Brain

Only the time you locked in the package window matters. It will either be takeoff time (time steer 1) or time on target (first triangle on flightplan). All other times on steerpoint will be calculated using a default flight profile for each plane. I just set up a tanker east of Seosan 5 hours in the future and it popped up after just a few seconds. It should work with less (5 - 20 minutes) like every other package. I can only think of picking the wrong plane type by accident or the worst case of server lag in a while. As long as a tanker is patrolling along the track you should be able to refuel with it at about 6 miles. You may have to frag it before your own flight though. AWACS can point you to the closest tanker which might not be on station yet or RTB. Then you'll get 'negative' when requesting fuel. In this case switch the TCN one channel up or down (should be 59Y - 63Y) to see if there is another tanker. If it's reasonably close you want to find this guy instead.

According to some PDF I found "Bad timing" pops up if you create a flight in the past. Only thing that comes to mind is you set the take off time but forgot to hit the little lock symbol. Then HQ will try to create a flight with the time on target (default) which will put the TO in the past thanks to the long travel time. Everything else should give you "no AC available" but (say it with me): "BMS can act in strange ways" The server is sitting in 2D now in case you missed it (got rid of most AI warping issues etc.). Once a flight is considered completed it will be deleted automatically and the server should just jump to the next plane in the ATO. You still can't delete the occupied flight manually ("human player detected") but other than that it shouldn't influence creating/editing/deleting flights. I still got the VG D1 save at hand and I'll add a squadron of KC-10s available for human tasking. Think they look way sexier than the KC-135 and it will make finding the squadron easy. You'll have to get used to a different contact position but I think you'll appreciate a little diversity ... and actually having tankers available in a less remote location

What happens is that BMS eventually hits a so called memory leak. In it's final hours the server will behave strangely (eg. paused message) and then give you some kind of connection error. Also your BMS client should be restarted after each flight when flying on the server. If not you are likely to get the blue "time compression" message, indicating a bad connection. There also seems to be a greater influx of brand new players. Everybody is doing a good job at passing information but not all know about the quirks in BMS yet. The server isn't exactly a Ferrari so that's sadly to be expected. Some opportunistic restarts and player reports usually ensure a mostly constant up time. We might bring in some traffic today or check out the Israel theater

After acting odd yesterday (units disappearing) the server crashed today. Thanks for looking into it

It's timing out again after I took a break. A few pilots on but nothing out of the ordinary.

Giving me a "server reply time out" (formerly "Kevin pending message") indicating a hang. While you're at it, could you check IVC as well? Noticed my?IVC client growing from 6mb to 150mb RAM and beyond when running over extended periods. Don't know about others or the IVC server. Since it isn't needed, I'd suggest shutting down the IVC client on the VG server to avoid that possible memory leak.

...having a ship made out of guns helps

Only seal clubbing in St. Louis or Bogatyr as stress relieve. Sometimes IJN DDs for those oblivious BB drivers.?

I just checked. Server is up and campaign is running. Try going to campaign immediately, click online and connect from there. The session should become visible in a matter of seconds. If you're outside the US and/or have a limited internet connection maybe give it a minute. If that's not helping check the port forwarding again and firewall (if any)

Only issue I'm able to spot from running x64 time acceleration is the huge amount of planes active. I think it will be more than just challenging for our current player base and not good for server stability either. I'd have to clear the ATO on both sides first. Then set squadrons to being inactive/reinforcements, stare at the map for a while and repeat until I hit something reasonable. I can imagine this won't work as I expect so it's possible I have to start from scratch. Overall pretty straight forward but not the most exciting thing in the world and the current trouble with my ISP ($$$, right before my planned airshow vacation) isn't exactly motivating. Feel the need to get my mind off all that PC/Internet related crap...one downside of being a "digital native" I suppose :D The saves are there for everybody to pick up and some documented experiments would help the effort. I might be limited to 100kbit for the moment but it's just enough for some small files like that.

