Temetre

Yup, thats my understanding too. Has some later upgrades like the 'dogfight-mode'/CAA switches.

At least on the A-10 it says APR-36, despite an ALR being behind it^^ Its weird tbh xD I think so, the ALR-46 would be early 70s, so youd have a recently upgraded F-4E. Those even flew in late vietnam I think. Now Im not sure what the AN/ALE-40 changed tho; but I imagine its just more capacity? Could easier just ignore that detail, or limit countermeasures.

My bad, I was being too vague as well xD I ment to say, when the F-14 upgraded in the 80/90s to the ALR-67, that was vastly more advanced than than the ALR-46. The F-14 kinda skipped the F-4E Phantoms ALR-46. AFAIK those two RWRs might also be closer than they look; the F-14 just has an outdated display scheme for the most part. But the ALR-45 has lights for certain SAM systems, like it can show "SA6" when it identifies that one of the contacts is an SA6. It just doesnt show which one. If I had to make a guess, the reason is almost certainly cost and necessity. Doing a 45 -> 46 upgrade for the Tomcat wouldnt be cheap, and who knows how much the system would need to be adjusted for the Tomcat. F14s likely already burned a hole in the Navys budget without extra upgrades, and this is while Vietnam is going on. On the other hand, the F-4E probably needed the RWR also much more; it was much more active in Vietnam, and operating close to north-vietnamese SAMs, while having to react to regular Mig' ambushes. Many Phantoms were lost after all. Thats likely the main reason why our F-4E is stuffed with an almost absurd amount of tech for a 60s airframe, it was one of the most important active combatants of the USAF (and USN to a degree). Otoh, the poor amazing Tomcat was always a bit behind in terms of upgrades, suffering from cost, post-Vietnam budget cuts and a role that never got quite relevant. Thats my assumptoin, might be wrong of course Best thing is, on the A-10 the cockpits RWR-screen actually has an APR-36 marking. But while they kept that screen, the tech behind it was upgraded multiple times with digital RWRs. I think that mightve been part why even Heatblur got confused about it on the Phantom Maybe thats also the case for the F-4E? An APR-36 screen with ALR-46 tech behind it.

To avoid confusion, its the ALR-46, not APR-46. Thats based on an earlier confusion^^ Our F-4E got the OOFP-5 or so modifications as well, thats also around 1980. The base configuration of the plane is older tho; and if you limit equipment accordingly, its very close to a late cold war F-4E. This stuff gives a bit more flexibility for when you use the F-4E in other scenarios, or with foreign liveries/places etc. I dont know why taht would be hard to believe. The 80s F-14s got a much more capable ALR' RWR than the Phantoms -46.

Yeh thats my stance too. Hesitant to buy anything till the RB situations is cleared up. Im not happy with EDs radio silence on this major issue.

Aye, that makes sense. Theres probably also gradients to how the M2K handles it, im not 100% sure. Neat tho

Interesting. Is it done like in RBs M2K, which afaik assumes a static percentage of RCS with tail/side/top/bottom for all aircraft? (like as a made up example, frontally it might always assume planes to reflect 80% RCS) I wouldnt worry about that tbh. Mind, the F-4E is from the same time as the Mig-21. Meaning you rely on EWRS warning planes, and youre not really reliant on finding targets with the radar, and youre not reliant on BVR combat anyway. Even in the worst case, you will be able to skip most radar complexity with dogfight-radar modes that go up to 5 miles out, which is well above the engagement range of a Mig-21 or often even Mirage F1 carrying Matra 550s. Also, just looking at the manual, the jester functionality seems to be heavily expanded and much more easy to control. It honestly sounds quite impressive as to how HB improved Jester, and I imagine hell be easier to manage than in the F-14 anyway, considering long range BVR/TWS shennanigans arent of concern in the Phantom.

Some seem completely useless for non-nuclear, others seem very niche, like Dive Laydown for horizontal clusterbomb delivery. But even Dive Toss apparently was reliant on good maintenance and well trained pilot/WSO, and thats the 'easiest' to use mode.

Aye, Im aware Afghanistan has a lot more going on than just more recent COIN stuff. Wags was however highlighting that its the modern map and will likely be mostly about COIN missions; if people will follow that logic or not is ofc another question, but it threw up the question. The problem with mission design is that DCS only really supports heavily scripted and predictable missions; Im not sure how much this lends itself to the chaotic/unpredictable nature of COIN missions. AI enemies cant react dynamically to players' presence and actions, which imo would be a core feature of counter insurgency. Besides the lacking of autonomy, im also concerned about the general AI. For example, ground units struggle to move in a straight line often enough without getting stuck, their situational awareness is not simulated. Neither is the allimportant factor of suppression, let alone realistic fragmentation damage from bombs. COIN often relies on the inferiority of anti-air of insurgents, but there is very little limitation to AA-fire in DCS; a single AK trooper might fire with the awareness and precision of a highly trained Gepard SPAAG crew. They also are not limtied by night-time, as another issue. All in all I dont see the technical basis for COIN operations in current DCS. So I wonder if (or rather hope) were gonna get some big AI upgrades with that map coming?

