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Modex Number?


Swift.

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The F-14 had modex numbers on each side of the nose, the flaps, and the rudders, and often on each side of the nose gear doors.

 

The Heatblur F-14 modex numbers are not dynamic because of the wide variety of modex number styles, sizes, and placement on the various liveries combined with the limits of the placement options in DCS. You are not likely to see this implemented soon.

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The lack of dynamic modexes has been killing immersion for me, honestly. Minor details like the font/placement are great and all, but having 4 '101' jets flying together is just awful. The Hornet did away with font/placement and pilot names for the sake of dynamic modexes and no one complained.

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The lack of dynamic modexes has been killing immersion for me, honestly. Minor details like the font/placement are great and all, but having 4 '101' jets flying together is just awful. The Hornet did away with font/placement and pilot names for the sake of dynamic modexes and no one complained.

 

Hornet modex placement variation is fairly minor between liveries. When the F-14A comes out and the modex number doesn't line up right with, say, the racing stripe on a VF-1 livery because they're the only squadron that ever put it there and in that size, plenty of people will be having the same complaints about immersion.

 

Each modex getting its own skin isn't a space saver, but it's the way it's gotta go right now. Blame ED for creating a decal system that doesn't serve US Navy jets very well.

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plenty of people will be having the same complaints about immersion.

 

I guess yeah, even if just giving more skins for the same squadron would fix this. I get why, but for some, it's a killer. Everyone has their own pet peeves.

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When the F-14A comes out and the modex number doesn't line up right with, say, the racing stripe on a VF-1 livery because they're the only squadron that ever put it there and in that size, plenty of people will be having the same complaints about immersion.

 

Why should all squadrons have fixed modex numbers just because one squadron had unique placement? Give all the Tomcats dynamic modex numbers and leave the fixed numbers for the small number of jets that actually need something more specific.

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Why should all squadrons have fixed modex numbers just because one squadron had unique placement? Give all the Tomcats dynamic modex numbers and leave the fixed numbers for the small number of jets that actually need something more specific.

 

Not just one. Almost all of them across the 30 year career of the F-14A had unique modex placement, style, and size. VF-1 was just the most egregious example. VF-51 in 1979, VF-2 in 1975, VF-154 from pretty much the mid 1990s onward, VF-21 post-Desert Storm, VF-201, VF-302, the list is probably shorter of squadrons that consistently followed the "standard." And that's just nose modex. Let's not even get started on rudder modexes where some aircraft in the same squadron didn't even have it in the same place.


Edited by Swordsman422

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I mean, with time and effort a full squadron skin pack with each MODEX could be done. You'd just need to at least cross check the BuNOs to the MODEX when you can, probably via anft.net, and you could at least have planes with line skins and differing MODEX. Then if size is a concern you could bump the DDS down to DXT5 or use other compressions to at least have passable line birds.

 

Downside, obviously, having to sscccrrrooollllll through every time in order to set up your missions. But if your're doing a lot of LUA mission writing I suppose that can be eased by standardizing your skins file format and some copy/pasta action.

 

As an example, the 8 "Korea" VF-31 Tomcat skins I made take up about 2 Gigs, high compression zipped, when I used the BC7 compression in DDS tool. Super high quality but very fat. But I plan to do a DXT5 pack that's a lot smaller, so something like a more compressed pack to flesh out the rest of a squadron/wing and not have clones should be helpful no?

 

The Heatblur templates should make it easy enough. It's just a time/effort/accuracy question, and everyone has different desires as to what they think they want. Accurate MODEX and BuNO but not having the right pilot names, or any pilot names, might be a no-go for some of you guys. Spending time to custom wear each plane so the paint has different variances. All that jazz adds up in terms of time spent but if it's really something desired, it should be doable.


Edited by LanceCriminal86

Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

 

VF-11 and VF-31 1988 [WIP]

VF-201 & VF-202 [WIP]

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That's pretty much what we're looking at. For OEF/OIF aircraft, the modex and bunos of all squadrons involved can be seen in the Osprey Publishing books F-14 Tomcat Units of Operation Enduring Freedom and F-14 Tomcat Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Canopy names will be problematic, however. For my yet unreleased VF-102 OEF set, I'm leaving this area blank, both because I don't have adequate reference material and because, this being a game, I'm not ever expecting to 100% replication of historical events. We'll be throwing these skins into fictional scenarios. The squadron crews could remain fictional and nameless.

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We'll get to it eventually guys, but atm it causes us problems and time we allocated elsewhere to work on - I will carefully say from our perspective - atm more important things. That said, I did not mean to say that it is not important, of course it is.

 

Whether we will find a way to change them dynamically, or via one skin per modex number, I cannot say at all yet.

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