How many of us MP BMS guys (and gals?) are there anyways?
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I have to chorus red-shift, being new here and a few other flight communities, on the pinnacle of early retirement (maybe) and a lifetime love. The fact is, if we taught every american kid interested how to fly…well…You’ll soon see this becoming more POSSIBLE not PROBABLE as things like HMDs, flying automobiles, and the desire to do it is borne from the ability to. cars are used by almost every family, yet not every family can afford to pedigree an f1 racer. Or something less exotic but just as socially revealing, hockey- who plays hockey ? upper middle class. where do they go to school? private. Look at the cavalry legacy to the pilot. I’m from an aviation family, yet only two of us actively fly, and no one has enlisted since WWII.
The American warrior culture is a dirty word to the liberal mass, the american engineer, as much as the pilot, liberated Europe and has ensured aerial hegemony of both our technology and our country…just, don’t go flying over Moscow in a winter storm. As public opine changes, the need to keep the most advanced and strongest air force will no longer be seen as a defeat to human nature. It is my earnest hope that someday very soon, the world at large once again recognizes the self evident truth that the best and brightest not only do build advanced and exotic weaponry, but they have to, for they will soon be under attack.
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I actually think a blending of the “casual” and the “professional” is the most preferred option. I have been toying with this idea (and I am sure it has been tried and failed before but that’s the thing about programming, life, business, and coding, just because something has been tried and failed doesn’t mean that in a different time, with a few different minds, with a few tweaks, that it won’t be a raging success the next time around – compare MySpace to Facebook – compare Falcon AT to Falcon 4.0, compare Windows 7 to Windows 10, actually forget that last comparison :D).
Anyway, the concept is inter-squadron campaign matchmaking. Where @theOden is flying A-10 AI with 3 of his buds and @Redshift20 is flying F-16s with 8 of his buds. Now, wouldn’t it be peaches for Redshift to fly SEAD and TARCAP for the A10s with a divert option if nothing is going on at the AI for them to do?
Between the A10s and the F16s all you need is a modicum of brevity between them. Inside the flight it can be strict brevity or no brevity. The AI mission might fail if A10s have no SA aggravated by that flight not practicing brevity. But that just adds to the drama, it’s a good movie and Redshift’s exposure to bad brevity practices is limited and the reverse is also true. theOden’s exposure to high professional standards is also limited. They both get to fly more in MP, they both get to mostly fly to their own tastes. And, I think, it makes the whole community start coming together and as it comes together (loosely) this should increase interest.
Now, there are a couple things that have to happen. A base protocol has to be agreed setting up missions, connecting, and cooperating. This doesn’t need to be known to all, just to flight leaders. Your buds just follow along as you, the flight leader, instructs them. The protocol is either dreamed up by an entrepreneurial spirit here and invites the squadrons, or the squadrons each have a representative when working at the protocols.
I don’t think the 24/7 campaign would work very well for this, nor even a dedicated server, but there is another way to share campaigns. Most squadrons have the ability to host a session, so what you need in this cross-squadron world is someone to be a campaign moderator (at least one for each theater). Say Redshift takes on the current ITO campaign and theOden takes on the current KTO campaign. You need a slick way for squadrons and individuals to schedule time in the campaign and invite others (i.e. I could check the campaign out from 2000 zulu to 2300 zulu and host up to 8 players). You also need a slick way to share the campaign files (like checking a library book out and returning it).
So, general protocols for inter-squadron cooperation. More specific protocols set by the campaign moderator. A little more specific detail and guidance can be added by the mission leader. Then finally, you are pretty much king within your flight. (Although you may face court martial after you get back to base ). Everyone doesn’t have to know everything, just the mission leader and the flight leaders need to be on top of the protocols. Anyway, that’s the shell of the idea that I’ve been tinkering with the last couple of months.
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Interesting idea Vandal,
as long as I can have my friday-beer and laugh as I taxi off the runway back home I would fly there.
But I do think the campaign would be suitable.
Just untick “HQ” on a Viper and a Warthog squadron and “no planes available” should be of no concern.
Give flight leaders an hour maximum before take off to analyze the situation and frag a package with all needed flights and off we all go (they need to adopt to a changing world, don’t they! haha)Getting new e-pilots to start see and connect the events in the campaign along with the effects of completed missions should get them interested.
DBond taught me alot that I never seen despite flying for years.
I guess I really never understood the campaign fully but was just impressed with flying and getting all the surprises one might get slammed in the face with during mission.
