Coole28

That’s just an RFI, until we see a PO the HMCS is just a tentative plan, not set in stone and confirmed to be happening. If HMCS integration ends up being too expensive or too difficult it will almost certainly be scrapped. F-22 was in the same boat, it was “planned” to have JHMCS but integration proved problematic so the project never went anywhere.

To my knowledge no, I don’t think so. I’m sure the engineers toyed with the idea, but I haven’t seen any documentation suggesting it was a serious consideration. To be honest I’m surprised even the GPU-5 was considered in the first place, since the plane was envisioned as a low level deep strike fighter. Not really the mission a gun run calls for. As fun as rockets and big guns would be on this bird, we’ll have to stick with the A-10 and AV-8 for the time being. Fortunately both those aircraft are a blast to fly so I can always hop over when I get that itch to strafe.

I’m cool with getting tutorials on systems as they are completed prior to the plane being released. That way when all the systems are completed and the plane is released, I’ll already have a good knowledge foundation to work on. Better than waiting until the plane is released and dumping all the tutorials at once imo.

GPU-5/A never entered service with the E model, and I’m pretty certain it was only ever slung on a test bed aircraft (which was actually a B model). So while the E model has been cleared to use the GPU-5/A, it was never actually integrated into the E model’s systems. AGM-65 on the other hand actually did get integrated into the E model’s systems, and was in service for a time with at least one air wing.

The 15 hardpoints is likely for the upcoming A-1H. Also given the large amount of CFT hardpoint limitations when it comes to mixing ordnance, I’d say its unlikely we will have a separate loadout box for each hardpoint on the CFT. Probably will just have one or two loadout boxes for each CFT. From what some of the SMEs have been saying pretty much the only ordnance mixing allowed on the same CFT is between laser JDAMs and regular JDAMs, since the planes computer doesn’t differentiate between the two.

I can’t speak for real world physics, but as far as DCS is concerned AGMs fired in sequence can overtake the first missile fired, and it happens quite frequently at longer ranges. I’ve learned to just assume all my missiles will impact at the same time, and to never target vehicles close together in a single pass. In a convoy I’ll only target lead and tail vehicle on the first pass, then readjust targets after they react to contact.

Pretty much the only time there is planning (or any communication really) in multiplayer is if you are playing with friends. In theory there are set roles or tasks for each slot in most missions, but in practice most players end up doing whatever they want. It doesn’t help that people all join at different times, it’s hard to run an escort when the flight you are supposed to be escorting took off half an hour before you even joined the server. There’s no skill barrier either; nothing like watching your SEAD crash into the Black Sea because they didn’t know you have to unfold your wings BEFORE taking off. Hence the need for flexibility in multiplayer, the ability to switch roles and adjust fire as needed. There’s just no way for multiplayer mission creators to plan around the human factor on public servers.

Have you ever played multiplayer? Loadouts aren’t preplanned in most servers, in the most popular ones you get slapped in a clean plane and it’s up to you to load up and configure the plane to your task. Nor are missions ever static, there’s a good chance that somebody else already destroyed the target you planned out, or maybe there are already more than enough pilots performing your assigned task so you have to switch to a more needed task. Flexibility is vital for multiplayer, there really is no way for the mission creator to preplan loadouts in a way that accounts for other players already flying around. I agree wholeheartedly, I’d love to see DTC capable of all these nuances. I think it’s fine to be able to do this in the mission editor as well. But for the love of God, don’t lock us out of being able to program the DTC in-game. At the very least make it the first step after selecting a role prior to jumping in the cockpit. I would cry real man tears if my MFD page ordering was different based on the host’s preference every time I switched servers.

