Parking Slots Very Restrictive For Wide Body Jets

Seems like there's quite lower space for B2's, Tankers, and other long range bombers than I thought.

Also, generally, for things like Su-27s, the slots that feel like they could be used, can't be.

In Boulder Airport it only lets me use 8 of the same fighter type.

Maybe I'm just ... obviousy not familiar with any of this stuff in the real world, so I may had a wrong perception.

Is the space so tight in real life too?

I'm not going to request that more parking slots be made that don't exist there in real life, that's not my request, even tho I see in the first picture there's actually a slot for wide body aircraft placed on what the textures are showing is actually 5 slots for smaller aircraft,

What I'm seeing accross the board, not just B52, just used as an example here, is that some slots are restricted that geometrically should be allowable and also airfields just get full quickly, or some "this airfield supports total of X many Y type units" I think this is actually not realistic because in a WAR situation all those common-operation rules are thrown out in the water, and most airfields would be full, miliary is very adaptable and , in the simulator we can't have those rules all the time either, but, these rules could be broken in a case-by-case basis only for AI aircraft that are in emergency return, they have low fuel, or burning wings, base damage level below certain point, or a failed engine.

WideBody AI Aircraft that are in emergency and low fuel and can't get to a larger airfield, or an airfield that's full, they should still be able to land, repair and refuel, and then go back to the proper airfield where they can find a parking spot, that kind of smart AI would also enhance the game.

I've notice this aswel.

I'm creating a syrian Campaign using Nevada and I'm using Creech as Khmeimim Airbase.

I can't even create an incoming flight of An-26 because when they land, they sudenly disapear at the end of runway for not having parking slots to their size.

Of course, starting med to big planes from parking area is out of question aswel.

I just hope ED improves this briefly. It doesn't look like an hard job and could help to missions.

There's a lot of parking spaces on every base that simply aren't assign to parking slots.

Like so many features, it seems an half finished job. I can understand the difficulty of implementing new features, but this kind of unfinished ones is hard to understand.

I can understand the difficulty of implementing new features, but this kind of unfinished ones is hard to understand.

2.0 is alpha.

I recently went back to DCS 2 and I noticed the same, but it's probably not a huge priority right now. I would like to see if addressed eventually however.

Also nice to see that new airfields were added. I'm a few versions behind on 2 and I didn't even know these things were added.

In truth, the current config for spots F154 - F161 are incorrect. Those are taxiways to and from the actual NE/SW facing spots on that end of the ramp, not dedicated parking.

SiThSpAwN, are you saying that B-52 werent meant to operate out of Tonopah or locations specified on F ramp at Nellis is the reason why there are so few med to big planes slots on Nevada map or is that just speculation?

Are you serious about that Syria argument? Really?

Don't get me wrong but I don't get why everytime someones points something that is not right theres allways an excuse.

There's something to be finished here and thats it. No need to find justifications out of the blue.

Exorcet, we all know what is alpha. As I said I total understand that a lot of these features take time, a lot of time to be implemented. But this isn't a feature that is not yet implemented. Its something that was started and left half finished and on halt.

And like so many important features is in an unfinished state for years while the same feature is implemented on other projects so there's not even the excuse of diferent guys to diferent features.

Imagine that I'm a constructor and that you ordered me an house. I started your house and when I started to paint, I left most walls half painted. And then evertime you point me about this, I answer that this is still WIP. And then I move to other areas like roof, floor, etc, and walls were still left half painted. And after a few months I start doing other houses to other clients and your walls and olmost everything else was left half finished and everytime you asked me about it my answer was that I was still working on your hous and that it wasn't yet finished.

Does this resemble you something around here?

We all know what alpha means when we payed for this. But at least me was convinced that ED would do what they could to deliver me a finished product as soon as they can.

I just want to highlight that I'm not one of those guys that come here just to whine. I really love DCS and keep flying and although I don't come here very often, I try averytime to help and be constructive in my posts, but this dishonest way of doing things have made a lot of people to leave DCS for good. Most of my friends have abandoned DCS and its a shame to see this.

