Frostiken

IFF is weird. From an AI perspective it's very hard to do, as currently it 'knows' everything is hostile or friendly. Once you introduce IFF, everything would have to be neutral until proven otherwise (or however you set your mission ROE). It would be awesome, but a major headache to the AI programmer who would now have to consider what to do when targets are considered as having invalid IFF (but aren't necessarily hostile). Last thing we want are forces shooting each other down. The classification of it gets really stupid. The NSA gets fidgety when you mention COMSEC, and even though the only truly classified aspect of IFF is Mode IV (and, specifically, the daily keys for it, for obvious reasons), no one actually knows how much they'd be able to model. The way Mode IV works isn't classified... what the signal is isn't classified. Hell, I don't even think the way the pulses send the signal (and thusly communicate to other systems which data is Mode 1 / 2 / 3/C / 4) is classified. But once you have them all together, suddenly it's classified. It's kind of stupid, since the fundamentals of IFF are well-known by almost everyone who cares at this point. Honestly, as a COMSEC guy and F-15E avionics guy who works AAI/IFF - I can't tell you why modeling IFF would be a secret, because I really can't figure it out myself. The only real answer I can give you is that the NSA is a bit retarded. I won't go really into it, but the way they demand COMSEC handled is really antiquated...

They suck ass compared to Tornadoes? Because that's the exact opposite of what the Bundeswehr told us :)

I like turtles.

I did. It was fun until my wingman smashed into me and killed me, due to psychotic AI behavior after I abandoned a landing.

The back of the PAS might not appreciate that though.

Heh, regarding the 'open hangar doors', I'm always amused by the PAS logic with the game. Do you have any idea how ridiculously difficult it would be to get an A-10 out of a PAS that was parked nose-first :D You'd need to get like twenty guys to push the damn thing out just so you could turn it around.

That's cuz the DLPs and pigtails are shit :p Nothing to do with the missile :D

You wouldn't get that kind of accuracy out of a JDAM. The CEP is something like 10-15 meters. For that, you'd need an .

Why do the F-16 fanboys keep acting like there isn't an F-16 sim out there that they could be playing right now?

Without a doubt though, avionics modeling on the F-15C would be much easier. But damn if we do get an F-15E, your brains will implode. The A-10C's avionics system is extremely easy and straightforward.

Kind of like how Simcity was still around because they made "Simcity Societies"...

Not fair to say that there isn't an F-16 sim, since the Falcon 4 / BMS / OpenFalcon / FreeFalcon / whatever the hell malarky is going on with that has kept the sim alive and (somewhat) up-to-date more than the F-15 and F/A-18. Making a DCS F-16 commercial product would be a waste.

Dear god what have I done

Errr, it is. Huge numbers of A-10s were lost in Desert Storm because battlefield commanders had no idea how it would fare against semi-competent air defenses. They got completely shredded. Generally you try to avoid losing expensive aircraft you don't have replacements for. When the A-10 was made in the Cold War, money was practically infinite and it was okay to lose planes and even pilots - the F-16 was built to be a cheap, lightweight disposable fighter - the infantry of the sky. This is why a billion of the stupid things were made.

Off-topic of what? :] This thread may as well have been titled "STAR DESTROYER VS. USS ENTERPRISE" :D The only reason to post in it is to argue why your aircraft is better :) We just do barrel rolls and the Talibs explode because of the awesome. Notice I didn't mention the F/A-18. Because, well... V

Nah, the F-15E's avionics were upgraded to allow good support to employ the M61 on ground targets. Accuracy is problematic due to the lack of PAC control, but the gun even on the A-10 isn't that great against softies either simply because of the nature of trying to hit a little dude hiding and running around in cover. If you watch videos of all kinds of gun runs in the 'stan, mostly they land all around the make a hell of a racket. Generally the cannon is used to flush them out of cover. Against vehicles and such, the M61 works just fine, and the GAU-8 is just overkill - nothing in Afghanistan needs the 30mm, and API hasn't even been used in-theater. The gun isn't that bad though - last time I was in the sandbox we got an excellent kill against one of the Top 5s with some HEI :D Speed and accuracy of the rest of the package are way better than that stupid gun anyway - when the alarm comes down and troops need help *now*, F-15Es are always the first to respond. Which is why they'd want an F-15E where one guy is glued to the pod, instead of an F-16 where the pilot is too busy thinking about how much his helmet is messing up his bitchin' haircut while trying to fly and not drop bombs on every Canadian, Brit, or Aussie within 50 miles :D We showed off the aircraft and cockpit to some Bundeswehr IDS pilots and when they saw how much crap we have inside they went: O_O The key words there is 'forward based'. That isn't a luxury the F-15E nor the A-10 currently has, and Afghanistan is a huge, huge country with these aircraft only based out of Bagram and Kandahar respectively. As such, the A-10s can stay in an area longer, but the F-15Es can get there three times faster. When it comes to AOWs or the like, A-10s are just fine, and if they split the load evenly when it comes to planned ATOs, but when things go tits up and troops are in trouble the A-10 is useless. Surely you can't be serious. The Harrier is probably even more useless than the F/A-18 in Afghanistan. Because of lack of stealth? I don't think that's really a strike against it, since stealth is hardly the 'norm' for anyone these days. In thirty years when the F-15E finally has a replacement, it most likely will be a bigger concern, but until then, that's what EF-111s and EA-6Bs are for :D I mostly just hope we would get at least a Suite 5 model. The avionics package will *destroy your brain*. The A-10Cs avionics package is a Speak and Spell in comparison :D

