OutOnTheOP

...are you even reading what they wrote? No one (NO ONE!!!) is advocating making anything "OP" or giving incorrect performance to any aircraft or system. They're just saying that you can "balance" things by choosing which aircraft are modelled. DCS could make a 100% true-to-life Boeing P-26 and pit it against a 100% true-to-life MiG-35. The MiG would win every time. DCS could make a 100% realistic Lockheed F-22 and throw it against a 100% accurate Polikarpov I-16. The F-22 would win every time. OR, they could make a 100% accurate late-model F-4, and pit that against a 100% accurate early MiG-23. THAT would be balanced. See the difference? They're just saying that, when an aircraft is made for DCS, that something of comparable capability should be made for the other side so they have a CHOICE to fight a fair fight. Right now, there isn't even the OPTION to fight a fair fight, because roughly-equivalent aircraft are not available. ...not that I think that the Russian aircraft they're asking for should be modelled, because so few of most of those variants have been built. Like the Ka-50 and Su25T, each of which were made in quantities around a dozen, not hundreds. For modern Russian, I think the best air superiority they should get is the Su27SM2, because that's the most advanced one in fairly common circulation.

I don't see any attachment points for them, though. A brief google search for "new raytheon ramjet missile" indicates that it is indeed a ramjet-powered, tail-fin-only competitor to the AGM-88E upgraded HARM

Doubtful they'd have that many AAA emplacements; AA guns aren't widely used, and haven't been for years. The one place they've had a niche is in the VERY forward elements, primarily for use against attack helicopters. On an airfield, I doubt it. Maybe a half dozen .50 cal guns, but those would be more for ground defense against infiltrators than for air defense. Your missile setup is, if anything, a bit on the light side. Perhaps too many IGLA (not that it's improbable to find that many, but they usually wouldn't have that many because they're just the backup to the more capable systems). SA11/ BUK is normally operated in a battery of six, not four. Chances are excellent there would be an SA-10 (S300) or SA-21 (S400) battery within 20 miles of the base as well. These would be a control van, EW radar, tracking radar, and 6-12 launchers *edit* Mind you, these are the realistic numbers for Russian or US defense of military airbases. They may be realistic, but they most certainly wouldn't be much fun to fly a mission against... at least, unless you're a real masochist.

For the US, I can assure you that you will never, EVER see a USAF airfield in an active combat theater (with hostile air or ballistic missile threat) without at least one PATRIOT battery defending it. More likely, they will have a full PATRIOT battalion. The basic battery consists of a command van, radar system, 8 PATRIOT launchers, 2 MANPADS teams (Stinger) for close-in defense, and maintenance and reload teams. A Battalion contains five batteries. They would not be physically close to each other, but spread out 30-40 miles apart from each other, possibly more. Perhaps two batteries would be within 5 or 6 miles of the airfield; if this was done, it would mostly be to maximize radar coverage

For COIN, it would work just fine. It's really not all that far from what the US has been providing to the Iraqis for COIN work, and which has been doing sterling service (when the Iraqis decide to stand and fight, at least). Cessna Caravan with TGP and Hellfire:

The first I can ever remember playing was "High Roller" (aka Strike Force Harrier) on the Commodore 64. I had to have been all of like 4 at the time. I remember getting very frustrated by it; don't know if I ever successfully took off. Getting airborne was a real bastard... which I guess means it was an accurate simulation, considering how temperamental the Harrier is? The first I ever remember playing with any success was one of the MSFS series... the one with the stick-figure airplanes in a WW1 dogfight quick mission. Reading the Wikipedia, looks like it was MSFS 1! Of course, I really grew up on the EA and Janes series.

Yeah, I have a *real* hard time imagining online missions *not* having F4U vs Me109. Particularly considering there are *already* missions with P-51 and F-86 mixed in among Su27 and F-15. So.... yeah, not buying it.

Absolute BS. That warhead was WAY larger than found on an S-8, and moreover, was a single warhead, not a ripple of rockets. There was a better chance that was an F-22 JDAM than MiG-29 firing S-8. No way of knowing what delivered the ordnance (or even that it was in fact air delivered), but it sure wasn't any 80mm rocket.

Dingding! Absolutely. What made the Fallout games (1 and 2) great was their interface; the isometric turn-based gameplay, and the character interactions (including grouping together with NPCs). The transition to FPS took a steaming dump all over everything that Fallout was.

Pretty sure what I was suggesting is exactly how the DCS A-10C works currently.

Hmm... not sure I agree it should be *completely* up to the mission designer, but what about making 4-5 historically common beltings, the mission designer selects which are *available*, then the pilot chooses from the available list?

