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

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

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.

 

That's fine if I am flying a mission I made.

However, Zabuzard suggested a checkbox  similar to the "realistic loadout restrictions"(I assume he means the pylon restrictions available in the ME). If this checkbox is in the mission editor, then players using those slots will be restricted in their livery choice by country unless they modify ALL livery files to be usable by all countries, which is the situation we used to have and begged be changed.

 

[Zabuzard]

My suggestion wasnt meant to be taken that literally.

It was more about the fact that after seeing the wishes of all parties involved, it seems that the best approach is not "country lock liveries yes/no?" but rather to provide improved utility in the DCS native GUI.
That is, mission designers should be able to select any livery they want if they want, but also be able to easily and quickly access the liveries appropriate for a givrn country, as well as forcing/allowing players in-game to do the same. And further even allowing players for fast in-game selection in servers to save favorite liveries etc.

There seems to be plenty of ways to deal with it from that front, while our tools as thirdparty are very limited. We can only choose livery lock yes/no and it seems that for the majority of people no livery lock seems to be the better of the two evils...

[Rudel_chw]

5 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

My suggestion wasnt meant to be taken that literally... ... it seems that for the majority of people no livery lock seems to be the better of the two evils...

 

Maybe for the people that mostly fly Multiplayer on missions created by someone else ... not sure if that's a majority or not. I employ this Mod mostly for my own use, and shared it just in case there are some other mission creators that share my livery preferences, no one is forced to make use of this Mod so I don't understand why some users have so strong opinions about it.

from ED I would like a slightly enlarged livery picker list, as just 10 entries is kind of short, rather than having them change their UI in a more complex way:

 

 

Cheers!

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

That's fine if I am flying a mission I made.

Well, following this - having whichever liveries available becomes a mission editing problem (and one that's easily solved, well depending on how many player aircraft there are) and not necessarily a "livery assigned to a country" problem.

1 hour ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

If this checkbox is in the mission editor, then players using those slots will be restricted in their livery choice by country unless they modify ALL livery files to be usable by all countries, which is the situation we used to have and begged be changed.

Again, I'm left asking what the point of having countries in the mission editor is, if everything is going to be available for all of them?

And again, this is completely avoided if mission editors make their missions such that liveries aren't restricted - something they're fully capable of doing without modifying any livery files. I'm sorry, but I'm struggling to see how this isn't just a mission editing issue.

16 minutes ago, Zabuzard said:

That is, mission designers should be able to select any livery they want if they want, but also be able to easily and quickly access the liveries appropriate for a givrn country, as well as forcing/allowing players in-game to do the same.

This was already the case in DCS for aircraft with liveries tied to countries:

• If mission editors want every livery to be available, they should use one of the combined joint task forces "countries" which bypass any country specific restriction and has everything available (essentially identical to selecting no specific country).
• If mission editors only want liveries of a particular country to be available, then they should select whatever specific country.
• If mission editors only want one particular livery to be available, then they should uncheck the checkbox in the advanced server settings which controls whether switching liveries is permitted.

I can think of scenarios where each option could be desireable: if I'm doing a free-for-all and the livery doesn't matter, option #1 it is; if I'm doing a mission where country markings are important (for instance where VID-ing targets becomes important/necessary to avoid friendly fire), but I don't necessarily want to completely prevent players from changing their livery, then option #2 it is; and if I want to try and do a historically accurate mission where I want to enforce as much accuracy as possible, then I can choose option #3. 

If every livery is available to every country, then all that happens is I lose that second option, reducing the choice to a binary yes/no, all or nothing deal. Where it's either completely wide open or as strict as possible.

Edited August 11, 2024 by Northstar98

[Stackup]

I think some of this might also extend from the aircraft Heatblur has chosen to model.  The Viggen and F-14 are both primarily single country aircraft, while the F-4E was significantly more widespread.  So country limitations are more obvious and restrictive on the first two than the F-4, when a country that isn't the US or Sweden was chosen.  I'm not really sure why that's a problem in the first place though.  Why should something like the F-14 ever be placed into a mission where the USA is not its country?  Aside from Iran, which doesn't have any default skins in the first place, nobody else has operated it or has skins included.  And the Iranian user-made skins were already available for Iran if the player has them installed, so unless the mission maker has locked out livery changing, I'm not seeing a problem.

