Frostiken

Besides a really god damn dirty A-10. I see a Sniper XR, 4 GBU-38s (two of which are oddly colored?), and some rockets... and a mysterious... thing.

Yes, it really is. The shape of the wings, the intakes and engine power (or lack thereof), and the position of the stores mean that the A-10 can barely even reach 8Gs, much less survive it without wings snapping off. The A-10 keeps almost every external store on the wings, so under 3-4Gs, it's actually rather amazing that they don't break off already - especially given their straight and relatively flimsy nature. The A-10 doesn't really have an overload warning system ("Over-G! Over-G!") specifically because it's so slow and cannot handle high-AOA maneuvers to such an extent that it's not really a problem. Except for extreme maneuvers at the edge of the envelope, it's almost impossible to actually hit the G-limits - the A-10 will deviate catastrophically from controlled flight before that happens.

Frosti's air refueling tutorial: Put the thing in the hole until the stuff sprays out.

Okay! "I promise to buy DCS: F-15E."

SA-18s are already miniature tactical nukes... a MiG can shake off a Patriot missile strike, an A-10 loses half of its airframe :/

Maybe an oversight - you can adjust the brightness of everything but the damn scope :P

Keep in mind that underneath every F-15E is the ultimate in air-to-air pedigree... I don't think a fight between the two would be that cut and dry. If push came to shove, just take the CFTs and the pods off, install a few plugs and some panels and you have a C-model with two sets of eyes :D.

Go big or go home, that's what I always say. I would get and play the F/A-18C all the same because I want something that can go fast, but like I said, compared to many other airframes in the same category it's extremely low-end in every single aspect. I'm really not looking forward to having to hit a tanker twice every sortie and/or finishing them in 20 minutes or less. Especially considering that in order to have any mission endurance whatsoever, you're going to have to carry drop tanks, which means you get to carry two JDAMs and two AIM-9s. Or, conservatively, five Mk 82 dumb bombs. Compared to, say, this excessive example of government contracts: I have no idea what the hell the story is behind that but it's awesome :D

I think you guys are overestimating just how bright they should appear. FLIR isn't just for seeing 'bright hot things'. High quality FLIR like those of a SniperXR can paint a pretty clear general image of everything, and at very close ranges, you can make out so much detail it just looks like a perfectly clear black and white image. If I get a chance I'll give you guys some example of SniperXR FLIR imagery (on the ground only though). You may be surprised at how 'hot' certain things look.

The worst is when you're looking for targets on the TPod and go 'What's that black cloud?'

Makes sense because of, you know, the 200kt airstream pushing against them. Really though... 0.3? Where'd you get that number? I don't even think you can transit the stabs that fast.

Strictly speaking, for IR missiles you should put your belly to them and fire off flares - the A-10's overall design means the engine exhaust isn't visible from below and was one of the selling points of the aircraft, giving it much high survivability against MANPADs as it was harder for them to get and maintain a lock. Whether that's modeled or not I don't know.

Ultimately that's what it is - I can't get excited about it. It'd be like having a racing game where the fastest car you can have is a Toyota Supra. Like, I guess it's fast, but it's not really the best of what you'd expect in a racing game. I'd happily take the Superhornet over the standard, but I still think the F-15E is where it's at. These days it's pretty much the workhorse of the entire military as far as air to ground is concerned. Trading off the incredible versatility and impressive array of toys for carrier ops isn't a fair tradeoff for me. On the other hand, the F-15E is in such active development, I'd like to see it at least Suite 6 which probably won't happen. JHMCS would be nice :D At best I can see us getting a Suite 5.

You can change the radio they use in the mission editor, AFAIK. All the default missions seem to leave everything at 124.00 AM and call it the 'guard' channel, but this is hardly realistic - guard channels are for emergencies... and most aircraft confine most of their chatter to the UHF frequencies.

Which is weird because there's plenty of reviews from even reputable sources, so why isn't Metacritic adding them?

It's actually referred to in the manual in a couple places, but never explains what it is.

Q-calls are what ATC tells you for whatever Q-code you get. Being told the QFE is a Q-call. He wants to know if they're fixed, ie: in 1.1.0.7 you'd be told ridiculous things like 'QFE 3320'. I don't know if they are, but that thread seems to suggest that they are.

I've had AI try to kill me twice - both times after an aborted approach. The first time, my wingman cut mere inches across my nose (I almost pooped) and careened into number three (four seemed to be taxiing back to base from 15 miles away after sustaining some damage... what the **** was that about...). The second time he didn't miss me and knocked me out of the sky. When I watched in TacView, they were both doing some sort of crazy ****ing corkscrew thing back and forth, while I was flying straight and level. Now I just tell them to anchor until they run out of fuel and die. Hopefully.

Yes and keep in mind the bathtub protects the pilot, not the gun. Damage to the just about any part of the system will cause it to jam the **** up. So I'd say this is pretty realistic.

LMAO - that sucks :D

Well, regarding air refueling, I have a feeling it's not quite the same kind of 'difficulty' in real life as it is in the sim.

For what it's worth, any weather so bad you can't see what you're shooting is weather so bad that there wouldn't be any aircraft flying around.

See that's what gets me about the speculation for an F/A-18C. It's an old, antiquated and utterly obsolete heap of shit - why would the DOD suddenly want to pay for a computer-based training simulator for it? It would be like doing an F-15C dedicated sim - they're getting mothballed so why make a sim about it? Only reason I could think is it's a non-US contract, or they're just doing one for fun this time around.

<Insert joke about Russian air shows here>

Doesn't matter, still works. Hope it gets fixed soon... it's not often a problem but when it pops up it's just some extra asspain. Would also be nice if the JTAC would give his.... whatever you call 'em. The BIG grids. The ones the JTAC doesn't announce and if you put in his information but with the wrong grid you get a target 130 miles away... Sorry, brain no think good.