Nowadays I spend time looking through the OOB and checking if any AWACS are up when I plan to fly, not before all missions but occasionally.
(but DBond is reporting campaign status with his impressive writing style often enough making it less important , even when new squadrons of F-16’s arrive)
We alter PAK’s on daily basis along with mission type sliders to twist the coming events as we think is needed. -
Yeah personally I am 100% into campaign flying. I am 100% into the story advancing even if I am not flying. But I don’t need the story to advance if no one is flying for a couple of days. So, you can handle that by saving the campaign and shutting it off until someone needs it.
You can either have a dedicated server, or share the campaign file, or both. I am thinking though, as a minimum at least 1 campaign per theater at the cross-squadron site. So, if you are moderating the current KTO campaign, you can set that up on your dedicated server and have the rules for checking it out (including being a “qualified” session leader – knowing the rules on how your server is run). Redshift, being in charge of the current ITO theater, may adopt the “library” model that I outlined and he might have no additional qualifiers before checking it out. Next ITO campaign would go to someone else to moderate and the protocols for that could change a bit. You just don’t want to break the way people connect and schedule, but you could have a variety of scenarios/playstyles all getting some attention. But yeah, you really want to standardize how sessions are organized and then it’s just a matter of brushing up on the current campaign’s house rules and off you go!
The thing is with a bunch of campaigns being ran and everyone in the community knowing they can check out the schedules and participate in these cross-squadron campaigns quickly and easily – well there’s bound to be 2 or 3 going on that is really going to catch your interest and if you are a nut like me, hell play them all and enjoy the variety!
But yeah, flight leaders need to take some time to frag missions appropriate to the number of sign ups, and I would personally partake more often in campaigns that set aside player controlled squadrons as that makes life so much easier!
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That is what Falcon Online was. You’d have guys who knew their shit front to back and guys who didn’t. It was a lot of fun as you never knew who you were going to get on the other side of the FLOT. Sometimes you’d be in a BVR match with Mower, other times it was MortilSil or PrancingKiller. That was a lot of fun.
Right now the netcode doesn’t support large matches, but eventually that will be fixed, maybe in the next 3-4 weeks, who knows except the devs, but hopefully one day we will be able to have large 24/7 matches like used to!
Most people were able to catch onto the basic brevity from having AWACS controllers and the brevity codes being freely available online, so it wasn’t brutal to follow except that people called the individual bullseye for everything, rather than binding groups as you’re supposed to which reduces radio chatter a great deal, but I could live with it. We’ll have to see going forward. Hope for the best as far as large online campaigns, ect.
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That is what Falcon Online was. You’d have guys who knew their shit front to back and guys who didn’t. It was a lot of fun as you never knew who you were going to get on the other side of the FLOT. Sometimes you’d be in a BVR match with Mower, other times it was MortilSil or PrancingKiller. That was a lot of fun.
Right now the netcode doesn’t support large matches, but eventually that will be fixed, maybe in the next 3-4 weeks, who knows except the devs, but hopefully one day we will be able to have large 24/7 matches like used to!
Most people were able to catch onto the basic brevity from having AWACS controllers and the brevity codes being freely available online, so it wasn’t brutal to follow except that people called the individual bullseye for everything, rather than binding groups as you’re supposed to which reduces radio chatter a great deal, but I could live with it. We’ll have to see going forward. Hope for the best as far as large online campaigns, ect.
That’s what I understood from my visits to FO, but it looks like to me anyway that they crashed up against having 1 server and wanting to have hordes of flyers up at one time. I am saying have at least some of the campaigns hosted by the players. Decentralize it. Make the transfer and handoff of the campaign to the next guy as slick and as automated as you can (FTP script with Filezilla comes to mind) and go off and do your mission. If you know you can only host 6 players reliably, then only advertise six slots for your mission. Maybe that was going on over there, but it didn’t seem to be the focus.
Of course, I hope that the code gets fixed for flying hordes, but that’s not a reason to not do what I am talking about, because when it does get fixed you can add the massive furball server to the services offered by the inter-squadron mix.
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the american engineer, as much as the pilot, liberated Europe…
Not to mention the thirteen million military and fourteen million civilian Russian casualties during WWII….they payed the highest price for our freedom.
