maturin

Something about the launch FX of ATGMs (when looking through the gunner's scope) is causing severe framerate loss. This makes it impossible to steer the missile for several seconds after launch. There are no particularly detailed FX visible, so there must be a flaw in some of the graphics here, to create a loss of 10-15+ FPS. That's a sign of trouble regardless of system specs.

If you have a bit more patience, try these tracks as well. Watch the first few minutes of 'bldng' and watch Humvees lob tons of TOW missiles uselessly into houses, because they see straight through them. Then watch the last few minutes as my tank gets shot through an entire village. I forget what's in track 'bldng2' bldng.trk bldng2.trk

Here's a track. The T-80s immediately spot the Abrams through the building, and shoot it. For the second Abrams, I take control and kill it by shooting through the building with a sabot. It isn't necessarily unrealistic that the AP round goes through a small house, but it is unrealistic when a round goes through a whole factory. There are lots of different building models, and many are glitched. Some have LoS blocking problems for AI, and some have physical geometry problems (can't shoot/lase near them because they are bigger than their 3D model appears to be). bldng!.trk

If I get around to it, but if you haven't experienced this, you just don't play CA.

I just played a mission for several hours, and lost more than one tank from AP rounds going straight through large structures. This dynamic is pretty clear if you turn the labels on and watch them fade in and out. LoS geometry clearly doesn't match the visual geometry of buildings, although some models may work better than others. Basically they shoot at you through the building until the building becomes ethereal, then then shoot you. It stands to reason that all buildings suffer from the bug where they become ethereal, though. So it makes more sense to hotfix this than track down every geometry problem in every Caucasus asset.

Trees seem to work great at blocking AI LoS. The same cannot be said for buildings. Ground units usually spot you through walls and then pound the intervening building with cannon rounds. At a certain point the building becomes ethereal (it runs out of hitpoints, I guess), and they kill you. So you can't hide behind buildings because you will be killed by enemies that you can't see. This could be fixed by making even 'dead' buildings block projectiles. Also, it would be worth your time to make sure that physical geometry actually matches the visual geometry of buildings. At least on the square corners. Nothing like trying to shoot at a tank and hitting an invisible wall instead. Lastly, vehicle collision for trees should just be turned off, because it is so broken. I spent like 10 minutes stuck between two saplings. There's a reason that even games like Arma allow tanks to flatten trees.

I just strafed the hell out of a column of AAVs, scoring dozens of hits with four gunpods. None of the APCs suffered any damage, and the log recorded no hits. Track attached. gunpods.trk

I would like to see a Phalanx or Kashtan CIWS hit a target while the ship was engaged defensive at supersonic speeds...

This newest update broke a bunch of key bindings for me. Now I can't access the score screen in-flight, and chase views don't work either. I'm afraid to find out what other controls have stopped working. Both keybinds I mentioned are untouched in the Controls menu, at (\) and (`) respectively.

3 on a good pass, but apparently that's an exploit. If you fire Vikhrs from 10km, you will never get hit by an IR missile that is located at the target. Usually you can get away with two. The range is good enough to make you untouchable if you are patient and don't have trouble locating the target. Loading Kh-29s and Kh-25s just make me feel silly, on the otherhand. A flying brick in search of overkill. Myself I really like the racks of 4 FAB-100s. Spread like a cluster bomb, but they hit tanks harder and have none of the fiddly behavior.

Destroying an S-300 site should be a massive PITA. Tor and Tunguska attached to S-300 sites used to try and defend it from ARMs. Now these massive weapon emplacements are utterly defenseless and won't lift a finger to save their own lives. So there is a clear regression from earlier patches. Edit: AHA! It appears that Tor will shoot down HARMS, but not on Average skill level. With Excellent or Good skill they presumably have fast enough reaction time.

Every DCS World patch tends to change the ability of modern SAMs to defend themselves from PGMs, and 1.5 is no exception. One major change is that Average skill SAMs tend to ignore PGMs heading their way. If you want challenging SEAD, be sure to put all SAMs on Excellent skill. S-300 and Tunguska don't target HARMs or Mavericks.* Tor target HARMs if they are on Excellent or Good skill level, but not Average. Tunguskas target Harpoons, Kh-29Ts, Kh-58s if they are highly skilled. They target Kh-59s with guns, but do not target AGM-154s. S-300 targets Kh-31s, and Kh-58s, but not Kh-25MPUs. Tor target Mavericks, Kh-59s and AGM-154 JSOWs, HARMS, Kh-25MPUs and Kh-58s, if they are highly skilled. Human controlled Tor can target pretty much everything except bombs: HARMs, Harpoons, P-700s, Kh-58s, Kh-22s, Kh-25s, Kh-31s, Kh-59s, Kh-35s, AGM-54s, AGM-119s, AGM-154s and AGM-86s. Even S-300 and Patriot missiles can be acquired and launched on! GBU-10s cannot be targeted, which presumably applies to all bombs. Human-controlled Osa can target Kh-29Ts, Mavericks and Kh-25s, but chances of success may be slim. Player Osa can also knock down Kh-59s and other cruise missiles. AI Osa don't target missiles.* Naval vessels will shoot Tor and even Osa at Kh-58s. Naval vessels will shoot Tor at Harpoons. Naval vessels will shoot Tunguska at Harpoons. Naval Vessels will not shoot S-300 at Harpoons. Patriots target all ARMs, but not Kh-59 cruise missiles. Besides the skill issue, one major takeaway is that bombs should be valid targets for modern SAMs. S-300 sights also really need to defend themselves when there are no Tor in the group. *Why on earth wouldn't Tunguskas and Tor attempt to defend themselves from Mavericks? As it stands, their only weapon is stealth, since A-10s can launch on them from beyond their max range. Fixing this would not unbalance the game, since Mavericks are still quite effective against Osa once you're inside the launch envelope slightly.

Honestly, there's no point modelling the initial launch sequence of the S-300 down to fine details when the 3D model of the system itself has like 10 polys and flat color textures.

New beta, new crashes. This one should be pretty easy to nail down because of the highly specific circumstances. I plopped an S-300 on the map and flew towards it with my SEAD-equipped Su-25T. After looking on to the radar emission, I turned on the Shkval. When I pressed the button to zoom in, I got an instant CTD. (This was crash log 20151005-204356.dmp.) The other crash was in similar circumstances, but I didn't notice the precise action that caused it. sead ctd.rar

:notify::notify::notify::notify: I watched this track with my own eyes! Surely the replay feature isn't so screwed up that the mission can be entirely different? The Flanker only had ERs. And Tigar: When last I checked (admittedly long before 1.5), the jammer worked very well against MANPADS. The success rate was way north of 50%, if it was a pure tailchase situation. Edit: I just watched the track again to verify that it is working. I should point out that the Flanker also displayed some rather suspect AI decisionmaking. It would shoot one single missile at me, then swerve away to extend the range. This may be good for BVR, but it's a silly thing to do when you are chasing a slow ground attack aircraft. Worse yet, it did not realize that the missile had missed until several minutes after it whizzed past my cockpit. The ERs had to actually impact the ground before the Flanker would return to the chase and fire another one at me.