Stuge

Oh, ok I was misinformed then, apologies.. Edit: ...but actually according to Wikipedia an upgrade should allow F-22 to use AIM-9X with helmet sight. :)

Sure, it could be dangerous. Historically, what about kamikaze flights? That's even more dangerous, and it really happened in real life. What about two countries that only have Mig-21 or similar having an engagement? That seems to be another fantasy that all air combat must be the United States alone against vastly inferior enemies who will (in theory) be always splashed in clean, 5th gen, pure BVR glory which could never ever end up in a merge :) Why on earth did they give the F-22 vectored thrust and AIM-9X with helmet sight, such a waste of resources when clearly in this fantasy dogfights won't happen. :):):) The F-22 even has a gun! Such useless excess weight! Or maybe the designers learned a lesson after Vietnam and woke up from this fantasy.

Mig-21s still operate at almost 20 countries. Can they avoid the merge easily? Cos if you fire an R-3R at a bandit and keep the lock until you expect it to hit.. you are going to merge him if he survives or his wingman :) The fantasy world is a place where two hypothetical countries have AWACS and 5th gen fighters that are absolutely deadly against each other. AWACS and 5th gen technology combined with state of the art radar provide 100% situational awareness to all pilots. Missiles are extremely deadly and pretty much never fail. Countermeasures have been mutually defeated, be it stealth, ECM, or traditional countermeasures. None of them work. If you're in a missile's no escape zone and you get launched on you will get hit period. Beaming and low flying also don't work. Missile never loses track of its target. Careful tactics and asset deployment ensure that merges don't happen. Until that one hotshot drunken Russian pilot lands to get some vodka from a freeway supermarket, and then proceeds to splash an entire squadron of 5th gen Americans by just taking off the freeway, like the Finnish do! Don't forget to check motorways and country roads for extra planes lurking, waiting :)))

If, hypothetically, all the current battle-ready, maintainable and manufacturable fighters clashed with each other, there would be no way to avoid dogfights. Even with 4th generation fighter jets, there are too many holes to plug to contain it in BVR only. 5th gen fighters may have powerful radars but what about stealth technology? Jamming and other electronic warfare? Missile reliability? Now add to the equation the many airforces' older generation fighters... compared to a very limited number of 5th gen fighters and you have a furball :)

There is no contradiction here :) Better average kill rate with Eagle? Sure! Is Eagle easier for beginners? Most definitely! Is the Flanker the ultimate plane to mix it up in the hills? OH YEAH! :D When things get heated, Eagle runs out of fuel faster(unless pilot keeps the tanks), runs out of missiles faster, and has in my opinion actually worse SA once the situation is 100% tumbleweed and everyone's merged with each other.

<3 Sweeps Well, for me the Flanker is in its way the ultimate death machine, with a little luck you can go on a rampage. Last one was just 2 days ago when I last flew on 104th, six kills in one flight. Even for a veteran, such rampage is always satisfying :) To have a kill streak like that in Eagle is much more rare.

And exactly why is it so bad to get shot down a lot? :) You always get help if you ask for it.

I've been thinking about this.. is this style of fighting really the most effective and desirable? For covering an airspace and threatening the enemy, sure. But if you actually want to score kills? I'm under the impression that historically most real life air to air kills have been scored so that the target didn't even know they were under attack. (surprise attack) Because of this supposed historical fact(correct me if I'm wrong please), wouldn't it be reasonable for air forces to take measures to achieve this type of thing? AWACS and GCI make it very possible, so wouldn't ambush tactics be the most deadly type of attack, instead of attacking openly from long range? If the target knows it is under threat, it can likely put up a good defense or even avoid the engagement altogether! Thing is.. regardless of how much fail you can find in the missile performances.. a surprise attack from perfect range, with any missile type, pretty much always results in a kill in DCS because missile failures are not modeled. So OP! :)

Last time I flew on 104th server the Flankers were definitely kicking the Eagles' asses heavily! It was east vs west sarh only.

