Hind tempting, obviously, but what exactly are we going to do with it?

[Lurker]

21 minutes ago, BeastyBaiter said:

 

and for me the higher priority item is updating the game engine to use our modern 12-16 thread CPU's instead of being optimized for a Pentium 4.

 

I agree, but that's a whole other discussion unrelated to the Hind. As for 8 tank kills vs 12, again I agree it's no big deal I'm pretty sure a dedicated Hind crew will make short work of armored vehicles (and hopefully Petrovich will be of some use in singleplayer or for those who just like to play alone).

[Grievo]

I think the issue Beasty is that helicopters spend most of their time supporting and engaging infantry targets. Apache's and Havocs are the exception rather than the rule. Especially in the Hind. That thing is just the cavalry on a faster, sexier horse! That is why the Infantry functionality and increase in model selection is important to me. prone, entrenched, crouching, some form of suppression modelling, seeking to put objects between you and them etc.... 

 

I think an important thing with Armour detecting aircraft too is the variables such as engine on/off, buttoned down or not, dismounts nearby etc.. If you're in an armoured vehicle buttoned down with the engine running you're not hearing a helicopter until it's pretty much over you, and spotting it would be a miracle also.

 

I think instead of trying to get ED to model accurately the view restrictions and so on, we just need it simulated. So if an armoured vehicle is moving or engaged, it can be assumed to be buttoned down, and detection ranges for aircraft drop dramatically. If it's in an OP position with the engine off and the hatches open, detection of aircraft improves. If one unit detects an aircraft or unit, there's a one second delay to get that from the commander to the gunner before it reacts, and a five second delay for the target indication to reach the rest of the troop. You get the idea. We don't need to know the angles of the viewing apertures for each vehicle, just that it's hard to see. So the probability suggestion seems to me the most likely to appear in the short term. And maybe with a few more ME tools from ED, such as readiness levels for units (relaxed, alert, combat), different sighting ranges based on class of vehicle under different driving conditions (stationary, driving on road, driving cross country) etc we could come a long way. The second blast radius for infantry with frag weapons also seems a good idea. I'm not so sure about soft skinned vehicles. Frag would cause damage to vehicles you wouldn't necessarily be able to discern from an aircraft. 

 

Anyway. My two cents. Everyone else is wrong of course!

[Blackeye]

1 hour ago, BeastyBaiter said:

The only restriction is it will be limited to 8 tank kills per arming instead of 12. Is that really such a big deal?

 

I'm more concerned with targeting and range.

 

Older variants of the 9K114 max out at 5km, there is no laser range finder and the zoom on the Raduga is 3x/10x compared to the 7x/23x of the Shkval.

 

So you probably have to get within 4km of the threat which depending on the target may make things a lot more dangerous/suicidal.

[Fri13]

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

All of those things that you list Fri13 would require a massive rewrite of the AI code in DCS World.

 

Yes, as I said that ED needs eventually to scrap everything and remake the AI. It will affect every mission and campaigng ever made. But they can't proceed by pretending that every ground unit belongs to specific group that is handled like a fighter squadron. 

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

While your enthusiasm is commendable, this is something that would take years to code properly.

 

And ED has been on it for years already, at least from 2014 or so IIRC.

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

We need a quick, temporary fix.

 

You can't have such quick fix because it doesn't fix anything that is wrong with ground units and their relationship to air units.

No matter how much it is dreamed, they can't just add couple things and have better experience than now.

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

Something that can be done with the existing codebase.

 

That is the problem, it can't really be done and stay compatible.

As long you have units in groups that has instant knowledge of anything that one unit knows, it doesn't work.

As long there is no communications simulated between each individual unit (do they have radios or not) it doesn't work.

As long there is no proper command structure and units cooperation, it doesn't work.

If you can't have dynamic AI that reacts and behave based intelligence, reports, commands and their first hand information, there is no better operation.

As long ground units are locked to waypoints that are like one would plan a flight plan, you can't get proper ground war. You need to scrap the waypoint mentality and move to command structure with goals and time tables etc. 

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

Not sure why you have an issue with that, it's not like one of those things precludes work from being done on the other.

 

But it is, exactly that! You can not hold on the old work that you need to scrap to get the required improvements and changes.

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

I'm also not sure if you consider the the amount of processing power that such a detailed simulation would require, wherever possible developers need to use simplifications in these cases.

 

DCS World is currently utilizing maybe 10% of the current hardware resources, maybe at max 20%. That is not about CPU calculation power or speed, amount of RAM or 3D graphics rendering speed. It is about the DCS World engine being limited to old real-time design where one unit is constantly checked once a second and simulated regardless that there is no one ever seeing what is happening. When every bullet, missile, rocket and bomb etc is handled with real-time idea, you have severe performance issues when anything of those happens. When a future known action is known, it is not pre-calculated when there would be time but it is waited to actually happen and then run it in real-time. When something happens and it is obscured and doesn't need to be done on that specific millisecond, it is still set to be simulated in real-time. 