You may be convinced he likes to create drama, but your last three entries on this thread have all come across as deliberately confrontational, at least to me. Photos were posted that illustrated API-heavy .50 cal belting in USAAF useage, with aircraft that were obviously not P-51. You pointed out that one of them wasn't a P-51. Solty expressed confusion as to why that would matter. Solty seems to have more than adequately understood that some of the pictures weren't P-51s; it wasn't a key point of the discussion; AN/M2 .50 caliber guns in aerial useage by fighters was the larger issue being discussed. An appropriate counter-response would have been more along the lines of "Oh, not saying that those type of belts weren't used, just that the photograph was mis-identified". Misunderstanding cleared; issue done. Now, on topic, yeah, I'm all for customizable (as in, select from a pre-made list of historically valid) beltings. Like what they do with the DCS A-10. Not like CloD. Certainly it's more reasonable than adjustable convergence; custom belting can be done by any idiot with enough of the desired projectiles on hand; you need no tools and no technical knowledge to de-link and re-link .50 BMG (though a linking machine is a lot faster and easier)

Agreed. Don't get me wrong: while I may gripe about this-or-that aircraft and the choices the developers make, I am still happy they are making something. Now, do I disagree with some of the logic? Sure. Would I prefer to see things implemented in a particular order that may not agree with what the developers are doing? Absolutely. Am I shy about debating the developer's choices and letting my opinion be heard? Not even a little! I think it's important that the developers get feedback from their customers (even the most partisan of frothing fanboys ;) ) Regardless, while I may desire a P-38 ten times more than I want a Sea Fury, I still want the Sea Fury infinitely more than I want no new aircraft. Keep up the good work, developers!

If there were one, single, solitary "common" modern multirole jet, I would agree. But there's not. One single F-16, F/A-18, MiG-29, F-4, Su-27, F-15E, Tornado, Eurofighter.... *anything* a bit more mainstream, then yes, I would agree. But this is like if they announced DCS WW2, and the second plane they announced were the Bolton Paul Defiant! This just seems to me like an odd choice so early in development. Not saying they shouldn't do it, or even that I wouldn't be interested in it... but I don't think I'd be interested enough to shell out more than maybe $15 sale price, because I doubt I would fly it any more than as a "huh, I wonder how this one works" curiosity; once I had a passing grasp on the avionics... well, I doubt it would get much stick time. Just like I'd be curious to try out the Defiant, but knowing that it would only get stick time purely as a curiosity, I would have to weight my outlay in cash against the amount of time I'd put into it. It's a matter of investment (my time and money) versus return. Ok, but the same argument can be made the same for either side, here. As in, of course I'd like the Viggen, but "when they get around to it". If we can wait "until they get around to" an F-16, we can wait until "they get around to" a Viggen. The thing is, in DCS, I want planes I will fly in virtual combat. That's why I'm not as interested in the "unusual" aircraft. If my primary intention is fly them around and learn their cockpits and avionics peculiarities, I can get much of that experience on other well-developed platforms. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a well-modelled Viggen for MSFS somewhere that has a pretty good simulation of the avionics. Yes, but the same could be said about an F-16, or some of the Su27 derivatives. Or a J-10. Or an F-4. Or any number of other aircraft (well, ok, aside the thrust reverser part). So the question is then again: why the Viggen and not something else? I would be far more enthusiastic about a Gripen, even. I just don't see it making real good return on investment for LNS. Maybe the business model is to get rare, "interesting" birds out early, so that the modern-multirole-starved audience is happy to buy anything that scratches the itch, before they're all sated on the common aircraft and no longer interested in buying more? *edit* also, an F-16, the most ubiquitous fighter aircraft in the west, hasn't even been ANNOUNCED. As best as anyone knows, NO ONE is making one. Nor an F-4. Nor an F-15E. In fact, there's pretty much nothing for the USAF but the A-10. Everything else is naval, or European. VVS is in the same boat: nothing modern. The two main air forces in the world have nothing to represent them in DCS.

Looks smashing, but I can't say I'm thrilled to see yet another end-of-war superprop... I really hope they don't show up in WW2 servers, but I am quite certain they will. At this rate, I'm going to have to demand a P-51H just to stay competitive >.< I think you're on the right track with the P-40 and F4F: '43 to late '44 is more interesting to me, as there is general parity in performance, huge historical significance, and it well supports the WW2 online community.

Entirely possible, but I can't imagine that all the more likely candidates are saddled with that problem.... Viggen is down near the *last* modern jet in terms of overall proliferation. I find it hard to believe that nothing else was practical to simulate.

I have to disagree: while the F-somethings, as you put it, may have featured in games before, they've never been done anywhere near DCS fidelity; particularly as regards flight modelling. By that logic, the A-10C should have been a disappointing flop: there have been, by my count, at least four simulations exclusively focused on the A-10. I don't know about you, but A-10 Tank Killer, circa 1989 (my God, was it really that old?!?!) isn't really scratching the itch anymore. Neither is the dessicated corpse of Falcon 4.0. No matter how many mods have been bootstrapped on it, that game is not DCS, and the flight model is still simple.

