Dragon1-1

Have you looked at how many nukes Russia actually has? Even less than 10% would suffice to reduce both US and Europe to a wasteland. Also, while the vast majority of nukes are Teller-Ullam designs (not boosted fission), this does not mean they have no pure implosion type weapons in service. Lack of tritium would likely knock out all devices over 100kT in modern arsenal, so most ICBM warheads, but it would not actually eliminate all nukes, particularly the smaller devices. Of course, all this is moot, because strategically, their arsenal has to be treated as perfectly functional. Nobody is dumb enough to risk calling their bluff and finding out the hard way they're wrong. You can't argue for making any other assumption without evidence much better than "that's how it usually works in Russia". In fact, this is why extremely tight secrecy and policy ambiguity is an important part of any nuclear strategy. If the enemy discovers a flaw, the value of the deterrent is much reduced. What car plants? What other factories? US cars are mostly made in Canada and Mexico, and base components they use are made in China. A factory is useless without its supply chain... most of which had been offshored. Whatever manufacturing remains in the US is mostly high tech final assembly type stuff, not the components that you assemble the product from. Not to mention, you can't just convert car factories to tank factories. At most, you can get them to make militarized trucks, most US factories are heavily automated, and this means they are straight-up incapable of producing anything that doesn't fit within their design constraints. Oh, and lest we forget, there are only three actual car companies in the US, only two of which (Ford and GM) are actually based there. If the US actually getting them to go into "war mode" would not be easy nor cheap. Russia has been focusing on resilience of their supply chain, they're trying to build their equipment with domestic components only, when possible. Their factories are more primitive due to lower labor costs and less skilled workforce (and therefore less specialized), which could make them more flexible. And of course, they have a land border with China, which doesn't seem to mind increased demand for their dual use components. Lastly, the power structure means it's easier for Russian government to make arbitrary decisions about what the factories make. With China, of course, there's no contest. Not only have they been taking resilience seriously, that's where most of the manufacturing actually went to. There's a lot of them, they have a very large military, and a lot of population to support it. The only advantages the US could muster against them are nukes and the tech gap, which is closing rapidly.

Yes, Russian stock is mostly part kits, but those are mighty handy to have when your working tanks get damaged. Russian stuff might be poorly maintained, and they're not very good at upgrading it, but they have it, which is more than Ukraine can say. As such, Russian armor doesn't need to be "competitive" with the US, it has to be good enough, and easy to make in large numbers. As long as it runs, a T-55 with a tablet and NVGs for the commander is extremely dangerous to anything that isn't a tank, and can have modern navigation and comms. With proper support, it can go quite far. Also, I have my doubts about the US being able to outproduce Russia on superior equipment (or even on stuff that's just as crappy). US weapon manufacturing operations are run on commercial principles, and have, like much other US manufacturing, been gutted in the name of increasing corporate margins. They do not seem to have much excess capacity. Rebuilding that capacity takes time. Europe has just realized they need it, and promptly set out to do it. I haven't seen much movement to that end in the US, indeed, if anything they'll be running even leaner in short term, especially as tariffs start to bite. BTW, you actually don't need tritium to make a nuclear warhead. You need it only for thermonuclear ones. I don't know what proportions of warheads Russians have, but given the vastness of their arsenal, I wouldn't be surprised if they had enough simple fission devices to ruin everyone's day. Besides, nukes are a grand strategic deterrent first of all. If you actually get to try out if they work, they've already failed in their job. So by that measure, Russian nukes are working perfectly well. Even if it's a bluff, nobody is going to call it because the price for being wrong is being wiped off the face of the Earth. This is also why there's such vocal displeasure with Iran trying to make a nuke, and to a lesser extent with India for actually making them (while not making any fuss about Israel doing the same). It's not that anyone is worried about them actually launching any nukes, it's that they're afraid of not being able to bully those countries without repercussions. In their intended role, nukes are both frequently used and very effective. As for Kuznetsov, it was only built because the Soviets saw the US having a lot of carriers and decided they wanted one, too. Russia doesn't need it, nor does it need a ship like it. The Soviets, quite sensibly, expected their large submarine force and their land-based cruise missile aircraft to fight US CVBGs. Their own Moskva-class was an ASW boat with helos, and they should have stuck to that. Anything the Kuznetsov can do, Russia's considerable force of long range land based aircraft can do better. They would be better off mooring the thing besides the Aurora and charging tourists for entry.