So when one does launch 4x32 rocket pods at once 50 km from player location, the game slows down on the moment because everything needs to calculate as in real-time.

If you drop a bomb on a vehicle, it gets obscured by the smoke for next 3-5 seconds. There is no required reason to calculate all the damage in the next cycles because it happened so, there is good time to delay it by 150-800 ms and no one would know the difference, but you would have plenty of resources to be utilized in longer period than in real-time.   

 

 

Example, there we have four ground groups and one flying group. One of the ground groups is moving. 

It doesn't make any sense to be calculating real-time every single unit position, animation, perform checks that does the unit see a enemy unit inside its detection ring.

Yet it is done, continually. 

What is required is to cheat. A master AI that is all knowing, that has only one purpose and only one. To check that what AI's are activated and what are not. What simulations are required to be run and what is not.  "If a tree falls in a forest...." is the philosophical question that needs to be adapted, if there is no one seeing or hearing it, then don't waste time to simulate how turret turns, is there a enemy to be engaged etc. The "Cheater AI" will make sure that irrelevant simulation is not processed. When a simulation is required, then the "cheater AI" will allow it to happen, that is when more resources are used to start calculate things. 

 

Another core problems in DCS is that it is based to perfect information. Every unit location, position, attitude, status etc is known all the time. That is wasted resources. It is anyways unrealistic as in reality you can not know perfectly where every soldier, every vehicle or even where your companies are located. 

We need DCS World to be based to "Fog of War" design. Information is not accurate, it is not reliable and not immediately available.

It is required that DCS World turns to command structure form where you know that there is a company "west of the X" and their general status (80% of the forces intact etc). You can only issue command for them to position for defensive position at given area and reach the required status at given time, nothing else. You would know that company X has started their march at 08:00 from specific area and they are expected to be ready in defensive positions in commanded area at 09:30. You shouldn't know the units exact position without requesting report and get a generic map coordinates and status. You would only know "Company X is on the move, now south and 15 km of the town Y". 

It is waste of time to run real-time simulation and animations for every unit in the company on the move when there is no one seeing it. When there is no one seeing, it is just like on mission editor now that you know that at 08:44:14 the units would be in specific position and order if someone happens to jump there with camera. 

 

 

7 hours ago, Lurker said:

If the resulting case of an AI rework is that DCS World would run like a slideshow then this is simply not a feasible solution. 

 

AI runs now already as a slideshow.... 

 

 

That is a hypothetical and unrealistic scenario, and running that will put every PC on their knees because everything is ran in realtime, every animation is rendered and every unit is checking constantly what other units are inside its engagement range and LOS. 

It doesn't matter if you are 50 km elsewhere flying, that is calculated and your CPU screams because there are thousands of bullets in the air at any given moment and hundreds of LOS checks performed all over the places. 

 

DCS was never designed to handle such scenarios because it is just for "There is a SAM on that town, drop a bomb there in Su-27 after shooting down those two F-15's intercepting you". It was never designed for ground war, but just to offer ground units as a targets for practice and procedure. All run in realtime. 

There are far better methods how one can have thousands of units in the camera view and have excellent performance even with old 2-4 core computers.

 

Nothing like that can be done with the DCS World current engine and AI. It needs to be redone. No small quick fixes is going to improve the gameplay and add the required changed for the experience to be a helicopter pilot in a combat scenarios, unless you want to do just the old Flanker level scenarios "There is a BTR, destroy it and return to base". 

The AI and the unit behavior structure is not flexible enough at all for required tasks, like get a AI unit to withdraw inside a forest for cover of reported attack helicopters heading to their direction. Unmount automatically the infantry from vehicles to prepare them for incoming air assault etc. Everything without any scripting, based to real world tactics and common sense that AI would need to be given. 

 

 

[lmp]

 

1 hour ago, Fri13 said:

Everything without any scripting, based to real world tactics and common sense that AI would need to be given. 

 

The problem with an AI that is too autonomous in the tactics department and thinks on a too high level is that you sacrifice a lot of flexibility and control down low. It's nice to have to simulated command structure, but that command structure won't work for all military forces across all the periods we have in DCS. It's nice to have a "If a tree falls in a forest...." simulation outside of the player bubble, but what if you want that BTR to sit on that particular street corner for the player to destroy. It's nice to be able to plop a US battalion and a Soviet regiment on the map and have them duke it out, but sometimes you want your ground units to perform some very specific, repeatable actions to give the player a curated experience. In the end this is what DCS focuses on - the pilot's experience. Never mind the fact that whatever ED could come up with would be janky and flawed simply because of how complex this system would have to be.

 

I think any kind of "command AI" along with "outside the bubble" simulation, unit spawning and despawning should be a new layer on top of the simple waypoints and routines that can be disabled. And the waypoints and routines should be expanded and streamlined to support both the high level command AI and better custom mission design. Dynamic and autonomous isn't always better than linear and curated - especially in a training scenario.

