TAW_Blaze

Whatever you say. I'm just realistically saying what the jet is like compared to the others that exist. I see everyone here mumbling about what a great 2c fighter the Viper is at M0.7 to M0.85 and if you bleed your speed you're an idiot. Meanwhile the highest sustained g you can take is between 7.5 and 8 which gives you literally no vision and still comparably not that good turn rates. If you apply too much vertical either you are overspeeding to the point that your turn circle is a planet or you're bleeding too much speed to the point where you're not regaining it by the time you get down again resulting in trashcan performance once you exit the maneuver. In the meantime other platforms are out rating you at lower speed laughing at resting g.

Except for the fact you get outrated by Hornets (or basically any other jet in DCS for that matter) cornering at 360-380 kts and sticking to your optimal 450 kt+ regime will gloc you in half a turn because of incorrect modeling of g effects currently. Pure vertical or 70-80 degree bank climbs typically also only work if you start with a lot of excess energy and you usually have to convert back to horizontal otherwise you're severely off from your optimal turn performance after 1 vertical maneuver. On the way down usually you can control your speed but once you're down to corner on the bottom of your loop going for another vertical heavy maneuver is not really an option unless the bandit is extremely low energy state. It's ridiculuous that you can't really sustain more than 7.5g for more than half a turn. I don't get what people fight against thinking DCS Viper is good in DACT, basically every other competitor can completely trash it because the only regime where you have notable advantages is basically unusable due to incorrect g modeling. F-14 / F-18 is borderline unwinnable against a good opponent. F-15 is a bit better but typically still results in a loss due to the much better snapshot capability of the Eagle. I haven't fought much M2k or russian jets but I'd expect the same since they all have significantly better low speed handling characteristics and rate fighting < 400 kts they are comparable or better than an F-15.

Any good gunsight should be so instinctive that you do not need weeks of studying to use the symbology well. F-15 and F-14 does just that. Your HUD is clear and without any additional clutter tells you where the bandit is and where your bullets will go. The rest is up to the pilot. In comparison in the 16 you have a worthless gun funnel that only gets exponentially worse during any kind of out of plane maneuvering, another set of supposed "wings level" marker that is equally worthless and only takes your attention away and eventually the smallest symbol in your HUD is actually where the bullets go. This is all in HUD reject mode, don't even get me started on all the further useless shit that you have by default.. Furthermore it's a garbage gun platform due to the AoA limit, you simply cannot take snapshots that other platforms can and most gun fights are ended by a snapshot not a tracking in plane shot.

The gunsight is just plain horrible. HUD is overcluttered with worthless information for anything other than an in plane tracking shot. For the majority of snapshots you're better off aiming with the gun cross. In comparison the modes you have in the F-14 or the F-15 are infinitely better.

I'm just surprised we are delayed 2 weeks or more depending on when a patch happens with a critical bug. The most probable explanation to this is that the release train is a mess otherwise you'd easily be able to put in specific changes on demand.

Viper DLZ and ASE circle is basically a placeholder at this point and you're better off fighting by experience. You can use it as a ballpark but it's largely irrelevant, you can get kills well outside displayed Rmax under good conditions and the steering dot is straight up horrible, I tend to reference HMD designation and target track.

When is the G tolerance getting fixed? Other aircraft with less inclined seats can sustain same or more G compared to the Viper. Considering your main fight envelope is Mach 0.7 - 0.9 this totally destroys the dogfighting performance.

In DCS there is no downside, you should have it on. IRL is a different story.

Actually this is often a positive impact on overall pK due to the idiotic terminal phase. Dropping 80-90 degrees vertically on top of target (or even sometimes approaching it from behind his 3/9 line) especially at long range is automatic miss in almost all scenarios. In terms of pK your optimal intercept angles on a high speed bandit are typically somewhere between 30-60 degrees depending on scenario.

If you use TWS it seems to turn them red. But you generally don't use TWS since it's garbage for general search.

How did you end up with this conclusion? She just said it won't be released to stable. Which is a 100% reasonable decision based on the current state. I'd very much expect a fix for the datalink issues this week if it was already internally fixed last week.

So being able to customize your aircraft on an irrelevant feature such as trim to make it a more enjoyable experience makes people air quake kiddies? Damn that escalated quickly. It's not dumbed down, it's called agency and it exists for a reason. The more agency people have over what they are using the better the experience. If every player had the 100% replica full cockpit I'd concur this is not necessary. However there are people flying on a single joystick or even a keyboard + joystick. These people will not have an axis and will have to stick to using joystick trim. Therefore at the moment they are automatically. For them trim is a worthless function unless you just dropped a2g stores because the trim is simply over sensitive. If you were rolling left and you trim one click to the right now you are rolling to the right instead and vice versa. Fantastic. This is the exact reason I flew for years without binding trim at all. Simply there is no point. I added the same point for cursor control because in some of the FF aircraft the button control compared to the axis is so mind bogglingly poor you're 110% handicapped in combat compared to someone who has a separate axis for it.

