Temetre

Tbh I think you reading into this. Nobody was talking about cheaters. The problem is if you got both planes on steam and standalone. So you have to use standalone for the full package, and steam doesnt work at all anymore because its bound. If I understand the change correctly.

^ Thats the real problem im concerned about. We can do that currently, and I dont think ED has the plan to change that. But what in a year? In two years? They showed that they are willing to make changes overnight without even talking to the community about it beforehand.

Thats not true. You didnt "have" to do this, as long as ED doesnt get into financial trouble otherwise, you have the freedom of choice. You (if you wanna take responsibility for this change) did this because its the eaisest solution to make this our problem. Im sure they wouldve been other solutions, but this one was just easy. Its not cheaters, I imagine its people sharing a seperate steam and standalone account. And the steam account doesnt get the standalone planes, but the standalone also gets the steam planes. Someone at ED probably decided "this is theoretically lost income" and decided to do this. This is decision is almost certainly just motivated by greed. DCS is more succesfull than ever before currently, but someone just decided thats not enough, they want more money. And if that means taking away from average customers, then so be it.

I basically got one thing on the standalone. And yeah, now I just cannot use DCS steam at all anymore. Should be pretty obvious whats the issue. I get that. ED had a problem. But then ED decided to make it the communities problem instead. You know, the community that already puts up with all the game bugs and crowdfunding. And ED didnt even tell us, until people started asking why theres an issue. This kind of change takes weeks of testing, its not something you do from one day to the other. ED also didnt have plans to make impossible to use connected steam accounts. Until they had a plan to do so. Thats the thing, theyve changed the rules of usage, so why wouldnt they change it again in future?

Im aware you didnt make that decision, its the ED leadership, tho im gonna say "im sorry you feel that way" is a pretty bad thing to write. Coulda been sorry about ED making a change thats objectively punishes me without any doing of my own. Thats the problem, and not my feelings over it. And "someone broke the EULA and thats why we punish you too" is not a justification. ED just made a change limiting how I can access a game I put like 200-300 bucks into. ED just decided to push the problems onto players, rather than to deal with it. Maybe it wont change anything, because ED has more power than players, who also tend to have a short memory. For me I can say, I was planning to dive into helicopters and get the Hind or Apache on christmas sales, but now I have zero interest in giving ED money for them. And then I cannot use anything from Steam together with stuff I got on the Standalone. I basically just cannot use DCS World on Steam anymore. Also, whats next? Will the bind be removed, will we not be able to transfer licenses anymore? If ED makes a changes like this without telling us, theres no knowing whats their next step. Even if they dont intend to do anything currently, they might just change their mind in the future. ED has control over the platform, so it kinda matters if we can trust them. And with this we clearly cannot trust them to not make changes against our interest.

Im obviously not blaming you or anyone else working on the community side. Im blaming the ED leadership or whoever made that decision. Im sure this has been coming a longer way, its not something you do one day to the other normally. And it just feels bad to be treated like that. Nor do I know how else ED might restrict our access to the game in the future.

Why did we have a newsletter on friday, but it doesnt tell that ED just changed over the weekend so we cant use steam accounts anymore when they are connected to standlone accounts?

Gotta be real, this feels like a really trashy way to treat your customers, by the ED leadership. First, we dont even get told about this change at first and had to learn it the hard way. Thats unacceptable from the get go and shows a blatant disregard for customers and community. And secondly, this is ED arbitrarily changing how we can access the game. This is some kind of "pray I dont alter the deal further" moment. We have no choice, we werent asked, not told. Just ED changing such a fundamental thing, a principle of access the game was sold on, and we have to suck it up. This is only made worse becasue we already put up with so much. We pay silly amounts of money for modules, we accept a deeply buggy game, and we crowdfund eternal early access modules with often questionable road maps. If anything, ED should give back more to the community, rather than treat us like this and take away features. I planned to purchase more modules, eg the F-4E instantly at release, but Im gonna put those on hold. Not just because Im treated badly, but because this makes clear that I cannot trust ED to not make changes against my interest. If they did a decision like this as if its nothing, what else will they do in the future?

I might be misremembering, but IIRC someone from Heatblur actually said its probably not worth it for lack of interest, besides lack of documentation.

I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile. I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile. I included the RWR with "EW gear". The point was about compatability with the missile.

Obviously besides the EW gear lol

Crash could be a clue or could be nothing. But if the test doesnt find errors... its probably not the memory. Tbh I cant really thing of more things to try.

@Match Hm, that looks frustrating af. My bet is some bug/memory leak in DCS, but who knows. Its probably worth checking if your memory is fine? 1. Try Memtest64, thats a simple software that checks your RAM for errors. I once or twice had broken RAM chips, and memory-testers instantly found them. 2. I imagine you also got software for your SSDs? They usually come with specific software from the manufacturer, like "Kingston SSD Manager" or "Samsung Magician". If you havent run that, do it so it can check for damaged cells. Another thing is, your VRAM might be full when playing DCS. I dont think that should cause stutters and loading issues as severe as this, but its worth a try. Your 3080 is a fast GPU, but a bit limited in memory with only 10GB of VRAM. And DCS really loves to gobble up as much memory as possible. Easiest way to lower memory usage is just to lower textures. Imo just set the first two texture settings to low for a test run. If you still got issues, make sure youre using less than 10gb GPU memory.

