SoW proposal: Merging different realism preference players online

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by csThor

If I were to fly on a server I would want to see it ensured that everyone is flying at the same level of difficulty. No mixing between various levels.

Does it mean that you would prefer to not allow people to turn off their HUD icons, speedbar, and if it is possible in SoW for example, not to allow them to change fuel pump primer settings, manual fuel tank management and so on? The division of even those who fly together today would be very divided if your preference for uniformity was applied.

Score means squat. I mean it. You can't and won't change player attitudes or what they do (i.e. shoulder-shooting) by fiddling with something like score. That's a complete non-entity in that regard.

If they are motivated by say, score and only score, they will attempt to find the highest level they can fly well at and score kills with (with this proposal). If they don't care at all about score, then they may care about the ranks showing their settings to everyone. And if they don't care about ranks, then they might care about the limited performance envelope they can get from using any kind of aids. And if they don't care about even that, then they can just fly at whatever level they think is the most satsifying for them regardless, and still be able to fit in.

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by Qpassa

I think that the list of servers should be filtered by difficulty, I also want to play with people at my same level ,realistic 100%

Would you be able to go through a long startup procedure, different for every plane, bind controls for all kinds of features (maybe twice as much as now) including fuel primer pumps and propeller blade pitch angles for every engine, individual radiator flaps for the coolant of every engine, and individual oil cooler flap for every engine, individual fuel primer pump lever for each engine, individual buttons for changing fuel tanks, for pumping fuel between tanks, manual fuel pump, manual oxygen controls, manual selection of engine start power source (including a button for switching the aircraft battery between each of the engines for start).

As you can see, even people like you and me, with G940, can probably not handle all those things, because it is too complicated if we want to learn more than one plane, with all the keyboard binds we have to use and so on.

If you want to force people to have to bind all those things, and learn to use them, then it will divide the pilots when it is just unecessary. Even if some of those things above are done automatically for some pilots it does not affect the gameplay for the others. And that is why this proposal is useful - they can still fly together, at quite high levels of realism.

[csThor]

Yes, MikkOwl - no difficulty mixing. There's no such thing as "a bit pregnant" . And I stand by my words: Shoulder-shooting and the likes are not motivated by score issues but simply a sign for a lack of manners and a faulty attitude.

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by csThor

Yes, MikkOwl - no difficulty mixing. There's no such thing as "a bit pregnant" . And I stand by my words: Shoulder-shooting and the likes are not motivated by score issues but simply a sign for a lack of manners and a faulty attitude.

If there was no score given to them by being the last to hit an enemy, would they still do it? They would not. Assuming that this assertion is correct (I am certain it is), the conclusion should be that their motivation is to get a higher score, and their lack of manners is what allows them to go that far.

And you seriously want the system to forbid people from turning off their speedbar, icons and ability to set their fuel tank manually even if it is not mandatory for the rest to do so? What motivation do you have for that? I just cannot understand why it is in any way a bad thing to permit one guy to choose to pump fuel between tanks manually even when others prefer to use aids to automate that specific feature (as an example). It doesn't affect anyone but himself. And he himself would probably find himself without servers to play on if he insisted that no one be allowed to automate aspects of the fuel management of their aircraft, without any real gain - messing with those systems only take a matter of seconds and probably don't need to be touched in a dogfight anyway.

[Blackdog_kt]

I'm not much of an elitist, to the contrary in fact. Never the less i can still see problems in such a system, but they are mostly practical ones.

On one hand, i don't really mind flying alongside or against people with a couple of automated functions while i have none, as long as (like you mentioned) we all stay in cockpit view, no icons and the list of automated settings is not over the top.

On the other hand, this system could actually leave the pilot with the relaxed difficulty settings at more of a disadvantage than the full difficulty pilot. For example, how many different stall recovery techniques will an AI be able to use? How many different variations of engine management routines per type? What kind of skill level will the helping AI be? How can you learn your airframe if you are not allowed to make mistakes? Also, supposing that the AI routines are indeed variable enough to give you a bit of unpredictability, how will you accurately judge your aircraft's performance when you see it behaving differently in a series of similar events?
By having an AI routine heavily modulate your flying to keep you safe, you've effectively put yourself in a position where you are as predictable as the AI.