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The problem with a setup like that Vandal is the way the MP works. It requires a good amount of STEADY bandwidth to have more than 1-2 players in your match. Residential ISPs don’t guarantee your bandwidth, they only give you a maximum down and up–but that’s a max. It very well might only perform at 10% of what you pay for (You can generally disregard speedtest results, most ISPs prioritize that traffic so you always get good results, regardless of your actual ‘normal’ throughput), particularly on the UPLOAD side (Which is the more important for this scenario), and they don’t promise uninterupted service either. Experience and a good deal of testing shows the Falcon MP code does not handle interruptions of any kind very gracefully, and the more players you have the more likely you are to see interruptions on any server–but this is true 10x over on a residential server.
The concept is sound, although the execution would probably be limited because you still need some sort of centralized coordinator or “master” of the theaters. Someone to host it all, settle disputes, coordinate between groups, make sure the files are up to date, etc… Even if you put all the technical work on the theater “moderator”, you still need somewhere (Website/Forums) to act as a file hub, and coordination location.
As Redshift mentions, for the longest time, this is exactly what FO was. A 24/7 coop server for anyone, of any skill level or interest, to join in. I can’t count the number of times I took new guys on their 1st or 2nd ever MP flight up on the COOP to help them out a little, or get a little practice with formation flying, tankers, or just to hear how it “Should” sound when a flight lead knows what they’re doing and makes all the calls. Most of the time, a new player will tell you they learn more in 1 MP flight with an experienced person than they did for 2 years flying SP, or just tooling around with a friend in a TE one of them hosted.
The issue of “Super-Professional” vs “Casual” can’t really go one way or the other. There are groups who do both, but most online settings don’t discriminate against one or the other so you will always have the mix. There is no “right” way to do it, even if you are the super professional crowd. A ton of TTPs have a little different flavor in squadron to squadron in the USAF, so having that mix of things is actually a little more realistic than a lot of people think. There is a reason they brief for days in advance before a Red Flag, or coordinate until midnight when flying inter-squadron ops. Different brevity, different procedures, different SOP, etc… It happens IRL too. Obviously there are some things that are inviolate, but I think most people would be very surprised how much is really up for interpretation in actual flying units, and how much things can vary from one to the next. For that matter, things can vary quite extensively just from one commander or Chief of DOV to the next in the same unit.
In the end I think it just comes down to finding what fits for YOU. As has been mentioned several times, it really takes a lot to fully understand the game, and everything that comes with it. But not everyone has the time, or motivation, to get that deep in it–the truth is you can get good enough to takeoff, blow some shit up, and land, in a weekend; which is all some people really want. We shouldn’t be discouraging those people from playing the game, we should be encouraging them to find their own path and do what makes them happy, because EVERY new player is a win for a community like this–regardless of skill level, immersion desire, brevity familiarity, or anything else. That doesn’t mean we have to invite them into our folds and let them run crazy or ruin our perfectly executed bracket, but we shouldn’t just say you need to find a new game if you won’t work at this one for years either. Because let’s be honest…idiots who don’t talk on IVC and prefer to do their own thing in a mass PvP event DO make for great cannon fodder and AMRAAM bait.
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The level of knowledge and practice is an issue from when sims started to MP.
The continues participation is another. Real squadrons have this limited down, pilots r obliged to do it.
Virtual pilots are not and when bored or distracted they flee.
So a pool of members is always needed to keep a limited members participation.Reaching a high level of common expertize in bms for a whole squad is utopic nonexisting even after many years. Members come and go. But for sure is structured and there is a minimum base of knowledge that unifies them oposed to anything else that is just a furbal.
I keep reading about a fix of the code to support hordes of clients.
Well aint actually the case. Iirc the mp code guy said the previous had issues so he reverted back starting from scratch to narrow it down. What he could kinda warranty was the provided one which is way better than before. The rest will follow. So its in the procces of implementing things and not fixing actually. The fixing most probably would relly on the falcon core code and not the mp code.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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Vandal’s scenario is actually what many VFW do nowadays.
The only difference is that it’s not done at the campaign level but rather at the TE level.The campaign issue is the high number of objective and features that have to be shared and that is the core of the issues in MP and hence why FO had stability problem
A dedicated campaign with less objectives is the answer to these issues - but that’s another debate.A TE has always much less activity than a campaign and is bearable for the MP code.
8-12 shippers (maybe more but that’s the ballpark figure we usually reach) are quite stable.The VFW level of dedictation can be different and can be mixed as well. It does work with no real issue.
At Zipgun’s initiative ViperDrivers often fly with 185th guys in the above scenario and we’re happy with the way it provides both squads with other views of the challenges, the different SOPs are slowly blended together and I think I can say we all enjoy our flights.
