Oh man, I can see this leading to a lot of hilarity if people try having the ship turn too quickly. I REALLY hope we get an update from the usual chocks to tie-down chains as well (and proper radio calls to Plane Captains instead of crew chiefs).
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What, you didnāt think it was already hilarious?
Even if the boat is slowed way down, if youāre on the deck with engines runningā¦ Youāre taking a bath!
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Oh, I meant from planes sliding off the edges of the deck into the water, due to the heel of the ship in a hard turn at high speed. Thereās a reason there are clinometers everywhere throughout the ship.
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I truly can not see myself doing anything else in DCS when this is released.
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Server admins of the big servers are going to be looking to block access to the carrier slot as much as possible.
On lesser controlled servers, I can imagine sudden changes causing mayhem when someone decides to play carrier without checking on the aircraft on deck or nearby.
On the other hand, a great tool to aid in carrier training and the ability to correct course of things go awry or you simply need to turn into the wind (when using dynamic weather, without the script).
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That carrier module sounds amazing! I am really looking forward to that!
This is the number one reason I bought combined arms during the last sale.
Can not wait to play bumper boats with an aircraft carrier!
Itās already 90% of what I do with āonlyā the Stennis
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Iām right there with youā¦I could fly ātouch and goesā off the carrier all day!!
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Being a Naval Aviation nut the carrier will probably be day-one purchase for me as well, though Iām not terribly happy that some fundamental features that should also be on the default Stennis (more parking, night lighting, not-crap ATC) donāt appear to be coming to the Stennisā¦almost like planned obsolescence.
Itās easy to understand in the micro transaction concept. DCS has a limited user base. It does not appeal to the masses and itās not re-sold every year like some franchises that put the year behind the title, every year, and charge their users another $60. Still, ED need a cashflow to keep going, so itās new features and modules, every now and then, instead.
Todays Stennis will be there as a bare minimum boat.
Itās just another way of doing businessā¦
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I understand the business aspect of it, but as a āminimum boatā the three features I listed are minimum featuresā¦Iām fairly certain that the Stennis was slated to get more content added to it when the Hornet first entered EA, then as the Nimitz came around the talks of improving the Stennis vanished (granted the ATC is WIP; but there were things like pushback and elevators discussed a year ago).
Well, thatās a matter of opinion.
You can use the Stennis to launch and recover.
Enough to get hooked (pun partially intended 
) on carriers and buy the Super Carrier moduleā¦
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I am a big aircraft carrier fan, so this will be very exciting to see.
Even though I think some of the announced features are a bit over the top. Personally I see no point for a steerable carrier in a flight sim. What are you going to do, turn it onto the wind for flight ops? I have written a script that does that.
What I really want to see is having the basics sorted out. I want an Alpha Strike of 10-20 AI aircraft (plus the player) to be able to spawn, taxi to the catapults, launch, recover and taxi to parking spots without crashing, colliding or blocking each other in the air and on the deck. And there finally needs to be a solution to player sliding on the deck. Once the carrier is in a basic working condition for more than training and small scale flight ops (I believe it when I see it), we can start to talk about Gucci-features.
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In regards to elevators - if you open the model file for the Stennis, you can move some of the slider and see that the elevators are indeed animated (at least to some extent, Iām no SME.) Opening the collision model it also appears one could theoretically go below deck too.
Precisely, some people arenāt code-friendly mission designers. Theyād just want to click and drop, save and go play.
For FSX, we had the FlightSimNation (FSN) Alpha carrier. I didnāt fly with a lot of Hornet pilots to make use of it on my server much - but I am sure others made more use of it.
Lacking an AI that can do it all, I see no reason to prevent another avenue to bring in the human element to things.
Well, I would expect that turning into to the wind for flight ops is added to the stock AI of course. To me that seems as natural for a flight simulator as not having to manage runway lighting at an airport.
The Stennis model file also has the orange flood lights, but we canāt turn them on for some reason. Those are sorely needed for night ops when thereās not a full moon out.
And I agree with Mbot on the AI/sliding issues. As of now, the carrier is great for practice, or with a couple humans on board. AI collisions and general stupidity need to get sorted.
Thatās almost my favorite part of the news.
I agree to concentrate on the basics first, but these kind of features can be added by other talents in the ED team. You donāt need a degree in engineering, physics or avionics to build a nice looking chat room and some collaboration tools. I want to have more fighter squadron vibe.
Wait so the AI isnāt supposed to land on top of each other when they recover?
Seriously, though, Iāve been kind of pessimistic about the idea of the carrier module previously but it is certainly looking impressive.
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