DCS Carrier Communication Test

Please don’t think I’m being an arse. But that’s sort of the model anyway for dcs? I’m mean the frogfoot and cavalier mustang are free. Those were all I had for the longest time, the whole caucasus map and those 2 aircraft were totally free . Seeing people online buzzing round in migs and Eagles made me buy into dcs.

I guess it depends on how ED’s funding model goes over time - will aircraft retain their initial high prices or fall off with age?

If aircraft values drop as the module ages, then I could see things being bundled together into more “traditional” expansion packs, like WWII, Modern, etc.

If not, then these type of assets really should be merged into the DCS “core” as it were. Maybe not right away - maybe us interested parties pay the way for it to eventually be free for all (which I assume that would lead to backlash being the internet and all) which leaves another option that I am sure currently sounds quite horrid - maybe the “core” won’t remain free?

For now they are trying this approach and we will just have to see how it goes - or maybe we start a group patreon and chip in a few extra bucks to then gift keys out to our community so no man gets left behind. Could we work out a bulk deal for Mudspike? :wink:

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This is really going to put a damper on my community wide L-39 Carrier Ops (equipped with NS 430 GPS units with the L-39 adapter) mission, where we escort a box formation of B-17G’s to take out 25 Jeep Willys over the new Syria map. :wink:

With stuff like this on reading reddit today I do wonder if they should set up a ‘DCS Snickers Fund’ where people get a transformational chocolate bar to relax a bit before getting banned from the ED forums. The lurch from ‘we love DCS’ to ‘death to DCS!’ seems to happen in about 5ms.

I quite like the idea of the new carrier SAM systems taking out people that don’t own it - that’ll work.

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Geez man, you said it. What a flood of bovine excrement hysteria.

Of course ill buy the carrier. Ill never drive it or play LSO, but just having dudes on deck and jell-o for paddles is worth the price of admission.

Oh and also supporting the outfit that supplies my hobby!

You been hangin’ with @Anklebiter? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think if people that don’t own it get can get by the Mk-15 Phalanx CIWS and call the ball then they deserve to be able to land. :slight_smile:

The good thing to come out of it is ED is getting lots of early feedback, so like @Gunnyhighway said above, plans might change. They did with the servers not having to pay for maps, which was a pretty big thing to happen and that was a while coming. If initial sales aren’t good then it wouldn’t be surprising to see the plan tweaked in response.

Had a chance to read a lot of the community comments and all I can say is that’s one hell of a can of worms ED has opened. I think there’s a very real breakdown of communications on all sides and lot of lost tempers (Cpt. Obvious reporting for duty!).

First off, the impression I had was in the past, the plan seemed to be a carrier module that would offer certain features to paid users, while non-paying users would only have basic functionality. This seemed ideal, like the existing system: you buy a carrier aircraft and you get basic functionality, and if you want more you have to pay for it. Don’t like carrier operations or don’t want to pay more beyond basic functionality? It’s cool, you still get to play with the guys who do at reduced levels. That seems to have changed and now everyone must have the carrier in order to play. That’s not good, not at all. I’m more than happy to pay for it and make missions to show off fence-sitters or others the cool things we can do, but locking them out completely isn’t the right way forward.

Folks are getting bent way around the axle about the whole thing, which I can emphasize with, but they do need to take a chill pill. Mashing away on the keyboard as they are is not the way to get ahead and while I think they should be free to express their displeasure, they need to do so in a diplomatic way. Likewise, ED’s staff – especially the community facing ones – needs to take a breath and relax. The community isn’t demanding this be free; by and large, they want to pay for it. They simply disagree with the premise that it will lock non-paying users from servers that use it. From a mission makers perspective, it basically means I won’t be able to use this awesome module because I’m barring a huge number of users from enjoying my mission and the server that it may be on.