This could have easily been fixed if mission designers would use the CJTF countries exclusively in their design if they want to allow full user customization as has been mentioned.  If we look at future modules still in the pipeline, the Eurofighter is used by multiple countries while the A-6E was exclusively US.  Removing the limitation might be easier for some, but it is highly annoying for others.  The MiG-21 is also an example of no country filters and an extremely long list of liveries which is arguably more annoying to me than the F-4's list.

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Well, following this - having whichever liveries available becomes a mission editing problem (and one that's easily solved, well depending on how many player aircraft there are) and not necessarily a "livery assigned to a country" problem.

Again, I'm left asking what the point of having countries in the mission editor is, if everything is going to be available for all of them?

And again, this is completely avoided if mission editors make their missions such that liveries aren't restricted - something they're fully capable of doing without modifying any livery files. I'm sorry, but I'm struggling to see how this isn't just a mission editing issue.

This was already the case in DCS for aircraft with liveries tied to countries:

• If mission editors want every livery to be available, they should use one of the combined joint task forces "countries" which bypass any country specific restriction and has everything available (essentially identical to selecting no specific country).
• If mission editors only want liveries of a particular country to be available, then they should select whatever specific country.
• If mission editors only want one particular livery to be available, then they should uncheck the checkbox in the advanced server settings which controls whether switching liveries is permitted.

I can think of scenarios where each option could be desireable: if I'm doing a free-for-all and the livery doesn't matter, option #1 it is; if I'm doing a mission where country markings are important (for instance where VID-ing targets becomes important/necessary to avoid friendly fire), but I don't necessarily want to completely prevent players from changing their livery, then option #2 it is; and if I want to try and do a historically accurate mission where I want to enforce as much accuracy as possible, then I can choose option #3. 

If every livery is available to every country, then all that happens is I lose that second option, reducing the choice to a binary yes/no, all or nothing deal. Where it's either completely wide open or as strict as possible.

 

There is no point to countries in the ME. 

Server admins can easily lock liveries to whatever livery is assigned in the mission. 
 

Single player missions you build yourself should have the liveries you want already assigned. 
 

 

[Northstar98]

3 hours ago, Stackup said:

I think some of this might also extend from the aircraft Heatblur has chosen to model.  The Viggen and F-14 are both primarily single country aircraft, while the F-4E was significantly more widespread.  So country limitations are more obvious and restrictive on the first two than the F-4, when a country that isn't the US or Sweden was chosen.  I'm not really sure why that's a problem in the first place though.  Why should something like the F-14 ever be placed into a mission where the USA is not its country?  Aside from Iran, which doesn't have any default skins in the first place, nobody else has operated it or has skins included.  And the Iranian user-made skins were already available for Iran if the player has them installed, so unless the mission maker has locked out livery changing, I'm not seeing a problem.

This could have easily been fixed if mission designers would use the CJTF countries exclusively in their design if they want to allow full user customization as has been mentioned.  If we look at future modules still in the pipeline, the Eurofighter is used by multiple countries while the A-6E was exclusively US.  Removing the limitation might be easier for some, but it is highly annoying for others.  The MiG-21 is also an example of no country filters and an extremely long list of liveries which is arguably more annoying to me than the F-4's list.

Exactly.

I don't understand why the F-14 or the AJS 37 is available for anyone other than the USA and Iran, or Sweden respectively.

If I want them on both sides, then again, that's what the CJTF countries are for.

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

There is no point to countries in the ME.

Then what's the intended use case? Why do they exist?

Because for most modules they're there to filter what's available, which aids QoL when building missions. It means that if I know I want the USA in my mission, selecting USA and only being shown items actually accurate for the USA is a very convenient QoL feature (well, if it was respected that is).

Having to scroll through lists that are way longer than they need to be, just to find items actually relevant is a pain in the backside, especially when I have the option to have an unfiltered list with the CJTF countries.

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Server admins can easily lock liveries to whatever livery is assigned in the mission.

And how do I set it up such that players can still change their liveries, just so long as they stick to the same country?

Because I can do that if they're tied to countries, as well as having it completely unrestricted and completely locked out. I can't if they're not.

See that's the thing, both of us are fully catered for going my way, I'm not catered for going yours.

