Smokin Hole

The enemy datalinks their positions to my Hog!? How. Cool. Is. That?

Well I fired up the Ka50 for the first time in a month. I wanted to see how fast I could designate a target, cover, and ERBL the location for a Lat/Long. It takes about a minute. This has the added benefit of not exposing the Ka50 during lasing. In other words I think our two worlds will exist happily (if unrealistically) laser or no laser. I still think it's a cool idea. But now realize that life as we know it will continue without networked sharks and hogs.

True again. Actually forget the laser. Just give me the OH-58.

Yeah it's a pipe dream, I know. Which begs the greater heathenistic question, where's DCS going? We will soon have two excellent, amazing, and highly sophisticated simulators that share nothing but the Editor and the DCS name? Are these two sims serving two separate online communities by design? I'd love a Kiowa. I'd also love a gold plated toilet seat. Neither will ever happen. So I'm stuck with a Ka50 that's being left behind by the new kid on the block with no functional battlefield connection to it. Was such a thing ever promised? No. But I did the dangerous thing and assumed...

Well I know how it works (pardon, but I don't know Lua script). In Eric-script it's: A10 "A" lazes with code 1688 / A10 "B" sets code 1688 = "B" sees what "A" designates. Let's not take the simulation thing too seriously. It's not as if a laser is being fired and the TGP (as modeled by DCS) is reading the wavelenth. This is just code and anything is possible. It almost certainly won't be done and I completely sympathize with why. But lots not pretend that the magic is actually taking place.

Well it would only be possible if ED assigned a laser code for reception of the Ka50 laser. Maybe the ka50 already transmits a signal readable by the TGP but I highly doubt it. Otherwise we, as Ka50 pilots, are left with smoke rockets and awkward ERBL coordinate handoffs. Not much fun IMO.

I'd considered posting this on the Warthog channel. Somehow I didn't think the idea would fly there. Maybe it won't here either. My request is this: dedicate a single A-10C laser code to allow LSS reception of a Ka50 laze. Logic says the mere thought should be DOA because it would destroy the purity of the study sim concept of the DCS series. And yes that's true. But think of what it would do for online co-op missions. It would allow live helo pilots a more active, cooperative role in the battlefield. Anyway, I don't need to explain further. I just wanted to see what others thought.

No it's not the complexity, it's the time available to the player. I switched to Rise of Flight partly out of frustration with BS/FC2. The online experience with that combo required a large time investment often with little action to show for it. That isn't to say the the experience wasn't great at times. I can recall a handful of really gratifying online sessions. With Rise of Flight the multiplayer experience is extremely up close and personal. The fights are almost physical. After half an hour on a populated server my palms are sweaty and my heart is racing. And after an hour I can walk away from my desk and return to my family completely satisfied that I had a great time. IL2 is a similar experience. So while I have loved first Flanker 1, then BS since it's release, and am learning to love the Warthog, these last two will now be single-player experiences for me. I can fully "comprehend" a half-hour flight pre-brief followed by a 1 hour coordinated CAS mission with comms and SPI handoffs, I have zero desire to invest the time when other aspects of life take priority. It's basically a question of time invested online vs the joy of the experience.

Kiowa. Easy to model. Works well on the battlefield with the A-10. And it's not all that far in capabilty from the Ka50. Plus it would relatively quick to develop.

This A-10 is complicated. Well duh! You say. I've found a big assist in learning this sim--my Kindle. Instead of paying $50+ to have the manual printed I just moved the .pdf file to the reader. It's perfectly formated and easy to read on the 6 inch display (The DX would be even better, and iPad better yet). For those of us who don't have dual monitors it's a perfect way to shave time off learning this flying bucket of bullets.