Air Marshall when?

[kestrel79]

Sounds very similar to what the CB Radio thing does on the Combat Box server...which is awesome by the way...but having a human do more of it than AI. I guess no one really knows not much info has come out on it.

[Guest deleted@83466]

—-If people are looking towards “Air Marshall” as some means to primarily do ground controlled intercepts, all you need for that to happen is -any- comms system (team speak and discord being perfectly adequate, and no server impact) and the radar equivalent of “balloon-dar” in Rise of Flight…contacts within range of the detector get shown on the map to people who aren’t currently flying.  Not very sporting to do that with a WW1 sim, and appropriately frowned upon, but I think the basic capability that RoF had  is all you would ever need for BoX.  You absolutely do not need organic comms, SRS, or anything elaborate to do what I understand Air Marshall is supposed to do.

 

—-If you have the above, you don’t need the equivalent of DCS: Combined Arms, with a dedicated player slot to be a tactical controller if all you want to do is vector human controlled airplanes around.

 

—-As others have noted, who wants to be “commanded” by some random guy who has assumed a particular role as the air commander unless it is by prior arrangement agreed to by all players?  For the day-to-day fun type flying people do, better to have your own friends or your squadron mates in your own separate comms directing you. In fact, why bother with this Air Marshall module at all, because even for an organized event, you only need what is in the first paragraph. 
 

I’m not opposed to Air Marshall, but I’m not convinced that it is necessary at all to accomplish what people think it’s going to accomplish.  Sure, I think some work would have to be done to give a convincing simulation of ground based radar, and perhaps ground spotters, both of which might be a huge task in themselves (and some angle and distance tools that were mentioned above), but built-in comms and much more than somebody not flying being able to see contacts on a map really isn’t necessary…and -anybody- who is sitting a sortie out while their buddies fly should be able to assume that role, no matter if there are 20 other people doing it for their own friends and squadron mates on their own comms channel.

Edited June 25, 2021 by SeaSerpent
Typos and Grammatical errors Galore

[SCG_Limboski]

Indeed, we'll eventually have to wait and see what the air marshal mode actually entails.  Perhaps, I have been strongly influenced by TeRReF's vision of what might constitute an air marshal system which entails much more functionality than what you guys basically describe:  a simple system where you can order people around and perhaps get some additional contact information.

[=KG76=flyus747]

14 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

What makes you think it isn’t getting enough attention?

Consider that no in game tools exist to facilitate teamwork even after almost a decade.

 

Terrefs video itself has barely scratched the surface of any IL2 discussion. I can only describe what he's done as a breakthrough progress and, again, presence remains small.

 

The topic is essentially forgotten in all talk circles in favor of whatever the latest fighter issue is...

[AEthelraedUnraed]

14 hours ago, SeaSerpent said:

—-If people are looking towards “Air Marshall” as some means to primarily do ground controlled intercepts, all you need for that to happen is -any- comms system (team speak and discord being perfectly adequate, and no server impact) and the radar equivalent of “balloon-dar” in Rise of Flight…contacts within range of the detector get shown on the map to people who aren’t currently flying.  Not very sporting to do that with a WW1 sim, and appropriately frowned upon, but I think the basic capability that RoF had  is all you would ever need for BoX.  You absolutely do not need organic comms, SRS, or anything elaborate to do what I understand Air Marshall is supposed to do.

 

—-If you have the above, you don’t need the equivalent of DCS: Combined Arms, with a dedicated player slot to be a tactical controller if all you want to do is vector human controlled airplanes around.

 

—-As others have noted, who wants to be “commanded” by some random guy who has assumed a particular role as the air commander unless it is by prior arrangement agreed to by all players?  For the day-to-day fun type flying people do, better to have your own friends or your squadron mates in your own separate comms directing you. In fact, why bother with this Air Marshall module at all, because even for an organized event, you only need what is in the first paragraph. 
 

I’m not opposed to Air Marshall, but I’m not convinced that it is necessary at all to accomplish what people think it’s going to accomplish.  Sure, I think some work would have to be done to give a convincing simulation of ground based radar, and perhaps ground spotters, both of which might be a huge task in themselves (and some angle and distance tools that were mentioned above), but built-in comms and much more than somebody not flying being able to see contacts on a map really isn’t necessary…and -anybody- who is sitting a sortie out while their buddies fly should be able to assume that role, no matter if there are 20 other people doing it for their own friends and squadron mates on their own comms channel.

I for one would follow up the Air Marshall's orders. I assume the servers who run the air marshall mode will say so - if I don't feel like listening to some guy's orders, I go play at another server.

 

I don't have a good mic, neither an online squad, nor any real-life friends who play IL2. I'm mostly a single-player guy, but occasionally I do enjoy going online. I would love a feature like air marshall if that enables me to do more coordinated attacks with other players.