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, Grievo said:

 

 

I think instead of trying to get ED to model accurately the view restrictions and so on, we just need it simulated. So if an armoured vehicle is moving or engaged, it can be assumed to be buttoned down, and detection ranges for aircraft drop dramatically. If it's in an OP position with the engine off and the hatches open, detection of aircraft improves. If one unit detects an aircraft or unit, there's a one second delay to get that from the commander to the gunner before it reacts, and a five second delay for the target indication to reach the rest of the troop. You get the idea. We don't need to know the angles of the viewing apertures for each vehicle, just that it's hard to see. So the probability suggestion seems to me the most likely to appear in the short term. And maybe with a few more ME tools from ED, such as readiness levels for units (relaxed, alert, combat), different sighting ranges based on class of vehicle under different driving conditions (stationary, driving on road, driving cross country) etc we could come a long way. The second blast radius for infantry with frag weapons also seems a good idea. I'm not so sure about soft skinned vehicles. Frag would cause damage to vehicles you wouldn't necessarily be able to discern from an aircraft. 

 

 

 

I like the idea, I think it can save a lot of ED resources and still give us a far more realistic envinroment.

[Rogue Trooper]

There is nothing "quick fix" in DCS.

We are aiming at a PVP/PVE online dynamic campaign.... and that is it.

Live Coms will be open to all that want to partake and it will be full frequency.

The massive global warfare will be cut down into sectors of operation to make them easier to handle for the servers, You will be assigned your designated area of operation, but cross sector travel will be possible. If a utility nut wants to move his MI-8 full of ammo from the rear section of a low intensity battlefield and move across 3 low intensity sectors of the rear in order to finally push into the back end of the most contested sector in the DCS online world... then good on him!

 

The Hind will have plenty of room to manoeuvre in such a world.... everyone busy, no one looking hard...... this is where the attack chopper slips in.

 

I just do not understand the arguement about the Hind, if we get left right door gunners.... then we got the best Hind... I am converted!

 

Now we just need the world to operate it in.

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by Rogue Trooper

[Stratos]

20 minutes ago, Rogue Trooper said:

There is nothing "quick fix" in DCS.

We are aiming at a PVP/PVE online dynamic campaign.... and that is it.

Live Coms will be open to all that want to partake and it will be full frequency.

The massive global warfare will be cut down into sectors of operation to make them easier to handle for the servers, You will be assigned your designated area of operation, but cross sector travel will be possible. If a utility nut wants to move his MI-8 full of ammo from the rear section of a low intensity battlefield and move across 3 low intensity sectors of the rear in order to finally push into the back end of the most contested sector in the DCS online world... then good on him!

 

The Hind will have plenty of room to manoeuvre in such a world.... everyone busy, no one looking hard...... this is where the attack chopper slips in.

 

I just do not understand the arguement about the Hind, if we get left right door gunners.... then we got the best Hind... I am converted!

 

Now we just need the world to operate it in.

 

 

Then Iron Man sitting in a BTR turret kills you at 2km away. rofl

[Rogue Trooper]

13 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Then Iron Man sitting in a BTR turret kills you at 2km away. rofl

every time?

Or this time

 

Perhaps 30 mike mike took care of the man of iron at 3 klicks?

Perhaps it is question of how and how often you rotate your skull to observe what is in the world around.

Perhaps this statement does not apply to me!

Perhaps.

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by Rogue Trooper

[Stratos]

30 minutes ago, Rogue Trooper said:

every time?

Or this time

 

Perhaps 30 mike mike took care of the man of iron at 3 klicks?

Perhaps it is question of how and how often you rotate your skull to observe what is in the world around.

Perhaps this statement does not apply to me!

Perhaps.

 

 

You know what I wanted to say. Altough the dinamic campaign will be really nice, I think we need some steps toward a more realistic enviroment. The small steps I'm proposing (together with others like Grievo and others) should be really easy to add and will dramatically change the sim.

[Rogue Trooper]

27 minutes ago, Stratos said:

You know what I wanted to say. Altough the dinamic campaign will be really nice, I think we need some steps toward a more realistic enviroment. The small steps I'm proposing (together with others like Grievo and others) should be really easy to add and will dramatically change the sim.

for sure, slow is the pace in which we move.

 

It would be nice to drop into a dynamic live PVP/PVE online campaign though.

I would rather pop a 30 MM Cap into some ones skull and worry about how bad it performs from there.

Like starting from a new truth.

 

Something not pre set, something random, chaotic, something where the attack chopper lives.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Rogue Trooper

[Stratos]

I've seen BigNewy pretty active around the forums last weeks, hopefully he will notice this post and tell us If such behaviour change is to be expected.

[Rogue Trooper]

It is a big change.

 

Ed will have to set up servers and they will probably need to be pay to use... which would work for me.