SlipHavoc

Are you shooting in LOAL or LOBL? The DIR/LO/HI trajectory setting only affects LOAL shots, not LOBL. If the missile can see the laser at the time of launch, it will be a LOBL shot. The missile constraints box will be large, instead of small like it is in LOAL mode.

I can't check at the moment, but I believe the HUD should show some dashed lines along the bottom representing the pylons, and should have a number above the dash for every pylon that will be released on the next pickle. In Salvo mode, it should show multiple numbers. IIRC the numbers only show up when the release conditions are met (e.g. CCIP pipper is hot, or trigger is held and waiting for CCRP). You can also toggle the Launch Permission Override to force those numbers to appear so you can check the salvo setting, and then turn Launch Permission Override back off. AFAIK the Su-27/Su-33/J-11 doesn't have a way to set the ripple or interval.

An important factor in the startup that is not explicitly mentioned anywhere is that with a cold start, you need to wait 2.5 minutes from the time you turn on electrical power to the time you start moving in order for the navigation system to align. You can rearm and start engines during that time, but don't start taxiing until 2.5 minutes after turning on electrical power. I bound a HOTAS key to start the stopwatch in the cockpit, which I hit just after turning on the power. This 2.5 minute alignment time is also needed in the Su-25A, but AFAIK is not needed in any of the other FC3 planes. If you don't wait the full 2.5 minutes before starting to taxi, you'll notice that your compass (and HUD in the Su-25T) will start showing the wrong heading after doing some hard maneuvering.

I'm always puzzled when people say the F-18 feels like it's "on rails" but don't level the same criticism at the F-16, which to me feels even more stable. In my experience the F-18 is also significantly faster than the F-16 when carrying any kind of useful A/G load, and it can fly at higher altitudes. The exception is when you light the afterburner, which in the F-16 is very powerful, but the F-18 has about twice as much time on afterburner just with internal fuel, and can carry more externally. I personally much prefer the F-18 over the F-16, as I like being able to carry more A/G weapons, I have longer range, 3 MFDs, can fiy higher, have a better HMD, and it fits my dogfighting style very well (put the lift vector on the bandit and pull, which the F-18 is excellent at, while the F-16 requires more discipline in keeping your speed up). But if it bores you there's nothing wrong with that, just find some other plane that you like more. You aren't required to like the same planes that other people like, or for the same reasons.

Did you try that? Because when I tried it, it didn't help.

Interesting... I also verified this. AUTO (CCRP) mode works fine from an air start and drops on target, or at least very close. But from a cold ground start, it's way off, usually dropping very short. I tried Mk-82, Mk-82 AIR, Mk-82 Snakeye, Mk-83, Mk-84, and GBU-12, most had the same problem. The exceptions were the Mk-82 AIR and Snakeye, which dropped extremely long even though I had the DRAG setting at FF (not RET). The GBU-12s dropped short, but if they picked up the laser they would still hit. I also tried designating the target with WPDSG, visually through the HUD, with the A/G radar in EXP3 mode, and with an ATFLIR pod, and all seemed to show the same inaccuracy, so it doesn't seem to be a designation issue. And I tried setting the HSI to POS/GPS instead of POS/AINS, but that didn't seem to have an effect either. I have often done toss bombing attacks with the F-18 with both laser and dumb bombs, although haven't for probably a couple months or so since I've mostly been using the F-15E for those attacks since it came out. However the toss attacks were always very accurate. In the past, CCIP accuracy has been a major problem (it used to be good until a patch a couple years ago, but the October 19th 2023 patch seemed to fix it and CCIP has been accurate since then. The November 16th patch also mentions changes to the AUTO bomb mode. I wonder if something in one of those two patches got messed up.

The MiG-15bis does have hydraulically boosted ailerons. The system is described in the manual starting on page 115, "5.5. Lateral control hydraulic system".