My ISP went full retard, so instead of wasting my time on the net I spent some of it on this save. It's nothing special, just some proof of concept crap I've thrown together. Included 2 additional saves to spare you waiting for things to happen at 64x. Main focus in this 1st iteration was seeing how things influence the ATO, so I didn't advance too far yet. It's based on the day1 save VG is currently using.https://www.dropbox.com/s/y20ndwyld84cdhq/VG%20prio%20POC.7z?dl=0 For the most part I adjusted BLUFOR prios willy-nilly in mission commander just to see how things turn out. Here a quick summary of changes: reduced MISSION prio for Strike, SEAD, OCA, Sweep to make BLUFOR less aggressive against high value targets. UNIT and OBJECTIVE prio had to be adjusted accordingly or the AI would still focus on these (Setting UNIT prio for aircraft was done in game, since MC doesn't appear to have an option for that, which seems odd). Maxed out MISSION prio for Escort & all kinds of CAP to defend friendly air assets and airspace. All Vipers had their speciality set to A2A, Strike Eagles set to General. Reactivated Hogs to help dealing with DPRK ground forces. All already scheduled SEAD/DEAD/OCA packages have been cancelled. OPFOR has been adjusted in a similar manner but are slightly more aggressive to make human DCA viable. I'll just let the save speak for itself for those interested (pay attention to the kinds of mission in the ATO!!!). It's very flawed but the whole point is showing how the fragging AI can be influenced to make players have more of an impact. Again: I think that's what it should be about, not cleaning up behind the AI. Another thing: "IF_BORDOM_HOURS" in the campaign's .tri file will end the campaign early based on a timer. Basically if no other event happens (mostly capturing objectives from what I understand) in the given time frame the campaign just ends.

I second that. Disappearing ground units on TGP is a rare case when switching a2g weapons. If you take your time when doing attack runs it shouldn't be a big deal. BLUFOR is probably stuck behind all those destroyed bridges. It is a low priority target for AI but since they took care of everything else it's what gets fragged. Clearing the area of OPFOR troops might allow capturing and repairing certain bridges. Question is if AI commander will give the order to an engineer or if they are all busy elsewhere. Found the campaign events, they are stored in the saveX.tri files. Have to dig further as this doesn't appear to be the place handling reinforcements. How did you spawn the Vinson on day 1 again? Now, back to my shovel, lol

Has been a reoccurring problem for months. A GBU-12 directly hitting a soft target MIGHT result in 1 kill but everything hit by the splash radius will show up as "damaged" in the debriefing. Doesn't seem to happen in offline flights. If the server has a 12mbit connection, shouldn't the BW be more around 11000 (1024 per player + 10% overhead)? I know it's just a maximum cap and not necessarily used fully, but if the server tries to send 25mbit worth of data and only 12mbit make it through ... you get the idea. Have noted popping in ground units again. When switching A2G weapons, looking at the TGP all targets vanish and reappear a few seconds later. Seems to be worse with multiple battalions in line of sight. Is BMS resetting the bubble in this event, as stupid as it might seem? Is the delayed popup a sign of network data not making it through when refreshing the bubble? Don't think we've made it past 8 players at once so we could give lowering the host BW a shot. Since the server is physical unable to go beyond 12mbit it shouln't hurt. If it does ... BMS is strange. Campaign is going well ... for BLUFOR. The ground war was pretty good, took several days to push DPRK back over the DMZ. That's what I expected from removing the Osan Hogs. Air war is a game of chance. There are some OPFOR flights going on each day but according to the force levels there aren't that many planes left. It's certainly not enough to fly CAP over the FLOT, allowing BLUFOR to conduct missions unopposed.

Another mission done: Gave some support to a human 2-ship out of Kunsan. They were engaging some MiG-17s which behaved perfectly fine. When both left (after 1 got shot down) I could see the MiGs jumping once, then everything went back to normal. That's the typical host handoff you'd also see from tankers. In case of a smoking MiG-17 it looks just like the "lag" we usually see from AI. On my way RTB I picked up the remaining plane from the other package, now AI controlled. Flying close formation was no problem at all, formation landing possible (which I screwed up), perfect taxi back to parking position. I'd say now client's properly "host AI in their bubble". Whatever interfered with it seems to be gone since the server is not in 3D anymore. Average server population seems to be increasing, so there should be some people able to comment on that.