So if you don't have an appropriate knob.. you are shit out of luck?

A recommendation for future handling of similar features such as: - trim - radar or equivalent mfd cursor It would be worthwhile to make their sensitivity user definable much like a control axis. i.e. if I'm using a 4 way hat to manage my radar cursor, I'd like to be able to customize the sensitivity of the movement. Same goes for trim. Apparently somoene found a workaround for the trim in another thread, but it'd be great to have this as a general feature from the controls setup. In real life everyone flies specific airframes on the exact same setup. We fly the same airframe with thousands of different hardware. I don't understand why this was not done so far. Especially people with limited options (no spare axis) are totally screwed. As a simple example, anyone attempting to use F-16 radar cursor with a 4 way hat is going to have a god awful experience because of how slow it is compared to a mini stick.

I haven't checked single player either but I don't even care to be honest. I wouldn't be surprised if it was working there. The stupidest part is that it doesn't matter how much information you reject in the SA settings, it's still ruined. Worst of all my own flight is generally not showing up at all..

I gotta say everything showing friendly is ten times worse than all red. Even including the Hornet/Viper mixed everyone red bug you could manage decently, but now you literally cannot distinguish. At this point basically on any busy server you're going to have to turn off the datalink completely because it's that bad. I tried disabling E3 tracks but even that way it's awful.

Is there a plan to hotfix the datalink "everything's friendly" bug in the F-16 if it's already fixed internally?