Oh, you. The entire point of this thread is to argue about stupid stuff and you know it :P It's a cyclops with lemon juice in its eye smiley

There's one thing you're not considering here - in our modern theaters of war, the A-10 is *not* ideal specifically because it is slow. In fantasy land DCS where lines of Russians need to be shot full of holes, and more specifically it's arranged in such a way to accommodate the A-10's slow speed, this is fine. However, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the A-10 is way too slow to be much use to JTACs, because when they need air support, they need air support *now*, not in thirty minutes. The F-15E can give the A-10's payload a run for its money. Fuel efficiency is a trade-off. The A-10 might be able to fly for two hours on a single tank of fuel, but it's going to take twice as long to get anywhere. You speak like the F-15E (Mudhen? Psh, civilians...) is the odd-man out. The fact is, the A-10 is the aircraft that's out of place in modern theaters. It was made to shoot up Russian tanks as they shuffled through mountain chokepoints, but times have changed since the 70s and the A-10s been shoehorned into other roles specifically because its original purpose has passed. Practically speaking, in a real-world engagement I doubt you'd ever see A-10s doing the kind of stuff we do in DCS because frankly it's incredibly dangerous, much more dangerous than it used to be. The A-10C upgrade was more to let the A-10 stretch its wings into the kind of work that we need now, not back in the 70s: PGM employment, aerial overwatch, quick-response work, and combat in an integrated battlespace. I'm sure the USAF is kicking its ass for stopping F-15E production just before Iraq / Afghanistan blew up, but the fact is that they can't be everywhere - if they could, they would. They're expensive, resource-hogging beasts but nothing can even begin to do the job they do.

Actually, the real problem is that it's a B-1B. It's the queen of the Air Force! ...... hangar queen. Kidding aside I think a B-1 would actually be a pretty interesting aircraft to fly. Or crash.

Versus, say, totally different patches to bring older versions up to par, which are, may I point out, nowhere to be seen because it's taking so long to create totally different updates? Yes it hurts SSD more, as well as people who are using drives faster than 7.2k RPM. And it's waste, and waste should always be avoided. Wasteful code, wasteful resources. Going the FSX route of aircraft add-ins is frankly the only way to go from here on.

More to the point, LOMAC, KA-50, and DCS: A-10 take up a combined 22GB of space. The next module could tack another 7GB on. I would venture to say that like 85% of that is completely redundant (art and sound consume the most space, and since nearly all assets are shared in some fashion between all three modules, an F-15C, is an F-15C, is an F-15C, so why should I need three different programs that all have their own (yet similar) F-15C model, texture, sounds, and code?

Good job with the camera in a PL3 area :D

From what I heard the reason most of the western area is undetailed is because they ran into a limit of sorts on the engine, and thus only the eastern part of the Black Sea is modeled. Sad :(

I doubt it would work economically. Yeah, while a decent chunk of DCS players undoubtedly are into the Hong Kong-to-LA-in-real-time in 'traditional' sims, there's also the group who are interested specifically only in military-sims where you get to blow shit up. While the former group would buy a transport chopper sim, the latter probably wouldn't. Basically, economically, I don't think it'd make any sense - if it's military contract related, I imagine it would stay on the military side of the house, since the military isn't going to care about how pretty the ground combat looks. In order to make it more attractive to the civilian market ED would have to invest seriously into the fidelity of ground combat and given the smaller marketshare you'd be looking at due to the undoubtedly lukewarm reception combat-simmers would have to a pure transport chopper... I just don't see it happening. Though I do just keep thinking about how effing awesome it would be if the ArmA2 engine could handle the view distance and terrain size DCS demands, and if ED was making aircraft for that - *then* I'd probably buy a Blackhawk. Honestly the one thing that always bothers me in FPS games with aircraft is that aircraft are naturally pretty god damn hard and finicky things - obviously we've all played this sim so we know that - but then they just put in ez-mode aircraft that provide a much greater risk-reward than they really should :( ArmA2 combined ops would be so much more epic if the difficulty of infantry combat was simulated with parallel difficulty in the aircraft and vehicles, so a dedicated pilot would be that much more valuable. Oh and then make it like Planetside :D

People keep asking for utility helicopters and transports and things like the Blackhawk... eh... no. Things like that wouldn't work very well in DCS - the modeling of ground forces is... rudimentary to say the least. While you can imagine in your head flying a Blackhawk into a hot zone and dudes fast roping out the side, that's what you get in Call of Duty or ArmA - games that have invested literally years into modeling infantry combat. I cannot imagine whatsoever ED investing the resources to make such maneuvers 'cinematic' which is what you probably really want. The ground warfare aspect of DCS simply doesn't have enough level of detail and fidelity to make these kinds of aircraft feasible, and frankly I think most people would get bored as hell in less than a month of an aircraft whose only purpose is to pick up heavy stuff and move it from point A to point B and then run away when someone shoots back.