HMAS Melbourne R21 (1980)

[Cdodders]

1 hour ago, Bungo said:

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NOTICE:  (April 7, 2021)  HMAS Melbourne v1.1 is updated on ED's User Files for download.

 

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Thanks to @mmarques and @Helles Belle for fixes and testing.

 

The failure to catch the arrestor wires that some were experiencing and some of the AI issues to do with taxiing and the catapult should be fixed.  Minor enhancement to the model included.

 

Cheers

 

Braedon

Awesomes. Will this allow AI Hornets to land or is that a hard coded thing because of the size of the carrier?

Also what is the difference between the WIP and Non-WIP version?

 

Edit for AI Hornet landing. No Hornets will land, always WO (AFU) IC

Edited April 7, 2021 by Cdodders

[Bungo]

F-18's have always had the ability to land, unless you had issues with the arrestor gear.  You can land an Su-33 on it if you wish (the SFM? doesn't play nicely with it's nose wheel however).

 

Wip and non-wip version the difference is the length of the catapult.  The WIP has it at the correct value of ~43m, the regular one has a length of ~85m which helps everything take off properly.  The WIP one is for if I ever work out how to fix it so that any aircraft can use it at MTOW without disintegrating (which I think is more a function of the aircraft than the carrier, but anyway?)

 

Bungo

 

 

[Cdodders]

2 minutes ago, Bungo said:

F-18's have always had the ability to land, unless you had issues with the arrestor gear.  You can land an Su-33 on it if you wish (the SFM? doesn't play nicely with it's nose wheel however).

 

Wip and non-wip version the difference is the length of the catapult.  The WIP has it at the correct value of ~43m, the regular one has a length of ~85m which helps everything take off properly.  The WIP one is for if I ever work out how to fix it so that any aircraft can use it at MTOW without disintegrating (which I think is more a function of the aircraft than the carrier, but anyway?)

 

Bungo

 

 

It's not me landing, it's AI attempting to land

[Cdodders]

F-14 launched and trapped. Slightly wonky taxi with no regard for statics but otherwise landed. A-4 still has CV launch bug and will always wave off. These are also AI.

 

Second F-14 trapped on the second attempt and had an 'interesting' choice of taxi path followed by donuts

 

[Cdodders]

Video of the donuts

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lc1orq1pdaxeihz/Digital Combat Simulator Black Shark 2021.04.07 - 14.10.08.01.mp4?dl=0

[Cdodders]

It seems that without statics No.2 taxis fine

 

[mmarques]

2 minutes ago, Cdodders said:

It seems that without statics No.2 taxis fine

 

The F-14 is far too large and heavy to use on the Melbourne, basically what happens is when it lands it pulls the wire much too far (I'm surprised it doesnt actually end up in the drink).

Also the F-14 will not fit into the standard parking spots sized for A-4.

[Cdodders]

1 hour ago, mmarques said:

The F-14 is far too large and heavy to use on the Melbourne, basically what happens is when it lands it pulls the wire much too far (I'm surprised it doesnt actually end up in the drink).

Also the F-14 will not fit into the standard parking spots sized for A-4.

I have so far fit 2 Tomcats and 1 Su-33 on ramp start, the 33 blinked out of existence after landing (full stop hook release wire) when both Cats were parked (after landing) on the bow. I have yet to try with 4 of either. Only the Hornet has failed to be able to land and the A-4 still has the launch bug. These are all AI as Players can probably land it fine. I will also try F-14A on the WIP version, to see if it launches at all.

 

 

Edit: I have now launched 4 F-14As off the WIP version. No issues. Pics to follow. Will report on their landing efforts

Edited April 7, 2021 by Cdodders

[Cdodders]

[mmarques]

7 minutes ago, Cdodders said:

I have so far fit 2 Tomcats and 1 Su-33 on ramp start, the 33 blinked out of existence after landing (full stop hook release wire) when both Cats were parked (after landing) on the bow. I have yet to try with 4 of either. Only the Hornet has failed to be able to land and the A-4 still has the launch bug. These are all AI as Players can probably land it fine. I will also try F-14A on the WIP version, to see if it launches at all

If you use a smaller airplane such as the S-3, it should work fine to both launch from parking and land.

You should only run into problems when you look at large aircraft like the F-14, Su-33, E-2D, etc as they dont fit into 1 parking space.

The A-4 launch problem is a problem on the A-4 mod itself and is being looked into by that team.

 

Also, try having the ship moving at at least 16Knts, sailing into a at least 5Knt wind and not having full fuel onboard, the F/A-18 should have no trouble taking off and landing. It's going around because it's too heavy to land.

[Cdodders]

Most of the landings were all over the place but they did land. No.1 went on the magical mystery route to the parking spot, No.2 was fine, No.3 went on magical mystery route into the back of No.3 and No.4 did a disappearing act

 

 

2 minutes ago, mmarques said:

If you use a smaller airplane such as the S-3, it should work fine to both launch from parking and land.

You should only run into problems when you look at large aircraft like the F-14, Su-33, E-2D, etc as they dont fit into 1 parking space.

The A-4 launch problem is a problem on the A-4 mod itself and is being looked into by that team.

 

Also, try having the ship moving at at least 16Knts, sailing into a at least 5Knt wind and not having full fuel onboard, the F/A-18 should have no trouble taking off and landing. It's going around because it's too heavy to land.