Well, we won't run out of playable F-16s anytime soon :D After constructing some kind of "CPU Cooler of Dr. Franken" my (formerly) passive cooler now seems to do the job. LOL Encountered a pack of MiG-23s followed by Frogfoots. TGP showed no signs of the MiGs spinning. Frogfoots held formation nicely, popping flares, going evasive. ...there's more but you get the idea. It ran perfectly. The catch is I saw VG was looking at the map again ;) Semler, did you adjust the "player bump time"? We found this thing waaaay back and it fixed the server getting kicked periodically. Hidden in some obscure config file. Airspace was pretty crowded at the time, DPRK flying sweeps over Osan, multiple escorted Frogfoot packages. That doesn't sound like particularly low server loads, especially with 3 active pilots at that time. I don't know if anybody waved their magic wand or what. I remember something along the lines of hosting in 2d is not supported. Can anybody confirm that? No graphics, flight physics or plane avionics to worry about, no "bubble" around the host's plane...and all "bubbles" are guaranteed hosted on a client PC. Sounds like pretty good hosting conditions if you ask me..? Going up again in a bit, choosing some crowded airfield (if any). Let's see how AI handles something simple like taxi. EDIT: Wingmen seem to work. "Duck" took an AI wingman and he seemed to be fine. Previously they would crash on the airfield or just vanish. 6 Players flying at the same time, smooth AI movements, excellent.

I did run a test today - my friend and I took the current VG server save .cam file and he hosted it off his PC. He's in the UK and I am in the US. We didn't experience any AI lag or warping problems. Of course, that is with only two clients and is not really a good test of the loads the dedicated would experience. Warping happens even with one player on the server, even when the server PC has just been restarted. We got 18000+ ground units across several hundred battalions and hundreds of planes airborne at the same time. Just because they are not "in a player bubble" doesn't mean they are idle. The war goes on 24/7 and all of the battles still need to be calculated in some way. If the server has a CPU bottleneck then we are SOL. Since you had no issues on your testflight I would assume connection/distance is not the issue but processing power. BMS might not be able to fully utilize a quad core CPU but having the operating system in the background on a 2.5 ghz dual core doesn't help. So, yeah, we might be SOL for the moment in that regard. I downloaded the campaign and let it run for ~48 hours. Spoiler alert! https://www.dropbox.com/s/gmy5q8za4h0po2w/VG-Camp-29-4-48h.cam?dl=0 Well, it's not as bad as previously but DPRK is still being clubbed pretty hard. Most radars you'll see on the map are actually just search radars. It will be well sufficient for the weekend but after that it's going to be pretty uninteresting again (read: little to no opposition). And remember: that's without a single human flight, just me looking at the map (and going to the grocery store). Looking at the squadrons I noticed all stock Viper squadrons are still set to HQ. For months we had 3 of them disabled (Kunsan, Osan, Seosan) and still the campaign won itself. What exaclty is the thought behind it? How is it supposed to help when BLUFOR is already overpowered? ... It may take a few days, but no matter what changes we make AI DEAD/SEAD flights with HARMs will render those sites inoperative after some time period. It's just a matter of how long that takes. No, that's wrong! You can edit the AI priorities so they won't fly that many SEAD missions. I brought that up twice now, even with a guide on where to find these settings in Mission Commander! One well executed human flight against a very active DPRK airbase can change the entire "balance" that we may think we have setup. And that's what it should be all about: player action and it's influence on the campaign. Take out airfields for air superiority and limiting DPRK ability to strike back, take out engineer battalions to delay repair of said airfields, fly SEAD to open corridors for follow up missions, destroy war production to limit supplies .... with the default prio settings the AI will do all those things for you and it's just a matter of time until there are no valuable missions left to do. Just changing some planes around only changes how fast this happens. Everybody playing on the server has been able to observe this. I can't deny that a well executed OCA strike will tip the balance but if it was a hard fight it feels rewarding and it's only a temporary victory. You'd have to destroy the engineers tasked with repairing as well, which is suicidal with all the air defenses in the area. So, a 'permanent victory' would require multiple missions or a larger flight/package (haven't seen many people online, unless that changed during the last week). If you guys are meeting up in TS these days, drop me a line so we can go over some scenarios. I'm starting to feel like I'm unable to clearly express my concerns and explain my reasoning, so a direct dialogue might help answering all questions.