I think this is a bit too much to ask. It'd be seriously complex to implement, with little benefit.

The thing is, if you look at the US, how much of the post-Cold War new and shiny tech was an actual advancement? For a while, the US developed stuff like the F-22, but then, they started cutting costs. Soviets had things like Drozd APS during Cold War, and the tech to make a remotely controlled tank turret was there, but the US was comfortable with incremental upgrades to their old Abramses. They weren't advancing quite as fast as they probably could have, and the rest of the world caught up. Instead of peer combat, the US focused on bullying smaller countries and fighting insurgents in a cost-efficient manner. Something that wasn't going too well for them despite the tech advantage, BTW. It seems that a winning strategy is both quality and quantity (note that it is not a new observation, a "high-low mix" is a well attested strategy). Specifically, a few "tip of the spear" high tech units backed up by a large number of older equipment that's been upgraded with enough new tech to support the spiffy ones. Basically, high tech gear would be used to breach the enemy's defenses, then cheap stuff would pour in and wreak havoc, while the high tech gear switches to preventing the enemy's high tech force from getting to the cheap stuff and wrecking it. The big advantage large numbers have is the ability to be in more places at once. As for China, restricting tech flow to them is closing the stall long after the horse has bolted.

A lookup table can be perfectly fine, as long as the values are reasonably dense and derived from a realistic aerodynamic model (or the real charts). This is obviously not the case here. Until we get GFM, we should at least get the lookup tables fixed up.

The F-4 is fun, too, you just have to use it right. Jester will probably get better if he can tweak gain and such, but the other period radars are too good, in that you can use them to search airspace reasonably well, without many of the issues that affected them IRL. In fact, you generally don't have to mess with gain and only drop lock from notching. Realistically, you should not be getting BVR locks on fighter-sized targets from any of those platforms. The primary method of acquiring targets in fighters of the time was visual and GCI/AWACS calls. Much of the time, they would not even turn on their radars until they had a good tally. This is why SPO-10 was a perfectly sufficient RWR for its era. If you were being painted by something that caused SPO-10 to beep, that usually meant it was preparing to shoot you. The MiG-25 was probably the first fighter with a search radar that was worth a damn, followed by F-14 and F-15. Before that, the radar was primarily for guiding missiles and getting range for the gunsight.

If you hear what the crews and the infantry thought of their IFVs, it was pretty clear not all the criticisms were addressed, either. Also, it helped that the worst flaws were discovered and somewhat patched over before they were deployed in ODS. The M2A2 version was quite significantly uparmored compared to the original. And yeah, military procurement is often more politics than capability, with occasional strategy. There are many examples of the latter, for instance the Blackhawk was chosen over a Huey variant as the Army's main helo because Bell was making Cobras and they were worried they'd decrease their output. At other times, it's just a company playing dirty, like with F-16 and F-20. In the end, the problem is that everyone is playing dirty at this point. Both the military itself and the MIC have become too politicized, and they seem to rely on vast reserves of money to maintain effectiveness... and they can't even explain where half of this money actually goes. Adversaries like Russia and China have to do more with less, so they're forced to innovate, though Russia has enough other problems that it ended up with several otherwise good designs that it can't actually afford to produce. China can produce theirs, though, and they seem to keep a tight lid on the politics.

Flip the switch on the throttle, you need to bind it to the HOTAS.

I don't mind enable/disable exists, just as long as only one shows up in the wheel at any given time, and that they're accessible without a submenu. A more generic solution is fine, as long as it doesn't require any additional clicks or holding down a button. These things are done on each startup, so they should be as streamlined as they can be.