Edited August 11, 2024 by Northstar98
either -> both

[Rudel_chw]

50 minutes ago, Stackup said:

The Viggen and F-14 are both primarily single country aircraft, while the F-4E was significantly more widespread.  So country limitations are more obvious and restrictive on the first two than the F-4, when a country that isn't the US or Sweden was chosen. 

 

That is only if your Mission designer is a believer of strictly historical re-enactment missions ... but on DCS it is very easy to create mission on slightly alternate history, for example I can easily imagine that on 1979 Argentina could have purchased Viggens instead of Super Etendard, which then would have participated on the 1982 Falklands War:

 

 

[IronMike]

15 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

That is only if your Mission designer is a believer of strictly historical re-enactment missions ... but on DCS it is very easy to create mission on slightly alternate history, for example I can easily imagine that on 1979 Argentina could have purchased Viggens instead of Super Etendard, which then would have participated on the 1982 Falklands War:

 

 

Exactly. And that is the point of freedom of choice, to give you the freedom to do that. Mission makers want that freedom, and so we give it to them.
______

That also won't change. Anyone who does not like fictional liveries for fictional countries equally enjoys the freedom to not use them, or employ this mod for simpler search features.

You just need to think of something like "Maverick steels Iranian jet but it flies on US side"... DCS can be played in a plethora of ways, and for us it is important to provide that. Hence, this freedom outweighs the rather minor inconvenience to have to scroll through liveries, like honestly, it takes but a couple of seconds and if you place a template, even less for remaining units. The liveries will remain country unlocked, and anyone who wants, can use this mod of course instead, which we fully applaud and appreciate.

Beyond that, livery selection and rearm window filtering is something for DCS side rather. Thank you for your kind understanding.

PS: the top livery is not in the country section by prefix, because DCS requires a default livery, and we chose this one. Hence it will always show on top.

[Stackup]

11 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

That is only if your Mission designer is a believer of strictly historical re-enactment missions ... but on DCS it is very easy to create mission on slightly alternate history, for example I can easily imagine that on 1979 Argentina could have purchased Viggens instead of Super Etendard, which then would have participated on the 1982 Falklands War:

 

 

I thought we were talking about the default skins that ship with the module?  Of course alternate history is possible in DCS, but you chose to download fictional Argentine liveries and removed all the default Swedish ones from being available for Argentina instead of leaving them default because Argentina wouldn't have used Swedish skins.  You aren't disagreeing with me, you're still limiting the skins by country.  You still wouldn't want a Swedish skin on a fictional Argentine Viggen, anymore than I would want a US Navy skin avaliable on my Iranian F-14s.

Speaking of China, I can use the H-6J as an example of a dev taking it a step further.  The H-6J can only be used by China or CJTF Red.  Nobody else.  Not Russia, no one.  Hard lockout.  So, my fictional Soviet Badgers have to be placed under CJTF Red or China in order to be used.

Liveries locked to a country are still all availabe on CJTF teams, that's the point.   The country tab is a filter, that's why it's there.  Using it to filter liveries as your mod does makes sense to me and that seems to have been the original intention of the country system in the first place.

[Rudel_chw]

6 minutes ago, Stackup said:

I thought we were talking about the default skins that ship with the module? 

 

Yes we were, sorry for my rambling, I just wanted to note that the Viggen (and F-14) on DCS can be used by any country I need for my mission, as long as there is a livery for it somewhere. 

On the F-4E case the Mod deals only with the 60 default liveries, because the other 30 that I have downloaded to my saved games folder can be easily edited to be usable for the countries I deem appropiate  ... while the default liveries are harder to edit since they can be overwritten when DCS updates or is repaired, that's why I needed this to be in User Mod format.

greetings,

 

Eduardo

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

 

And how do I set it up such that players can still change their liveries, just so long as they stick to the same country?

Because I can do that if they're tied to countries, as well as having it completely unrestricted and completely locked out. I can't if they're not.

See that's the thing, both of us are fully catered for going my way, I'm not catered for going yours.

As I suspected, this is tied to your ability to control the choices of other players. 

In the server settings, you can deny the ability to change liveries globally and the players are stuck with whatever livery the mission designer chose for that slot.

The ultimate in livery power.

If you give them the ability to change liveries, they will be able to choose whatever livery they want. How is this possible? Because the livery files are editable by the end user and the countries they are available to can be edited. 

