Solved BMS 4.36 U2: Several bugs in TE GroundOps mission (cold start), causing new players to get stuck
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Hi there.
I am a new player and have just begun going through the TE GroundOps mission. To help improve the player experience for beginners, I have been writing down any issues I have come across along the way.
Here’s a quick summary for the cold start part of the TE GroundOps mission, i.e., the very first mission in the list for new players.
- FORM button disappears in cockpit when clicked
- GPS switch can’t be toggled. Must use MAP switch to toggle GPS switch.
- Canopy switch is non-functional for mouse interaction
- HCMS feature is missing in the F-16 during the TE GroundOps #1 tutorial mission, cold start
Hope this helps.
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@Elegantly Are you sure you’re entering the right plane?
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@MaxWaldorf I think so, yes. I select the bottom flight labeled TRAINING, not the ones above labeled BARCAP. This is as per tutorial instructions:
“Please note: you need to select the F-16 flight in the left window of the UI (last flight in the list).” [training doc, p. 10]
I click on the bottom training to make it “green”, then I click on TAKEOFF in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
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@Elegantly did select the seat?
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@MaxWaldorf Aha. Apparently I didn’t. There is one line in the text that mentions a “seat”, but I thought I did exactly that by selecting the TRAINING flight at the bottom of the list.
Ensure you take a seat in the F-16 “Training” flight instead. [p.10]
So ultimately this was a mistake of mine, good catch! So I learned I also need to click on the single plane shown for that flight. This was totally not obvious to me in the UI as a beginner. (The training text is normally very verbose and detailed on what to press, click, etc., but not in this case.)
Feedback: I still think the current wording in the Training doc is not very clear to total beginners, which easily leads to this mistake. I’d suggest to update the instructions.
Here’s why I thought I was doing the right thing, particularly because I already came across threads on my first read-ups about Falcon BMS (before I even jumped into a cockpit) that mentioned that very same mistake of beginners, “Did you select the correct plane?”:
- I did click on the last flight labeled TRAINING. The green highlighting confirmed, to me, that I selected the correct one.
- I afterwards clicked on ATO button, and it did show an F-16 to me. Whenever I selected one of the other flights, I was shown an F-4.
- Once in the cockpit, it looked like an F-16. So, to me, this was a final (but ultimately incorrect) confirmation that I selected everything correctly in the mission. As it turns out, even if you screw things up and actually have been assigned to an F-4, “your” cockpit looks like an F-16.
So, while I was indeed not in the correct flight and seat, everything to me as a beginner said “Yep, there’s only a single F-16 in this mission, and I have multiple confirmations that I am in the right one!”.
The only cue I noticed (now) was that upon entering the cockpit you see a green text message mentioning your callsign. Without the having the correct flight AND correct seat selected, the message does not say “Goblin 2” (I was Tiger-1-1 instead, for example).
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PS: Let me know whether I should close the four reported tickets and create a new one for the Training docs improvement. I can also take a stab at updating the docs, if you can give me some pointers on how to do that.
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check the documentaiton section of this forum…
The berely use the public bug tracker to be honest. Dev team goes into the forum and we use a private bug tracker.
Cheers
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@Elegantly ps it’s a very common mistake, don’t feel bad
Most of the non-viper jets display the viper cockpit, and viper wing models (looking out the window) so even after you know about this quirk, sometimes it can take a while to realize you’re taxiing in a B-1B bomber.
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@Elegantly What others do is to write their suggestion for an improved text in this thread:
https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/23033/falcon-bms-4-36-2-documentation-bug-reports/30
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@MaxWaldorf Thank you for the pointers, Max, and for replying to my original comment in the first place!
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@airtex2019 Hah, thanks for making me feel a little better.
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@jayb Ack, will do that.
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