Its a bit hard to see how Afghanistans' focus on COIN gameplay is gonna be realized, with the current limitations of DCS' AI, ground units and air defense, as well as the very static/scripted mission structure. (Wags said Afghanistan is intended to be a counter insurgency focussed maps, see the recent interview below:)

Why do you even want an Afghanistan map then?

Aye. Suppose ill wait for more detailed info when people start trying the EA. Your GPU/PC got a bunch more memory than anyone elses^^

Imo it would be nice to get some information on that before pre-ordering. Like, estimated, how much memory is full Afghanistan gonna be, how will does it perform at release (and later with more optimization) compared with Syria, for example? I would expect high quality from the map, the trailer speaks for itself, but performance is always a big issue in DCS. Multithreading is nice, but object density, RAM/VRAM usage and disk usage is pushing a lot of systems to the maximum already.

Tbh as muhc as I love destructible terrain in games, its usually very difficult to make work technically and performance wise. Especially in massive open world games as DCS. Stuff like runway destruction shouldnt be as difficult tbf.

Tbh theres more talk around explaining the weird sales models than there is selling the map to us. Like, why is this map 70 bucks worth, when eg Syria was 50? Why should we buy another map with very similar terrain to the other ones? Tell us why the map is worth buying, besides the very basic marketing blips. The map certainly looks cool, come on ED, sell us the idea of the map and why your approach is special. Splitting the maps up like this also seems nedlessly complicated, as indicated by the amount of questions it creates; even the long FAQ doesnt exaplain everything. Theres now gonna be 7 different combinations of the 3 map versions; and compatability of missions/campaigns/servers will be kind of a struggle, since terrain quality will affect visibility even in BFM, let alone anything ground based. When I dogfight using the low quality version, will just be able to dive into where cities would be, and the high quality players seems me warping through buildings?

Oh thats finnally been fixed? Cool!

Ive also seen Zabu on the Discord mention some pretty big bugs: For example it was like, whenever the target altitude would be above current planet altitude, the pod would just go stupid and revert to fallback mode. They did make a version with fixed software and stuff later. I think the HB F-4 will have both versions.

Aye, so also might be a maintenance issue in Vietnam? Or pilot mistake, wouldnt be the first time that causes issues with new tech (see Sparrow^^).

Thx

Wait so the F1M has no IFF interrogator either? I thought it was upgrade with one

You already got good answers, but ive heard some anecdotes about Dive Toss. Apparently some pilots disliked it, but a few also got really well trained in it and had really good results. So its definitely been used to effect, even if it wasnt always popular. I imagine thats also gonna be the most commonly used mode, its amazing in the A4 SKyhawk.

Yes, I also had the autopilot stop working after a dogfight in the F-1EE. Wonder if its an issue with INS or magnetic compass being confused? Or mb I needed to use the throttles autopilot lever/button in combination with the AP-button to reenable it Could be degraded systems or user error.

Well put. I always like to point out how much of the combat is about the environment. Sure the F-18 gives you a ton of situational awareness, but you will absolutely need that awareness when you deal with modern SAMs and missiles. When you sit in a 70s scenario in a Phantom or Mirage F1, you wont face as many scary things. And heck, those two for example are well ahead of most of the competition (like Mig-21s). The "easy of flying" really isnt that big of a deal. Ive learned flying in IL2 Sturmovik, flying WW2 fighter aircraft. Only difficult thing is visibility while landing imo. F-4 is probably gonna be luxury compared to that.

So theres ways to start the F-4 with rapid alignment, which limits the alignment process to 2.25 minutes, rather than 10 (or sometimes even 20) minutes for highest accuracy. (ignoring stored heading) What systems would suffer from such a rapid alignment? Obviously the nav computer error becomes bigger, but the WRCS, Radar and sight are also all fed information from the INS; but its not clear to what extend those are hurt, if at all. From Zabu we also know that Pave Spike stabilization is worse. Couldnt really find information about the effects of poor alignment from a short skim of the manual.

Yeh, and apparently tried in test aircraft, but those were probably wired specifically for that role then.