Yes, but if you're looking for a specific moon phase it's a lot easier to just pick a date from a list rather than have to go through one date at a time in the ME and see which one has the moon phase you want. It's great having the visualizer built into the editor, but it's also great to have a list of dates that have a full moon.

Is there a reference somewhere showing what band every radar in the game uses?

I'm necroing this thread because I've been curious about this for a while and finally did some testing, and was looking to see if anyone else had done some, so this seems like a good place to post my results. The short answer is: Yes, your exterior lights make you visible to the AI, if they can see them! Brighter lights make you more visible. Moonlight also makes you visible to the AI. But flares and gunfire do not make you visible. I tested with the AH-64D Apache on the Caucasus map, default conditions, mostly against a DShK technical and AK-74 infantry. I first tried a moonless night (setting the year to 2017 and then just changing the time of day is an easy way to get a moonless night). If all exterior lights are off, I was able to fly directly over the infantry at head height, and land right next to the technical, without being spotted or fired on at all. Popping flares and shooting the cannon also didn't cause the AI to see me. However as soon as I turned on any exterior lights, they were able to spot me and opened fire immediately. However, it's not just a binary thing... When the lights are on "dim", they would shoot at me at around 500 m, but couldn't see me at around 900 m. With the lights on "bright", they were able to shoot at me at 900 m. I didn't exhaustively test every range because it's a pain to do, but the important lesson is that the brightness of the lights does matter. Also, the Apache's formation lights are not visible from the forward hemisphere. If the formation lights are on and you're facing the enemy, they can't see you, but as soon as you turn around and they see the lights, they start shooting. Then, I tried a full moon (leave the year on 2016 and change the time of day to get a full moon). With all exterior lights off, they started shooting at around 900 m, but couldn't see me beyond that. Turning on "dim" exterior lights didn't make a difference in that case. However with "bright" exterior lights they were able to shoot from at least 1.1 km. I also tried adding an overcast (Overcast 5 is a very dense 3-layer overcast), but kept the full moon. Although it was visibly darker with the overcast layer, the AI was still able to spot me at the same distances as without the overcast. So I guess that's part of the current AI-ignores-clouds issue that's been a thing since the new cloud graphics were added. Finally, just to confirm, I had been doing all this testing with the default dark green US Army livery for the Apache, so I tried once with the very light gray desert livery, and the AI saw me at the same range as before, so it doesn't look like the livery you pick makes a difference to the AI, at least under these conditions. This was all pretty surprising to me somehow; I hadn't expected that the exterior lighting made such a difference, although realistically it certainly should. I'll definitely have "Exterior lights: OFF" in my fence check from now on... Some ideas to try in future experiments: Do enemy units with night vision capability spot you from farther away? If so, does type of night vision (thermal vs image intensifier) make a difference? Can enemy units with heat seeking weapons (e.g. MANPADs) spot you? (They shouldn't be able to, since AFAIK the seeker cone on most MANPADs is very small and they have to be aimed visually to get their initial lockon, and their coolant is limited so they can't reasonably be used to scan for a target anyway, but would be good to make sure.) Is spotting affected by your physical size? Like, a Gazelle should be much harder to see than a Hip or Hind. Also, does aspect matter (e.g. you should be easier to see if you're turned sideways vs head on)? Does exact time of day matter? Or is spotting just based on a binary day/night flag? Does moon phase matter? Or the height above the horizon? What if the moon is behind a hill and you're in its shadow? I tested the Apache's gun and countermeasures flares, but do any other weapons make you visible? What about the colored signal flares that the Hip and Hind can shoot off? Does interior cockpit lighting make you visible? The Hip in particular has some bright white interior lights that theoretically should make it a lot easier to see from the outside.

You might find this video useful: I haven't personally verified what's shown in here, but it looks like it covers most of the yaw stuff.

As I said, not really an extremely high priority. But what can I say, I like saving time. Also, the CFTs are used up first as far as I know, so unless you're running deep into the internal tanks, most of the time you're refueling, it's at the slower 1,900 lbs/min rate.

