Avimimus

Thank you both! I've gone from zero solutions to having two solutions!!

Thanks!

I'm actually finding the GUV pods to be quite effective (including against light armour)... so it is making me suddenly want an Mi-24V to be modelled someday... even with the issues related to the gun jamming... it'd be great for taking out more vehicles in a single pass or suppressing infantry without having to turn the helicopter.

They are very low velocity - which makes them vulnerable to side-slip and also gives them a long travel time. The launchers are also angled up in the pods to give them an increased range. However this means that they are initially flying out above the gunsight... it'd be nice to know how far away the grenades would pass through the cross-hairs (if they were fired from a level hover. Maybe I'll see if I can fire them from the tarmac? Gather info? In any case - I'd recommend firing them only in short bursts... and waiting to see the fall of shot before firing the next burst. It'd be very easy to get confused regarding which burst one is observing impacting (as it is quite possible to have multiple salves in the air at once)! Thanks for checking!

Thank you!! Is there any information on correct way to deploy the grenade launcher (GUV with AGS-17/AGS-30)?? I've often wondered if there is a correct way to use it (e.g. an appropriate range or technique).

Hello, I've generally kept Petrovich flying forward. The AI pilot seems to sometimes start oscillating in pitch at 60km/h, furthermore it is easy to order the pilot to put the helicopter into a vortex ring state (i.e. it isn't safe to tell the AI to descend when in a hover - it'll descend fast enough it loses control). I've tried running in on targets at 120 km/h, however the attitude of the helicopter is such that Petrovich never brings the gunsight low enough to allow firing in the missile. This makes me think that I need to order him to fly fast enough towards the target that the gunsight will start depressed below the target (giving me a window to fire as the gunsight passes over the target). Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible to fire from a hover? Is it possible to get the Petrovich pilot AI to depress the gunsight enough to fire the Shturm? Thanks!

Yes... it just seems to allow adding a fixed range marker. But I'm not sure if that adds anything. My hope was to find a way to get the ballistic computer to calculate the approximate range of the CCIP point. Once I knew the range for a point on the ground near the target I could easily work out the corrections required. I could then use the fixed sight and manually adjust the number of degrees correction for the weapon in use.

I understand that the grenade launcher, S-13, S-24 are all not compatible with the automatic ranging sight. However, if there was a way to force the sight to stay on the ballistic computer (and radar altimeter, and attitude sensors) could still be used to calculate the rough range of objects. Having a range estimate, even a slightly incorrect one, would make it much easier to use the fixed sight to hit the target. So is there any way to force the automatic ranging to continue when an incompatible weapon is selected? Any hidden switch I don't know about? Thanks!

Well... that is nice for a change. In the Ka-50 the 30mm or even 23mm cannons were much more effective than rockets in almost all circumstances (with the possible exception of the S-13)

Well not RNG... but RNG+Contrast? Yes! Honestly, there should be some situations where the Shkval's automatic tracking system fails (e.g. due to intervening obstacles, low contrast, lighting conditions) and one has to manually correct to keep the cross-hairs over the target. It is unrealistic for targeting pods to be perfectly reliable! I want to sometimes have to go manual!

The major thing I noticed about the Petrovich pilot AI (in the first video showing it - the ATGM video) was that it was oscillating the helicopter in pitch quite a bit. I found this a bit nauseating. What do you think - would it be better for Petrovich to be less accurate in speed and altitude keeping in order to be more stable in attitude (note: attitude not altitude)? Would that be more realistic?

I do hope it'll eventually automatically call out the type of target, bearing and approximate range. It'd also be nice if it occasionally made mistakes to "Tank 320 degree approximately three kilometres" [...] "correction tank 320 degrees is IFV" It'd add a lot to immersion. If I'm carrying all of the extra weight for a second cockpit and crew-member - I'd like to actually benefit a bit from it. When not guiding missiles the primary role of the forward crew-member is as an observer... so I think we differ on this. The way I see it - it doesn't make sense for people to constantly complain about a lack of a missile warning system for aircraft like the Mi-8, but to reject having AI crew take on that role... it is realistic... and they've built in realistic delays to spotting.