I think the practical problem behind this is that a more experienced pilot can still shoot you down and on top of that, you have reduced control over how your aircraft performs and most of all, reduced feedback from it, which is essentially what helps you learn.

There are situations where this system would be helpful, but that would be mostly dedicated training events/missions/servers where the "rookies" fly alongside the "veterans" and gradually soak up experience until they can go full real themselves. With such a scope in mind, it could in fact be useful.

Just as everything else, if it makes it in it should be an option and not a mandatory game mechanic. If there are servers willing to mix realism settings, then the admin would for example flag certain settings in the console as selectable by the user and keep the rest adjusted according to his desire. If on the other hand he doesn't want to mix them up, he would simply flag none of it as user selectable.


For the reasons i outlined above, i think that the list of automated functions you suggest is a bit large to see any widespread use apart from training. I can't see a lot of full-switch players willing to participate, as a part will consider the odds stacked against them, another part will deny it on a matter of principle, some will object to it out of pure elitism and finally, my personal reason is that it takes away the challenge.

That's not only on the part of the pilot receiving the AI help, but on my part too, as it will feel like fighting against the AI whenever someone on relaxed settings pulls too many Gs in front of me.
Sure, if he pulls too much he will stall, snap roll, bleed 100mph of speed and loose 500 feet of altitude, but i know better than to cut my throttle and follow him if i'm not 100% sure i can kill him with a single snapshot. Otherwise i'm getting myself set up for attack by someone else, because in order to follow him i also have to slow down by 100mph and drop 500ft lower. What that effectively means is that despite his clumsy technique, he has managed to evade my firing pass and has gained anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds to escape depending on what each one of us flies, speeds and altitude that the engagement is taking place. If the AI kicks in just as he starts to push the airframe and limits him to a 2.5G relaxed break, i'm simply going to pull a bit of lead and fill him full of holes.
It could be like shooting fish in barrel and i'm no hotshot by any means.


What could maybe work is a single difficulty setting for automatic startup/shutdown that would be a sub-setting of realistic systems management. That could work pretty much like Black Shark, with you sitting back while the AI goes through the motions and then it would only be limited to starting up and shutting down engine,radios and whatever other systems your plane might have, useful only at mission start and after you land and exit the runway.
In such a way, if you want to you can start things manually, or if you don't or happen to be trying a new airframe you can simply press the "engine on" key, but this should again come with a drawback. For example, a quick and dirty but still safe manual start up will be faster than having the AI going lazily through the entire checklist. An automatic one will be by the book, while a manual one you can do as you like.

For example, if the weather is too hot or too cold, the "by-the-book" settings the AI uses might fail to start the engine on the first try or quickly have it overheat before you even start taxiing respectively. A manual start up on the other hand is different if you take a look at your gauges.
If you see the outside temperature gauge in your cockpit indicating cold weather, you can either prime the engine a few more times, or if you have electric carb heaters you can give it some heat to help it start (not sure on the last one).
If you on the other hand see that the weather is too hot, it will start easily and with fewer strokes of the primer. The caveat is that the AI's by-the-book procedure of x amount of priming strokes for a standard temperature, might result in over-priming in a hotter one. It's still flooding the engine with the same amount of fuel but the hotter,rarified air will not be enough to burn it, requiring more revolutions of the starter motor until the excess fuel is pumped through the engine unburnt and out the exhaust, until it can finally start. With a manual start you can probably get it right 99% of the time after you develop a feel for your aircraft during your first 3-4 sorties, plus you can open the cowl flaps a bit more before starting to make sure you don't overheat just by starting up and sitting on the tarmac waiting for your turn to take-off.

It may sound awfully complicated to read, but would probably be a difference of a few seconds to clear the excess fuel. So, the AI would manage to start the engine in 10 seconds from the time the starter is engaged, while a manual start-up could work a mere two seconds after the starter is engaged. In any case, seconds count and it would be an incentive for people in a hurry to learn how to do it so they can get rolling about half a minute faster in total.

[Desode]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

This isn't just 'a challenge' it is probably impossible. Whenever a particular set of rules is established, people will look for the easiest way around them. This isn't anything unique to combat flight sims, or even to computer games in general. In any rule-based scoring system, people will find the best way to exploit he rules. The only way to avoid this is by not keeping score. That is probably to radical a suggestion for most online IL-2 players, but having spent years playing offline, where the only thing I could sensibly measure myself against was my own past performance, I don't have a particular problem with it.

