Frostiken

Well just because you *can* load enough weaponry to devastate a small country doesn't mean you *have* to. If you look at that link to the loadouts I gave you, most of them are far under the maximum weight. To use the OEF example, there's two loadouts, one with four GBU-12s, and one with only two. What would be an interesting feature would be limited supply resources so with a large squadron you'd have to divide up limited bombs between airframes, sort of avoid an 'all your eggs in one basket' affair. Let the mission editor decide how many munitions you get. Also, 10-16 active pilots = 5-8 E-models. Sounds easier if anything.

No. Trim is an on/off affair.

Well you said use HARMs, and HARMs are like, the single easiest piece of ordnance to use in the world, so...

As the guy who does all the classified work on the F-15E, honestly I don't think it's going to be that big an issue. The most heavily classified stuff is the TEWS system, but what's classified about it is mostly stuff that doesn't have much of an impact on a sim - threat tables, tolerances, agility, frequencies... basically, the exact same stuff is classified on the A-10, and ED didn't have an issue getting that modeled.

WAAAAT F-15Es do plenty of SEAD. They played a huge role in OOD, and plenty of videos can be found of F-15Es obliterating SAMs. I think it's a lot more manly to manually guide 2,000 pounds of rocket-propelled love and watch the expression on the guy's face before you absolutely annihilate him than it is to push a button, wait for your missile to fire itself, and then run away :)

That was Desert Storm. Operational combat load in Afghanistan alone for an F-15 is: 1x AIM-120, 1x AIM-9, 2x GBU-12, 3x GBU-38, 1x GBU-31, 450-some rounds of HEI, SniperXR, LANTIRN Nav, 2x Drop Tanks, and of course the CFTs. Aircraft come back empty (except the missiles, obviously) all the time. http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/en/weapons/loadout-configurations

Well, he's not there to enjoy the view anyway :p

Microswitch could be faulty... which sounds like Migo's problem. May have become unseated.

Well keep in mind that we don't have an aircraft with an IFF interrogator yet... which changes when we get DCS: Something With a Radar. I think there's a lot of room to doubt this claim - Mode 4 isn't actually classified, just the keys themselves. Personally I'd love to see all IFF modes modeled in some fashion just to give the system some active use in the cockpit. I don't think anyone would mind a slimmed-down system, but whether you're switching Mode 4 A to B at midnight Zulu or putting the entire system in hold to retain emission limits... would be an excellent addition :)

I understand exactly what he means. Basically, DCS *should* function as the engine with the game world and physics functioning as a single common component. When you load a new module, it loads the 3D cockpit, all the new code for the avionics and the like, and plugs it into the core engine component. Effectively this means that the module could be free and you simply release aircraft packs for it. The theory being that everything is consolidated saving a LOT of disk space and it really would be much more manageable for ED, since they wouldn't have to individually update future engine iterations - A-10, KA-50, and LOMAC would've all worked together in MP straight out of the box, since the MP component is the exact same. This would also have the benefit of making 3rd party mods and addons far easier to manage, as well as streamlining the whole interface. Unfortunately with three different programs out already it seems it would be quite a bit of effort to slice out the aircraft components in a way that makes them easy to 'plug-in'.

"Hey chief, I dropped my pencil." *Pilot walks off to debrief and leaves the crew chief / B-man to find the pencil HE lost* *Once in debrief* "Oh hey, I had a radio problem. I occasionally received broken transmissions on radio 1. Uh... let's see... I'll write that up as a code 3 'zero transmit or receive on radio 1 for entire sortie'. Oh and my DTM recorded a minor fault in RWR... um... 'DTM reported 04152 fault, pilot confirmed fault'. Yeah, now let's go to the bar!". - Dropping FOD in the cockpit and not even bothering to TRY to help search for it. - Lying on the recap to try to coax a fix for a minor code 2 problem. - Writing things up on the recap in the most asinine and unhelpful fashion possible. Did you get any spikes? Nails? Detail fails? No? Couldn't bother to spend 5 seconds typing that in? Guess what, I'm not going to spend the 30 minutes to run it up. CND. And not being associated with a crew chief is more along the lines of why an astronomer would get offended if you asked him for a horoscope. But ah, not all crew chiefs are that bad :) Weapons troops though....... :D

Pulling positive G's is going to impart significantly more energy into the bomb release, effectively sending it much, much farther than if you had released it at 1G.

It's all about scalability. I don't think anyone should doubt that it would be possible, it's just having the right people, time and money to make an engine capable of doing it. DCS: A-10 looks nicer than BS, but given the high system requirements I honestly don't think it visually completely justifies the GPU overhead. We're still dealing with a fairly undetailed world - buildings are little more than textured boxes, trees have no collision meshes, roads are just a line drawn on the terrain... While the issue of scaling to the size of an entire country is applicable, ArmA2 I think did a fantastic job of creating a beautiful, expansive and completely believable terrain. Very detailed buildings (of course, it's an infantry game first and foremost), smooth terrain rather than the 'big grids', and lots of variety.

Hah. I've had pilots openly question the advice I've given them during redballs when it's clear they don't even know what they're arguing about. The best is when they ask "Can I talk to a 7-level?" and I get to point out that I'm the lead tech for the shift. Also, pilots think everyone is a crew chief. Avionics? "What's up chief." "Are you the radar chief?" "Yeah is there a weapons chief around?" WTF STOP CALLING ME A KNUCKLEDRAGGER! I don't like pilots very much :/

By correct you actually mean 'safed' right? Anyway, there's a lot of switches though that should be 'left' in place, and it would be interesting if ED could script it. For example, TACAN - the TACAN station should automatically set itself to the nearest TACAN beacon, since whoever was flying it last would've been using that one (most likely) - same for ILS. Radio frequencies as well I suppose.

... or those of you who didn't read the manual or use the search function on the forums.

^ :/ Make sure you have NWS actually bound to your joystick and / or a keyboard function. If you're using Game Mode you'll have to ensure it's bound in the Game Mode settings, since IIRC it's not by default.

A neat idea, and I'd try to enter if only to win the stick to give to a buddy who's currently flying with some inept Logitech piece of shit, but I personally cannot stand the music chosen. With the right footage and good editing, one could make a Cure album sound like a natural accompaniment to an A-10... angsty metal is just too easy and cliche for me. Ah well, hope to see others who were more inspired than me. EDIT: To be fair, the music is a lot less rage-tastic than most videos that one may find on Youtube* accompanying the visuals in question here... but the point still stands. ----- * "Alright... video loading... let's see..." ".... let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the..." "MUUUUUUUTEEEEE!!"

What he said...

The underside of running vehicles tends to have a huge cushion of "light" on FLIR.

Does it really matter what you call the ground underneath you? I'm having a hard time understanding how bombing virtual Russians with your virtual A-10 in your video game in a conflict that never occurred and that the US was never involved in is any less fictional because it's over Georgia. Afghanistan: 1) Has lots of desert and semi-arid scrubland. 2) Is very mountainous. Nevada: 1) Has lots of desert and semi-arid scrubland. 2) Is very mountainous.

I recall seeing clouds as both, actually - thinner clouds or the edges were 'hot', while they got darker towards the center... less IR, makes sense.

Honestly except for image fidelity it looks like they were using two totally different level / gain settings... low level and aggressive gain on the '1st gen' and much higher level on the '2nd gen'.

Nevada.