This was one hell of a post ... literally. So I scrapped most of it. I'll go into MC, export the map and litter it with annotations. It should be easier than explaining everything. Having trouble with my CPU overheating but was able to look at MC today: AI fragging priorities can be found under "Teams - Bonus/Priority" (has to be set for US and ROK individually). However, this means you can't exactly tweak individual squadrons as I intended (unless the speciality makes a difference, which can be set in the squadron details window). This is a mandatory change no matter how tedious or convoluted it seems. If this isn't changed, AI will keep fragging offensive missions and at best we're only delaying the inevitable: DPRK seal clubbing. Ideally the same should be done for DPRK, but I suggest seeing how well the AI adapts to the situation. It's possible the AI doesn't adjust at all and basically flies suicide missions all day long. If that's the case adjustments need to be made here as well. It's self explanatory and by default ROK/US is set to be very aggressive. With a ~10% priority for CAP/DCA it's no wonder DPRK has such an easy time making it into South Korea. Increasing tanker priority slightly seems like a good idea as well. Especially with heavy a2g loads and center line tanks they are really helpful but rarely there is one on station past day 2 or 3 For every human squadron I recommend clearing the schedule. This can be done easily under "Units", double-clicking the squad in question and hitting "Clear" on the far right side. Feedback on Strong DPRK would be needed rather sooner than later. If it is decided DPRK is a joke no matter how well it is balanced (which is pretty much my point of view) we've to start all over again.

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth" ... even if it breaks down 3 months later and only by luck didn't take any other horses down with it. Another mainboard gone but a replacement was found. ROK crushed DPRK air defenses around the FLOT in 18 hours. That's a new record and it was 100% predictable. Looking at the force levels it seems pretty much the same happened to any enemy airfield and aircraft were almost entirely wiped out very early. So, basically no opposition on day 2 except IR SAMs/MANPADS (AAA guns are a joke and you shouldn't go down into ZSU range ever). I can't imagine anything more one-sided. You might get 'lucky' sometimes but as a regular I tell you AWACS will mostly call out vectors to helicopters. Unless players really kick into high gear with CAS/Interdiction they don't have a huge direct impact on the ground war. You're not going to like it but secretly I disabled the Hogs at Osan some campaigns ago. They are the main reason DPRK isn't simply flooding into South Korea with everything they got. Currently they are sitting at around 2300 a2g kills which is estimated 35% of all vehicle kills so far. Previously they would go over 9000 (literally, stop the memes) but since so many aircraft are available and pretty much nothing else needs to be done it's distributed across all squadrons who fly CAS...which is pretty much the entire ROKAF/USAF. Anyways, this kind of balancing isn't going to work. The server is inadequate as it is and 100+ more active aircraft is not going to make it any better. So, here is a suggestion (starting from our old KTO day 1 save): Deactivate fragging for at least 3 Vipers (Seosan, Osan, Kunsan), remember to clear their schedule or they will fly missions fragged seconds after launching the campaign! Spawn the Vinson, including the Hawkeyes, 1 Super Hornet (AI), 1 Hornet (player controlled*) Spawn the ???th Viper squadron at Kangnung Leave all other reinforcements untouched (should be the remaining Hornets + a few Vipers + maybe supports) Add Harriers at your own discretion (**) Except the Harriers all these squadrons would arrive eventually during the campaign so it shouldn't overload the server as much IF the campaign makes it past day 7, when all reinforcements have arrived. Now for the 'tricky' part: Every squadron has a list of priorities attached. DCA, OCA, SEAD...you name it. This way you can set up squadrons to only fly CAP /Escort to secure friendly airspace/high value targets. Set up 2 Vipers (thinking of Kangnung and either Seosan or Kunsan) + the Super Hornets (biased towards CAP/Intercept) to do just that. Friendly SEAD and OCA Strikes should be less frequent but the increased CAP should make up for that and keep bombers away. I just got around installing BMS just to see how things are going. Once everything is set up I can have a look at MC to see how to do certain things if needed. I know the options are somewhere but that isn't very helpful I suppose :D * The Super Hornet has too many hardpoints to fit on the SMS page and it is completely overpowered against DPRK forces unless you find a package consisting mainly of Flankers, which will only happen after China and Russia enter the war around day 7. That's why I propose the F/A-18C as player controlled. ** The Harrier lacks a proper RWR, the hover physics feel very arcady and the payload is a joke. There also seems to be a bug with the rudder kicking right. Compensating manually and then recentering the joystick (default Alt+C, J) is a workaround. Can still be fun in small doses but an F-16 is just far more effective in every way. Also, do we have proper carriers for those (Tarawa Class or similar)? If it doesn't conflict with the Vinson that would be a nice touch. OOOOOOR: we could try porting a Strong DPRK day 1 save and see how it goes from there. I doubt there is a difference in the AC data so it should be compatible. However, that's easily tested locally by copying a save to KTO and see if anything breaks. It would introduce some more threads to spice things up a bit as currently AMRAAMs and HARMs pretty much outrange everything DPRK can muster when you're at 30.000 feet. IIRC the Vinson is also present from day 1 so your Hornets are already accounted for. Since the opposition is stronger we might be able to get away with less units in general and thus reducing the server load. We haven't got very far with the balancing attempts so far so it wouldn't be a huge loss either.

