Server option to switch off "autoHostile" IFF returns

Then and now

DCS was, until last week, made of two coalitions, Red or Blue, 1 or 2, and that was it. Nothing in between, nothing ambiguous, no problems to solve, my radar shows enemy, I shoot.

For as long as IFF has existed in DCS, stemming from FC3, a failed IFF return on a target will automate a change in HAFU for the track to Hostile. On F-14 - you see Jester IFFing and turning ambiguous to Hostile, on F-18 you see once you STT an ambiguous track, it turns red hostile once it fails. Same process exists, even AWACS does this on the SA. It's wrong, there is no such thing as a hostile return, there is only nothing. With the advent of Neutral coalitions, you see this magic mode4 IFF even more obviously, in that, somehow Civilians or military of independant Coalitions will now identify as ambiguous and the enemy don't have the magic replies to do the same.

It's fairly obvious that this is an important 'game' function to keep multiplayer anonymous server play somewhat functional, without blue on blue breaking it and turning into a frustrated game of "demolition derby". Yet Multiplayer anonymous play isn't the only way DCS is played and there are plenty of folks who like to do things more logically, that do not want to pollute the L16 network with non combatants marked for destruction, or even have AWACS do that for you. What is more, since people wanted neutrals and that request was granted, there must be people who want to see neutrals as neutral, not as 747 drones. And, year on year in DCS we have also seen the rise in popularity of controllers, whether ATC, Weapons Directors or hybridised support roles on the radios, guiding players.

Why change what we have?

Well apart from the realism aspect of; enemy aircraft do not have beacons that respond with a 'shoot me' directive, the current model of IFF in DCS prevents any gameplay where the visual arena is important. And in a simulation game where the visual arena is so good looking, where the flight models actually mean something, and an entire strategic and tense decision making process in realtime is simply absent. From an amazing game, it's a real shame for groups of organized players and single players to miss out.

What changes are you requesting?

- It will never work for anonymous multiplayer, that's OK, let's never force change.

- A Server>Mission>Player inherited difficulty setting where IFF does not upgrade ambiguous HAFU's to Hostile, It leaves them where they would be in the real world, you respond as a military friend, or you simply do not respond.

- An option to disable AWACS (computer) from upgrading HAFU's to Hostile, and only relying on player Classification, which may include offboard decisions via LotATC (or even the F10 map).

- Relevant Server API controls for offboard ID management. (simple upgrade/downgrade on unit) so the L16 network can be managed by humans.

What gameplay advantages would this give us?

- Where missions have neutral planes, the human now has to think before shooting. They simply don't know if a bogey is hostile and require to work on that either individually or as a group. For players wanting to be told, they can leave the default settings from what we have now.

- Where no other offboard sensors are involved, we would now be able to have intercept missions on unknown random contacts. This gives a lot of tenseness to the gameplay (if you have never tried this type of mission, it is a lot of fun). Interceptors cannot really do their role in DCS until we have the correct underlying setup for cold war behaviour. All the other tools are there: ROE for AI, Tasking.

- Neutral player sides can now exist in organised multiplayer. They can go around, act erratically, sow confusion and give controllers and pilots problems to solve. Their hostility and behaviour can change, but if they aren't part of the encrypted MODE4 members, they aren't going to reply to an IFF. To give you an idea, some online squadrons host events with live ATC and live WD's. Throwing civilians into the mix gives the ATC and WD's more to actually do and to use the IDCRITS properly rather than have AWACS or radars automatically do magic IFF.

- Air policing becomes a thing you can do with more game support for correct IFF and coaltions. Let's remember, the world isn't always in the state of hot wars, it's in a persistent cold war state in most places, with airspace management, cheeky violations, exclusion zones, even Superbowl airspace to be cleared. This is far more common to see, than all out brawls. The CAM mod is very popular, the RAT script is very popular. People want to see civilians even if they don't want to be civilians. The people asked for, and got, a neutral coalition. There is something quite fun about pulling up alongside a 747 and escorting it, equally so, trying to identify the tail number of a small Cessna wandering where it shouldn't. We don't want to see these as hostile on a datalink, let them remain ambiguous and do the work ourselves.

- It will get people more used to the real perspectives of ROE and Classification, since we can apply most real world processes to DCS, except this one, this one we cannot.