Thanks! Not really an extremely high priority IMO, but just something that I've been curious about for a while, so it was interesting to run it down. That said, it *would* be cool if the F-15E refueled at the same overall rate as everything else...

Hm. And yet, it definitely takes almost 10 minutes to refuel 22,588 lbs, and not 8m41s. So I took a screenshot every minute and here's the results: Time - Fuel - Amount filled during last minute 0m - 200 - 0 1m - 2,800 - 2,600 2m - 5,400 - 2,600 3m - 8,000 - 2,600 4m - 10,600 - 2,600 5m - 13,100 - 2,500 6m - 15,000 - 1,900 7m - 16,900 - 1,900 8m - 18,700 - 1,800 9m - 20,600 - 1,900 10m - 22,400 - 1,800 Internal fuel is about 13,100 lbs, so it looks like it fills the internal fuel at 2,600 lbs/min, same as other airplanes, but it only fills the CFTs at 1,900 lbs/min. So the average refueling rate ends up at around 2,300 lbs/min. So the question is, should the CFTs fill that slow? Or is that correct?

Several types of bombs look like they're tilted too far down when they're on the rear CFT pylons. The rear shackle and the aft part of the pylon is actually clipped into the bomb, and in some cases the bomb fins are clipped into the CFT as well. Affected bombs: All Mk-84s and variants: -84 slick, -84 AIR, GBU-10 Mk-84 AIR GBU-10 Mk-20 Rockeye CBU-87/97 Bombs that appear to be correct: All Mk-82s and variants: -82 slick, -82 AIR, -82 Snakeye, GBU-12, and training variants Some pictures attached. Pic 1 shows the Mk-84 AIR and GBU-10 fins clipping into the CFT, pic 2 shows the shackle and pylon clipping into the bomb. The rear pylons are tilted in real life, which gives everything mounted on those pylons a kind of odd-looking downward orientation, but not this much.

Regarding #1 only (rate of refueling), I tested this a couple days ago and again tonight, and I got 2,285 lbs/min. Started with an empty, dry F-15E on the ramp, cold and dark. Max internal fuel weight according to the Mission Editor is 22588 lbs. On start, immediately went to comms menu, ground crew, rearm/refuel, selected 100% fuel. Fueling started at about 19 seconds into the mission. Fueling ended at about 10m12s. That's 9m53s total, or 593 seconds, so that's 38.09 lbs/sec or 2,285 lbs/min. Track file is attached. I tested several other planes a couple days ago (F-14B, F-16, F-18, and Harrier) and found all of them were just over 2,600 lbs/min. If the F-15E refueled at 2,600 lbs/min, it should take about 8m41s to refuel, but it definitely takes longer than that. If you land on fumes you almost might as well spawn a new one, because startup only takes about 4 mins... F-15E refueling speed test.trk

How did you get the unguided rockets to be intercepted? I tried shooting unguided rockets at a SA-15 from both a Harrier and an Apache, and it didn't shoot at them. How did you set up your test?

There's always a balance between fidelity on the one hand, and programmer time and effort on the other.

Just from a quick browse through the Quaggles datamine (assuming that's accurate of course), here are a few that don't have a "reflection" value: https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/Durandal.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_24.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_31.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_31_V_2B.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_31_V_3B.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_31_V_4B.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_32_V_2B.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/GBU_54_V_1B.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/LS-6-100.lua https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/bombs/Mk_84AIR_GP.lua I'm sure there are others. A developer with direct access to these files should, I think, pretty easily be able to find which ones have a "reflection" value. I may need to revisit the script I made to automatically extract data from the datamine though, to make questions like this easier to answer... Then there is the question of the APKWS, which being much smaller than even a Hellfire, let alone a 1000 lb bomb, seems like it should have a smaller RCS, but it's "reflection" value is 0.04, and the SA-15 engages it: https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/missiles/AGR_20_M282.lua And the BRM-90 (laser guided rocket carried by the JF-17) is 0.05, so the SA-15 should shoot at it as well, although I haven't tested that one specifically yet. https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/missiles/BRM-1_90MM.lua Are those the correct values for these small rockets? I also see that none of the Hydra rockets seem to have a "reflection", e.g. https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/nurs/HYDRA_70_M151.lua I will try to test this afternoon to see if the SA-15 will engage the unguided Hydra rockets, or maybe it's still coded to ignore those... Edit: SA-15 doesn't seem to engage unguided Hydras.