There seem to be a variety of excuses on ED’s side, to which I have to take with a grain of salt due to past history and actions. I do understand their needing to turn a profit and heartily agree. My question would be why the cost for this module wasn’t/isn’t associated with the carrier aircraft that would undoubtedly use it. The F/A-18 costing an extra 20-30 bucks wouldn’t make much difference if you’re already spending $80, same as with the F-14. These are literally the only aircraft that can make proper use of the module, so I believe it would be fair for the cost of the new carrier to be included with these aircraft. The other claim is that the ATC and LSO system were the most expensive portion, to which I ask why not have a “Use advanced ATC-LSO” selector when placing the carrier – enable it and everyone must have the carrier, disable it for large public servers and use the legacy ATC system. Advanced features that I presume take player slots would remain locked to paying users, thus allowing some flexibility.

The ATC-LSO thing I’m less concerned with because in multiplayer someone can take over that role and in singleplayer the AI ignores it anyways. My largest problems with the carrier ATC has been more with the AI, not with players; notably, having a clearance to land and then having an AI plow right into my butt. The voice lines? The additional functionality? I’m not concerned with that – I just want the AI to quit flying into me, them, around in circles for no reason, and creating general chaos in the pattern.

As it stands, ED’s response to the community has given me second thoughts about purchasing additional modules at this time. It makes me feel like I did back in 2008, when after buying Flaming Cliffs 1.0 (the one that added the Su-25T to LOMAC), the Starforce DRM ate a couple of my optical drives and so I shelved the game. I paid for something that later basically became free in the form of DCS World, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who did that. There’s some give and take here, so I hope ED can understand that and come up with a better solution.

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Isn’t this just a " Carrier Communications Test"? It’s not a module feature list. Why all the hubbub?

Because it relates to the new paid carrier module, as noted earlier.

TL;DR: non-paying users will be barred from joining servers using the module, like it is for user made modules like the A-4.

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Got it, so not so much the test, but the clarification by Wags on the forum. Just reading his statement, I don’t see anything nefarious or misleading. I suppose one might infer that they are going deeper than originally planned, but is this not a positive development? Perhaps the originally distributed deck crew images had folks believing that they were owed a complex carrier ops when they purchased the Tomcat, from a 3rd party dev no less. Not going to wade through the subterfuge.

Edit: I suppose that there is a bit of snobbery in my statement and I am somewhat ignoring the online component of DCS. Didn’t mean to sound that way.

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I think some people probably had the expectation that the new carrier would be like any other module, ie a server could add it, but players would be required to buy it in order to do things like use the LSO, the elevators, or other features like defenses – basically, anything beyond the barebones core game functionality. I think there was also the expectation that ATC and carrier ops in general would get a core facelift, since at present time there are many glaring holes.

Now that it’s revealed that it’s going to be treated like the WW2 assets pack, hopes are dashed and people are upset that their expectations were wrong. To be fair, I think ED should have made this clear from day one and probably fewer people would be disappointed, but that’s just me.

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This ordeal is not the cleverest way to keep the online community whole… I don’t really care for carriers so I couldn’t quite care less until it starts effecting my online experience. Let’s hope they figure out a way to not break that.

[The cynical me] thinks that this was picked up on comments Wags made on other sources with respect to the video I posted above, and blown out of proportion because a vocal group wants something to rant at/about.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not want fragmentation of the multiplayer community because it makes it harder to use the cool stuff if everyone doesn’t have it and I hold out hope for a technical solution … but this has been known about for some time (that the carrier would be a paid add on) and it is not really different in any way from the WWII Assets pack. Maybe there is a solution that ED can do to make it compatible in a multiplayer environment for people that don’t have it but I suspect that is a technical challenge in the engine.

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I wonder if HBs carrier will have ATC/LSO? There is already a community script that is pretty awesome for carrier/LSO operations.

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The Forrestal I think was planned to be similar to the Tarawa, in that it just linked with existing core gameplay functions.