What is revolting is that it's not because they don't know how to do things.

No one is making excuses, some of the things you are asking for are simply not realistic, as in not in the real world...

This is Creech Air Force Base and I see there 5 C130 on runway and taxiway. I was asking for slot for planes smaller than these C130.

Sad, very sad that instead of using these discutions to improve and listen the comunity, people with responsabilities around here adopt a confrontation attitude. Was never my intention to do so.

Don't bother to answer. I'm out of this conversation.

I would also like to point out that this is a game... even though the video includes an emergency situation.

Oh totally forgot about this thread, actually I regred mixing a bug report with another set of my ideas, I'll separate as bug fixes probably wouldn't be all dropped in favor of just new ideas/features making them obsolete.

While the idea is also posted, the team has a choice of how much to fix, temporairly or "permanently" (longterm) and how much of the idea to consider.

This here was only a part of one of my ideas which is game-wide, not tied to a map, while certain maps could have some differences, and in case with specifically the textures/park slots yes that is specific to NTTR, but the larger list of ideas that would make DCS great for me I'll try to consolidate so I don't spend making so many thread about little bits, because some of it is connected and there's some cross functionality to make it all work, also crossing with the new ATC system a bit and might even help for dynamic campaign later on, not to the core tho so it can be a patch ontop but probably not a good idea to waste time making it for the old ATC system when new one is around the corner.

Part of the problem is that the rules for a parking spot are somewhat rigid in that each spawn has specific dimensions aircraft must fit in and it doesn't disable nearby spots to allow for larger aircraft. So it is forced to assume a neighboring slot will be occupied and with the largest aircraft parked in any spot will not block any other AI from taxiing.

Grimes, I understand that problem but at least in Creech, wich I know better, I think there are ways to overcome this.

Here are a couple of pictures with static objects showing a couple of slots where C130 size planes can park and taxi and one individual slot where any plane DCS has, can park.

I'm sure you understand that from a mission building prespective this is a very restrictive issue.

Even a couple of slots would make a big diference since we can make big planes to land and park.

Thanks for your attention.

Google the home bases of B-52 units and look at them in Google Earth. See how they compare to NTTR bases. Maybe not all bases are created equal.

Since I stared this wishlist because I wasn't sure if it is a problem, I'll explain a bit about the ATC-Runways-Scenario-System that i have in mind (incl AIs)

Then this is where it comes down to protocol in real life vs war scenario vs simulator adjustment.

The protocol in real life, various aircrafts have their "home base" sort of, or they have multiple such airfields of equal level of functionality.

The developers need to make a decision first whether or not certain logical things might happen in an emergency or war scenario, with some limitations, because usually, in war, things get upgraded/built so it can pretty much go anywhere, but we can and should pick these isolated clear-cut cases that happen on a more detailed tactical level.

If ED is serious about the realism of slots then I will be fine with the "limitations" but that it is actually checked for accuracy and somehow implemented in gameplay with some compromises which would make me and others more than happy ... so I think the ATC should know the full ground situational awareness, how many max slots, how many used, and it should deny permission to land (except emergency), and stuff that we talk here should be considered with the ATC system being developed so I hear, even if somethign like this is not planned it should be made so that it's easily expandable and won't need an ATC system redo from scratch again, that's why I'm stating this early.

But a compromise could be made that while only the airfields that support a specific plane would have more slots for it, some cases some of the aircraft whether or not it is AI or player would be able to land but not by changing slots or doing anything to the airfields or forcefully stopping on the tarmac or taxiways or any of that stuff, but that the special RESERVE SLOTS get officialy built in and would work with the new ATC system and would only be allowed for use when the airplane (AI or Player) calls in EMERGENCY (damage, low fuel, etc) the but I have an idea of how this whole compromise could be like:

So yes this is a mix of the "world of software simulators & gaming" and "official protocol" and "what-can-happen-in-real-life-scenario-that-is-not-officialy-recognized"

• Some aircraft types landing at airfields they never deploy from could be able to only get repair and refuel while not rearm. If in future ED takes more serious stance around "home-bases" then this could be a good compromise. But maybe only certain types of large planes would get the "strict homebaser" where it wouldn't even be able to refuel or rearm in normal slots on other airfields ... I guess you'll have to call tanker to deliver fuel from homebase.
  