That's the way we used to bypass the country restricted liveries in the past.

I don't wish to return to being forced to edit every livery file.

So you will have to lobby for locking out player access to livery files to achieve your ultimate goal.

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3308635/

 

Edited August 11, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[Northstar98]

22 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

As I suspected, this is tied to your ability to control the choices of other players.

Oh should I not get to decide how my missions are set up?

And erm, irony much?

You want to restrict the options I have available so it's either all or nothing, despite the fact that you're fully catered for and would still have the option to select whichever livery you want, even if the liveries were tied to a specific country.

You don't want me to have my choices, even when my choices in no way impact yours, so long as the mission is set up appropriately.

23 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

In the server settings, you can deny the ability to change liveries globally and the players are stuck with whatever livery the mission designer chose for that slot.

Yes I am aware - I have brought it up multiple times now.

I have also brought up how I feel that sometimes this is unnecessarily restrictive

24 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I don't wish to return to being forced to edit every livery file.

You were never forced to do anything of the sort, because as I keep saying and you keep ignoring, the game already facilitates what you want from inside the mission editor without you having to edit any file whatsoever. Mission editors just need to pick the appropriate country.

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, IronMike said:

You just need to think of something like "Maverick steels Iranian jet but it flies on US side"... DCS can be played in a plethora of ways, and for us it is important to provide that.

It seems that next to nobody wants to hear it, but this is already possible even with country restrictions. Taking them away isn't actually solving any problem, that can't be solved by just setting missions up properly.

For instance, if I want to have Maverick steal an Iranian jet, in Iranian colours and fly it for the US side, I just have that Iranian jet be part of a CJTF faction on the same side as the US and bam - Iranian jet, in Iranian colours, being flown for the US side. No problem whatsoever.

I'm sorry but the examples being provided seem to highlight an imaginary problem that's completely solved if mission editors simply set their missions up appropriately.

Edited August 11, 2024 by Northstar98

[Zabuzard]

I am not quite sure what we are discussing at this point anymore.

Country lock: people are annoyed (we had that in the past)
No country lock: people are annoyed (we have that right now)

Let's bring this to ED and let them fix it in a way that makes everyone happy (see previous ideas). Otherwise we will just ping pong between the two parties.

In the meantime, if you belong to the group of people who wants country locks, use this great mod :)

[=475FG= Dawger]

13 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

Oh should I not get to decide how my missions are set up?

And erm, irony much?

You want to restrict the options I have available so it's either all or nothing, despite the fact that you're fully catered for and would still have the option to select whichever livery you want, even if the liveries were tied to a specific country.

You don't want me to have my choices, even when my choices in no way impact yours, so long as the mission is set up appropriately.

Yes I am aware - I have brought it up multiple times now.

I have also brought up how I feel that sometimes this is unnecessarily restrictive

You were never forced to do anything of the sort, because as I keep saying and you keep ignoring, the game already facilitates what you want from inside the mission editor without you having to edit any file whatsoever. Mission editors just need to pick the appropriate country.

You can easily edit ALL of your liveries to restrict them to whatever country you like to make your mission building QOL better. 
 

You can’t stop people from editing their liveries to allow them to choose whatever livery they want. 
 

What exactly are you asking for?

[IronMike]

34 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

It seems that next to nobody wants to hear it, but this is already possible even with country restrictions.

If I use the CJTF faction I can have my Iranian jet, in Iranian colours, being flown on the US side, no problem whatsoever. I'm sorry but the examples being provided seem to highlight an imaginary problem that's completely solved if mission editors set their missions up appropriately.

 

Nope, because then it is on CJTF faction, and not a country, you have country bound triggers, too, etc. Just because you would solve it like this, others might not. This is why freedom of choice exists. You can do that, others can do as they please. But you both will have to scroll a wee bit to select a livery. Sorry, but that is a very, very small issue really, even though I understand the bothersome part of it, believe me, I made hundreds of missions. Hence having better filtering options in the rearm window is something I fully agree with. But that is DCS side, not us.

EDIT/PS; another cool solution would be, if it was possible such that when a country is selected the country's respective liveries simply filter on top by default for example. But that's all on DCS side.

Edited August 11, 2024 by IronMike

[Northstar98]

9 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

You can easily edit ALL of your liveries to restrict them to whatever country you like to make your mission building QOL better.