It looks like there might be other incorrect or missing RCS values for various weapons; will those be updated as well?

Looking through Quaggles datamine, there seem to be quite a few bombs that don't have a "reflection" value, but most missiles seem to. So far, that value does agree with the results we're seeing in game. I noticed that the SA-15 doesn't engage Hellfires (although I think it used to before this patch), and they have a reflection value of 0.3, but it does engage APKWS rockets, which don't have a reflection value and so presumably use the default. I see the LS-6-250 has a reflection value of 0.3, so that might be the best standoff weapon against SA-15s now...

Hey, just wanted to say I just tried out both Pretense campaigns a few days ago and I've been having a lot of fun with them so far. I've done both single player and MP with a friend and it's been great. Good challenge, no significant bugs that we've noticed, and a good sense of progression and stuff going on around the entire battlefield. Great work! I have one bit of feedback so far, that I thought about while trying some different settings and planes: Could the persistent save game be saved with a filename that is the same as the filename of the Pretense mission file itself, and then only loaded by that same mission file? Or is there some other way to have multiple saves without having to manually swap save files around? My thinking is that we could have one copy of the mission file (and save file) for MP, and one for SP, with different names, or copies of the mission file with different planes changed, different starting time or weather selected, etc. Anyway, thanks again! Edit: After some messing around in the script file, I wasn't able to get Lua to output the name of the script file it's running from. I'm guessing because it's actually embedded in other scripts and then running inside the game environment. I was using basically a variation of this: local fullpath = debug.getinfo(1,"S").source:sub(2) Maybe someone who knows more Lua than I do could come up with something that works. However I think I did find a workaround, which is to add a little bit of logic in init.lua and pretense_compiled.lua, replacing this line: local dir = lfs.writedir()..'Missions/Saves/' With this: local saveFolder = 'Missions/Saves/' if Config.saveFolder then saveFolder = saveFolder..Config.saveFolder..'/' end local dir = lfs.writedir()..saveFolder Now you can make copies of that mission file, named whatever you want, edit them however you want, and in each mission, in the editor, add a Do Script at the top of the Mission Start trigger with the following: Config = Config or {} Config.saveFolder = 'MyPretenseSaveFolder' Then it will save and load all the persistence into Missions/Saves/MyPretenseSaveFolder, or whatever folder you specify.

Here's the kneeboard folder: C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Kneeboard\F-15ESE

This surprised me as well, but I think I found the answer in this thread. Basically, the RF Hellfires can only be selected if your Sight is TADS or FCR. Pilot seat cannot select TADS as Sight, and we don't have the FCR yet, so the RF Hellfires can't be selected from the pilot seat.

This is interesting... The graphs on page 5 show the Mirage 2000 as having the highest sustained turn rate, higher than the F-18 or F-16. That would seem to imply that it should be able to out turn an F-16 in a level rate fight on the deck, and yet I don't think I've ever seen a dogfight video (e.g. Growling Sidewinder or similar) show that tactic being used. Instead, the Mirage 2000 is inevitably used as a one-circle fighter and when it gets dragged down to the deck by a Viper it's game over for the Mirage. Are people just missing a trick here and the Mirage 2000 has been a world-beater all along if flown properly? Or is there something I'm not getting?