If people find this difficult to handle, I'd just ask them one question. What was the final score in WWII? If you can't give a sensible answer to this, then why does scoring matter?

What was the final score in WWII ? Geez , I understand what your getting at but, It will never work. Competition is at the very core of any MP experience. Its the desire to strive to be the best. Therefore one cannot be the best if there is no score. This is even more so in Flight combat. I mean thats what made a Ace a Ace. Sure you can have ranks but a rank carries no weight if there is no score attached to it.


As for the final score in WWII ? I can say this, Nazi Germany lost so many planes and good pilots that they lost air superiority and that was the start of their End. Even though I don't know the exact number, of aircraft they lost. I know that it was great enough that they could no longer defend the skys over their land.

More importantly , just as you asked "what was the final score in WWII ?" to make a point. I will in turn ask " How many people know what Ace shot down how many aircraft ? "
I'm sure just about anyone on here, can tell you how many planes each Ace shot down.

Now if a flight game was say a persistent MMO style battle where one side as a whole won every 6 months, based on a Ticket bar that just represented how one side was winning or losing,,,,,,,, Then you may be able to do away with individual scores, however I doubt it. I personally could deal with that, as long as I knew it was helping my side. Thats just me though and I'm a very team work kind of gamer.


DESODE

[MikkOwl]

this system could actually leave the pilot with the relaxed difficulty settings at more of a disadvantage than the full difficulty pilot. For example, how many different stall recovery techniques will an AI be able to use? How many different variations of engine management routines per type? What kind of skill level will the helping AI be?

I think that is part of the motivator for players to try to move beyond the aids. If they achieved ideal flight through aids then there would be less motivation. I did cover this aspect in the initial post and stated it was a disadvantage in many cases but it permits so many more players to take part at an earlier stage of experience/skill/hardware. Still a win-win situation.

How can you learn your airframe if you are not allowed to make mistakes? supposing that the AI routines are indeed variable enough to give you a bit of unpredictability, how will you accurately judge your aircraft's performance when you see it behaving differently in a series of similar events?

There's many, many things someone must learn in order to fly successfully (in a completely realistic simulation) without aids. One must start somewhere. Things can always be learned by flying even with aids, and for those things that are not yet mastered, I think that the more realism minded players would really prefer not to have their team mates crash their Junkers 88 on take-off or into others when trying to land. I.e. some things are best practiced offline The larger the range of settings that can be toggled, the easier they can be learned one at a time. Nail the taxiing bit and take off bit, but still can't land without crashing into the ground crew servicing your team's planes, can automate just landing - for now. Can't handle fuel primer pumps yet and thus can't even take-off, well, look it up later, or just fly without it as it is of no major consequence for the most part of flight. Can't handle stalls/spins yet because there's so much to learn - leave the aid on until getting grips on the other things.

None of us stepped from non-gamer straight into a realistic simulator. The learning courve was long and hard. Spin recovery and those things are not that hard to learn for someone who has some grips on flying physics, so it will probably be one of the things early turned off.

[quote]the practical problem behind this is that a more experienced pilot can still shoot you down[/qoute]
On any servers enforcing a somewhat decent level of realism, this will always be the case no matter one's settings. This is the way of things. The proposal does not attempt to rectify this. It only attempts to allow those who cannot handle 100% realism due to whatever reason (and that most likely includes nearly all of us here) to participate with those who can without giving an experienced pilot advantages if he also choose to employ the same aids.

If there are servers willing to mix realism settings, then the admin would for example flag certain settings in the console as selectable by the user and keep the rest adjusted according to his desire. If on the other hand he doesn't want to mix them up, he would simply flag none of it as user selectable.

The current IL-2 system allows mixing realism settings by default - unless all realism settings are set to max. I don't think there even is an option to enforce people to use less realism/aids than max if a pilot wants to. SoW is going to add more extreme realism settings for complex management of all kinds of systems, and this is what I see as the main problem on the horizon (depending on just how realistic SoW turns out).

the list of automated functions you suggest is a bit large to see any widespread use apart from training

It is only a list of examples of what could be included in a single range, and also of aids that don't currently exist but could exist (and how they would integrate even in a more hardcore environment). For the 'realism first' minded players, I think even they would get taken back by very complex management of the fuel/electrical/coolant/starter etc system, assuming it is included, and would choose to have it automated, while others out of principle will switch their fuel tanks manually. Hardware available is a consideration. I have a G940 and Saitek Quadrant, but I cannot even reach my keyboard when flying, and I could not use all the systems if they were simulated with my current setup. Others are the same and I would prefer it if servers were accomodating to this fact (and more, as it is to everyone's advantage).