I had it doing max speed with no wind

AI Hornet still doesn't want to land

[mmarques]

22 hours ago, Cdodders said:

Most of the landings were all over the place but they did land. No.1 went on the magical mystery route to the parking spot, No.2 was fine, No.3 went on magical mystery route into the back of No.3 and No.4 did a disappearing act

 

 

I had it doing max speed with no wind

AI Hornet still doesn't want to land

Parameters as I had stated before

Wind 5Knts

Ship Speed 16Knts

F/A-18 35% fuel

 

 

It will work much better with smaller aircraft of course, the Melbourne is a very small ship. If you want to use an F-14, you really need a Supercarrier.

As a rule, if it won't fit the Elevator, it shouldn't be on deck.

Edited April 8, 2021 by mmarques

[Baco]

Nice trials Mmarques. Very useful.

And yeas the Tomcat didn´t even fit on Modified Midway Class carriers according to the USN.

 

[Helles Belle]

@Cdodders which Melbourne are you using the WIP version or the non-WIP version?

 

disregard, I just saw you wrote WIP, I’ll put my glasses on next time 
 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Helles Belle

[Cdodders]

31 minutes ago, Helles Belle said:

@Cdodders which Melbourne are you using the WIP version or the non-WIP version?

 

disregard, I just saw you wrote WIP, I’ll put my glasses on next time 
 

 

 

I have used both, the F-14A off the WIP was more of a test

[mmarques]

On 4/7/2021 at 4:30 PM, Cdodders said:

Most of the landings were all over the place but they did land. No.1 went on the magical mystery route to the parking spot, No.2 was fine, No.3 went on magical mystery route into the back of No.3 and No.4 did a disappearing act

 

Could you share the .mis file or tell us the steps to reproduce the taxi bug? I have been unable to reproduce it.

[Cdodders]

1 hour ago, mmarques said:

Could you share the .mis file or tell us the steps to reproduce the taxi bug? I have been unable to reproduce it.

I just had 4 AI Tomcats take-off, do a little flight and come back and land

 

Nothing special

 

[mmarques]

32 minutes ago, Cdodders said:

I just had 4 AI Tomcats take-off, do a little flight and come back and land

 

Nothing special

 

I see what you did now, you had them at 100% fuel and fully loaded, for a small airplane that's already a very dangerous thing, for a large and extremely heavy aircraft, that's almost unthinkable, even in a supercarrier, which is why they are pulling the wires so far, in real life they would just rip the wires off. Not sure there's much we can do about this as the Melbourne is already small, if you notice, they pull the wires until the front wheel is already over the deck in the situation you're attempting.

 

If you give them a light load and 35% fuel, they land and taxi just fine.

[Bungo]

Just as a side note for informational purposes, the only difference between the Fixed Wing (regular) version and the WIP verion is the catapult length and any animations that go along with that.  The rest of the model is identical,  To make the 2 models, I litterally export one, turn off one set of objects (the shuttle and it's animation), and turn on another (an identical shuttle and it's slightly different animaton), and export the second.

 

The same applies to the collison shell.  Export one, turn off the extended part of the deck collision shell off the bow in front of the catapult, and export the second.  There is one number that is different in the code (the catapult length), and the model names obviously, otherwise again, they are identical.

 

It is sometimes odd that DCS sometimes behaves differently with things that are the same between the models, but then, it wouldn't be DCS if the bugs weren't inconsistent.

 

Cheers

 

Braedon

 

 

Oh, and thanks again to @mmarques for helping me with the bugs in the AI / lua.  Both are not my forte, and he is repsonsible for many of the fixes in the 1.1 release and has been helping with anything on-going (at least until he doesn't wish to any more... ).

Edited April 11, 2021 by Bungo

[mmarques]

4 hours ago, Bungo said:

Just as a side note for informational purposes, the only difference between the Fixed Wing (regular) version and the WIP verion is the catapult length and any animations that go along with that.  The rest of the model is identical,  To make the 2 models, I litterally export one, turn off one set of objects (the shuttle and it's animation), and turn on another (an identical shuttle and it's slightly different animaton), and export the second.

 

The same applies to the collison shell.  Export one, turn off the extended part of the deck collision shell off the bow in front of the catapult, and export the second.  There is one number that is different in the code (the catapult length), and the model names obviously, otherwise again, they are identical.

 

It is sometimes odd that DCS sometimes behaves differently with things that are the same between the models, but then, it wouldn't be DCS if the bugs weren't inconsistent.

 

Cheers

 

Braedon

 

 

Oh, and thanks again to @mmarques for helping me with the bugs in the AI / lua.  Both are not my forte, and he is repsonsible for many of the fixes in the 1.1 release and has been helping with anything on-going (at least until he doesn't wish to any more... ).

 

I am happy to keep helping you in this, unfortunately about the fully loaded and fueled F-14 problems, I do not believe we can ever properly fix it due to the size of the landing area in the ship and how far the large and heavy aircraft will pull the wires.

[Cdodders]

Managed to get the Hornets to land, with 15% fuel, 2x Aim-9X and 2x Aim-120C

[Bungo]

There will of course be practical limitations...

 

Largely outside our control.

 

Braedon

Edited April 13, 2021 by Bungo

[mmarques]

On 3/27/2021 at 7:52 AM, Bungo said:

“2 weeks”

 

1 hour ago, Bungo said:

There wil of course be practical limitations...

 

Largely outside our control.

 

Braedon

That does remind me 

[Cdodders]

Will the locked weapon Luas affect this mod?

[Bungo]

They don't seem to.