this mod, but what I've already done is gone through the entire list of liveries I use and edit their descriptions such that they're sorted by country and are ordered in a way I desire (so they're all grouped appropriately and listed by squadron). In order to stop them from being overwritten by the updated I've also changed some of the folder names, the problem there though is that there isn't a livery manager to exclude liveries from being redownloaded everytime a repair or update is run, so I have to delete the duplicates each time.

@Zabuzard There is already a way to bypass country-locked liveries by using the combined joint task force "countries" - these have everything available.

On 7/5/2024 at 3:46 PM, Kalasnkova74 said:

I follow your reasoning, and that’s how I used to manage liveries. Then I tried to build a campaign with a Red Eagles MiG-21 flying for the USAF. You can guess the problem.

Also, some liveries correspond to nations that either don’t exist anymore or would align with both sides of a combined task force depending on the timeframe. If you have a USSR vs Imperial Iran scenario, Iran would be on the U.S. side. Obviously after 1979 under the IRIAF they’d be on the other side.  

Now add in mission scenarios like escorting a defector who needs to be considered “blue air” despite flying a “red air” asset, and you can see having the freedom to assign liveries without national ties is a useful capability. Of course, the trade off is less straightforward livery organization for more clear-cut Red v Blue setups.

I agree with you and these are valid concerns, but personally, wouldn't this be better solved with changes to the coalition system?

Firstly, instead of assigning countries exclusively to one particular side, have countries purely there to filter units (and by extension, their liveries). You'd then have a drop-down menu in each group to specify which "side" the unit/group belongs to. There should also be an option for "none" which has everything available (which is what we already have with the combined joint task forces).

This is exactly what C:MO does and it offers much more flexibility.

It would allow you to use the same unit and livery, from the exact same country, on multiple sides, thus facilitating things like defectors. It also means that, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, you can have it your way without compromise - don't want the hassle of having to go through lists that are way longer than they should be? You're covered - simply select a specific country and only the units and liveries actually accurate to that country should be present. If you want everything available? Again, you're covered - don't select a specific country (or in the case of DCS select one of the CJTF "countries") and you have everything available. This though is off-topic here and I'd direct you to this post instead.

[Kalasnkova74]

19 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

- don't want the hassle of having to go through lists that are way longer than they should be?

IMO, this is the role of the operator/player/campaign designer- not the system.
 

A big list of liveries is less development intensive than an interface redesign that requires ED resources to implement and test. In my estimation their developers have much bigger fish to fry than redesigning the liveries menu to enable region locking & independent livery selection. 
 

If I’m building a scenario, I know the role of the players and thus should have the flexibility to assign color schemes as required. If that means sorting through a big list of liveries, it doesn’t bother me. What would is encountering a nation lock that forces me to program around it.

[Rudel_chw]

11 minutes ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

If that means sorting through a big list of liveries, it doesn’t bother me. What would is encountering a nation lock that forces me to program around it.

there is a simple solution: don’t use this Mod, as the F-4E has no lock by default.

[Northstar98]

10 minutes ago, Kalasnkova74 said:

If I’m building a scenario, I know the role of the players and thus should have the flexibility to assign color schemes as required. If that means sorting through a big list of liveries, it doesn’t bother me. What would is encountering a nation lock that forces me to program around it.

But you're not forced to program around it, the game already has an option that gives you everything, even for liveries assigned to a particular country. No programming required - just select one of the CJTF "countries" for the scenario you're building and you have everything.

2 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

there is a simple solution: don’t use this Mod, as the F-4E has no lock by default.

It's even simpler than that - simply select CJTF as opposed to a specific country.

[Zabuzard]

Im not a mission designer myself and cant comment much on the process.
But the motivation for removing the country locks was done by community request. We had the skins locked originally in our projects and then there were huge threads with the community demanding it to be removed.

We removed it and now the majority of Mission Makers seems to be happy with the choice. So here we are.

That said, all your comments are totally valid. Which is why I believe it would be best to try and find a solution that can satisfy all the needs and make everyone happy. For example by having a way to bypass the coubtry lock individually per plane with a checkbox similiar to the "realistic loadout restrictions" checkbox that would then apply a filter.

Unfortunately out of our control, something that ED would have to do.

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Im not a mission designer myself and cant comment much on the process.
But the motivation for removing the country locks was done by community request. We had the skins locked originally in our projects and then there were huge threads with the community demanding it to be removed.

We removed it and now the majority of Mission Makers seems to be happy with the choice. So here we are.

That said, all your comments are totally valid. Which is why I believe it would be best to try and find a solution that can satisfy all the needs and make everyone happy. For example by having a way to bypass the coubtry lock individually per plane with a checkbox similiar to the "realistic loadout restrictions" checkbox that would then apply a filter.

Unfortunately out of our control, something that ED would have to do.

Its better to just have those that want country locks to just apply them to personal liveries. 
 

If what you suggest is implemented at anywhere except the rearm window, the end user will be back where we were before, forced to edit every livery file to include it for all countries. 
 

PITA

[IronMike]

Thank you for the mod!

Simple trick: place down a template aircraft, select the country livery it will fly for, and then simply copy paste that unit for subsequent unit placement. Now, when you select the livery, it will always be in the respective country's vicinity, much quicker than placing down a new unit and selecting everything all over again.

In other words, the gain in freedom, to allow all liveries, far outweighs the inconvience of having to select them.

That said, great to have a mod for that, more QoL never hurts imo, and also agree with Zabu, that a tickbox on ME side would be great for "sort by country" etc.

[Rudel_chw]

3 minutes ago, IronMike said:

the gain in freedom, to allow all liveries …

to me, having an aircraft of france flying with a japanese livery simply does not make sense, I honestly dont understand such freedom 

[Northstar98]

4 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Its better to just have those that want country locks to just apply them to personal liveries. 
 

If what you suggest is implemented at anywhere except the rearm window, the end user will be back where we were before, forced to edit every livery file to include it for all countries. 
 

PITA

Why not just use the CJTF "countries"? They have everything - no need to make any edits to any files. You already have a solution here, even if the liveries were assigned to appropriate countries.

That way, both of us are covered, without really having to compromise. If you want the flexibility to choose anything - then select one of the CJTF "countries", want the liveries to be sorted? Select the specific country you desire. Where's the PITA?

What even is the point of having countries if everything is going to be available regardless of which one you choose? That's the #1 reason I select a particular country in the first place - so I only see stuff (or rather so I should only see stuff) that's actually appropriate for that country. If I don't want that and want it completely open - I'm already covered, I just select one of the Combined Joint Task Force "countries" and there I have everything unrestricted.

With your way, I lose the first option and I don't actually gain any flexibility that I didn't already have by selecting the appropriate country.

Edited August 11, 2024 by Northstar98