Do you not see the irony of complaining about being "forced" to edit livery files (even when you weren't forced in the first place so long as the mission you're playing was set up appropriately) and then advocating that somebody else be instead?

And yes, I can and I have. Unfortunately the updater and repair utilities will overwrite the changes, so I've renamed the folders so it doesn't touch them (only then it'll essentially download duplicates), I can probably get around this if I got a mod manager to handle this (as what Rudel_chw has done), though there is this one in the meantime but I've also changed the order of the liveries so they're grouped together - something you can do by adding order = x in the description.lua. I also sometimes reformat names to be more consistent (it isn't helpful having different liveries with identical names like af standard - though this isn't something the Phantom suffers from).

9 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

You can’t stop people from editing their liveries to allow them to choose whatever livery they want.

I don't remember wanting to stop people from being able to make their own mods to liveries - after all, that's what I do (as I've said above). I'm against blocking the ability to make mods.

9 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

What exactly are you asking for?

I think I've been pretty clear what I'm asking for:

• I want the countries to filter what's available, such that only items actually accurate to those countries are present. That for me is their #1 use case - if they don't do that, then I don't see the point in having them. This is something that was already possible before, while still giving you the option to have everything available. With this change, now I don't.
• I want to have the ability to restrict available liveries to a certain set, if I feel it's important for the mission. Yes, people might circumvent this, that's okay, if it's really a problem then I might advocate for having this be something the integrity checker can control or locking them out entirely or something.

9 hours ago, IronMike said:

Nope, because then it is on CJTF faction, not a country

I don't understand.

The CJTF "countries" are treated like any other country in DCS, they have their own countryIDs (80 and 81 for blue and red respectively). They're functionally identical - just they have everything available to them.

If you have an aircraft from one of the CJTFs on the same coalition as say, the USA, then they're both on the same side as each other.

9 hours ago, IronMike said:

you have country bound triggers

Is there an example of a trigger that would break or stop working correctly if you changed the country of an existing group/unit?

I'm not familiar with scripting, so I could well be wrong there (I did have a look and didn't find many use cases for the countryID - apart from defining it if I'm spawning units/groups etc via scripting, but I'm probably glossing over something (I guess if you had a scoreboard broken down by country and you wanted everything to be counted under a certain country)). What I do know is that changing the country of an existing unit or group doesn't change either the group/unit name, nor the group/unitID. It also doesn't change the task, the waypoints or any advanced waypoint action/triggered action.

In the trigger menu, apart from those referencing all/part of coalition, there aren't any triggers that would break if you changed the country. Though even for all/part of coalition - that would only break if changing the country would change the coalition, which isn't the case in your example, because there USA and whichever CJTF would be on the same coalition.

All the other conditions in the trigger menu (at least the relevant ones), reference either the group or unit name, which doesn't change if you change the country.

Quote

Just because you would solve it like this, others might not. This is why freedom of choice exists. You can do that, others can do as they please.

Sorry, but if people won't set up their missions appropriately, how is it anything other than their problem?

If my mission doesn't work in a way I've intended, because I haven't set it up appropriately, then surely that's on me to fix? The only freedom of choice your advocating for, is the choice to not set up missions appropriately for what's intended.

It's like having every weapon available regardless of whether or not historical mode is set or the date chosen, because some mission editors might forget to turn it off or select an appropriate date (historical mode seems to be a persistent setting, meaning if you have it on in the last mission you made, it'll start on in the next one).

If they don't wish to restrict the weapons by date, then they should turn it off. And if they wanted weapons to be restricted by date, but not the one currently set, then they should set the date appropriately.

Would "just because you would solve it like this, others might not. This is why freedom of choice exists" apply here? Because I'm not seeing the difference between these examples - just one concerns weapons availability, historical mode and date - the other concerns livery availability and the country set.

And if so, the only freedom of choice you're preserving, is the freedom to choose to not solve a problem that's of their own making. Is that a choice really worth preserving?

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

 

And yes, I can and I have. Unfortunately the updater and repair utilities will overwrite the changes, so I've renamed the folders so it doesn't touch them (only then it'll essentially download duplicates), I can probably get around this if I got a mod manager to handle this (as what Rudel_chw has done), though there is this one in the meantime but I've also changed the order of the liveries so they're grouped together - something you can do by adding order = x in the description.lua. I also sometimes reformat names to be more consistent (it isn't helpful having different liveries with identical names like af standard - though this isn't something the Phantom suffers from).