By having an AI routine heavily modulate your flying to keep you safe, you've effectively put yourself in a position where you are as predictable as the AI. [...] That's not only on the part of the pilot receiving the AI help, but on my part too, as it will feel like fighting against the AI whenever someone on relaxed settings pulls too many Gs in front of me.
Sure, if he pulls too much he will stall, snap roll, bleed 100mph of speed and loose 500 feet of altitude, but i know better than to cut my throttle and follow him if i'm not 100% sure i can kill him with a single snapshot. Otherwise i'm getting myself set up for attack by someone else, because in order to follow him i also have to slow down by 100mph and drop 500ft lower. What that effectively means is that despite his clumsy technique, he has managed to evade my firing pass and has gained anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds to escape depending on what each one of us flies, speeds and altitude that the engagement is taking place. If the AI kicks in just as he starts to push the airframe and limits him to a 2.5G relaxed break, i'm simply going to pull a bit of lead and fill him full of holes.
It could be like shooting fish in barrel and i'm no hotshot by any means.

There's some misunderstanding here. I was not specific enough: the stall/spin recovery aid I suggested would not act to disallow stalling and spins, but only (attempt) to recover from spins using correct technique that veteran pilots know perfectly how to do already. They would stall and enter spins if pulling too many G's, but at least they could have a chance of recovering if not too low. Your impression of my suggestion sounds more like turning off stall/spins in IL-2 (yes, that one alters physics while this one would not, but if this suggested aid did not even permit stalls, it would be affecting things a bit too much).

In that sense, your personal experience fighting someone with spin recovery aid would be no different from a veteran pilot, all else being equal. They'd stall out and then try to recover, from your perspective. There's no way you could tell if they had it or not.

What could maybe work is a single difficulty setting for automatic startup/shutdown that would be a sub-setting of realistic systems management. That could work pretty much like Black Shark, with you sitting back while the AI goes through the motions and then it would only be limited to starting up and shutting down engine,radios and whatever other systems your plane might have, useful only at mission start and after you land and exit the runway.
In such a way, if you want to you can start things manually, or if you don't or happen to be trying a new airframe you can simply press the "engine on" key, but this should again come with a drawback. For example, a quick and dirty but still safe manual start up will be faster than having the AI going lazily through the entire checklist. An automatic one will be by the book, while a manual one you can do as you like.

Now you see the spirit of things I agree with it, but I don't think it should be as basic as two options for aircraft system management - one for stuff more than throttle, and one for start/stop procedures. There's many more systems that should be toggle-able depending on the user's preference, experience or hardware available. In IL-2 'complex engine management' takes over the radiator (mostly), prop pitch/RPM and fuel mixture all at the same time. It would be nice to specify if I want to move on to learning how fuel mix works and bind that to a lever without having to also learn prop pitch at the same time. In SoW this will be more complicated, warranting more options for automation.

As for the fuel primer pump thing, it's not just a matter of knowledge, it's also about (as mentioned) hardware. Even if something can be learned, it might not be possible to manipulate it in a fun/good/decent/ergonomic/immersive way.

Great post, loved reading and replying to it!

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by Desode

What was the final score in WWII ? Geez , I understand what your getting at but, It will never work. Competition is at the very core of any MP experience. Its the desire to strive to be the best. Therefore one cannot be the best if there is no score. This is even more so in Flight combat. I mean thats what made a Ace a Ace. Sure you can have ranks but a rank carries no weight if there is no score attached to it.


As for the final score in WWII ? I can say this, Nazi Germany lost so many planes and good pilots that they lost air superiority and that was the start of their End. Even though I don't know the exact number, of aircraft they lost. I know that it was great enough that they could no longer defend the skys over their land.

More importantly , just as you asked "what was the final score in WWII ?" to make a point. I will in turn ask " How many people know what Ace shot down how many aircraft ? "
I'm sure just about anyone on here, can tell you how many planes each Ace shot down.