Yes... although that could still be a month or two of work on the AI (to get it efficient, realistic looking, and debugged). The same goes for implementing a better fragmentation model. These tasks might seem logical and solutions easy to imagine (e.g. me, writing below) but they may not be in practice - especially in such a complex piece of software... and development effort required is ever unpredictable. Anyway, some thoughts: The problem with rocket fragments is that they aren't perfectly evenly distributed. However, I could see that one could do the following instead of actually modelling fragments: Checking the distance of objects. Assigning a probability of them receiving damage based on that distance (i.e. of a fragment hitting). Apply damage if the vehicle fails that probability roll. One could even have the table include the probability of receiving multiple fragments (and multiplying damage by the number of fragments)... so it'd be a single check per warhead. If resources permitted one could even have the probability/damage distributions (over-pressure with an ~100% hit rate but a rapid decrease in damage with distance, small fragments which are more numerous, and large fragments that do more damage but 'travel' further) - all done simply by checking the distance vs. a probability of being hit by a fragment (and the amount of damage done by that fragment). So one check per enemy per rocket - or if one wanted to model multiple effect warheads (e.g. Vikhr with over-pressure, main warhead fragments, and fragmentation belt) like just described... that'd be 3 checks per missile per enemy. It sounds doable. However, I wonder if the devs might refuse to use such a layered probability approach for the simple reason that they eventually want to give ground units more advanced damage models (and want hit locations to matter). In that case rockets might remain without fragmentation models until computers get fast enough to give every ground unit a complex damage model and model every fragment from an 80 rocket burst... so ten years without improvements.

Those would be rather nice things. Also, making it so that more detailed modelling of rocket warhead fragments was done for this first ten or twenty rockets fired (there might be performance issues with doing so for firing all 80 - so it might make sense to switch to simplified modelling for particularly large bursts).

Fascinating.

Having grown up in Canada - we get a lot of English language books from the U.S. - which means that there is the opposite problem sometimes, boredom. Whereas ex-Soviet technology almost always has details which are unexpected and surprising... ...also, I like analogue systems

Allegedly: http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/168201/russian-mi_8-in-syria-survives-direct-manpads-hit.html That said... one could lose a lot of the cargo bay and have holes in a variety of other places and still keep flying... so it isn't completely implausible.

I don't know yet Compatibility mode does seem to improve over time (e.g. Win7 and WinXP now running some Win 95/98 games). The thing is that I only have one Win 7 license. Does anyone know if there is still a viable upgrade path from Win XP to Win 10? Alternatively, is it possible to roll back to Win 7? OR if I upgrade - will that key always be a Win 10 key moving forward? It seems to be getting harder to obtain new copies of Win 7 these days.

Correction: I'm pretty sure that would be a Mosquito FB.VI (the fighter-bomber version) not the Mosquito B.IV (the initial bomber version). I'd love it if we were getting a Mk.IV, but it seems unlikely.

I'm with you on that...

The very simple thing that I miss most from Gunship! was the aggressiveness of ground vehicles... if one hovered long enough they'd close 500 metres or a kilometre towards you to get into weapons range It made being in forested country really intense - because you never knew if the trees might be hiding an APC flanking your helicopter!

Well... typically you'd want them to spread out - a kind of cluster bomb effect. However, we lack sufficient modelling of blast fragments to make them effective without a perfect hit... hence why you've learned to use them as a kind of close range single shot munition... (and honestly, I find that the 30mm 2a42 is almost always more effective at those ranges anyway).

Yes. Although the question does exist - will it be possible to have a four hardpoint, MWS equipped aircraft (closer to the actual #25)? We don't seem to know. It could be the case that the added hardpoints only appear if Iglas are equipped... or the MWS equipped aircraft could always have the updated wing...

Thanks for the update - I do hope for the 4xFAB-100 racks... so we can recreate that 10xFAB-100 bombload (Bomb load of Pe-2, SB-2 etc.) But I know it is unlikely.

I also get the impression that weapons tests and training flights often carry less than the full load of missiles (in addition to Chechnya - which I believe is the only operational combat use of the Ka-50?) Here we see what appears to be a pair of missiles on the upper-most rack attachments (similar to how they were used in Chechnya): Here we see a helicopter which appears to be carrying only two Vikhr - both on the right-wing - one on the upper-most outer point, and one on one of the lower outboard points: In a tank-killing operation during a third world war the full load of 12 missiles would make sense. For counter-insurgency operations, patrols, training, and weapon tests... the reduced load makes sense. So if we're trying to simulate how it was actually used historically... there is probably a case for replacing the 12 missile loadout with a four missiles one!