Coupe questions and offers for JETS DLC

[SandMartin 14]

Guys, How turn off unrealistic WHITE TARGET BOX (TARGET DESIGNATOR) ? I want to use aircraft HUDs (Green) Designator and radar to find the enemy! Thanks!

 

 

And coupe questions for the developers.

If you released JETS, maybe you can expand your maps with making small islands (only for airfields) or aircraft carriers far away from center of the map, where main islands like Malden or Tahoa will be in the center. I think, a distance between these small islands (start point for jets aircrafts) must be about 100nm. This will make Jets gameplay more realistic. You will be able make realistic maximum speeds 2+ mach, and realistic supersonic cruise speeds, you will be able to create afterburner mode for engines, and offcouse realistic radar distance with search and track about 50 nm. Air to Air missles like AIM-120 will shoot from realistic range too (about 15-20 nm)

I think, it will be real cool thing for all fighter pilots in ArmA3.

 

[Von Quest 1161]

Agreed. They missed a golden opportunity (yet again) to take advantage of the fantastic water environment.

[Strike_NOR 898]

To try and answer a few things here.

 

Firstly, I believe the part about maps is a nice idea, but development on Jets has ended and now only bug-fixing and performance tweaks are going to happen. 

 

However, the modding community can make maps, and as such, we will see jets-oriented maps in the future :)

 

 

The second thing you bring up is the HUD symbology. I also asked that BI would remove the UI-style target box etc, but they decided to keep them. I think it may cause issues for a lot of addon makers that do not have an ingame (first person) HUD, and rely on the UI-style "HUD". Also, there are a great deal of players using third person view (for reasons I can't understand, but hey, whatever floats your boat). These need a way to use the vehicles weapon systems as if they were inside, and as such they keep the "UI-style HUD".

 

Of course you could propose that they remove the 1st person view UI, and keep it for third person, but that would lead to balancing issues in multiplayer. The player with 3rd person would have a greater Field of View which the HUD functions in, while the 1st person player would have a much narrower area, constricted to the physical HUD inside the jet cockpit. This is really just a different version of having 3rd person view as infantry. The 3rd person camera can see what's behind walls etc, while the first person can not.

[Callsign 128]

1 hour ago, Strike_NOR said:

 

The second thing you bring up is the HUD symbology. I also asked that BI would remove the UI-style target box etc, but they decided to keep them. I think it may cause issues for a lot of addon makers that do not have an ingame (first person) HUD, and rely on the UI-style "HUD". Also, there are a great deal of players using third person view (for reasons I can't understand, but hey, whatever floats your boat). These need a way to use the vehicles weapon systems as if they were inside, and as such they keep the "UI-style HUD".

 

Of course you could propose that they remove the 1st person view UI, and keep it for third person, but that would lead to balancing issues in multiplayer. The player with 3rd person would have a greater Field of View which the HUD functions in, while the 1st person player would have a much narrower area, constricted to the physical HUD inside the jet cockpit. This is really just a different version of having 3rd person view as infantry. The 3rd person camera can see what's behind walls etc, while the first person can not.

All of this could just be resolved if it was just optional - it's redundant given BIS aircraft now all have HUD target boxes anyway (you could just turn it on for addons that don't have it). Maybe in Tanks DLC they'll address it when looking at targeting with ground vehicles and AT launchers.

Also - larger maps would be great given all the radar and targeting improvements. Having a carrier so close to a warzone feels wierd.

[Ex3B 265]

Well, isn't there a way to turn off that stuff in the difficulty settings?

 

As to the suggestion "maybe you can expand your maps with making small islands (only for airfields) or aircraft carriers far away from center of the map, where main islands like Malden or Tahoa will be in the center."

They already gave us to tools to do this with the USS Freedom. I used the Aegis mod and the Atlas LHD plus mod to place LHDs way on the edge of the map (in space that shows as black in map view), one to the northwest, 1 to the southeast. The 2 LHDs start 45 km away from each other. At ~900 km/hour, they can travel 1 km in 4 seconds. F-35s launched from the NATO LHD can reach the CSAT LHD in 45*4/60 = 3 minutes at that speed. If each side closes at that rate, its actually 1.5 minutes to meet, not 4 as you want, and the F-35s from Aegis can actually go 1200 km/h, so that reduces the time to reach the other LHD to 2.25 minutes

 

I haven't seen just how far away I can put the LHDs though.

The problem is a lack of CSAT aircraft suited to naval operations. The USS Freedom static object can launch Shikras, but has no hope of landing on it. The Freedom can launch any fixed wing plane actually, but unless they can fly really slow or have a tailhook, they can't land back on it, which means if one wanted to land a CSAT plane after launching, you'd have to have captured an airfield (there are many on Tanoa), or you'd have to use the Xian.

 

For my 2x LHD map, I gave CSAT Xians with custom pylon loadouts through their init field so that they could mount radar guided missiles, and held a total of 4x radar guided and 2x IR guided AAMs. The problem is that their radar sucks with just a 5km range... they aren't really a match for the F-35s. To attempt balance, I gave CSAT more Xians than Nato had F-35s..... but... :/

This could be fixed with a naval version of the Shikra, and have each side use the Freedom from BI rather than a 3rd party LHD mod.

 

The other problem with this sort of map is the limited ground combat possibilities unless ground forces start on the islands at the center of the map already.

In my 2x LHD map, the NATO LHD has a blackfish and some marshals (and some Zamak trucks), in addition to hurons/ghosthawks and hunters/prowlers/various cargo crates/smaller repair/refuel vehicles. The LHD forces can thus land IFVs packing 40mm autocannons, MRAPs, and crates of heavy weapons for the infantry. 

but....

CSAT can't deploy ground vehicles heavier than an Infrit... which would put them at a severe disadvantage when facing Marshals. Sure the Marid is amphibious, but it travels what, 11km/h in the water?

If each LHD starts 15km from the nearest island on Tanoa, it would take them over an hour to reach land, while the NATO ground forces would have been engaging the CSAT ground forces with Marshal support long before CSAT could get its Marids to the fight... where they would lose against marshals anyway... so I "fixed" this by init edited of some of the Ifrits to remove their passenger space, and "up-gun" them to have a 30mm autocannon, so that they can at least have a chance against Marshals.

 

Also to "fix the imbalance" I plan on having independent forces hostile to both sides on the islands, with a number of empty AAF vehicles and equipment available for both sides to capture. NATO starting with Marshals and a blackfish wouldn't matter so much when CSAT can capture Gorgons, Moras, and Kumas from AAF positions (although NATO would also be able to do that). The Xian limitations wouldn't be so bad when there are empty Buzzards and griphons sitting empty at each airstrip on Tanoa, waiting to be captured.

 

[Ex3B 265]

Well, there is a practical limit to how far apart I can place LHDs. I got them about 50km apart before I encountered problems.

In this picture, I placed the LHDs 72.2 km apart, both equally far from the 0,0 coordinate of the map,

It should look like this:

 

see if you can spot the problem:

 

 

Interestingly, if I zoomed the view in, the deck of the LHD reappeared.

I encountered similar problems when I tried to move other objects far away from the map, they stopped displaying, but were still "there" and collidable.

When I moved this too far away, it stopped being visible as well:

 

So, rather than have each one start 50nm away from the center of the map, the best I can get for tanoa is to have them start 50km away from each other (25km from the center, I guess)... so just over 1/4th the distance you want... (50 km = 27 nm)