Now if a flight game was say a persistent MMO style battle where one side as a whole won every 6 months, based on a Ticket bar that just represented how one side was winning or losing,,,,,,,, Then you may be able to do away with individual scores, however I doubt it. I personally could deal with that, as long as I knew it was helping my side. Thats just me though and I'm a very team work kind of gamer.


DESODE

I want to add my thoughts on the purpose of scoring.

The problem is that there's no wingmen that vouch for your accomplishments to the squadron/wing commander. There's no rewards. Nothing to prove how good you are performing to yourself and others, how much you have really helped your armed forces. And, without score, one cannot even compare one's performance to others (beyond statistics, which do not care about one's accomplishments, only keeps track of how long, how much, how many).

This is why I like score. But I don't like score that is not implemented well (shoulder shooting should not even exist mechanically. Steps should be taken to assign the kill to the person who did the most system critical damage and so on). When score is badly implemented, it promotes bad behaviour, and so then I would rather not have score to discourage that behaviour.

[robtek]

for shoulder shooting part of the cure would be that if just one of your bullets hits a friendly your score would be nil and you must join again.

[Blackdog_kt]

I can see your points and while i disagree on certain items i could see a use for it, of course based on the only fundamental truth in gaming "let's make it a toggle and not mandatory, so everyone can be happy".

Some things i probably misunderstood as well, some i liked and some i disagree with, but in any case thanks for explaining

One final note though on the actual complexity and how many controllers you might actually need. This post of yours was what got me thinking.

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

Would you be able to go through a long startup procedure, different for every plane, bind controls for all kinds of features (maybe twice as much as now) including fuel primer pumps and propeller blade pitch angles for every engine, individual radiator flaps for the coolant of every engine, and individual oil cooler flap for every engine, individual fuel primer pump lever for each engine, individual buttons for changing fuel tanks, for pumping fuel between tanks, manual fuel pump, manual oxygen controls, manual selection of engine start power source (including a button for switching the aircraft battery between each of the engines for start).

As you can see, even people like you and me, with G940, can probably not handle all those things, because it is too complicated if we want to learn more than one plane, with all the keyboard binds we have to use and so on.

If you want to force people to have to bind all those things, and learn to use them, then it will divide the pilots when it is just unecessary. Even if some of those things above are done automatically for some pilots it does not affect the gameplay for the others. And that is why this proposal is useful - they can still fly together, at quite high levels of realism.

This sounds a bit harder than it actually is. I have a simple MS sidewinder precision pro and i can do most of these things in IL2 already. You don't need separate throttle,mixture,prop pitch and radiator controls for each engine. The solution is already in IL2.
Press "select engine 1", start it up with the controls provided (manual or auto). Press "select engine 2" do the same. Press "select all engines and start rolling. If you take damage and need to throttle back one engine to "synchronise" their power output and avoid the need to trim for assymetric thrust, simply select one of them again and move your throttle and prop pitch sliders a bit back until the needles overlap. That's why most allied twins have a single gauge with two needles and also why 4 engined heavies have two gauges with two needles each, as long as needle #2 overlaps needle #1 your engines are producing identical power.

Seriously, it's only a month since i started delving in that stuff and i don't even own the sim i practice and learn these things at, i just fly it whenever i visit a friend on his PC and it's way easier than it sounds.
Wanna know how to start a P47 in real life? It's done in a mere 5 steps!

1) Hold the brakes just in case, battery and generator on, this thing won't start without some juice right?

2) Select the main fuel tank and turn on the boost pump. It can be the auxiliary too, but again just in case, we select the fullest tank. We need some fuel, plus we need some way to move it from the tank to the engine. Normally the fuel is sucked in by vacuum when the engine is running but now it's not running yet, hence the boost pump.

3) Turn on the ignition (both magnetos) and set mixture to rich (ie, full). Again, the fuel might be getting pumped but if the fuel valve on the engine is closed (mixture lever) we can't start. If everything's working as it should you get the specific fuel pressure that the manual says. Unless there are random failures implemented in SoW it will always be correct and even if they are, i doubt that many servers will run with those enabled. In single player, if you want to you can enable it and pause while you read the manual. Even easier, every gauge and needle in the cockpit has a green zone to tell you what normal operation is without having to memorize all kinds of numbers.