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On the other hand, a lot has changed in the last year with regards to DCS navops, Wags’ and Jabbers association with Vincent Aiello, for a couple. Kind of like a perfect storm brewing atm.

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Yeah. The features and collaboration on this component is amazing and I am really looking forward to it. I know that Baltic Dragon and Vincent Aiello are working on a set of missions that follow along with a book that I have not read … so that is all going to add some awesomeness to the environment.

The problem is the multiplayer aspect. And there is no easy solution in the short term.

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I suspect that ED determined early on that was not to be a concern in this module’s development, otherwise they likely would have come up with a different answer (seeing as the carrier has been in development since at least 2015, if not earlier).

For me, I will likely continue to use the Stennis through the foreseeable future in any scenarios I design, hoping that ED will address the AI shortcomings around the boat as part of the core game.

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My opinion:

Proper AI, ATC and that kind of stuff (including carriers) should have been in the sim since day one.
They have been talking about improving them since at least 2011.
For me it sounds a bit like they suddenly want extra money for that.

I have been buying numerous modules I rarely use (MiG-15, F-86, Mustang, Nevada, Normandy, just to name a few) for the sole reason of supporting ED, because the simulation environment is ever growing and free, with all its parts, such as ships, AI planes and so on.
Compatible in multiplayer (unless you just don’t own a map, which is OK IMO because it is easy to see).
That’s what creates the income they need to provide the platform all those planes use.

When they did the same thing with the WWII assets pack I was a bit torn, but at least there is kind of a distinction, it is WWII stuff, for WWII maps. But that was… not great either. Not the end of the world but not great.

This is… not cool. I’d rather pay more for planes and maps.

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I think most of the DCS community is the same way, which is why I wonder why the price of these features isn’t rolled into the relevant modules. Buying the F-14 or F/A-18 is pretty much saying “I want to do carrier naval operations,” ergo the price should reflect this. You’ll have more than enough people buying these modules that you could crunch out the numbers to upgrade the core carrier functions. Then, of course, you can still charge to use special positions and whatnot on the carrier itself, as with Combined Arms. Likewise, buying the Normandy map or WW2 aircraft should also have a price reflection to cover the cost of the WW2 assets.

I can only guess that their present business model is such that doing so would potentially make aircraft module prices more unappealing than they already are.

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I wonder if this just more about just getting regular revenue? Eagle Dynamics S.A. might not be actually making a huge amount of money, so they need to have regular ‘revenue events’ like what’s proposed in the Carrier DLC to keep the money coming in. We judge them to the same standard as a regular games makers and markets, but you can’t help but wonder if that isn’t a fair comparison.

It would be really interesting to see what sort of market saturation they have, plus what sort of sales profile old modules have. In regular games you get a launch lump but then a nice decreasing curve of sales as word of mouth spreads and other people notice and buy your game. The untapped market for a launched game can often be about 70% of its revenue past the initial launch month over a year or two.

With flight sims if the market is the size it is means that that doesn’t happen for DCS so much (as in, to make it comparable with a regular game). It might be the case that anyone that wants the Hornet has actually already bought the thing at pre-order. Due to the niche we’re in and the high cost of entry in terms of equipment and PC etc, DCS might actually satisfy the market (to saturate it) enough that they get X number of orders initially and then it drops off pretty sharply. The trouble would be if ‘X’ doesn’t sustain things in the period between having to do the next one.

A lot of the disconnect between what the fans expect DCS should cost/do could be explained with this gap - that it’s not really about ‘creaming profits’ doing stuff like this but just keeping the doors open in a very small and passionate market.

I really hope that MAC does well, as after all these years I’m fairly certain ED loves making high fidelity sims and won’t stop, but to have that other more mainstream revenue market to cross-sustain our detailed/niche stuff would be ideal.

I know this puts aside the whole ‘but if it was joinable on a server more people would buy it’ argument (which I see as a bit separate) but I do wonder if it’s related to the decision making process behind the scenes.

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