It’s a great way to bring usual VFW intern flight from 4 seats to 8 or even 12 seats.I think that VFW should not be drastically different, but as long as respect for the other’s VFW views in involved it should work.
I also think that it doesn’t come all of a sudden to top level, it’s built slowly.
It’s a great and flexible way today to increase the pool of pilots in a VFW.Of course it does bring another problem: you need guys to create TE’s
We’re lucky to have a few and we just found another one as we flew the first TE of Malc’s which was very entertaining to say the least -
Not to mention the thirteen million military and fourteen million civilian Russian casualties during WWII….they payed the highest price for our freedom.
Not only could I prove that wrong, but I have and I did it on the clock. American values inherently insure we are all entitled to our opinions.
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I have flown 4.33U3 campaign missions with 28+ players with very minor issues (1 guy not having the bandwidth). Now that was a European server with tons of bandwidth. I’m in the U.S. and in one mission I got a couple of stutters.
For myself, I just have residential cable from a crap company and I was able to host 6 players no problems at all.
So when you schedule to check out the campaign you want to put how many slots you have and if it’s a “shakedown” flight. So, if you have successfully hosted 6, but never 8, that should be disclosed. I found that certain people really enjoy helping you do shakedowns because they are generally givers, but also because they want more and more people to be hosting missions. So they sign up.
What you want is a protocol for scheduling that requires that sort of disclosure and it should all be good.
@Mortesil I think I must have explained myself poorly. It’s primarily a service that makes it easy for squadrons to co-op. So I am not talking about 4 random guys getting tossed into a flight together, I am suggesting each flight be from the same squadron. This scheduling service would be really cool for a lot of squadrons because anytime you can stitch together 2 to 4 guys you can now join a 6 to 28+ mission.
Centralized scheduling with general protocols with decentralized hosting and more specific protocols. It’s just a matter of some squadron leaders getting together and hashing out the details.
Yeah there would have to be a way to select how many say KTO campaigns could be going on and who got to be the moderator for that campaign, but that doesn’t have to be done by one person. I would think you would want representative/liaisons from the various squadrons to act as the board and most likely elect the CEO or “master of theaters”. The board could decide how many campaigns are going to be open (I would suggest 1 per theater at the start just to get folks to fly together and used to the spirit that you don’t have to have everything your way to enjoy a campaign). Or the board could pass that job onto the CEO. Similarly, the policy for who will be a theater moderator would probably be proposed by the CEO and approved by the board. Then the CEO would be responsible for seeing to it that the policy was carried out.
If you are excited about the general idea and your squadron has a seat at the table, well there’s not really much more that you can ask for. I mean you are basically entering into a virtual NATO and no one will get everything they want but most will get enough of what they want to make being a part of it worthwhile. This doesn’t have to take away from what your squadron does internally, it just is a unified way for squadrons to get together and fly.
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I have flown 4.33U3 campaign missions with 28+ players with very minor issues (1 guy not having the bandwidth).
What bandwidth is required for BMS 4.33U3 online campaign missions? I’m only on a crappy VDSL connection myself with DSLAM sync of 30 Mb/s down and 4.5 Mb/s up max. (Actual ISP throughout, in particular to overseas servers will be quite a bit less than that!). Would that be sufficient to join an Aussie or US server, given that I probably can loose a few fingers on my hand and still be able to count all BMS players in New Zealand on one hand!
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What bandwidth is required for BMS 4.33U3 online campaign missions? I’m only on a crappy VDSL connection myself with DSLAM sync of 30 Mb/s down and 4.5 Mb/s up max. (Actual ISP throughout, in particular to overseas servers will be quite a bit less than that!). Would that be sufficient to join an Aussie or US server, given that I probably can loose a few fingers on my hand and still be able to count all BMS players in New Zealand on one hand!
You guys can count ?
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What bandwidth is required for BMS 4.33U3 online campaign missions? I’m only on a crappy VDSL connection myself with DSLAM sync of 30 Mb/s down and 4.5 Mb/s up max. (Actual ISP throughout, in particular to overseas servers will be quite a bit less than that!). Would that be sufficient to join an Aussie or US server, given that I probably can loose a few fingers on my hand and still be able to count all BMS players in New Zealand on one hand!
Not that crapy at all. Its 3-4 times faster than mine.
If u want to host, u will be able to host 4 guys. If u want to be client u r fine.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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You guys can count ?
