The above is all AI as I was trying to test AI ground/ship starts over air starts for pacing reasons. Alternatives are to air start them all again or stagger their starts. Fortunately, the ones operating from airfields have no issues, so that part is good. For the ship though, I can’t set the AI’s starting points, or I’d move the F-14s to start elsewhere.
I’ve never seen or read material that the Mi-24 versions ever carried anything other than AT-2, AT-6, and AT-9.
It wasn’t the first time I tested. F-14s fired up, went to the bow cats, E-2 and S-3 waited for them to launch, then got into place.
That would be an acceptable fix in this case, though I’m not sure why the AI didn’t wait this run like they did the previous one. FWIW there’s 5 aircraft starting on the deck; an additional S-3 is launching from the #3 cat.
Point the nose down from 30,000ft, watch radar clutter up, see FPS slow to a crawl. I’ve gotten in the habit of shutting off the radar to counteract this, though I don’t play with the Fishbed much anyways.
In my book, a complex mission is one that runs in a near-dynamic nature, with respawning units and lots of scripting. The scenario depicted in the posted screenshot incorporates a tactical sector control with resource management for CA players and helicopters, strategic objectives, ship groups, aircraft patrols including CAP/CAS, AWACS + GCI, multiple fuelers, and about 40-50 player slots. There’s a lot of scripting going on in the background to make this work. If you remember the old Enemy Engaged scenarios, it’s similar to what was depicted there.
I would encourage people to research the difficulties with Alpha/Beta designations in agile development land. Compared to waterfall, where Alpha and Beta terms made more sense, as software went through it’s life cycle to release the terms apply differently than in an agile environment. What DCS is, is agile. What the original LOMAC, Black Shark, and A-10C products were versus what we have now is very different. What we have (and are experiencing) is continuous development and deployment to a ‘Beta’ channel - and that is a very different beast (which should be obvious given the challenges that we all are experiencing).
I would also hazard to point out a couple of additional issues, because if everyone is posting their opinion, I might as well too? Right?
EDIT: I apologize for the length of this.
Long post...
Number 1:
I have the F-16C module from early access - and I have never touched it. There, I admitted it. I have not touched it because I know it is not ready yet. It is not where I want it to be, but I have trust in ED that it will get there. It is not because I look at the progress (or as some would argue, lack thereof) but because I am in flight sims as a hobby for the long game.
I have the F-18C module from early access - and that I have played, but for the time being (a year now?) I have left it alone, again, not from issues with bugs or late features, but because I want to enjoy the product when it is ready. And, again, I trust ED to get there.
I can be patient because there are a ton of other modules and entertainment to be had - but then again I can afford to be and I have enough other things in my flight sim plate to keep me somewhat busy.
Number 2:
Managers (and higher level, senior developers). sigh. I do not want to bring my work life into my hobby but I will make another exception to point out something that I see again and again in agile development. Developers want to work on new features but they can also be tasked to hunt and fix bugs. Managers … can’t be tasked to hunt and fix bugs - they have to sit there, monitoring their developers doing that and they get bored, or fidgety or whatever madness creeps into their minds. Senior developers always feel like they need to be doing features and leave the bug hunting to the juniors. This (always) leads to scope creep as managers and senior developers feel the need to be ‘productive’ and get all their hard work into the build and they pull others into this vortex.
Testers … while development managers and staff can scope creep, it is up to the testers to ‘make up that slack’. Developers push dates as much as they can, as much as they are allowed to get away with, but testers can never do this. Let say you have 1 month development, followed by 1 month of testing. In this case, developers end up with 1.75 months of time, while testers are required to their dirty business in … you guess it … 1/4 of a month. That means test effort is (always) cut. You can throw as much test automation at it as you want, you can’t do full regression testing when you cut the testing time severely. What happens is triage - where feature A should only do it’s designed thing, therefore, theoretically, that is all that needs testing - because that is all the time that you have.