Well, this is certainly good to know :D The ER engagement was quite epic haha! I'm not sure I would feel too comfortable flying that slow with the barrel rolls though. As long as ED does nothing about it, I guess it's a viable tactic lol. ER manufacture flaw? To be honest the R-73 evasion technique doesn't look exactly safe though, and merging with a flanker puts you in a bad spot afterwards... But I admit these things could be looked into by ED.

Nice :) I'm sure the Mig-29 is responsible for surviving the most AIM-120 hits! F-15C is unlikely to survive a hit and Su-27.. well I don't remember it ever surviving a hit, not since PFM came :D

Ragna, I see you are not happy with the way people play the game. Thankfully, a single person can not force everyone else to play the game their own way. :) If you want to enforce something you need to make your own server where you make your own rules and enforce them! Regarding "gaming" and "IRL" mentality.. a true soldier uses all means provided to him/her to kill and survive. This is the case both in game and in IRL. If you start forcing imagined IRL variables into the game, you can always do that, but please don't expect everyone to think this way. Each pilot plays the game the way they want to play, not the way you would want them to. Using exploits is in the grey area, up to debate. What some people consider an exploit may not be so for others. Regarding Su-27 I think that with the new R-73 it is more powerful than ever. It sacrifices some max-range performance for extreme close range performance. I've gotten dogfight kills that would have been impossible in DCS 1.2. Su-27 is superior to F-15 in a mountainous terrain, and it is also superior in the upcoming scenario of Joint Warrior where AIM-120, R27ET and R-77 are removed from the equation...

No promises. High five!

At least the sea level graph looks quite close to what it is in game. The peculiar thing about it is that the Su-27 performance does not seem to change significantly between 600 km/h and 800 km/h. In my experience, anything between these speeds give good performance. This is in stark contrast to the F-15, which has significant performance increase all the way until practical corner speed (which is at 7.5 - 8 G due to blackout) I don't know what aircraft weights are used for these graphs but the truth is the planes perform close enough at sustained turn that whichever is the better-sustained-turning plane depends heavily on fuel weight and stores. You can also directly see the dramatic impact of low speed on the F-15 performance, while the Su-27 performs much better all the way down to 400 km/h

Octu limped home and repaired :)

Yeah, my computer choked on NTTR so bad that I was forced to buy 16 GB RAM and better GPU (GTX 980). Now runs very well :)

Sweeper you should've brought more lube for this...

If only I didn't contract a combined Alzheimer and Parkinsons diseases combined with a little overconfidence and a thorough lack of planning :D GG thanks all congrats Blue!

Buddy painting would be useful, hunting in pairs would become more effective...

Have you guys checked that takeoff assistance is set to 0%?

Yep, the snake is harder to use than the traditional F-15/Su-27 pippers. But hey, it's a snake on a plane!

Quick googling gave a glide ratio of 13 to the Su-27.. sounds plausible :) In that case 5300 m altitude should give 68,9 km glide distance.

This.. sometimes you want to maximize sustained turn rate but rarely do you want to absolutely minimize your radius. What you often need is to strike a balance between the two. In one circle geometry make your radius just slightly smaller than the bandit's, this way you only bleed as much speed as is necessary to gain advantage, while having enough speed to keep up with a sustained turn again, or a chase if necessary. Rate vs radius is not black or white, you have all the shades of gray in between.

This is.. uhh.. how to say this nicely.. very far from the truth :) Truth is that radius matters in most dogfight turn geometries. The only time when radius doesn't matter at all is when the fighters are turning at the same direction, in the exact same plane. This is often not the case at all.

My pro tips for not losing sight: 1) Zoom in more at the target 2) Fiddle with the target visibility settings to find what works best for you. I personally find the visibility enlargement aid confusing and sometimes lose sight because of it so I prefer to have it off. 3) Revert from TrackIR to hat switch :D 4) Revert from LCD monitor to CRT monitor :D:D:D Ok I'm not entirely serious about 3 and 4 but that's my setup :)