• Reserve slots would be granted to airplanes in emergency situations only, again with no rearming.
  
• Loitering on non-homebase normal slot is probably okay, even for strict-homebaser?
  
• Reserve slots would not allow loitering, you fix and go if airfield still full, otherwise take normal slot.
  
• Reserve slot position would be determined by some thought, not just thrown randomly, including the vicinity of the runway.
  
• The number and type of reserve slots would obviously depend on size of the airfield.
  

The fuction of the Reserve or Emergency slots would work as a pitstop, you only get a quick fix so you can get more safely back to better suited airport.

Also ... need to really research whether or not this home-base thing is really meant to be so strict, or depends on type of aircraft, that's why I don't want to make any conculsison or blank checks. ATC could have this implemented and respond "to rearm you need to go to homebase contact Nellis AFB bla bla bla"

It could be like this, that the emergency slot would be positioned so that it could accept one size level larger aircraft. But this is just example, slots seem to also go by type of aircraft.

Airfield1: Level 1 slots, + Level 2 Emergency slot-s.

Airfield2: Level 1 + 2 slots, + Level 3 Emergency slot-s.

Airfield3: Level 1 + 2 + 3 slots, + Level 4 Emergency slot-s.

In reality, war situation, we can guess they wouldn't have EM/Reserve slots, they would just pile aircraft with no protocol. But we can do this more elegantly, if we care about protocol right now, why then not develop the emergency protocol LIKE IT SHOULD BE in reality but they probably wouldn't waste time on it.

NO OPTIONS LEFT?:

The AIs should all have the basic crash-land script when they have no options left, but they would fly to the best airfield even if they know the'll ran out of fuel before reaching it. In case of the airfield being just nearby, but it has filled up all the slots including reserve ones,

While it sounds like a small thing, I think it would make the game feel more alive, specially when you would see airplanes attempting to crash land if all airfields are full and the best thing is that they would correctly not try to cause crash on the runway which would make the runway to cease operations.

AND ONLY THEN:

Only then ontop of this working system, would come errors due to damage to communications, then AI could land but it would probably crash into someone while landing, stuff like that, or create commotion with traffic jam.

But who knows if DCS will get down to those levels, if we're speaking about AIs. Speaking about this, I'm not sure if the existing comm damage makes the radio to work only one way, as in, only Receive or Broadcast before it's completely ... that would be kinda a cool thing that would go along with the damage model. But it would need check with facts, might not use separate annennas for RX and TX. Well antennas is one thing, but there's the Microphone too, you effectively lose TX when Mic dies, right?

Wouldn't that be a cool part in one of the campaign missions, when stuff like comms goes dead in the night and allies send fighters and you would need to use external lights to make some signals in morse code and some datalink stuff -> awesome!

BTW: No I'm obviously not expecting the ATC system to be the actual complicated as civilian ATC system with all the , and for the core AI logic is just one big master logic, and each airplane has a few adjustments ontop of that and that's it, the big planes need to automatically know that they shouldn't even attempt calling ATC if the airfield there is too small (which is exactly what's happening now, B1s landing at Jean)

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And what's more:

This might be something that could be developed for the dynamic campaign in mind, so that the default non-mission-editor guided behavior of ATCs/Airfields you would use the same code without having to do totally separate AI behaviors, the dynamic campaign could just have some adjustments ontop that the user could adjust, but the core underlying system should work the same and that's good for easier development/maintenance.

So improving the automation of AIs, is pretty much work that also benefits the dynamic campaign, imo. If the ATC/Airfield/Runway system isn't perfected it would impact the quality of the dynamic campaign a lot when everyone goes back to refuel/repair/rearm ...