upyr1

Thanks, I wasn't sure what would stop us from getting NATO upgrades

I know that Razbam says they aren't working on the Thud

I am with you there

Can you go into more details about what you are doing with the Thud? The fact it is posted gets us thinking that you might be working on an F-105 module or at least an asset pack with the F-105 in it.

The only thing I could see preventing the Thud being made is a lack of data. The republic archives were destroyed in the 1980s the second possibility is someone has it planned. I have a suspect https://www.facebook.com/RazbamSims/photos/p.1342658872487414/1342658872487414/?type=3&theater nullnull

Aren't the programmers based in Moscow still?

Playing with the mission editor can be fun

I've seen one of the MiGs in person, they are at Nellis AFB. The problem is that Eagle is in Russia and as such they need the VVS to sign off on the MiGs. If someone outside Russia could do all three FC MiGs without any legal problems, then I really hope that ED can hand the project off to them.

You should build a mission where you attack a Kirov with bombers and try different formations. I've seen a flight of B-52s have all but 3 of their antiship missiles get shot down by a Kirov-class battlecruiser the same formation sank an American carrier. I've also seen a Tu-22M sink a carrier and I have also seen their missile get shot down, the difference was the formation. When flying a line astern the ship's defenses had enough time to react while they killed the carrier flying line abreast. The problem with the Kirov vs a carrier is it only carries 20 missiles which are fired off in volleys of 4 or 5 missiles combine the Kirov with land-based bombers and other ships

Out of the two, I would expect AAA would be easier to gauge depending on the system. Some systems are computer aimed some are human aimed and in either case there are two questions, what is a baseline CEP and what is the CEP we see in DCS?

I do play, I like to build missions and then get frustrated then post something in the forum then go back and play a single player misison

I'm not familar with the system

There are two things to remember, first just becuse a technology is available doesn't mean that it will be used. An example of this would be World War II ship construction. Ships that were designed pre-war were known as gold platers becuse the shipyards and designers cut corners to bring down construction time. The other problem we face is the fact the RedFor we have is rather dated. The aircraft we have are basically early 1990s ventage. I don't know if we could get AI Su-35 or MiG-35s I know there is no way we're getting them flyable. I would love that. Then bringing up the Vietnam War, it is important to remember that during the course of the Rolling Thunder Campaign the North Vietnamese built up a thick air defense network. At their strongest they had over 200 sam batteries the AAA was thick- here is a map of the AA guns in hanoi the icon is a battery five to seven guns at each location. Brown colored gun symbols are 105mm, blue are 85mm, red are 57/37mm and yellow are automatic weapons (I'm guessing 23MM) and the source said the map didn't display all the small caliber guns. Then there is the issue of ED's AI and the fact I don't think it really models an integrated air defense system. During the Vietnam war the North Vietnamese would co-ordinate their fighters so that avoiding sams meant you were going to get jumped by a MiG then the North Vietnamese air force did a great job avoiding detection until it came time to engage. DCS's AI is really focused on individual units and not an army or air force

The closest thing to balance in DCS you will ever see is having contemporary assets and good mission design. NATO equipment was more technologically advanced than Warsaw Pact equipment. That is still the case with Western and Russian and Chinese equipment. Some of this was due to design philosophy, I won't get into the debate as to how much. The West especially after nations started to end conscription tended to favor more expensive high-tech systems while the East tended to favor low-tech systems that would be cheaper to build in bulk. I would love to see ED add modern Red Force aircraft, but as ED's goal is to make things as realistic as possible without getting visited by men in black suits, the only possible way we might see them officially would be as AI assets. I'd have no problems with that. So that leaves us with mods or being creative with mission design. When building missions whether it is single-player, player vs player, or co-op it is up to you the builder to determine how to achieve the right balance. That's not to say there is nothing that ED needs to improve that would as a side effect improve balance without sacrificing realism. This is one of the reasons I am way more excited about older planes than I am about modern ones. The F-4 vs MiG-21 will be a better match-up than the MiG-21 vs Mirage F1 or F-14 (if the engine holds up). Focusing on what we have, balance is achievable through mission design. Have the Red For outnumber the blue, and have a good air defense network. Having said that there are things ED could do to improve things that wouldn't sacrifice realism. Some ideas to improve the ground game would be the following. First add minefields, trenches, and other defensive positions this would make troops harder to hit and a tougher battle than troops out in the open. Next would be better artillery AI, the main problem here is that we are limited to barrage fire as we don't have forward observers. I would love to have AI FAC/FOs either ground or air-based call-in artillery and air strikes instead of relying strickly on pre-programmed strikes Then there needs to be more unit types in general. Training was a big issue here, if we were to build a realistic Desert Storm campaign the US would be set to Ace while the Iraqis would be set to trained.

That is exactly what I meant when I wrote ED limits access to the SDK. If you read what I wrote you will see I never claimed they gave modders any access and the main thing I said is that you use mods at your own risk.

I know ED has decided to limit access to the SDK, so I expect mods to remain a "use at your own risk" item. I do think there us a happy medium between what we have now and what other games have. This the reason that I want the filter, which could also be used to filter out official asset packs as well.

I am not familiar with Arma3 but something like that would be awesome

I honestly don't expect Eagle to spend massive amounts of resources on developing a mod manager. I would expect them to use Nexus or use an existing open source mod manager

The only question here, is what to do when borders are disputed. For example Ossetia, they have declared themselves independent but Georgia says other wise I don't know if we could a dashed line denoting disputed borders would work. I'm thinking AS or AO they would be awesome to add. They could be targets in any mission.

If the HTS is a good enough abstraction, then I would accept something similar in G.

Cuban ace is working on the Skyraider? Cool I

As I stated before they already are used in multiplayer and as you don't want to encounter mods then on line then you shouldn't complain about the filter idea as the entire point is to hide servers that you mods and asset packs that you don't use. Then you will never see a mod ever again in your entire DCS life.

It looks like logic almost caught up to you but you were faster. This is the reason I have a filter on the list. is the fact that you can't expect everyone to have the same mods installed (unless it is a squad that agreed to the same mods) you can however filter out mods you don't have which would make connecting to a server problematic.

I use more than the A-4. I've had to delete some mods becuse they don't work I've manually edited the LAu and I have the facebook group DCS mods

Some replacements would be worse than others, it all depends on the similarities. I'm more interested in a filter There are some flyable mods out there, that I only use as AI assets, the A-4 is clearly not one of them. There are some mods I will only use as AI assets (the Chinese aircraft pack for one) or the VSN F-105. Then there are the pure AI assets.