blkspade

While I mostly kid, unless the flanker is in an advantageous position (speed and alt), which most of the time they aren't, my only required maneuver put me in weapons parameters.

And I do, for the kill...

All that, and my ability to cheapshot, with the probability that it will actually be in the ballpark to require your attention.

Pretty much this. If I have a 29 on my TEWS, and confirmation of range on my radar, I giggle at your early shot. "He launched at 18nm, aww thats cute." Unless we're both crazy high, ETs are largely a non factor yet, I'll pop a few flares anyway. For the most part everybody's missile are equally broken. When they get equally fixed, it may mean not having to reach the merge (1v1). I kind of envision this only actually being good for the eagle driver.

Yes. I feel like I've mentioned this idea before. Combined with the already exiting inventory system, this could be something both better for players and mission designers.

Something I read somewhere indicated, on modern US systems at least, is that the IFF system is encrypted with changing keys. So there would never be a situation where you could fool the enemy. You might succeed in fooling friendlies though, which wouldn't do you any favors.

I'd say the IFF system in Sim is probably something that needs to be magically perfect. Otherwise we'd likely get TKs due to stupid things like packet loss/latency, as opposed to basic human stupidity.

Nope, this actually happens to saved tracks.

The irony of the lack of saving is that the replay function saves anything you might accidentally do in the replay. If change the view (even by bumping the mouse) you lose what was originally saved. If you quit before the end, that becomes the new end point. That would partially be of some use if the game saved a track of the last flight like it used to. If there were a way to jog through tracks, you can continue from a replay and take control. Its obviously a stupid way to do it, but there are bits of needed functionality half-assed into the sim.

I'm pretty sure the issue is with the tanker itself, irrespective of the modules.

The current issue with the 120s extends to all the radar missiles, which leads me to believe they are all governed by the same variable. Even if LN does their own 54C, and manages to escape a similar fate, I really doubt fighter kills at 80nm will be that common. Eagle pilots will see the long range 14 on the tews and just start jamming. Russian drivers not jamming, will probably still spend all their time low level and in the notch. In either case 21nm-28nm (burn-though) shots will likely have incredible Pk vs fighters.

Realistically the new western planes coming out aren't going to change the effective strategies in the Russian aircraft. You can largely treat the F-18 like an F-15. You won't know what you're fighting for sure until an active is inbound with the possibility of slightly longer range IR missile inbound. Just behave like everything is a Mig29. The F-14 has a theoretical advantage with the 54C, but will likely suffer the same flaws as the 120, but with longer range. At shorter ranges they won't even have 120's, and ETs/ERs are better than 9Ms/7Ms. Worse case scenario is the AI RIO will be epic a spotting IR missile launches fired in a visible area. You say look at the K/D between the Eagle/Flanker, ignoring the level of success the Eagle has had IRL. Like its somehow strange that F-15 should succeed. Sim flankers are doing OK, in the hands of competent pilots. Limiting yourself to the broken single player experience would be sad.

Who said anything about 0 workload. It would have to be AI operated to be anywhere near 0, obviously. Beside asking a SME, the devs are basically still going to consult each planes respective manuals. Same as any of us that have been sim pilots for any decent length of time could to extrapolate differences in workload. Hell the basic differences in the avionics now (which are basically accurate except up to whats missing) already favors the F-15. RWR is placed higher up in the cockpit and displays info in a non-cryptic format. NCTR on the VSD. Time to pitbull and time to intercept counters on the HUD. If the change in the Russian aircraft's AAQ function (pressing the lock button) was changed to match the RL counterpart, then that is yet another thing to slow them down. I think the most complicated thing you might ever have to do in a a split second in a clickable F-15 is jettison tanks. That is assuming people don't keep the jettison function mapped.

In sim, the effective weapons ranges result in many engagements devolving into WVR.

Actually the info on the HOTAS functionality of the F-15C is pretty easy to get (-1). Literally everything you are likely to need after the gears and flaps are up is on the stick. Save the Master Arm switch. You can get basically 1:1 mapping with a Warthog stick. Similar info is probably available in the real Su27 manual (if you know Russian). Much could be extrapolated from that info.

The AIM-9 smoke isn't completely invisible, but it is really difficult to see. Though it is practically invisible at the max range you can get a kill at. Your only chance at spotting it is to be looking directly at the spot the moment of launch because its not visible long. It can generally be seen at any range you can see the bandit.

That's really not the same thing at all. All the GPU potential is held back by waiting on DX9's single threaded batching. Rendering should be multi-threaded in DX11 (better but not optimally), as well as allowing for some of those "whatevers" to be potentially handled via DirectCompute on the GPU (which isn't a thing in DX9). We know the core engine is single threaded (not accounting for audio), and I expect the AI will still be CPU and in that single thread. Physics makes a lot of sense to be handle via direct compute, hopefully that'll be the case.

Speaking of the stores being extra draggy. I wonder if that same value affects the missile's off of the rail?

Generally speaking a game should always be maxing out a single core anyway, unless its very well multithreaded. The stutters are most likely happening due to something happening in the server at any given time. I didn't even have stutters when I was using an AMD FX CPU (except for when something was causing everyone online issues), so its not likely to be your CPU causing it. One area that is common for causing stuttering is disk I/O if DCS if installed on a slow drive. Having DCS on an SSD can be beneficial here.

Pretty much this. Options expand in as an eagle driver when you're not worrying about 73s/ETs. Half the fight is won by the flanker getting those IR missiles off at you before merge forcing the eagle to generally come off the throttle and lose energy maneuvering. That is then further exacerbated by the concern of a helmet sighted shot if you've made it close enough at a somewhat decent energy state. I'm almost certain some guys fire R27s way too close (with no chance of hitting) just to trigger a similar response.

I'm surprised that I might beat GG in here. Basically you should be landing according AOA units. The speed is always going to vary due to other factors (mainly weight) but going by AOA corrects for this. Put your velocity vector where you'd ideally like to touchdown and adjust power to maintain 21 units AOA. Any more than that and you'll be descending short of that point, any less and you're likely over speed. A little flare over the threshold and you should touchdown smoothly. As for aero-braking a similar rule applies that you have to hold a minimum of 23 unit AOA for it to be effective, and no more than 25 (to not drag the tail). With the engine idle, the nose should fall on its own once the speed is low enough (maybe with air-brake) without using toe brakes. You're not supposed to use toe brakes without all 3 wheels down. Even if its not currently modeled, it might someday result in damage to the nose gear in doing so. If you can do this perfectly at Gelendzhik, and not run out of runway, then you'll be good anywhere.

NEZ doesn't even mean what you'd expect it to either. A missile being spoofed by counter-measures/notching doesn't violate what the NEZ is supposed to be.

Most significantly, the 40% IPC increase.

That is far from true in my experience. The ET is effective when launched with speed at medium altitude out to about 13nm, if the target is in AB. It'll be visible head-on, but if they're offset preparing to turn-in, they probably aren't looking at your patch of sky yet. There has been no situation for me where staying in AB vs an ET would work. Other than knowing it was fired too early, I still wouldn't fly in a straight line. I've gotten aim-9 kills out to around 8-9nm high aspect, if the target is in AB. Generally with them at low-medium altitude. You can thank crappy TN panels (or calibration) for poor night visibility of smoke. That alone might keep me on my slightly slower IPS for some time to come.

Its the exhaust smoke. My FPS had a steep drop while taxing behind two F15s. Migs have even heavier smoke, all of which renders further out on AMD cards.