V1 & V2 Divisions - DCS Super Carrier

Flight Sims
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I’ve been tinkering around with Super Carrier and the FA-18 (I know, I know,…Hangar200 flying a modeling jet?? :open_mouth: Surely one on the seven signs of the apocalypse!, etc…)

Anyway…while the DCS Super Carrier, or how Will learned to love skittles of all the wrong colours thread concerns all things Super Carrier, I thought perhaps a thread focusing on flight deck operations may be in order.

On a US Navy carrier, V1 operates the flight while V2 handles Launches and Recoveries, that is to say the Cats and the Wires and anything that directly contributes getting a jet airborne and back on deck. (i.e. we are not talking about the pattern, different CASE recoveries, etc.)

Super Carrier has one the best job I have see with recreating “Life on the Flight Deck”. That said, being a sim, there are some limitations. My intention with this tread is to explore how to work through or around those limitations to make the deck look and feel more realistic.

With that intro, I’d like to kick things off with two ideas.

  1. Howe to make the deck look as crowded as it usually is: Simple answer, put more planes on it. Bt where? I need to find some of my old cruise pics to share. IIRC, a lot of times CAT 2 was completely clobbered with FA-18Cs; sometimes both CAT 1 and CAT 2 were clobbered-shooting from the waist CATs . Using static planes this is easy one, but I’m not quite are what that does to the Flight Deck AI. Will need to investigate.

  2. Emergecy Pull Forward: When an event is launching, the landing area is usually clobbered - lots of jets inside the foul lines as they wait and/or taxi to launch from the waist CATs or even a bow CAT. The idea is that once all the planes are launched, the landing area is clear.

  • However, every so often a plane gets airborne and has a problem that is a “Land ASAP” emergency. In such cases the carrier does an “Emergency Pull Forward” - V1 Division taxies all the panes clear of the landing area while V2 secures the waist cats and preps the arresting gear.

  • I think using static planes, this could be simulated…once the player declares the emergency, it triggers actions (a Time From Flag condition) that eventually deactivates the static planes in the lading area.

  • That would be the easy part. How that interact with the flight deck AI might be a sticky wicket. Will the tower give you a “Charlie” signal is the back f the ship is full of static planes?

I’d also like to look at realistic ways the Navy spots the deck that makes landing in something with a wide wingspan (Tomcats, I’m talking to you) a bit sporty.

Also perhaps if/as Super Carrier is improved, we might see things like the weight board prior to launch?

As always I defer to our august admin bubbas and their wisdom as to whether such a thread is worthy…(appropage fiduciary transactions have been posted to their off shore accounts :money_mouth_face:)

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Will there be Sea Stories…?

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Of course. :grin:

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Then I say such a thread would indeed be worthy.

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With the 1st thing I am looking at - crowded flight deck:

I’m thinking the way to go is to place the dynamic aircraft that (player and AI) first to ensure they “work” then start placing the static aircraft. Probably need to divide them into areas. So a bunch of Horenets on the bow; check and see what happens…the “six pack of Hovers, Hummers and Helos” next to the tower, and see how that goes.……and so on…thoughts?

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I’m more of a mission modder than creator, but in FSX/P3D, at least one add-on facilitated deck states that could be instantly commanded from a pop-up menu. I believe that this affected mostly static object placement. Sounds simple enough. I suppose that you could also set a trigger such as a flight RTB after a mission, time and distance parameters being met.

Will, you bring up a good point about deck AI interaction. For recovery, maybe only have cat 1 active? Regardless, one would think that the Supercarrier team has contemplated most of these scenarios.

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This is a good point…so when do the CAT 3 & 4 teams go away? When you call inbound? When you get Charlie? Regardless, If I stick a bunch of hornets on the bow but leave CAT 1 open…theoretically I should be able to Trap, park, rearm/refuel, and launch from CAT 1.

That said, perhaps a bunch of Hornets were parked on CAT 1and CAT 2 when I initially launched? So now both bow CATs are unusable…Ideally the CAT3 and 4 teams appear to launch you but…if an AI or MP jet is RTB…problematic.

Probably be better to have a trigger that opens up CAT 1 by deactivating the static aircraft…make it happen when the player(s) are a few miles from the boat so they don’t see it.

I’m working on a WHITE/RED/BLUE deconfliction mission right now…think I can integrate some of this. :thinking:

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Redkite created a couple of templates (Lus scripts) to populate the carrier. So, you can switch between different templates during the mission. (I didn’t test them and don’t know how well they work or how accurate they are).

Template Download (DCS user files)

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Looks interesting!

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Nice find @Ugene. 023

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