Again, it's all pretty self-explanatory up to this point as long as you ask yourself "what does an engine run on?".

4) Prime engine 2-3 times for warm conditions, up to 6 for cold conditions. You have a thermometer in the cockpit that tells you how the weather's like.

5) Time to engage the starter! Ever jump-start a car? You know, get it rolling downhill on neutral with ignition on, then you suddenly punch a gear in to force the pistons to turn and make it start? It's exactly the same principle and crude enough to fit the brute image of the Jug
The starter is a just big disk with a lot of inertia. You spin it up with power from the battery (switch left to "energize" label), when the high pitched wine you hear has stabilised and not "rising" anymore in tone it's at its full RPM. At that point you move the switch right to the "start" label, the disk connects to the engine via a clutch of some sort and transfers its spinning energy to it, turning it around.

You got fuel in the engine (we primed it and set all fuel systems to on), you got power going to the spark plugs and you just gave the thing a good kick to get it rolling. Congrats, you have a turning propeller in front of you. From this point on just keep the needles pointing inside the green arcs and you'll be just fine

Now let's see how we can do this without the need for click-pits that are usually disliked by combat simmers. I'll assume no fancy hotas, just a normal stick like the Sidewinder series and a keyboard. I'll also try to suggest ways that will retain functionality between different airframes and not be specific to one aircraft at a time, so that we can cut down on the amount of total controls needed. I will only look at controls that don't already exist in IL2, so that we can get an idea of how many extra we'd need.

In step 1 the extra controls are battery and generator. In multi-engine planes it would be "select engine 1" and then "toggle generator" and so on, eliminating the need for multiple keyboards assignments of the same controls per each engine. So, we have 2 on/off toggles so far.

In step 2 we have a fuel selector. Let's work this with two controls, like the flaps up/flaps don function we already have. One is "fuel selector up/clockwise" and the other is "fuel selector down/counter-clockwise".
Allied birds have rotating ones, i think some axis birds have levers, hence the double function for each one, so we can keep the necessary controls to map to a minimum. Just look inside your cockpit, decide where you need to turn it and press the corresponding key. Critical control on one hand, but if you're changing tanks at the last possible moment before combat you're already doing something wrong, so no reason to fret for having to glance down to the cockpit floor for a split second.

Why not have a single control that will cycle the selector through all of its possible positions you might ask. Well, because most fuel selectors have an "off" position too and that's not something you want to encounter before combat while you are changing from drop tanks to internals.
Also, some planes have more than one fuel selector, for instance the Jug in our example has one for internal tanks and one for drop tanks. A control to select them one at a time similar to engines could work in this case, "selector"+"1", "selector"+"2" on the keyboard and so on. All in all 2 controls to rotate the selectors and one control to choose between more than one selectors. We're up to 5 total so far.

In step 3 we have magnetos and mixture that are already modelled in IL2, so no change there. Step 4 brings us the primer, one more new control for a total of 6.

Finally, step 5 is the starter, which as you notice is a three-way switch with energize, start and neutral positions. In order to cut down on the amount of keyboard bindings, why not make this sequential? This can't harm anything (unlike a sequential fuel selector control like we discussed before). Furthermore some planes have a single starter button, some have a two-way switch and some a three-way one, so if we can simplify it it makes sense to go ahead and do it. So, in planes with a starter button, pressing the key we mapped just corresponds to pressing that button. In planes with multi-position switches, each press of the key corresponds a different switch position, done in the logical sequence. In our example of the Jug, pressing "starter" key would move it from neutral to energize, pressing it again would move it from energize to to start and pressing it one final time would return it to neutral.

In total, we need only 6 new keyboard bindings for a totally authentic start-up of this warbird. Others will require more (for example, the mk.IX spitfire is a bit weird) and others less. Case in point, we all have seen those Luftwaffe mechanics crank up the engines on those 109Es. What are they doing? Well, the 109Es (and possibly later models too, i'm not sure) also have an inertia starter, but they don't spool it up from a battery. It's the mechanic that spools up the starter with the hand-crank, before the pilot engages it to start the engine.

In this case it would make more sense to have a "ground crew" tab in the comms menu to request things like an external power source or a mechanic to hand-crack the starter and....OH MY GOD, it just hit me after writing all of this diatribe. I'm off to post the idea in the poll thread about systems modelling