Persistent problem. My aircraft has stopped seeing the external fuel tank.

[ASW]

At first I flew on No. 426, but then for some reason he stopped seeing the fuel tank. I switched to No. 383, it's "new" and it sees the tank. I may have heavily exploited No. 426, but how can I fix it? I tried using the F-8 radio menu in the DCS, but nothing worked.

I flew in multiplayer, but I created a regular offline mission to test. There is no fuel tank.

[Zabuzard]

Smells like an oversight in the code. Detecting ext-tanks in DCS is super finicky, thank you.

[ASW]

1 час назад, Zabuzard сказал:

Smells like an oversight in the code. Detecting ext-tanks in DCS is super finicky, thank you.

I haven't quite figured out the state-saving function of the aircraft. Does this function save wear or only the condition of the switches in the airplane? If the aircraft wears out, how can it be repaired?For example, it saves the Squawk Code, which I made for convenience. like the aircraft number 426. But it doesn't save 426. It saves 422. It's not essential, but I don't understand everything yet. I have "enabled" in the advanced settings and sometimes I do RCtrl+P.

[Zabuzard]

I dont fully follow your example.

The system saves the entire aircraft state, all its 3000+ properties. That doesnt just include wear/tear but also literal state. For example if you turned the laser on or the position of the lense inside the Pave Spike camera or whether a lamp is currently on or not etc.

Wear/Tear never reaches a state where something doesnt work anymore. That would be failures and those are decoupled from wear/tear and automatically repaired across missions. Your aircraft with maximum wear/tear will still work, it just will be a rough experience and performance of all components will deviate a lot from what they are expected to be (in both directions, underperform but also overperform). Details to the wear/tear system in the manual.

Edited October 28 by Zabuzard

[ASW]

We don't understand each other because I'm writing through a translator. I'll ask a question with pictures. I flew in multiplayer this afternoon, but the files in the folder have yesterday's modification date when I flew offline. What am I doing wrong?

 

aircraft_loading_errors.txt

2025-10-28 12:33:39
File name: F-4E-USAF-CA69-382-HillTwo-163rdTFG_382.cache
Missing components: 0, properties: 0, damage states: 0
Aircraft loaded without issues.
 

persistent_ac.7z

Edited October 28 by ASW

[Zabuzard]

Did you land and fully shutdown the aircraft? The state is only saved when you do that. It is not saved when you crash or exit the mission in-flight or with a hot aircraft.

[Yannick Pancake]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

I dont fully follow your example.

The system saves the entire aircraft state, all its 3000+ properties. That doesnt just include wear/tear but also literal state. For example if you turned the laser on or the position of the lense inside the Pave Spike camera or whether a lamp is currently on or not etc.

Wear/Tear never reaches a state where something doesnt work anymore. That would be failures and those are decoupled from wear/tear and automatically repaired across missions. Your aircraft with maximum wear/tear will still work, it just will be a rough experience and performance of all components will deviate a lot from what they are expected to be (in both directions, underperform but also overperform). Details to the wear/tear system in the manual.

I think he asked, if there is some kind of "reset" of the Wear and Tear. If we have used a plane to 100% wear, is there a way to reset the wear, in the case I still want to use the same Skin+Tail Number, but want to "overhaul" the plane.

[Zabuzard]

I think he asked, if there is some kind of "reset" of the Wear and Tear. If we have used a plane to 100% wear, is there a way to reset the wear, in the case I still want to use the same Skin+Tail Number, but want to "overhaul" the plane.

No. Maybe copy ur file when it was still good, as backup.

What is the use case for that though? Like, what are you planning to gain from the persistence system if not the aircrafts current wear/tear?

You can also always just delete the file or even disable the persistence system and you are back to a fresh aircraft.

[Yannick Pancake]

I don't really know why you want to do this, it was just what I understood as one of the questions from "ASW". 

 

For me it works with "saving" the switch positions, so for his other question I have no clue.

 

[ASW]

5 часов назад, Zabuzard сказал:

fully shutdown the aircraft

That's exactly what I was trying to ask you with the help of a translator!)

I didn't see this in the documentation. I realized that I had to land and stop, but I didn't see that the plane had to be completely fully shutdown.

p.s

(Today I learned about the "Combat tree". I can't understand why such a wonderful thing is hardly discussed on the forum and on YouTube. I started shooting down fourth-generation Su-27 and Mig-29 aircraft armed with R-27R missiles on the F-4E. And most importantly, now I can see them and I can easily capture them with radar from the back seat.)