I think that it is obvious what happens when testing times are cut.
Now, hold your concentration for a moment and think about how Agile Development is affected by this. Where developers and managers have free range to push, pretty much, whatever they want into the sprint, and testers have limited time and limited info on the full nature of the changes they need to test - because once a developer has pushed their changes, they are off to the next change set and don’t have time to brief testers on what they need to know.
Testing is, by far, the most difficult, complex and time sensitive task in modern development practices and very, very few organizations have that process working adequately. I have talked to many developers and managers who may be frustrated by process, timelines, what-have-you but can get their work done. I have never talked to a tester who said that they had more than 1/10 of the time needed to do what they need (or are asked) to do.
Yes, yes I do! I’d forgotten about them ‘good ol days’. I actually was one one of these, early 90’s, briefly. Wanna say it was Tornado. Dang, memory is the second thing to go…
I’m traveling for work so missed the main assplosion.
All the passion here is energizing!
DCS is worth investing in. it’s getting better… continuously! Continuous improvement for the win!
Cockpit and flight operations are best in class. Flying in VR is consistently sublime. Nothing else comes close.
Not much of a game though. I sympathize with the mission designers. I haven’t released nothing of Time Pilot to the public, even though it’s awesome. That ■■■■ is sooo unstable.
@Troll, You’re the one who brought up Fax, so yes we are … seasoned lol.
Next thing you know, you’ll be telling people how you worked on teletype. That’s usually when the 20 somethings loose interest. I worked a teletype Rig called a RATT rig back in the 80s.
I worked at the local newspaper, when I was in school. I collected the news that arrived by teleprinter and distributed them to the journalists. I also made ads. That was fun! We had a book of black and white logos that I copied in a huge copy machine, cut out, ran it through a wax machine, so it would stick to the backing paper. I then had to type the text into the word processor and print it in the font and size that was required. Wax and cut the text and place it on the backing. Oh, and we had all sorts of thin tapes that was used to frame the ads… Loved that job!
I had a AM Radio the size of two desktops. The messages came in on the “net” then hit the modem, then the teletype. I put the date an time and delivered them to the commander. So I always knew what was happening first. It was cool. Most of our teletype were of WW2 vintage.
Looks similar to the radar bug I found 2 years ago
as for serious sim DCS is going for, I can see why some folks might be angry for. I also can see the struggles ED is going through due the complexity of their product, but frankly paying customer should not be concerned about it. Maybe ED should put on every module they sell in big bold text PRODUCT UNDER DEVELOPEMENT
I accepted it and enjoy DCS for what it is. Some do not.
I sometimes joke about what ED stands for - Endless Developement. Don’t hate.
Little bit of humor doesn’t hurt like that since it’s not wholeheartedly malicious. Besides, it’s not as insulting as inferring “stagnant development”!
That looks like the same bug, just mine didn’t get to dozens of extra bars being allowed. So case of an old bug returning!
If you made a report back then, can you add it to my thread? Would help them to debug if they have “been there, done that!” before already.
Heh, hope it gets fixed in a timely enough manner.
Last time I ever bothered to report a bug in a game it sat for over a year before I finally stopped playing, not because of that. Came back to check it out a year later, bug was still there. Tried asking about the bug status/update that it was indeed still a bug. Was more or less told to F off and they closed my bug report, not fixed mind you. Ok, whatever works.
Came back 2 years later after that, so 4+ years after initial report. Still there I’d be willing to bet that now, at least 6 years later it’s still there.
I don’t see how DCS is doing agile development. Maybe someone can educate me otherwise. At least based on my observation while on their beta team.
I’ve seen examples in DoD regarding agile. In-fact it’s mandated now so everyone is forced to switch from old way and there is a lot of pencil whipping. I think Eagle Dynamics is somewhat in between. And we get bad results from both processes.
I’d be willing to bet that now, at least 6 years later it’s still there.
