These should be high priority fixes:

[Robert1983NL]

Hey all,

 

I've jumped into the mission building world and unfortunately I'm encountering many many limitations. I have many ideas for missions but after some hurdles my development usually comes to a halt because of this.

 

Since the introduction of the Huey, a whole new array of missions can be flown. Troop transport opens the door for missions like Air Raids, Air Assaults, Car Blocking Operations, Resupplying etc etc. The possibilities are limitless.

 

Unfortunately DCS is still very limited here... Most of the missions I have in my head or have tried to design in the Mission Editor are complex actions taking place in a small area, with a lot of (scripted) things going on. Many things are hampering me, and probably others as well, in building a convincable realistic and immersive mission.

 

Since the Huey seems to be a great success but still doesn't really have a purpose on the online battlefield, I really think the following list of improvements should be high on the priority list. In my eyes it'll be a great game-changer.

 

-First and foremost: AI. AI. AI. Right now the infantry AI is pretty terrible... They often won't move when asked, or move when not asked. Triggers often don't work, or when an enemy unit is near, all units just freeze cuz they can't shoot eachother because there's a building in between, for instance. A LOT of more fun and immersion can be achieved if the (infantry) AI will be improved.

 

-Troop transport. I'm a noob in DCS. Never heared of lua before this game. Reading through threads about lua almost makes me dizzy. I'm not a programmer and never will be. Lua's are too complicated. I would just love an 'action' that makes troops emplane or deplane aircraft.

 

-AI pathfinding/landing. Often when I set speeds/heights for waypoints, the AI just doesn't follow them. I don't know why, but is sucks. Also, I tried designing a mission where you land off-runway together with Chinooks. The whole landing is screwed up because the Chinooks just hover at around 40ft wiggling around for like 30 seconds before they finally hover straight down to the ground. Byebye quick air raid.... It shouldn't be too hard to have helicopters make a convincing fast landing, right?

 

-Testing missions takes a really long time. In the Mission Editor you can place units all you want, you'll really have to load the mission and check everything out to see how it turned out. And this takes time. Hours and hours. Would be nice if there could be a solution for this.

 

-ATC. Right now ATC is so poor in DCS, it's almost better left out. A lot could be gained here as well, and it'll hopefully force people to better and more often use the radio's. Also, it should be possible to operate as a formation under one callsign. That way you won't get the "C/S, hold position" 20 times when a formation is taxiing out together.

 

I think these are relatively 'simple' and realistic fixes which have a GREAT 'effort : gameplay improvement' ratio.

[cichlidfan]

Hey all,

...

 

-Testing missions takes a really long time. In the Mission Editor you can place units all you want, you'll really have to load the mission and check everything out to see how it turned out. And this takes time. Hours and hours. Would be nice if there could be a solution for this.

 

...

 

I think these are relatively 'simple' and realistic fixes which have a GREAT 'effort : gameplay improvement' ratio.

 

My favorite parts of this post.

[Robert1983NL]

Yeah ok, making it easier to test missions via the Mission Designer is probably the only fix that's not that simple lol. But maybe something would be possible by having an instance of DCS run the mission, while you can edit it via an instance of the Mission Editor in real time? Just thinking out loud.

[112th_Rossi]

The whole of the sim is LUA based though and editing mission parameters would require the LUA script to be read on the fly, im not sure thats possible.

[xatu miller]

Agree with most of your points. However "simple" is a relative term.

[Rotorhead]

Agreed. Ground AI could really use an overhaul. And easier troop loading / unloading (ArmA style preferably) would be nice, too.

 

But collidable trees is what this wonderful helicopter sim needs most IMO. That would improve everybody's Huey / Shark experience by 1000%.

 

Hopefully one day...

[Hekktor]

When I bought KA-50 Blackshark in 2006 I had not in mind that DCS has its origin in the Flanker series. Fighter Aircraft.

When I like to play infantry centric, ground based stuff nowadays, I start ArmA.

I do see/read threads in this forum with the same ideas/needs/suggestions for better 'game' immersion since 2006.

[Hotarubi]

The whole of the sim is LUA based though and editing mission parameters would require the LUA script to be read on the fly, im not sure thats possible.

 

When I make skins this is what I did few times:

1. Copy texture bmp into TempTextures folder

2. Load the game (start the game)

3. When I overwrite the file that has been loaded into DCS Mission that is running and alt+tab to DCS that texture gets updated.

 

Now... I am aware of the fact that skin is, relativly, a static thing - in difference to units.

It could possibly crash DCS, but it might work. Anyone tried so far?

 

And as for the makin something where you would actually see what is going on...that is a workload.... A workload.

 

The fastest solution that comes to my mind is that model viewer gets updated so it can load the saved mission files and show them with camera controls that are already implemented in game.

[Robert1983NL]

When I bought KA-50 Blackshark in 2006 I had not in mind that DCS has its origin in the Flanker series. Fighter Aircraft.

When I like to play infantry centric, ground based stuff nowadays, I start ArmA.

I do see/read threads in this forum with the same ideas/needs/suggestions for better 'game' immersion since 2006.

 

The flight models in DCS ofcourse can't be compared to Arma's. That's why I think that if DCS improves on the points I mentioned in the OP, DCS will absolutely slaughter Arma :)

[pakfront]

Hi Robert,

Your criticisms are valid; unfortunately it does not seem likely that we will get any major improvements to the ground AI for some time. I think this is particularly true for the infantry. I agree that is a limiting factor for convincing helicopter operations, but we will just have to work with what we have for the moment.

 

Infantry AI is actually quite difficult to do well and the 'open world' of DCS makes it even more challenging. You might notice that most games that have good infantry AI are working with a limited number of soldiers. Now imagine if you put a limit of even 100 on DCS... that is a very small number in such a big world. In addition, most infantry-centric games have small, customized maps where AI pathing, line-of-sight and cover have been partially precomputed. There are probably even human placed hints provided to the AI per map as to what it should do. Imagine again doing the same thing for a world the size of DCS!

 

I have not tried this, but have you looked into Combined Arms at all? Having a human commander for your infantry might lessen their stupidity a bit.

 

oh, I would love to see faster loading of missions for editing; even better would be realtime changes and resets.

[sobek]

Regarding unit placement, a satellite view is on EDs wishlist, but as always there is no way telling when the resources are available to do it. My guess is that they'll probably save it for when EDGE is done.

[Lucas_From_Hell]

It's an old time problem of the 3D engine and the interface not being compatible, they probably didn't implement it because EDGE was already in the oven, I'm betting they are building EDGE aiming for this compatibility like we had in the old Lock On.

[sobek]

It's an old time problem of the 3D engine and the interface not being compatible,

 

Nothing to do with compatibility, it was an adress space problem. Back when only 32bit adress space was available, the GUI would not fit into adress space alongside the 3d-engine, so it had to be split prior to Black Shark.

[shagrat]

Nothing to do with compatibility, it was an adress space problem. Back when only 32bit adress space was available, the GUI would not fit into adress space alongside the 3d-engine, so it had to be split prior to Black Shark.

Brilliant information! That explains a lot. I think I read somewhere, that you may run the ME and the Sim in parallel, thus you could edit things in the ME and only needed to relaunch the Mission in the Sim...

Found it: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=790918&postcount=4

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Thanks for clarifying sobek :)