DCS Supercarrier Deck Crew Bug List

[Brother_Leb]

I'll give you this, it worked better than I thought it would on release. So credit where it's due. I doubt this was easy to figure out.

Here is a track with traditional spawns with some of the issues from our squadron flight last night testing out the deck crew. I'll add more in follow up posts for more data as I continue to test this feature (which I want to work ).

Operation Fly Swatter_WIPv1_3-20241204-205406.trk

And here's a descriptive list of some problems we noticed:

• Stuck at "Waiting for ATC Status" message indefinitely. Occasionally resolved when there’s an available cat to taxi to and no obstructions, but this was not consistent. There's clearly some deck condition under the hood it's waiting for, but as a client you have no clue what that is and have no way to bail out of the sequence or force the next step.
• A busy deck frequently created gridlock. In one situation, we had guys get taxi’d to cats 3 and 4 and because the cat 4 guy showed up first, it wouldn’t taxi the cat 3 guy to the shuttle BUT it also wouldn’t launch the cat 4 guy until the cat 3 guy had launched. Stalemate requiring respawn.
• AI vs Client taxiing. It usually prefers the AI to a Client and so clients typically wait until all the AI are launched before they get to Taxi, BUT the AI frequently won't taxi if there's an obstruction somewhere (like another AI plane or a client, even a parked and spotted client). This required respawns for the clients to get the AI to GTFO.
• Lack of documentation. The changelog said it would be updated, but I have not been able to find it by searching manually on the DCS website or using a search engine. (Thanks to @rob10's comment I checked the game files and, sure enough, there's the doc. See comment below. Still not easy to find though. Please update the website ED! Thanks!)
• IFLOLS no longer functional without the overlay. It appears the lights are facing the wrong way, see:
• The boat is launching flares as client planes cross the fantail (wave off flares I believe but regardless of glideslope AOA etc., happens every time). This is annoying and distracting and I have no idea why it’s happening. I thought it was just a me thing, but then my squadron guys thought we were trolling them, so it's clearly not.

Annoyances that it would be nice to resolve:

• Plane directors will taxi you across foul lines regardless of planes in the pattern or on final. I imagine it would be complicated (and probably cause more breaks) to add logic to prevent this, but that means you have to ignore taxi instructions sometimes because it always tries to spot you on the fantail first. Fortunately, it doesn’t break things to ignore the director and not cross the foul line, it will still pass you to the next director as long as you are generally going the right way. 
  • I'd argue that they should probably be spotting us on the bow for a recovery cycle, but I imagine that would create all sorts of problems for the way the deck is currently handled, so I guess I can live with the patio spotting priority.
  • As long as I'm here though, could the parking menu have an option added to select where your plane will be spotted (e.g. 1)patio/el3/junkard; 2)El2/Corral/El3; 3)Sixpack; 4)Bow, etc.)? If we could have the menu come up once you clear the LA (see bullet below about ICQ), you could select your spotting location and avoid some of the traffic jams that always spotting on the patio first creates.
• There’s a new taxi speed restriction on deck that is enforced by jerking your plane to a halt (feels like grabbing a wire) and making you start again. This was obliquely mentioned by Wags in his video, but is not in any documentation that I've seen yet. W/o any way to tell what your taxi speed is tho, this gets frustrating. There is a way to turn this off in the special options, but I toggled mine off and it still did it
• There was a lot of complaining after Wags's video about how slow it would be to clear the LA. Ignoring plane director instructions is the way to clear the LA quickly. This is NOT ideal, but it works. Turn and get out, then obey the instructions and it eventually works out. Usually you have to get within a certain distance of the plane director for things to move along, but they will.
  • REQUEST: Can logic be added so that when you get close enough to a particular director it will pass to him automatically? There are 3 near the LA and it creates problems to require you to Taxi close to the guy near the Cat 2 JBD to get the sequence to start (e.g. the plane landing behind you with proper spacing will probably be exiting the LA behind you and then you'll be required to turn around into him to Taxi back to the patio. Again, patio spotting is not my preference, but I'll deal with it.)
• You can only rearm with the jet cold and dark. No more hot rearms (at least from startup; after landing and re-spotting you can through the new “parking menu”). This is not clarified in any documentation I have seen.
• The new parking menu is key to interacting with this deck crew feature but none of the marketing or Wags’s video mentions it (don’t know about the DCS guide, but see bullet above). You pop this up with LCtrl+LShift+LAlt+P and it is the only way to get unstuck if something gets out of whack in the taxi sequence (that or respawning)
• Deck crew must be disabled to do ICQ or any immediate relaunch. It ALWAYS taxis you to the patio (or the closest open spot) and only then can you relaunch (and usually from a waist cat because you are closest to those). This makes ICQ--which is a series of traps and immediate relaunches--not possible with the new deck crew. That's fine, and we can turn the deck crew off, but it would be nice to have that parking menu come up right after you clear the LA so you can relaunch right then instead of taxiing to parking (especially to avoid using waist cats, which would block the LA and prevent recoveries). Perhaps there's already logic to prevent using a waist cat if someone has received a Charlie call from Tower? Will need to test...
• A "force next step" or "reset" or some such option either in the F10 menu or this new parking menu would be nice. If things get stuck, there's no way to unstick them short of completely respawning or restarting the mission.

Edited December 9, 2024 by Brother_Leb

[rob10]

The updated documentation is in the Supercarrier manual.

[Brother_Leb]

This one? The one that was last updated in June of 2021? Supercarrier Operations Guide

I just looked in the core game files and found the updated guide (DCS World/Mods/Tech/Supercarrier/Doc for those looking), but it would help to also update the website, since people may not realize that that's where the Supercarrier manual is (I didn't and only looked on a hunch).

Edited December 9, 2024 by Brother_Leb

[Dangerzone]

That's a good writeup of a number of bugs that have been experienced. The plane directors definitely has potential. I'm not sure how much attention your report will get though, as it covers numerous bugs in the one bug report. Might be worth having a separate bug report per bug that you've encountered? 

On 12/6/2024 at 6:42 AM, Brother_Leb said:

• The new parking menu is key to interacting with this deck crew feature but none of the marketing or Wags’s video mentions it (don’t know about the DCS guide, but see bullet above). You pop this up with LCtrl+LShift+LAlt+P and it is the only way to get unstuck if something gets out of whack in the taxi sequence (that or respawning)

I wasn't aware of LCAS+P (only LCAS+t). Thanks for bringing that up. Do you know if this fix issues where your salute doesn't work when first spawned in, and you can't get the wheel chocks removed on the F/A18's?

[Brother_Leb]

@Dangerzone Good idea, but I don't have the time this week to create separate posts for this. Hopefully others can quote mine in their postings. Maybe I'll get to it later in the month.

As for the LCAS+P thing, as far as I know it doesn't fix those issues. I had hoped that the "cancel" option would cancel you out of the taxi sequence, but I think it just closes the menu. The only way to fix these is to reslot (which has it's own issues, ED has said they're aware).