Implementing DTM as a Mission Editor only thing would be a complete catastrophe. Anytime you want to change your loadout from anything that isn’t preplanned in your DTM (so basically everytime you play on a multiplayer server) would require you to manual enter what stores you have loaded on each pylon, with the exception of missiles and some GPS munitions. Thats a lot of clicking for the minimal benefit of watching a DTM insertion animation. Jf-17 does it pretty well. Whenever you rearm in game or you input preplanned points (via F10 map), the ground crew will update the DTM for you on the spot. This aught to be how it is done for every plane, maybe just tweak the F-10 functionality a bit to have a separate PP input rather than making and naming markpoints.

You mean the SDB I? I never said anything about the module not getting that, as far as I’m aware RAZBAM is still planning on adding them as long as they can get proper documentation and ED approves it. Only the Laser SDB and SDB II are way out of the timeline, and certainly harder to get documentation on. As for the Eurofighter, unless I missed something in the past couple months the METEOR hasn’t been confirmed yet. Truegrit/Heatblur want to add it (so much so that their concept art shows the plane launching one), but they stated it all depends on getting the proper documentation. AIM-120 is the only BVR missile they confirmed so far. It’s not a good comparison to the RAZBAM F-15E anyway; Truegrit states their plans are to model their Eurofighter as the most modern they can, while RAZBAM specifically stated they are modeling their F-15E on what a ~2006 bird would be capable of, which would exclude newer SDB variants. Eurofighter (possibly) getting 2018+ tech doesn’t therefore mean the F-15E should also get 2018+ tech.

SDB II just entered service a year or two ago, the seeker/guidance system is incredibly advanced and HIGHLY classified. It’s got INS/GPS, laser, millimeter-radar, infrared, home-on-jam, and datalink guidance all in one. Good luck getting the proper documentation for implementing that beast. Not to mention the fact that RAZBAM said they are modeling a ~2006 era F-15E, nearly two decades before the SDB II entered service. Laser SDBs were a stop gap between SDB I and II, since budget constraints slowed development on the II. This is slightly more plausible to get documentation for as the laser seeker is the same as used on LJDAMs, but it is still a decade newer than the planed timeframe of the F-15E module.

I have to disagree with this statement. No doubt the E has a lot more room for stores and can drag a lot more hate into battle at a significantly further range, but the hornet has the more versatile arsenal. Hornet has rockets, anti-radiation missiles, anti-ship missiles, and cruise missiles; E model does not. The only class of weapon the Hornet doesn’t have that the E model does have is the sensor fuzed weapons (CBU-97/105). Other notable weapons on the E model already have analogous counterparts in the Hornet. The GBU-15 is damn near the same as the Walleye II. The AGM-84E/K can do everything the AGM-130 can do and more, minus the warhead size. GBU-28 is a “bunker buster” LGB; while the hornet can’t quite match the warhead of the GBU-28, it does have access to other “bunker buster” LGBs that are more than capable of destroying anything in DCS. The small diameter bomb (specifically the SDB I; Laser SDB and SDB II is a whole other beast but there is zero chance we are getting that in DCS) is a pure INS/GPS penetrating glide bomb, same as the JSOW-C but trades size for quantity.

From my personal experience, wrapping my head around the HOTAS logic for the A-10 was a massive pain in the ***. Having to memorize the functions of all the different switches was overwhelming as a rookie. China hat, coolie hat, boat switch, data management switch, target management switch… its a lot. F-18 has one hat switch you have to memorize functionality for, pretty much everything else is buttons that are labeled by their functionality (e.g. to expand the FOV on your FLIR, you hit the button labeled “FLIR FOV”). I think the F-18 is a far less frustrating module to learn if you have no prior experience. Plus carrier ops are way more fun than land based ops IMO.

It depends on the vertical velocity of the bomb. If the bomb is descending at too high of a speed at the time it reaches the set BA, all the dispersed bomblets will impact the ground before they have time to release their parachutes. A higher BA will give the parachutes more time to deploy. 500 ft is fine for low level CCRP bombing, but if you do dive CCIP bombing or high level CCRP there is a good chance your bomb will be too fast by the time it releases its bomblets and they will dud into the ground. I usually set the BA at 1,200 ft., I find it it be the minimum height that CCIP consistently works. Default BA used to be 1,500 or so until a couple months ago, I don’t know why it got switched to a lower altitude.