Yes, it’s really easy… like the number of times you guys defeated the All Blacks… :wfish:
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Yes, it’s really easy… like the number of times you guys defeated the All Blacks… :wfish:
When you guys send a team over it costs very little, as most of them are already here. :drink:
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@theOden:
We try to offer folks to fly lonewolf if not comfortable talking in a foreign language or with us in seperate flights or in our flights on or off IVC.
We do see alot of visitors reading our adventures (and failures) but very few actually bite and join the server.Interesting thread and comments. As Oden said, the concept behind our server is a bit different perhaps than some others. The stuff Redshift and players like him are doing is fantastic, but I think it only appeals to a limited number of potential F4 MP players.
I think the focus should be on players who want to fly MP, but do not, for whatever reason. There are surely many who love F4, but have no desire to fly MP. All’s good. But what I am interested in are those players that train, fight and fly F4, that have a desire to join the multiplayer community, but for whatever reason they are not taking the plunge. How many are there? Hard to say, but I think it’s reasonable to expect quite a few.
A number of potential causes have been mentioned here. If I had to take a guess, I’d say it’s fear. Not terror of course, but more the fear of embarrassment, fear of screwing up, of looking the fool. Let’s face it, F4 BMS is the pinnacle of the jet flight sim genre. There are many highly accomplished players. They know all of the systems and procedures. If you were a fledgling F4 MP-hopeful, what would be going through your mind? Yes let me jump in with these guys, knowing a fraction of what they do. What could go wrong? So you end up with this cycle of guys saying yes, I’d love to join you, but i just need to brush up on this or that first and I’ll be ready to go. But that’s a fool’s errand, because as soon as they work out that thing, there is another thing that they need to brush up on first.
Those of us who are flying MP and encouraging new guys to join always trot out the line “You’ll learn more in a few MP flights with a seasoned vet than you will in weeks/months/years/ of flying offline”. Well, that’s true, isn’t it? But it doesn’t work worth a damn, does it? Why? If the prospective MP pilot is just hoping to know more, then wouldn’t the best and fastest way to accomplish that (flying online with vets) be the obvious choice? Yes, but it doesn’t cause them to do it. And that’s why I think it comes down to that fear of looking the fool. No one wants to be the guy who scrapes his pipe on landing, or doesn’t know how to turn his laser on, or how to set up the package on the datalink. So they get stuck in the cycle of training. They feel the need to know everything before they will feel comfortable in MP. And very few will know everything about F4 BMS. And so it goes….
The concept behind our server is designed to mitigate this to some extent. We have no requirement to fly with another, or to even use voice comms. As I like to say, just hop on and do the voodoo that you do. Want to fly an interdiction? Have at it. A strike? A BARCAP? Ripple durandals down a runway? Go get 'em. Players are free to join whenever they want, in any squadron or plane, to fly however they see fit, with or without another human. Or we will take them up for a few flights. It’s all good, literally.
And still, we struggle for participation. It’s frustrating, because I can think of little else we can do to mitigate any reservations a player might have for taking the MP plunge. There will always be brave noobs, who just join because they aren’t afraid of looking the fool. I’d reckon that most of us who are flying multiplayer were this guy once. “Yeah, I don’t really know shit, but I want to fly MP, so I will!” And those are the guys who become the seasoned vets. We all screwed up in front of our peers (and still do), but we became better virtual F4 drivers because of it. So it comes down to the mindset of each individual guy. Some take the plunge, some hold back. All we can do is keep encouraging, extending invitations for a private hop or two, taking them under our wings until they are ready to leave the nest on their own wings, so to speak. It’s a mental barrier, and once broken through, you have a MP player for life. Or at least, that’s my take.
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Not that crapy at all. Its 3-4 times faster than mine.
If u want to host, u will be able to host 4 guys. If u want to be client u r fine.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
There isn’t much difference between hosting and being a client. You still may have to upload to all the clients connected. This depends on how players enter the 3D, and where they are in relation to each other (IOW: Bubbles…) The BMS manual states ~40kbps per client connected IIRC, but I don’t believe that accounts for the connection overhead (~10% local and 30% for long distance or cross-ISP connections). I think it’s a little low regardless, with 20-25 players as a normal client I was seeing between 2.2-3 Mbps upload, which is closer to 100-120kbps per client. It can start getting tricky when you are going long distances due to big ISP/networking issues as well.
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Im talking about minimums. Bellow minimums u have major issues. Above mins the code uses whatever bw is available and manages accordingly.
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