Good point, someone also point that out to me on the discord. The only thing required for full supporte of STARMs on the F-4E is apparently a panel, and maybe software. I think F-4Gs are also very close to F-4Es.

Interesting! I was mostly pointing that out because Kermit seemed to say the F-8 were beloved because of their gun. Im not disagreeing the gun is useful. Im happy were getting an F-4 with gun in DCS

Tribalistic nonsense. Gotta make up groups so you can villify them for having differing opinions, I suppose.

Tbf most of the times theres tons of seperate manuals. Seems to vary quite a bit how complete the 'main' manual is.

Pilots are biased. If they are not trained to use a weapon, which has some reliability issues, and then see the weapon missed most of the predictably bad shots... yeah, of course they might think its a bad weapon and they dont wanna bet their life on it. Guns are much more predictable and under their control. Same way pilots might dislike the "feel" of FBW, when in reality it gives them so much more control about what the plane is doing, just in a more indirect way. But that doesnt mean the weapon is bad. The bit about "theres a low chance to hit" usually depends on the usage of the weapon, and you cant tell me that guns have an easy time getting kills. And its actually the prefered strategy for missiles these days to go for low risk low kill chance shots. Do that enough and you get a kill, without putting your plane too much into danger. And I think the numbers really back that up. Idk how accurate Wikipedia is, but the US aerial victory list shows 19 F-8 kills over vietnam. And the Aim-9 article claims 16 kills by F8s with Aim-9s. All available data seems to show that guns dont bring many planes down, but missiles do. The F-105s have an extraordinary amount of gun kills, but that plane was also taken out of service because of massive losses. You could say thats because its a bomber, but thats also true for the F-4s: Not all Phantoms lost were in fighter configuration.

The USAF made a lot of wrong calls. Black Wednesday happening shows clearly they didnt understand the conflict, hence they tried to adapt. And considering the F-4 went on to get most of its kills with missiles, I think that shows that a lack of gun wasnt the problem. Rather than the well docummented lack of strategy, communication and training in the scenario they found over vietnam. Late in the war, sparrows became the most effective weapon IIRC, even beyond sidewinders. The USN had better training from the beginning, and never struggled quite as much. The gun pod also seems more like a token gesture, or something for ground attack, considering how bad pods are for dogfighting (drag+no radar sight).

You could even say the F-104 was a bit too exciting

Only the 104S can use Sparrows. The G's radar doesnt got an illuminator to guide missiles.

I would argue that the F-4 proved that the cannon might be useful, but it wasnt really necessary. Even after the cannon-variant was introduced, most kills came in equal measures from Sparrows and Sidewinders. Pilots just got better at using the missiles, while technical shortcomings were sorted out. In the latter part Sparrows got most kills afaik. Its harder to make a judgement about the F-104 imo, but the concept itself might be flawed. If youre that fast, its gotta be very hard to get accurate gun hits with a B&Z fighter.

And mind that many of the 20mm kills are from F-105s. They only got two sidewinder kills. No kills for F-104s. If you look at F-4s, they are much more about Aim9/7s.

DCS is not doing trying to simulate as accurately as possible. As evidence, just watch the show with wags, where he talks about ballpark numbers, leaving out declassified features, that kinda stuff. He says they dont want a sim that "bad guys" can use for planning. Yet pretty much every scenario in DCS is fictional. Those specific SU-27s flying in DCS are almost always in places and times they dont belong. That shows that the purist view ignores the reality of the game. The use of "realism" is almost parody, when "this exact aircraft configuration" is presented as the hight of realism, and the scenario is just handwaved away. Let alone how the SU-27S is a simplified module, so it doesnt even hold up to the limited realism of FF modules. As said, Im not saying the missiles should be added to the plane, but the idea of adding them being a bigger breach of realism than anything else doesnt make sense. It might even be more believable in the common fictional conflicts in DCS, thats a context where fictional upgrades make more sense than outdated variants. You think ED is trying to make realistic tanks and ships in DCS? You can make an argument where planes and game system take shortcuts, but tanks/ships should be much more obivous. Who said that its problematic? My point was that this view of the game doesnt add up. If anything, I would turn your point around: People pretending DCS is trying to be an ultra realistic simulator are the ones who dont understand the game. Its the most realistic game simulating those planes in combat, maybe. But its clearly a game, even ED representatives are saying so. All those instant action missions, the comfort options like airstarts, the fast tutorials, air-pause, all that stuff is sign of a game trying to make learning and flying fun and accessible. Not just have the most super realistic sim. Wags talked about features they cant add or dont want to. And its not the "most realistic simulator", already because commercial sims exist. Let alone there being some big holes even in recent official modules. Isnt it telling that people even made this argument about FC3 planes, which are not even trying to be super realistic? They can do so if they want. But Im pretty sure theyd lose to commercial/military simulators. Eg the Mirage F-1s radar? Thats not realistic at all, they clearly made compromises. Frankly, "the most realistic simulation" is marketing speech, that only works compared to games. Not compared to simulators.

DCS itself runs counter to that philosophy. You cannot cite that statement and tell me you think thats serious word for word.