Thanks for the responses all. TMS Right/TGT on the FCR more or less works. It doesn’t continuously update though, I.E. the TPOD will just slew to where the FCR was designating at the time of hitting TMS Right. Still not exactly slaving to the SPI, but easier than creating a markpoint. I’m guessing the TPOD following the FCR as Frederf says is either bugged/WIP. It works fine with slaving TPOD to HTS at least, which I use a lot.

TMS aft/down is target reject, all it does is unlock the designated GMT lock. This is what I have been doing as a workaround in the past, but it is overly cumbersome and illogical. The workload aught be as simple as lock target with GMT to create SPI, slave TPOD to SPI, then switch to TPOD as SOI/SPI designator once you have visual with the TPOD. Thats how SPI logic works it is in every other plane, but maybe F-16 is different IRL. I’ve said it before, but damn the F-16 is the least user friendly plane out there.

Is there a way to slave the TPOD to a SPI created via locking a target in GMT? Hitting CZ seems to slave the TPOD to the steerpoint rather than the SPI. This is opposite of the behavior when you designate a SPI with the HTS, in which CZ slaves the TPOD to said SPI. I can visually confirm the SPI is being created by the radar, I get a weapon solution on the target and everything. Maybe I’m bad at reading but I can’t find anything in the guide relating to this. Any help would be appreciated.

The other responses go over the procedure for TPOD handoff and manual tracking, which is good to know but didn’t actually answer your specific question. The reason your maverick didn’t release is because it isn’t locked on to anything. No lock, no release. When you designate a target with the TPOD, the maverick may fail to get acquire a lock. When the maverick has a lock on a target, the tracking gate (crosshairs) close. In the picture you provided, the crosshairs are still open. The easiest/quickest remedy is to hit TMS up with the maverick screen SOI to attempt a lock, as skywalker22 shows in his video. Sometimes it takes several attempts, especially if you are at 5nm or more. Below are examples of an unlocked and locked maverick screen (taken from Chuck’s guide). You can also see this in skywalker22’s video. Note how the crosshair closes the gap once it acquired a lock.

I’m a ground pounder first, air superiority second kind of guy. The lack of a CCRP solution or guided munitions in the -33 really leaves me at the mercy of whatever air defence system is lurking in the TA. Although whenever I am feeling particularly naughty I’ll take the -33 for a spin and do some IRST stealth hunting. It never gets old ramming an R-27ET up the tailpipe of an F-16 that never knew it was I was there to begin with.

J-15 would be awesome, I would absolutely by that module in a heartbeat. Multirole flanker AND carrier ops? Don’t think I would fly any other module again save for an F-14D which isn’t going to happen.

I can second what Void68 said, I would routinely have close misses with CCRP releases which turned out to be from INS/coordinate problems, but mine were caused by something different. The two things I did that fixed this was 1.) on initial startup, making sure the plane is completely rearmed BEFORE starting the alignment process. Rearming causes the plane to shift around, which during the alignment process causes slight errors in the INS system. Wags mentions this in his official alignment tutorial. 2.) The TPOD video feed by itself doesn’t give perfect coordinates, its more of an approximate location. In order to get precise coordinates (and as such, a precise CCRP solution), you have to briefly shine the laser on the target to get proper ranging information. Through mathematical magic the plane uses the ranging information provided by the laser and compares this to the INS/GPS coordinate of your own plane and the slant angle of the plane/TPOD to calculate the precise coordinate of the target. You can visual confirm this is working as the coordinates displayed on the TPOD screen change after you briefly shine the laser. Both of these steps are includes in the F-16 tutorials so in theory you should already be doing this, in which case all my typing was for naught. But if you are a dumb*** like myself who relied entirely on prior experience flying the A-10 and F/A-18 rather than actual tutorials to operate the F-16, this might be your issue.