You actually don't need an AWACS. If you fly against DL jets or the other side has AWACS obviously it hurts a lot, but generally you don't need it. You can also do juts fine even against those odds in the Eagle. What matters is to have your own routine of SA generation and flying in a way that allows your SA to be maintained. Just a couple things that are important: 0) Avionics handling I put this at 0 because this is the absolute minimum - yet a lot of people fail at this. You need to know your avionics very well and be able to use them like the extension of your fingers. This takes a lot of time to master however. Make sure you have an effective HOTAS setup that allows you to manipulate radar cursor, azimuth / elevation, azimuth width and radar modes. In FF jets it gets a bit more complex but essentially it's still the same. If you struggle with radar basics here's a great tool to help understand how it works: https://tawdcs.org/radar-f15/ 1) Map control This is more of a macro element, but very important. You need to plan where you go and how you will enter the fight. If you put yourself in an area where you're outnumbered with poor exit windows or none you'll typically end up dying no matter what you do. A classic example of a good exit window would be i.e. being able to do a 180 and go Mach 2 back to base because in an Eagle nobody will catch you. Comparatively if you have bandits on both flanks or even cutting you off from taking a direct RTB, unless you can kill them or sneak past you won't make it back. 2) Conscious decisions There's a lot to this but the bottom line is everything you do must be conscious and you need to avoid randomness at all cost. Building and maintaining SA is roughly 30% sensor management and 70% mental chess. Just some very simple things: - noting your attack heading (in general or specific to one fight) significantly helps you to understand where the bandits are coming from - noting your defense heading helps you automatically make safe maneuvers in case of doubts - making deliberate maneuvers towards specific headings helps to keep a good mental picture of what's going on - avoid random maneuvering at all cost - this exponentially increases the rate your SA degrades at and also keeping track of what you're doing will also speed up your learning curve since you know exactly what you did and when - noting bandit heading helps to find notch directions quickly and also acts as a crutch to know where to look for the bandit - recognize bandit airspeed, altitude and general flight pattern - this will help a lot in decision making and predicting fight patterns and outcomes 3) Concious defense This is a subset of 2) but I cannot overstate how important it is. If a missile is fired at you and your first thought is to do something "random" it'll always get you killed. The first thing that you must do is to analyze where the missile is coming from. This includes range, launch altitude and airspeed and also your own initial parameters. Once you know this data you can make educated decisions on how you try to defeat it. Obviously if you only start doing all of this when your RWR starts blinking it's all too late. Which is why you do all the other things I'm describing above and below. To have a mental picture and understand if a missile is inbound, what is the most likely source it comes from and knowing your surroundings you can almost instantly make good decisions on how to react because you immediately can have a ballpark guess of when and where the missile was launched. i.e. if I'm preparing to fight someone and he's currently at 15 miles and I get an active missile warning it means he fired it somewhere between 10-15 seconds ago (considering an AMRAAM). Then based on experience you can translate this into what you need to do to defeat that particular threat. 4) Reset between fights One of the most common mistakes I see online is that people commit to a fight and once the fight is over, if they are still alive they continue being agressive. Now I'm not saying this is 100% wrong or you should not do this, but it should be determined based on the scenario. However most people just do it blindly and they fail to realize (or ignore) that the longer you are committed to a particular fight the worse your SA gets. A BVR fight for 30 seconds will significantly reduce your SA. A BVR fight lasting 2 minutes means your original SA is completely obsolete 5) Tunnel vision This is the other typical mistake. Now everyone is flying datalink jets so it's becoming less and less common but unfortunately not because of pilot skill. In general you always want to focus on the highest threat. But if you commit to prepare fighting a guy from 40 miles away, there might be a guy notching you at 15 miles and the moment he sees this he might turn into you and you won't see it coming. This is why you should stay on your toes and only commit to fight someone when you have good confidence that he's the highest threat to you. i.e. if I fly an Eagle typically I'm scanning the sky even if I know there is a guy 20 miles pushing towards me because 20 miles is still not that threatening (discounting 40k+ ft altitude fights). I'm going to scan 5-15 miles in front especially at low altitudes to find anyone sneaking around. I will intermittently scan back to keep tabs on the original guy, but not commit - although at the same time I still prepare for the upcoming fight by speeding up. This is not to say you are ignoring this guy, this is absolutely not the case. You are full on preparing to fight him. You should have a plan on how you execute the fight: when you really target him, what altitude and airspeed you arrive to shoot and how you defend. You continously monitor him but at the same time scan for additional threats that might override your priority target and force you to alter your plan. Once the bandit gets to your planned parameters you enter the fight and execute it. However if I spot a guy turning into me from the notch at 8 miles while my original target is at 16 miles I will either immediately retarget or if unable simply ditch the fight and extend. In another example, if my original bandit is 15 miles to my 360 and I spot a guy to my 300 at 12 miles I might crank 060 and execute the fight to the bandit at 15 miles while maintaining maximum separation from the other guy. It is also likely in this case if my original exit heading was 180, now I might alter that to 120 to minimize closure between me and the other bandit. To summarize fighting air to air is all about monitoring your environment and constantly double checking if your plan is still valid. In order to be effective at this you need to be aware of what exactly you are doing and what you're planning to do. This allows you to keep a clear mental picture and predict what will happen or where you need to go. Now obviously this is very difficult. I recommend to start simple. A couple of the more simple things you can start with: - remind yourself to note bandit heading before entering the fight and try to remember it.. now if this is working, try doing this in combination with some 9g out of plane turns - experiment against AI to see if fires how much time you have to execute a particular type of defense.. I would start with something basic like a split S extend, and I would also set the AI to fire on Rtr otherwise it gets too easy to dodge them Make sure you have Tacview and have a structured approach to what you try, when you try and how you evaluate your success. Doing things randomly will usually result in developing the wrong habits.

.. and the fact that DCS is a "little" bit more than what it was when the A-10C was developed.

Thanks a lot! I was just curious about it, I'm happy to hear this is something you are working on.

Dear Kate: Thanks for the update! In the reddit thread you linked you posted somewhere that multiplayer architecture will be reworked. Could you elaborate on this?

The trim adjustment by 1 button should be user customizable to define it's "amplitude". Currently in basically all aircraft if my plane is slightly rolling to left, I trim one notch to the right and now I'm at least as severely or more rolling to the opposite direction. What a worthless function.

The problem is even in busy servers generally the warping starts after 2-3 hours. I can ask around if someone has a track, I actually disabled my track recording in the hopes of improving performance.

I'd love to see the updated weather aswell. Would make it much more spicy to fly (ok I admit as soon as it arrives I'll probably be bitching about it :D). It's been the same couple of missions going on in MP always for years and it gets very stale eventually. You can't even use the current weather system because it more or less kills stability.

IMO part of the issue is currently devs are only getting paid indirectly for core development and really your main income is shiny modules. However when you already have plenty of shiny modules another one barely adds to the experience. Now I'm not saying a sub based business model will by itself fix the problem, but it's one way to make it more direct. In general I also hate subs :) I'm curious to see where we get by the end of the year with this newfound focus on core features and also some multiplayer focus. So far my experience is mixed: - multiple game breaking patches - decent attempts at being transparent about what is happening in the background - critical bugs that are reported correctly seem to get reasonable focus