I really appreciate the effort of trying to balance things out using mission commander. As said previously it's a huge project. What I don't undestand is how adding 4 Hornet squadrons without compensation for DPRK is supposed to help balance. They break the balance even on day "X" when DPRK get reinforced as well. The campaign has pretty much always been one-sided and this is not going to help it. I shared these concerns with Sinu already. Part of the intention is to introduce some of the new planes (for now Harrier & Hornet) from the start. The Hornet is a pretty cool plane to fly in BMS, it just got an updated flight model in 33.1 and the Harrier is just something different and isn't part of the stock KTO. That's a really cool idea; I approve! It will certainly break the balance but if Sinu is as dedicated as he seems that will be fixed at some point. I expect a few more restarts in the future to implement balancing changes but on the plus side it means we're more likely to get shot at. As I said earlier I really missed launch warnings, However, apparently Semler proposed turning down the AI difficulty as well. He had some projects going on, preventing him to get into BMS again and therefor didn't participate in any of the campaigns lately. There wasn't any public discussion about the difficulty either so I assume he has no idea how the campaign actually feels. To sum things up for you: unless you're forced bellow 12.000 feet into MANPAD/SA-13 territory, a split-s is all you need to evade 90% of the missiles fired at you, which are almost exclusively SA-2s and SA-5s. Usually you won't encounter these past day 3 thanks to the AI doing all the work. Even in laggy dogfights the AI isn't particularly smart. Just by waiting for a 4-8 o'clock shot I got an estimated 80% hit rating. TLDR: toning down the AI difficulty is not necessary at all. I get the idea of a server "accessible to everyone" but if BASIC flight maneuvers are too much to ask for we are approaching PR coop levels here: everybody with limited kits sitting on rooftops and camping the AI spawn points. Further, if we have a vote 2 weeks into the campaign when there is basically nothing more to do than waiting for BLUFOR to finally reach Pyongyang, why not have one regarding the difficulty? I really like the idea but not how it has been handled. I don't like the first iteration of changes either (as they will totally ruin balance) but if Sinu want's to collect data for further improvements that's fine by me. EDIT to clarify: Harries, Hornets and additional Vipers have been added WITHOUT AI fragging. They are entirely new squadrons intended as additional player squadrons.

