Plans for Nimitz in Arma 3 beyond 0.99

After the release is before the release, or so they say. Some ideas got implemented in Nimitz for Arma 3 0.99, but not all. So this is an overview of what might happen in Nimitz 0.100.

First, an already completed but untested task was the upgrade of the SAM systems, the Mk-29 Sea Sparrow launcher and RIM-116 RAM. Both systems now use a BI function to move the missile to the correct launch tube. Also they deploy Pookie's smoke script and generate some smoke upon launch.

Now onto the uncharted territory. With the advent of working radars with the sensors update as part of the Jet DLC, the anti air assets were already upgraded to use sensors. Now the Nimitz itself needs a long range radar to assist those weaponry and of course the planes. Work on this had started during 0.99 development, but was never completed. And when speaking of long range radar, I mean long range for the typical Arma 3 island, something in the range of 10-20 km.

The customization of the carrier for different versions of the Nimitz class is another topic to be discussed. The aft mast, located behind the island, is quite different between those subclasses and ideally we would have different models to show these differences. Further the island itself differs between the latest Nimitz class carriers and the original. And finally the numbers look a bit different on the real carrier than they do on our virtual one.

The hangar is quite an important part of the carrier, but lacks in details and 'liveliness' currently. I would hope for a complete overhaul, similar to what was done to the exteriour of the Nimitz already. It's undecided yet if ambient objects will be directly integrated, or left to the mission makers idea. Both approaches, an empty hangar, or one filled with objects, have their purpose and it's a hard decision which path to go down.

Sitting below the hangar is the 2nd deck. It can be considered a first approach of supplying additional rooms for communities on the Nimitz. The deck needs to be completely overhauled to look more ship like and equipped with objects. Mind you, there will be enough empty rooms available, so a mission maker can equip them as he deems fit.

Weapon carts are a needed addition to the carrier's properties list. The work on them has been contracted from the remaining donation money and should be available later in 2017.

For Nimitz 0.99 Shockley did a tremendous job at adding textures to the hull, which look more ship like than before. Hopefully this work can be continued for the flight deck textures and improve the textures further.

Script wise it would be interesting to add a teleport module for those player that don't want to walk/run around the carrier. There are already some memory points in place that can be used for that. Probably the best approach forward is to publish the nimspots lod, which contain those memory points, so mission makers can integrate their own teleport systems.

A completely different area is that of sounds. Late in the 0.99 release cycle the air conditioning sounds and engine sounds were added to the Nimitz. What's missing is now some general quarters alarm and other ambient sounds via speaker systems. Any suggestions are welcome here!

Yet another tech available in Arma 3 that has not been made widely available in the Nimitz are the Picture in Picture possibilites. The nautical's bridge monitor system is a good place to start on this, but more control rooms in the carrier's interiour could be thought of that get a view on the outside world via cameras.

Camera's are also found on UAVs, which are currently not exactly compatible with the Nimitz systems. The scripts for launching and recovering planes could use an overhaul so UAVs are supported as well.

The Tilly crash crane is currently a static property, as time to make it a carX simulation is rather scarce. Eventually it would be made fully driveable.

Last on this long laundry list is the IFLOLS system which sits untextured on the side of the carrier. Here a better texture, some light source magic and scripting is needed to make it a believable system.

As you can see from this post, we can really use some help in any of the above areas. Feel free to reach out when interested in helping, and join our discord server. There's also the possibility to hire modellers and texturers to assist with some of the above tasks. When doing a donation please let me know in the comment which part of the carrier you would like to see improved: Donate. The money raised so far helped with the following parts: RIM-116 RAM, Phalanx, nautical bridge, medical station, interiour objects, fuel pump, weapon carts (when completed) and new ammunition models.

NDB Navigation

One of two aircraft related mods that I planned to do is the NDB non-directional-beacon navigation support; the other one is the MAAS system, which is still sadly lacking a nice model.

At the end of summer I got contacted by madsolosniper on the BI forums who had a mod idea for adding navigational aids to arma 3. When a few weeks later NightIntruder wrote me about his aircraft sign mod I sat down and wrote a couple of test missions at the end of September. One of them eventually was released by NightIntruder with his mod.

Then the project sat idle for quite a while. This weekend I then finally converted the sample mission into a mod, which still needs testing, especially in multiplayer.

The mod as it is now (2017-03-19) is quite minimalistic. It consists of an invisible NDB object and some actions on players to control the NDB navigation. The basic work flow is to add one or more NDB objects to the map at places like airfields, aircraft carrier, or the NDB building from NightIntruder's mod. On the object the frequency for the NDB can be set. In the mission players in aircraft can then change their direction finders frequency to that of any NDB. For publication of the NDB frequency for example a map marker or a note in the mission briefing can be used.

In the mission a player in an aircraft has three action menu entries:

1. change frequency of direction finder to NDB frequency
2. show the direction arrow on the HUD
3. hide the direction arrow on the HUD

The implementation is quite straight forward and might be in need of optimisation for performance later on. In the config.cpp the "ttt_ndb1" class defines the invisible beacon object. It's main purpose is to keep the "Frequency" stored in a like named variable. Further it uses an init event handler to store the object in a global array (ttt_ndb_beacons) and initialize the mission event handler for showing the arrow on the HUD (addMissionEventHandler EachFrame). Also the Man class gets an extended init eventhandler to add the above mentioned user actions.

The init eventhandler for the Man class calls fn_addUI.sqf. The code there sets up the arrow for later use and adds three actions to the scroll wheel menu for the player. It relies on the locality of the global variable beaconActive and a few others to determine the state the system is in, e.g. if the arrow is displayed on the HUD or not. From the "Enter beacon frequency" action the dialog for entering the beacon frequency is triggered.

The init eventhandler for the beacon class "ttt_ndb1" checks if the global variable ttt_ndb_beacons is present. If this is not the case, it will be initialized and the mission event handler "EachFrame" is added to display the directional arrow on the HUD. Also the beacon object is added to the "ttt_ndb_beacons" array.

When the frequency is changed through the dialog, the "ttt_ndb_beacons" array is traversed and checked for the given frequency. If found, the new active beacon is set and the arrow points toward it. If not found, a message via "vehicleChat" is shown to the player that no such beacon frequency exists.

As this is pretty much my first attempt at changing the UI via mod, there might be other ways to achieve the wanted behaviour. Maybe some are much better than the way chosen, and I'd be glad to hear about them.