 

True, for the online squadrons out there who already have good comms in place and already coordinate their flights, it likely won't make a huge difference. For the lone wolves like me out there, it has great potential.

[ATAG_SKUD]

On 6/25/2021 at 3:44 AM, SCG_TeRReF said:

I think the biggest problem they encounter with creating this Marshall mode is the extra load it will create for the servers. Currently, the popular servers that allow for 84 players, have a hard time running smoothly already. 

 

I created this quite a while ago, it can add a lot to the tactical aspect of the game, but there is no way this works with 84 players. Maybe half of that and then a Commander would still be limited in the amount of AI units deployed. It is very useful to trigger events though, which I will show in my next video.

 

This is close to what I was thinking except without much AI.

I liked the idea of the human Air Marshall (AM) being able to create mission slots either before the map roll or on the fly during the map that players can choose from a picklist and execute. Mission slots could have variable constraints as decided by the AM from a simple "attack this target" to specifying aircraft, loadout, waypoints, altitude and take off (or spawn) time. Perhaps one slot in the mission could be allocated to AI to keep the group together but this would be optional. This would preclude the server capacity issues. Of course, players would always be free to do what they want once in play. I see no need to prevent that. A tally of accomplished mission assignments figured into their scoring might encourage them to play along. 

 

For this scenario no integrated comms feature is needed. Discord/Teamspeak/SRS or whatever the players want to use works fine. At the beginning of a campaign the AMs would be given a broad objective and a finite number of assets with scheduled availability to win the campaign. Some assets and supplies become available as the campaign progresses and the AM decides how to get them to where they are needed and providing protection for them as they travel if needed. The battle evolves according to the decisions made by the AMs and the capabilities of the players. For example, if a depot for example is depleted of AA the AM could prepare AI mission slots to deliver replacements from the nearest depot. If its spotted (see recon discussion below) then it could be destroyed and the depot is left vulnerable to destruction.

 

I think the spotters idea is excellent and would be another transformational element of MP. Spotters could be another limited availability asset the AM has to manage by deciding where to place them. The opposing AM would need to guess where they are and try to plot flights to avoid them. The spotters need to have realistic capabilities such as an inverted cone of visibility but also be able to report position, heading, speed, approximate altitude, plane type and quantity- like it was in RL. To complement this the opposing side would have a realistically limited area of visibility of ground targets and as they passed over them so to report recon contacts or have them pop up on a map. So all targets aren't visible from the outset. Coconut had this feature and I used to fly high altitude recon missions to light targets up on the map.

 

I think these features will drive realistic engagement where groups of aircraft are needed to hit a target and escorts will be required to protect them and groups of planes needed to intercept them.

Going lone wolf would be dangerous - as it should be.

And the odds of victory will be subject to the capability of the AMs, the players and a bit of luck -in that order.

skud

 

[C6_lefuneste]

I'm also not convinced so many people will want to be marshall, and moreover that they will handle it correctly.

Maybe the good level should be "squad marshall": you create a slot for your squad, handle people in it and push some information to all other players or other squad Marshalls using map...

Edited June 27, 2021 by c6_lefuneste

[21.Gr.CT.Ludovisi]

I though it is something like the 1946 Command and Control mod (https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,26654.0.html), IMHO a "killer application" of 1946...

[AEthelraedUnraed]

13 hours ago, ATAG_SKUD said:

Going lone wolf would be dangerous - as it should be

I'm not sure if you were responding to my use of the phrase "lone wolf" above? If so, I was not talking about going on a solo mission across the front.

 

With "lone wolves" I meant people such as myself, who don't have any friends to play IL2 online with and don't have a good comms system. For those of us, an integrated comms feature would be useful (i.e. the AM being able to give commands and pass info, in some kind of text format).

[NoelGallagher]

On 6/24/2021 at 4:04 PM, Soilworker said:

Upcoming feature - when?!!!!!111

 

This kind of thing bugs me, I understand the desire to know when something you want is going to be released but is so hard to just ask politely? 

i don't see anything wrong with his choice of tile ...

what's wrong with that??????

On 6/25/2021 at 8:44 PM, SCG_TeRReF said:

I think the biggest problem they encounter with creating this Marshall mode is the extra load it will create for the servers. Currently, the popular servers that allow for 84 players, have a hard time running smoothly already. 

 

I created this quite a while ago, it can add a lot to the tactical aspect of the game, but there is no way this works with 84 players. Maybe half of that and then a Commander would still be limited in the amount of AI units deployed. It is very useful to trigger events though, which I will show in my next video.

 

Skip to 4:05 to skip the intro.

 

 

you are genius