Had a flight with Kaos and IVC would not transmit anything (neither 2d or 3d). We both had a solo flight before so IVC was still running after the BMS restart. Restarting the IVC client as well seemed to have solved it. The campaign is going well for BLUFOR. Not even 24 hours into the war there are no SAMs left around the FLOT. In comparison I was still doing SEAD and OCA around day 4 or 5 last time. I think the balance last time worked out reasonably well. Usually by day 4 the AI already destroyed everything of value, leaving players with a choice between CAS or deep strikes. Both are not very engaging if you can spend 90% of your flight time in autopilot. Sure, we lost Osan at least twice but that's because the AI didn't have the means to keep AFBs out of commission and their bombers on the ground. That's where the players come into play. A 2-ship package armed with HARMs and JDAMs can take out almost any AFB no problem. Feeling bold or just no wingman available? Try a NOE attack with Durandals or do a mixed loadout ... BLUFOR really relied on player actions and that's what I think the dynamic campaign should be about. Not letting the AI doing all the work and then basically flying training missions until the next reset. There don't appear to be many regulars online so a balance like this might not be possible at the moment. You're certainly going to do some changes in the next few days and if so consider taking some F-15s out of the equation. It may reduce the amount of Strike missions flown. Another way of balancing would be editing the day 1 save in mission commander and tweaking the AI priorities to make both sides more defensive. Given how many variables there are it would potentially be a rather extensive project. AI (obviously) is still laggy as hell. They seem to jump about every .5 seconds. Doing several speed tests I ended up with a ping about 150ms. Not great, but usually sufficient for playing any game. I haven't talked to any US players lately but with .33 they were having the same issue. It makes me wonder if connection is really the issue here. We know BMS has some memory leaks and the server will eventually reach critical CPU loads. If somebody from the US with a good connection and PC could host a campaign just for testing that would be great. If it works fine a CPU benchmark and speedtest running in the background would influence BW and CPU load, hopefully helping narrowing down the problem.

AFAIK squadrons on the same airbase share supplies. MAVs and GBU-12 usually run out first, especially when the A10s at Osan are getting busy. A destroyed runway (as well as certain infrastructures) will delay resupplies. Loadouts are currently bugged as hell. Rejoining a flight will refuel and rearm the plane in question. Other players also appear as fully loaded even though they are not. Seems to be a bug in BMS as I've seen it happen in a vid a couple of days ago. One step forward, 2 steps back

TGP, MAV, FLIR... have less of a performance impact after the update. Reverted back to double-res-MFDs (default) and still got more FPS than before, even with MAV/TGP/FLIR open at once. Your mileage may vary but it seems worth spending 30mins re-tweaking some settings. Running on an HD5770, Catalyst 15.7.1 which is like reeeally low-tech these days. AI is still having its issues. Taxi with AI is impossible, in cruise flight they will randomly change speed, random warps .. you know the deal. Air refueling is perfectly fine. Still think it's better after a restart but as we established months ago, everything in BMS can be just imagination ... lol. If anybody could capture that warping on tape and post it on YT (or w/e) that would be wonderful. Could aid in finding an answer. Campaign so far looked pretty good. DPRK didn't loose all air defenses on Day 1 and are putting up a good fight. Osan and Seosan did get hit, but that's why we've got to do some OCA Strikes ourselves. It may seem like DPRK is gaining the upper hand but I expect some more flights to happen on the weekend to balance things out and not everyone might have had time to update BMS yet. One annoyance is the change for the radar range buttons. They used to work with both the FCR and the TGP zoom. The manual states the corresponding axis in the real Viper do exactly that, so hopefully this is just a temporary thing.

Went flying about an hour after the server came up. AI taxing is still a sight to behold. MiG 23s were behaving normal in a merge and SA-2s launch like hell. Had 1 crash but that problem was on my end. Just now had a nice flight, with a nice guy and an exotic callsign. OCA Strike, some BVR with scramblers, no visible issues and the kills even showed up in the debrief ;) Also feels like I got a huge FPS boost, formation flying was never that fun. Don't know if it's the update or the 64bit version.