[CheAG_Slava]

Hi.
to clarify some details. 
Whitch moment It exactly saves airframe state? 
As I can see in MP if I change slot frame doesnt save, only leaving server, or am I doing something wrong?
Also if I doing sortie like shutdown->rearm->fly it doesnt save  

Edited Thursday at 05:02 PM by CheAG_Slava

[Dominik96]

Hello @CheAG_Slava,

It saves at the moment when you exit the aircraft providing you're on ground and not crashed, so either when exiting the mission or releasing the slot in multiplayer. However, thanks to your report, we realized that then releasing the slot in multiplayer, DCS treats the aircraft as it was dead (crashed) so it does not save. We implemented a fix for that, will be in the next patch.
Rearming in game does not save the aircraft, you need to exit it. We will provide the possibility (already coded) to reload the aircraft after changing the livery/ tail no in game (and thus load the proper persistent aircraft file again, after spawn).
 

[SloppyDog]

On 10/28/2025 at 6:31 AM, Zabuzard said:

I dont fully follow your example.

The system saves the entire aircraft state, all its 3000+ properties. That doesnt just include wear/tear but also literal state. For example if you turned the laser on or the position of the lense inside the Pave Spike camera or whether a lamp is currently on or not etc.

Wear/Tear never reaches a state where something doesnt work anymore. That would be failures and those are decoupled from wear/tear and automatically repaired across missions. Your aircraft with maximum wear/tear will still work, it just will be a rough experience and performance of all components will deviate a lot from what they are expected to be (in both directions, underperform but also overperform). Details to the wear/tear system in the manual.

This is interesting.

Maybe what I'm about to say is not possible in DCS. Maybe this is not possible for the F-4. Maybe this is something you could try to implement in the future. That's a lot of maybes, but are you familiar with A2A Simulations wear and tear model? It's pretty good, the screen below was taken from their Bonanza in P3D v5. But they have a similar system in place for their Comanche and Aerostar in MSFS 2020 and 2024. (heck, the Aerostar even has dirty simulation on it, you can start with a new, clean aircraft and end up with a dirty one).

So, A2A's system works in a way that if you damage or destroy some system, you can call up the mechanic shop menu and the screen below will appear. It gives the player a summary of the general state of the aircraft, and if some item needs fixing or replacement, you click on it and the item is fixed. Also, you can have the whole aircraft to be overhauled in a single click. 

This type of selective maintenance would be a great addition in HB products. I don't know if is possible or not, just a suggestion. I think it would be better than the total wear and tear of the aircraft and the only way of fixing the items is by doing an complete aircraft overhaul.

 

 null

 

Edited Monday at 07:12 PM by SloppyDog

[Zabuzard]

The idea in general is ofc great and also something we had in mind for the long run. But visualizations of the systems are currently quite tricky as the aircraft has over 3000 properties that are individually affected by wear/tear. The list is huge and not really "readable" to casuals in its native view.

We will approach this step by step and potentially eventually arrive at something similar to what you shared  

The current goal for the persistence system was mostly to expand the wear/tear system in a way that campaign makers can benefit from it by making a series of missions where the player needs to use the same aircraft and take care of it. So something like "let me repair this and that" was out of the scope for this first step.

Edited 18 hours ago by Zabuzard

[SloppyDog]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

The idea in general is ofc great and also something we had in mind for the long run. But visualizations of the systems are currently quite tricky as the aircraft has over 3000 properties that are individually affected by wear/tear. The list is huge and not really "readable" to casuals in its native view.

We will approach this step by step and potentially eventually arrive at something similar to what you shared  

The current goal for the persistence system was mostly to expand the wear/tear system in a way that campaign makers can benefit from it by making a series of missions where the player needs to use the same aircraft and take care of it. So something like "let me repair this and that" was out of the scope for this first step.

Thanks Zabuzard. For mission makers, the system will work greatly. When you have to take care of your aircraft as your own, you approach things in a very different way. More realistic, I would say. 

[CheAG_Slava]

22 hours ago, Dominik96 said:

Hello @CheAG_Slava,

It saves at the moment when you exit the aircraft providing you're on ground and not crashed, so either when exiting the mission or releasing the slot in multiplayer. However, thanks to your report, we realized that then releasing the slot in multiplayer, DCS treats the aircraft as it was dead (crashed) so it does not save. We implemented a fix for that, will be in the next patch.
Rearming in game does not save the aircraft, you need to exit it. We will provide the possibility (already coded) to reload the aircraft after changing the livery/ tail no in game (and thus load the proper persistent aircraft file again, after spawn).
 

Thanks, you are doing absolutely great stuff

maybe ability to save and than load current airframe state would have a reason for MP

Have you any plans about some kind of «state viewer» ? Just for understanding in which condition current plane?

[Zabuzard]

4 minutes ago, CheAG_Slava said:

Have you any plans about some kind of «state viewer» ? Just for understanding in which condition current plane?

As explained above, the ability to view the 3000+ properties of the aircraft that are affected by wear/tear is planned. But its challenging.

[CheAG_Slava]

Yeah I understand that 3k params for user will be a bit too much.

but may be overall params for eng, l/g airframe total… woul be enough