 

Saved Games is your friend. 

 

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

 

I think I've been pretty clear what I'm asking for:

• I want the countries to filter what's available, such that only items actually accurate to those countries are present. That for me is their #1 use case - if they don't do that, then I don't see the point in having them. This is something that was already possible before, while still giving you the option to have everything available. With this change, now I don't.
• I want to have the ability to restrict available liveries to a certain set, if I feel it's important for the mission. Yes, people might circumvent this, that's okay, if it's really a problem then I might advocate for having this be something the integrity checker can control or locking them out entirely or something.

 

As I suspected, you want the ability to force people to fly multiplayer missions in only the skins you choose, which you can already do by locking out the ability to change skins at the server level.

Or do you want to somehow make single player missions that restrict users to a specific set of skins? I guess that is what you might want. A little bizarre.

Lots of people, me included, don't want to be restricted in livery choice. They like to be able to choose whatever livery they want. Lots of people fly in liveries from their home country no matter the mission. Many fly in custom liveries, for example, the ones in my signature photo are some of the custom liveries my group flies with online. 

I am done with this conversation. This isn't about any quality of life changes to the ME. You just want control over other people's behavior and choices. 

[IronMike]

It's a futile conversation, because we won't change it anyway, it's not up to discussion. Thank you for your kind understanding.

Let us please get back on topic, and discuss here relating to the mod, and respect the modder's work, by not hijacking this further into a discussion about the principles surrounding it. Thank you!

Edited August 12, 2024 by IronMike

[Wingmate]

5 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Is there an example of a trigger that would break or stop working correctly if you changed the country of an existing group/unit?

I'm not familiar with scripting, so I could well be wrong there (I did have a look and didn't find many use cases for the countryID - apart from defining it if I'm spawning units/groups etc via scripting, but I'm probably glossing over something (I guess if you had a scoreboard broken down by country and you wanted everything to be counted under a certain country)). What I do know is that changing the country of an existing unit or group doesn't change either the group/unit name, nor the group/unitID. It also doesn't change the task, the waypoints or any advanced waypoint action/triggered action.

Just to answer this question, the mission Operation Bactria (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/201633/) would no longer work. I don't know if you are familiar with the mission but it aims to replicate realistic CAS in the A-10 using the Caucuses Mountains as a stand in for Afghanistan. There are four different flights of A-10s that get randomized taskings each flight also has a different AO (with some minor overlap) these flights are assigned to different countries (all using US skins though) and use the country trigger so that one groups actions don't overwrite what another group is doing, as would happen with a coalition specific trigger. Affecting country triggers is a side effect that I hadn't thought about until IronMike brought it up.

 

Anyways thanks for updating the mod Rudel, it is something I will continue to use for myself until (if ever) there is a better option implemented I really like the idea of selected countries liveries are filtered at the top of the list.

[Northstar98]

44 minutes ago, Wingmate said:

Just to answer this question, the mission Operation Bactria (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/201633/) would no longer work. I don't know if you are familiar with the mission but it aims to replicate realistic CAS in the A-10 using the Caucuses Mountains as a stand in for Afghanistan. There are four different flights of A-10s that get randomized taskings each flight also has a different AO (with some minor overlap) these flights are assigned to different countries (all using US skins though) and use the country trigger so that one groups actions don't overwrite what another group is doing, as would happen with a coalition specific trigger. Affecting country triggers is a side effect that I hadn't thought about until IronMike brought it up.

I wasn't familiar with the mission, but thanks for giving an answer - I appreciate it, I am indeed mistaken (my mistake for looking at conditions - which in that mission mainly seem to operate around groups and units (e.g. part of group in zone etc), but not actions and there are country specific ones there).

I can see that in the mission there are country specific actions (message/picture/sound etc). Those would get sent to the wrong country if changed. It would be possible to work around this, but would entail quite a lot of reworking.

[Rudel_chw]

Hi,

Just a quick note to inform that today I updated this Mod, to cover the additional israeli livery introduced on the last DCS update.

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

 

Best regards,

 

Eduardo