I’m part of what I suspect is the Silent Majority - Single Player .
MP is okay sometimes, for some things, but is less convenient for me.
I tend to prefer Air To Ground stuff anyway with complete, fully fleshed out, missions that are more a simulation of the real world as I understand it to be (past or present), from start to finish - and are dynamic. DCS is sorely lacking in support in this area, thus I get my “combat mission fix” via [a lot of] scripting.
I can’t find the exact clip I want but this one from “Hozer” is more representative of my leanings:
“…it passes for ‘fun’…”
It should be easier to structure a consistent and authentic experience if we had better tools relating to the AI. “Jello” made a point (in the clip I can’t find right now) when addressing this and the difficulty that was going to be demonstrated. To paraphrase: “Yes, it is hard to do these things correctly in the real world, so practice. Get good. OTW, this one may not be for you”. It was refreshing to hear that.
I suppose everyone is looking for slightly different ‘stimuli’. The spawn, shoot/die, re-spawn…lather, rinse, repeat…thing gets old to me quick. And I don’t need to go online to do this (just go 1 V many with the AI). I do understand the appeal however from both a game play and coding perspective.
My only real gripe with MP: It appears to take away time from coding AI (and yes, I understand how much work this is).
I just want my Bot Wingman to attack an arbitrary target - the one I’m looking at. I’ve gotten this to work in a very limited fashion but the bits to really make it go just aren’t provided to me from the sim: the code demonstrates functions A and B to accomplish this but are restricted to different contexts.
While I’m here…
@bignewy I can provide more detailed observations on the above if you have the time. I know how busy you must be and understand. But, in essence:
NOTE: They may do the math some other way but this appears to be a triangle engine.
Somewhere in the code you cast a ray (unit vector if you will); you determine the intersection of that ray with the terrain (triangle); find the nearest unit to that point (with some constraints); highlight it (for verification to player); click F10 | Wingman | Engage | “Hit that”. To everyone else this should sound similar to the process used with the JHMCS (or T-Pod, etc), so this indicates the tools are there, just not the context - arbitrary visual [eyeball sensor] targeting of, in this case, a ground unit.
Cockpit Visual Recon Mode gets me close - but unless I predefine the group/unit they will go after something else (or nothing).
Oh, and thanks for the work. It is appreciated.