Bummer, I thought you might've collected enough material when making Horrido. I guess I'll try to look on my own. Good thing it's not all that hard to get it to fly in first place, compared to, say, the 109.

Not true. AFAIK people did manage to get it refunded through Steam. You just have to get through to a human, as opposed to the bot which handles normal refund requests. Given that there's language on the product page which constitutes false advertising, it's a pretty good reason to grant a refund despite the usual rules around it.

Could we get a toggle instead of separate "enable" and "disable" options for chocks and external power? This would save a click in the Jester/ground crew menu. There's no reason to order chocks to be placed when they're already in place, so the button that opens the sub-menu with only two options (place/remove) could be made into a toggle instead. Current status could be indicated on the button.

I know the 190 probably isn't a priority right now, and Horrido is pretty old, but how about a startup/TO/landing tutorial video? You've got excellent tutorials for all warbirds you made a campaign for, except this one. While it's easy to start and get flying, it'd be nice to have a video showcasing the real procedure. BTW, if you ever make a Huey video in the same mold, I'm sure Paradise Lost players will appreciate that, too.

Always love your campaigns. I'm flying jets for now, but I'll get back to WWII later on. Still got to finish the first Wolfpack, though.

For what it's worth, it'd be a Standalone issue. I use Steam and never had this bug.

I suppose because it's the starting point for both a more kitted out version and the variant our E was upgraded from. Remember, there are more Phantoms in the pipeline.

Is that even for DCS? Then again, they shown a lot of modeling work, but not a whole lot more for any of their side projects, even before they got into the current mess.

Just about the only thing it can't do is JDAM, but the Walleye easily substitutes for that capability. In fact, those weapons could be said to be quite a bit smarter than the JDAM.

It's a short, stubby interwar plane with a huge prop and a massive radial engine. Yes, it was difficult to handle on the ground IRL. The other WWII sim sells it short, and even in that sim, there are easier planes to land.

Maybe another BD collaboration? Though A-10A is FC3, and he wasn't too interested in that. If we ever do get an FF A-10A, it could be a nice idea, though.

Yeah, modern warfare is resource-heavy, and focusing on the next shiny, stealthy thing is indeed a trap. The emergence of drones, many of which are not so different from toys that can be bought in bulk from the Chinese (and some of which are Chinese toys with a camera or an RPG hanging below), is where modern warfare is heading. There's also the case to be made that, instead of scrapping or selling everything outdated, it should be stockpiled, and then upgraded using off the shelf electronics. A T-55 may be old, but it's still a tank, and if you can put in a tablet that will show a GPS map and datalink information, maybe replace the MG with an RCWS (of the sort that can be mounted on a truck) and give it an anti-drone cage, you'll end up with a pretty lethal vehicle. It won't be dueling Abramses, but it could bully infantry and APCs. Ultimately, the side that wins in a protracted war is the one with bigger factories. As it happens, capitalism isn't really compatible with military preparedness. Consolidating suppliers offers economic benefits via economics of scale and reducing overproduction, but in case of a war, overproduction is exactly what you want. You want to be able to tell the companies: here's the money, hire another shift or two, we'll buy everything. In modern era, at least in the US, the MIC seems to be mostly concerned with stuffing its own pockets, not actually making the nation safer. While the extensive civilian gun industry ensures the US probably won't run out of 5.56mm ammo, at least, most rednecks don't have a 155mm howitzer in the backyard.

Also, VR is expensive, period. Unless you buy used, or an older generation headset, you're in for a big spend.

It is a good idea to keep running scans on a folder like Steam cache. Unlike DCS folder specifically, it's on all computers with Steam installed, it changes frequently, and things get downloaded into it.

You have to hold the button down, like on just about every US fighter before the F-14.

It downloaded in a snap on Steam, but it updated 28GB of files, so it's probably small changes to big files. I suspect the standalone updater is just dumber than Steam and just redownloads all changed files all the time, while Steam is able to do it piecemeal.