Long time forum lurker and fanboy of many of you…all the way back to the AOL days. I’ve been in and out of DCS for years, and joined some of you (I believe Holopoint?) years ago to ground pound with the Hog. I even have a A-10 hard copy manual (that a third monitor sat on for years).
With a career change, I work 12 hour shifts now and only work 7 out of 14 days. With wife (teacher) and my two high schoolers back to ‘in person’ school…I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands with winter coming. Apache has my fire re-lit. I’ve been trying to set DCS up, and relearn the A-10, which years ago I could bang out a cold start by memory. I’ve got the TM warthog, CH pedals, and TrackIR with the IR clip working.
But the controls. I can’t even get the Hog cold started any more. Throttle used to bump over the gate to start, now nothing. I’m stuck somewhere, even the start cheat won’t work after being mapped. Every time I sit down, watch a set up video, and try to map things, I get frustrated and go back to murdering bad guys in Breakpoint. It’s a vicious circle.
I’ve spent time with Chucks Guides, surfed youtube vids, but I’m lost. Please assist with some direction!!!
Hey dtaylo11, hang in there. I have switched to Virpil, except the Hornet grip, but from memory, most of the buttons on the Warthog should be mapped by default to the same function in the A-10C. What might be confusing is how DCS assigns redundant functions to every controller, like Pitch and Roll to the throttle and rudder pedals. We are mostly referring to axis assignments, but sometimes buttons get redundantly assigned as well. The result is something like when you press the right toe brake, your throttle advances.
Some people begin by blowing those all away and starting from scratch, which is certainly a good way to do it. But with the TM Warthog, you just might want to remove the redundant assignments. If you go to Settings > A-10C > Axis, and look at assignments for pitch, roll, and throttle, do they only have one assignment for each function, or are there multiple? If multiple, then you want to remove the duplicates. Then make sure to save your profile and save when exiting.
What time zone are you in? Are you setup on the MUDSPIKE discord server (megaphone next to your user icon top right)?
Hi and welcome, I also learned the A10C startup when it first appeared in beta, going back to it years later the start up procedure had changed quite substantially. Best would be use the training mission to get it back, I bet the muscle memory for tms and dms will come back quickly too
I remember having this problem in the past, too. When the time to start the engines came up, even in autostart, they wouldn’t. It had something to do with how the throttle was mapped, where I’d left my throttle, and the whole “sync HOTAS to controls” option thing in the main settings.
I haven’t flown the A-10C much recently, even with A-10 2, and it was always hot start missions so I’ve not seen it myself.
What people don’t seem to understand is that the people that work on the Frustration’s flight model aren’t the same as the ones doing the cockpit textures! It’s far better to have this level of Frustration in the hands of people that want it now, rather than waiting for a complete level of Frustration some years down the road. I just hope we can keep funding this level of Frustration, and that they don’t move on to some new Annoyance before it’s complete. That would make people Aggravated (which reminds me, where is the Air Boss for the Aggravated anyway, it was shown in the trailer 2 years ago?!)…
I will not buy DCS Frustration until and unless the modules Annoyance and Aggravation are included as part of a package bundling all three. Speaking only for myself, I am unable to enjoy being frustrated unless I am also aggravated and annoyed.
@dtaylo11 welcome, rest assured we’ve all felt that same frustration at one point or another.
The TM Warthog and A-10 module combo is - in my opinion - one of the most solid ways to go in DCS in terms of hardware and software setups. ED did a good job of ensuring interoperability and typically these just work.
One thing I’d definitely recommend is “waking up” the throttles every time you cold start in DCS. What I mean is to bring it up over the idle stop and into free-motion and play around with the throttles, all as soon as you load into the game. Sometimes it can take a couple tries to sync up with DCS but ultimately you should be able to bring it up, see the corresponding throttle motion within DCS, and put it back below the idle stop. If you don’t do that, the sim can get confused on the throttle position and might not give you the results you’re expecting.
If you can do the above and you’re still having trouble then we’ve at least ruled out that part of the start procedure and can continue down a different path on troubleshooting.
I do this in every sim. As soon as I get in the cold and dark pit, move all the bits to make sure everything is working. Sometimes, things don’t move (because the power isn’t on and some only react to power) but it does serve to ‘clear out’ the connection to the sim.
And with the Warthog A-10 integration, I seem to find that when starting the engines, I have to come out of the idle/stop detent and back in at least twice to get it to turn over.
I will say the Winwing Orion setup for the Hornet is just as good for the F/A-18 as the Warthog is for the A-10C.
I find myself flying the Hornet most of the time, too, so that’s a bonus.
As for DCS frustration, personally I thought we’ve waited too long and could’ve just done with Flaming Cliffs 3-level modeling. It would have been done sooner and how many people really spend time with all the minutiae of full-level frustration anyway?
. I honestly feel that I am generally helpful. But, yeah, sometimes I go for glib when that’s all I got.