What you want is an Expanded A/A radar mode. I don’t believe this has been added to the Jf-17 yet but is planned before it leaves early access. Someone may correct me if I am mistaken, but I knew it wasn’t a thing a year or so ago and I don’t recall seeing anything in the patch notes saying it was added.

I’m not sure how well the J-10 would sell, I feel like (apart from the hardcore DCS guys that buy every module) only the really dedicated RedFor guys would buy it. A lot of people don’t pay much mind to RedFor planes and would likely see it as just another red light fighter like the Jf-17. If they didn’t care about the Jf-17 I doubt they would care about the J-10. It’s a problem thats hard to overcome since the majority of the DCS community live in the West and are innately biased towards the planes that their country flies. I can’t convince any of my buddies to get the Jf-17 to fly with me, the reasoning several of them gave me was “I have no connection to that plane”. No chance these guys would buy the J-10 either. Its also a hard sale on the more casual/frugal players who already own the Jf-17; what does the J-10 bring to the table that the Jf-17 doesn’t already have? IRST on the B model I suppose, but that seems like a stretch to get documentation on for proper implementation. This is why I regret getting the F-16 when I already owned the F/A-18 and JF-17, there aren’t enough capabilities the F-16 has that the other planes don’t have to justify the price tag. I basically paid $70 for wingtip AMRAAMs and off-boresight ARM functionality. Now if it was the J-10 naval variant (assuming they are carrier capable, I can’t find much info on them), I could see it selling really well; Red guys don’t have any FF carrier aircraft. Su-30 would definitely draw everyones attention though, the Flanker is THE BlueFor adversary, legendary in the West. There’s also only one other FF heavy fighter in the game right now, and said heavy fighter is rather antiquated compared to the Su-30MKK. Even the hardcore Blue guys would buy this.

Some people want a full-fidelity F-15C module. Since the likely hood of that happening anywhere in the near future (or ever) is slim to none, an E model w/o CFTs is the closest they are going to get. That idea is somewhat understandable. Other people are hardcore A/A fanatics and couldn’t give a crap about fidelity or what plane they fly, they just want the raw performance a powerful low-drag plane like a neutered E model would have to give them an edge in PvP. Those people are lame and deserve to be smitten by every SA-10 out there.

If you are actively lasing the target, TDC depress won’t fix anything unless the coordinates are waaay off from the target. Laser guided bombs have a lot of leeway when it comes to inaccurate releases, assuming you are at sufficient altitude. If you only had to slew a little bit from the coordinates, then this isn’t the problem. What it sounds like is either the laser wasn’t armed, there was another laser source interfering with your bomb (such as a JTAC lasing on the coordinates rather than the target), or the laser code of your bombs don’t match the laser code of your pod. By default the bombs don’t have a laser code assigned, you must assign them with the UFC for every pylon. I *think* the TPOD has a default code of 1688, but that might also be something you have to set. Make sure you set the LTDR code and not the LSS code as those are two different things. Also the LTDR code can’t be set on the ground, you have to be airborne and the LTDR switch turned on. A good way to trouble shoot what your issue is is to run it again, but press F6 once you release your bomb to watch it as it falls (don’t forget to lase while in F6 view, your controls still work). If it falls in a smooth ballistic trajectory all the way to the ground, that means it didn’t spot a correct laser source so you know the problem is something to do with the laser itself. If it suddenly makes sharp adjustments in the middle of its fall, that means it IS following a laser, which means either there is interference from another laser source (in which case the bomb will fall straight to the ground at a specific point), or the target is way too far off from your coordinates (where the bomb will essentially fall sideways into the ground trying to reach the laser source). Also, just to make 100% sure, you ARE using laser guided munitions right? Only the GBU-10, 12, 16, and 24 have laser guidance. All the other GBUs are GPS guided, in which case they would just hit whatever the active target point is, i.e. your coordinates.