Billy

I mean

California, ordered on Oct 29th, not received yet:(

I do BVR in private servers or small-scale team airquakes, I stopped getting consistent long-range Phoenix kills after everyone died to a 60-mile shot at least once (should still shoot to force some altitude and timing advantage). One player even learned the angle the Phoenix descends and sometimes intercepts it with a Maddog SD-10 for funny. I get about the same number of kills with the Sidewinder and the Phoenix, Banzai people down for a pre-merge Phoenix shot seems to be the best tactic

Possibly AI logic/difficulty changed, making them defeat missiles more easily. I remember them barrel rolling much more, you can check Tacview to see what they did. Against players I don't hope for a hit outside of ~5nm

For me Harrier is super easy, I landed it 1st try a year ago on flatscreen. Although I spend 90% of my time on the Tomcat, I still couldn't do it even in VR:( (Provided I didn't fly too much last year)

Stores drag?

I'm more ok with J-8PP than F-20 because J-8PP represents the capability of standard J-8II's, therefore I can pretend they are normal J-8II's. I don't want to fly a server alongside or against 20 F-20s.

F-14 is like the F-22, there is a huge threat, and an extremely capable platform is needed. Both planes achieved the needed superior capabilities by smart engineering, but the technology is still the older technology. Both planes absolutely dominated in their first 20 years of service, but near the end of that they see a lot of new rivalries with the same capabilities. The rivalries gained capabilities through improvements of technologies, such as the F-15 receiving AMRAAMs, or the F-35 having better sensors and electronics. Still, for another 20 years the F-14 and the F-22 will show competence, the thoughts put in their design are at work. Even if you upgrade them with new technologies, they will dominate. But the smart optimizations that granted it superior capabilities now hold it off, it's expensive to change them. All the optimizations for the AWG-9 and the AIM-54 are not needed, fleet defense is no longer needed, and the newer round of technology is coming up. (5th generation/6th generation fighters) The F-15 is like the B-52 though. I will not be surprised if it out serves the F-22.

Compared to IRL, people in DCS are too good to exploit the game's flaws, but too bad at avoiding mistakes.

The F-14 can STT reliably at any practical range/altitude and fire, it's good to use that against opponents without that capability

I have always used Jester as the AWG-9 interface, and I always wished there would be more commands to him: Scan elevation +-1 degree, MLC filter, Scan pattern/bars, TCS zoom, set non-attack ...etc. I rarely switch seats because it will cause my computer to freeze. But i found that if you leave Jester untouched, he would make decisions, like RWS/TWS, bars, hooking targets... Sometimes he do them pretty well. I wonder how good is Jester's decision making? Or how much intelligence did the HB team give Jester?

Another reason why HB is awesome! Meanwhile another Dev team constantly want you to know it's "the Year of the Strike Eagle"

I used to have no feelings if not dislike towards this plane, it's not as sexy as the F-14 or the F-15. I'm sure if Dassault was right on "If it is beautiful, it will fly well", the J-8 would tank terribly. But I've learned to love it recently, for how homemade it made me feel. This plane doesn't have a great integration of avionics, will not our maneuver your opponent. But every system there is reliable. It flies high and fast and has a long solid body of fuel that will take you anywhere. I don't mind whether it's a Su-15 copy, or inspired by the Flagon, or has nothing to do with it.

I count many times people said it doesn't matter if Mudhen gets released with inaccurate avionics: "It doesn't matter as long as the capabilities are correct. " HB is honest that the EF2000 is going to be a mashup of the docs they can get on Trenche 1 and 2. J-8 gets the different treatment because it's not the pop star. For me, it's no different than the previous 2: 1. It's impossible to get documents to accuately depict the service version 2. Devs tries their best with current documents to make a capability-matching, full-fidelity variant. The J-8PP isn't even a made up variant As long as Deka is transparent enough I don't see a problem. I bet making a prototype J-8 isn't their first choice either. As I've said, if it's Razbam, they would just announce it as J-8II, and maybe somewhere in discord say that it's the Peace Pearl.