This is a list of things I quickly thought would become usable properly once an option to have realistic IFF becomes possible. If you aren't interested in this, that's cool, it shoudn't affect you as a server setting, but you could use them if you liked:

• Have intercept randomness with more tense gameplay and not a magic screen that tells you that a brick is going to shoot
  
  
• Practice intercepts, stern conversions, VID's, eyeball-shooter, IDcrits
  
  
• Use ROE that isn't "Weapons free"
  
  
• Missions Designers that don't have to make complex invisible Red planes on that coalition or mess about with tasks and scripts
  
  
• Enjoy using human controllers that can help a classification process and be contributing members to a network
  
  
• Use the interim classifications, spades, rider, gopher, outlaw, bandit so that they mean something, rather than, when on LotATC, asking the plane if it returned hostile interogation, then upgrading your trackfile and cheating
  
  
• Just have what it should actually be, rather than pretend
   
  
  

amen.

good points. thanks for the write-up!

Agree.

Good points

quick question because i don't want to open a seperate thread.

i'm not on open beta and i'm not 100% sure how iff works with the neutral coalition.

i assume that neutral will come back as unknown, but hostile will still come back as hostile, correct?

Excellent write-up Pinky. Thank you.

I can't believe this got so few replies... this is badly needed for any kind of realistic A/A co-op missions

+1000. We absolutely need this. It's very odd that the AWACS or AI fighters somehow know that this target, 200 NM away, is definitely a hostile.

For AI to not break, this should remain, but as Pinky says, an option to disable the IFF part of the contribution, unless certain criteria are met, is very much needed.

Yes, this would be a tremendous improvement for the editor and would open a lot of new possibilities for playable scenarios!

+1

+1

If ED wants to continue rising the realism bar, they will have to do an overhaul of IFF sooner or later. The limited change that you're proposing would help a few Viper and Hornet pilots split neutrals from bandits but ultimately would only be a small first step. A friendly MiG would still respond to your MODE 4 interrogation despite not having a compatible transponder. You could still leave your transponder off and not worry about getting blue on blued. And AI planes and SAMs would still be all knowing, ROEs aside. A lot of work needs to go into properly implementing the various IFF networks, integrating all the modules from all the developers and - which could prove to be the biggest challenge - giving AI the ability to work with all that (to some degree at least). I suppose it would have to be optional and per-mission enforceable, at least at first. This would change so much though and make fighting so much more interesting and tactical.

The typical answer is "IFF is classified" and it is just not correct because IFF systems are well known that how they are suppose to work, but classified is that what exactly is going in the "black box" to do it.  Likely larger public libraries that has section for the advanced radio engineering or flights will find books about principles of the IFF systems. One can simply use public material to develop a design how the systems would work in the DCS World. So even if we would get a 50% of the features implemented, it would be far better than anything we have right now. 

IMHO we need something else as well to go with this. We need a flight planning. This is requirement for the AWACS, GCI as any ATC and such. That they know what flight is going to take-off and when, what is its route (or at least destination) and other flight parameters and then have them listed nicely on the table. So players (and AI) would need to plan their flight before taking-off and then even get that list transmitted to those corresponding controllers that they can check information about them. Like they need to know that there is expected transport at 1830 local time from A to B. And there are civilian airliner flying at given time and route etc. As if there is no flight plan, then it is required to go checking it and it is likely as well a hostile. 

We would need with that as well a new 3D briefing rooms, mission planning station etc. These are likely coming in the Super Carrier.

And what I would like to see is to have a map on table of the area where you plan your route similar way as now in mission editor, but actually more like using a "real paper map". And then have there the marked possible intelligence of the enemy troop movements (that is result of the another topic: Reconnaissance pods/flights etc) with photographs that what it looks like on the area (so no magical ground units positions because someone has LOS at them, they literally need to transmit that information to others somehow). This would as well allow to have a large scale map or area map with enemy possible positions and movements, their controlled air areas etc. So that pilot can get the general idea visually. And GCI/AWACS to use this to quickly check is there suppose to be any friendlies on mission or civilians flying as their flight plans would be visually shown.  

The IFF system is not just a "I ping you, you reply back so I don't shoot you" system, as there still can be plenty of errors and possibilities that you just don't have proper information of target to be hostile. As has been shown in the real history, you might need multiple queries and still see target as unknown, you might not get any response at all. 

Question really is that is there possibility that for false reason someone could transmit wrong code that could be interpreted for some reason positively as friendly? I don't think that there is possibility for a false-positives. 

But we really need to get a realistic IFF/ROE/INTEL system (keep the current one as a GAME MODE or special settings to ease things by keeping it maically correct and instant) that would really do what OP asks, more Fog Of War and more challenges to fly.

It would likely as well mean that the radar systems needs to be improved across the board, that we get situations where you just can't find one with radar at long ranges and different weather. So you can't perform a interception alone or just scan the space and see everyone and it would be teamwork.

Just having a neutral side made things more interesting!