Absolutely agree. Viggen, or Buchon, or AT802U or any other (relatively) obscure, niche audience plane are certainly cool, but there's very little reason why they should be initial entries into DCS. The stable of flyables is still fairly small (not one true multirole fighter jet. Not. A. Single. One.) There are MANY aircraft with wider appeal (and often, wider capability for multirole). Let's get the F-4s, the MiG29s, the F-16s, the Tornados, all those widely-used, multirole, iconic aircraft that can be used for many nations and many roles first. After there's a decent selection of those, it would be more appropriate to bring in the less common airframes.

Interesting. Assuming that it's correct, that's a bit too far (not to doubt your work, I'm more suspicious that measurements used by the game might not quite line up with "normal" units of degrees or milliradians... for example, they might use Russian mils instead of NATO mils... which is, if I recall, 6000 mils in a circle instead of 6400). The K14 harmonization pattern should have the shortest pair converging at around 950 feet, and the longest at around 1150, from my understanding. So that *is* a bit much.

Having personally seen the effects of 500-lb class weapons, 98-lb 155 projectiles, 39-lb 120mm mortar, and hellfire (mind you, not sure which warhead it had on board), I would wager that NONE of those were SDB. The blast in the corner was more on line with the effects I've witnessed from a 500-lb, and the pair in the center had less effect than even the Hellfires (lightest warhead of the bunch). Granted, if they'd been deep underground.... But that, then begs the question "if deep penetration were the goal, why would you use the lightest, lowest sectional density weapon you have available?". Not having looked up the penetration characteristics of the SDB, I'd guess they are significantly worse than the GBU38. As to why you would drop inert warheads, that's already been explained. ...and if you don't think that a 20+ inch wide projectile screaming through a concrete roof at supersonic or near-supersonic speed is sufficient to kill or maim everybody in the room, you should probably read up on spalling and APFSDS kill mechanisms. I will admit that the primary reason to use inert warheads doesn't seem to be present in this case: there's no immediately adjacent buildings that you have to worry about collateral effects on.

The more I think about it, the more I'm actually leaning toward that. Particularly considering that the pair that hits closer to the center of the building NEVER seems to detonate; there's no debris thrown from that portion of the building, aside from a bit of broken glass and the like from the kinetic impact. Entirely possible that they were all inert bombs, but struck something a little LESS inert in the one corner of the building, and *that* is what actually blew up. *edit* the underground facility theory isn't bad, either: ISIS is known to make extensive use of underground facilities for protection of leadership and munitions stocks. Still, underground detonations are typically accompanied by a significant heaving of the soil above....

Ok, but knowing a bit about weaponeering, I have to ask: WHY? You delay fuze to get penetration, but you only need fractions of a second against a building of that type of construction. Having a delay in the order of secondS (plural) accomplishes nothing but allowing your target to escape the area of lethal effect. Unless, of course, that was the point. Maybe civilians on the target?

Good question. First, it seems to me the third object does not in fact go through the hole of the first set; it looks to me like it hits slightly (a meter or two) short (right, from the perspective of the camera). If two GPS munitions were dropped on the exact same coordinates, that would be entirely possible Second, I'm not convinced that you ever actually see a detonation in there; it seems to me more like the camera simply flashes because it's being switched from narrow to wide field of view. As to WHAT it is, I *would* have said you were seeing a "blue bomb", but there's too much smoke for that. "Blue bombs" are simply inert practice bombs with a JDAM kit on them; they were found to work well in Iraq against buildings, because the buildings were largely concrete/ cinder block: the raw kinetic energy of the bomb would kick enough fragments of concrete into the interior of the building to have good effects on anyone inside, but it wouldn't hurt anyone outside with thrown debris that an explosive warhead would cause. The blue bombs were more than occasionally enough to collapse small buildings. With this clip, hard to say. It doesn't appear to show the entire strike: for one, the last bit shows a collapsed portion of the building on a corner, but I didn't see anything strike around that part of the building. I suppose it's possible that they were some kind of fuel-air explosive? If you were dropping several on the same MPI, it might be worth putting a detonator only on the last one, so that it ignites the fuel in one LARGE explosion instead of several small, sequential ones. Who knows? *edit* in the last seconds, you can clearly see the holes where the first pair hit. The camera is looking from the opposite side of the building from when they impacted. The entry holes are very CLOSE to each other, but definitely not through the same hole.

Yeah, except there's a huge difference between air flowing through a radiator, where it is progressing in a turbulent manner through a barrier, quite possibly coming out slower than it went in, versus going through an ENGINE that is ejecting it at higher speed than it went in. It's really hard to take seriously the critiques of someone who bases their arguments around assessments of drag and fuselage lift from eyeballing a picture. Because, y'know, the engineers that designed it, using massive computing power to assist in optimization, had no clue how to ensure high body lift.

Or, y'know, a huge amount of thrust, coupled with thrust vectoring and excellent flight control programming. ....oh, wait. :lol: Besides that, 28 degrees/second at what airspeed?