Stuge

It all comes down to: do you want to see the bandit go evasive/defensive, or not? If yes, fire early. If not, wait until last moment you think you can still survive(remember aim120s or ETs may already be heading for you). If it looks like he hasn't detected you, you can go into a merge if you want. (looks can be deceiving though, maybe he sees you even if you think he doesn't :)) Once the bad guy fires, it is best, in general, to return the favor :) There is a case when it is really beneficial to fire an AMRAAM early: when the bad guy is flying high and not diving. Long shots have a much better chance of hitting a high-flying target since it can't maneuver too much, and due to high missile speed he will not have much time to react once the thing goes active.

I really feel like the 3/9 line in missile evasion is kinda overrated, much like corner speed i mentioned earlier is in a dogfight. I find that running away from a missile with max speed, max G, and minimum altitude, best guarantees bleeding a missile out of energy. By doing this, surviving a 10nm head-on shot is very doable, as long as you are prepared for it. And if you come there with more total energy than the bad guy, maybe you get away but he doesn't ;) The trick is to convert all energy you have into evasive action. Max G throughout the process. All extra altitude converted into airspeed before you anticipate getting (potentially) hit. And contrary to what you hear around sometimes, running away is better than flying a straight 3/9 line. Maybe this image will help: http://scilib.narod.ru/Avia/Bonanni/images/f01-09.jpg See how RMax is shortest when the shot is taken at a fighter's 6 o clock, compared to 3 o clock or 9 o clock...

Indeed...

GG and Blaze are right, maybe i didn't say it quite well... I like to use it intermittently when returning.. and keep it off while i feel safe :)

IFF has absolutely nothing to do with your radar being on or off. In fact, it's better to keep it off while rtb, because having it on will force everyone you're sweeping to locate you and IFF if you're enemy or not. Keep it off, and no one will pay attention to you.

Don't worry, occasionally you will find out that the "moron" making a teamkill is yourself :) Making mistakes is human, that's ok. So when you do, an apology is always enough ;) And if one doesn't apologize, they either 1) didn't realize they did it 2) have a big ego. Which is, btw, also a natural phenomenon :D So not to get your blood pressure up... learn to forgive. Become Jesus. If you can. And if you can't, well, that's human too :)

Not worthless, just a high chance of miss. But since you can carry 8, chances are you will get the bad guy with one of them. Don't fire all at once if the bandit is evasive. One at a time.. while he has to evade, you can force the distance smaller. If you have sparrows, you could try a flood mode shot. Then prepare to use aim9(if you're carrying) and gun if range becomes small. If you suspect the bandit may get away, switch radar off, track him visually, make him feel safe, and if you see he obviously turns back, mad dog or two :D

Seeing that nowadays 104th server is often full, and a little wait is required to join, I'd say I'm quite happy with that :) Great success!

Training missions are not the forte of DCS unfortunately... learning requires activity, you won't be held by hand all the way :) Try reading the manuals (found in your DCS folder), videos can be found on youtube, and once you get some of the basics down, come online, on teamspeak, and there are people (including me) who'll gladly help you out with any finer details and perhaps hidden secrets that can be found :D

Without having time to read through everything here I have to comment on this one. Even if the planes are identical, the capabilities of the pilots rarely are. Get a little more practice, a little more knowledge, and you just may suddenly find the other guys to be receiving much more missiles in their faces than you are. Many new guys have made rapid progress in this sense.

Same guy every time? I can understand the frustration.. I sometimes like going all audiovisual (radar off) in the mountains with f15, that means i can spike em just before i fire my gun :D Still.. i think the thing i most recommend to you is get a good night's sleep and everything's going to be ok again :)

If you want to analyze server balance, count the amount of fighters on each side. Strikers don't matter from the perspective of air combat. You shouldn't think too competitively about the outcomes of team vs team online servers. Most missions last many hours. The balance shifts many times, and most players don't even have time to sit through the whole thing. So it's more about practice, learning, teamwork, enjoyment and interesting situations, than it is hardcore competition. Even if the game itself is 100% hardcore :D And nowadays there's usually at least someone on ts, so you shouldn't be completely alone!

Umm I'm surprised no one pointed this out before, but for strike aircraft, attack areas are marked with waypoints. Read the briefing more carefully. Only one area is active at a time. Once the units are destroyed at A, units at B spawn and so on. That's why you didn't find anything. There are no ground units battling each other on 104th missions in general. Blue targets and red targets are located in different places. There are cases though where there are friendly units very close to a target area, in this case a friendly fire incident is possible even if you somewhat know what you're doing :D About balance.. there is no possibility for autobalance, and people may want to fly together, this can lead to even heavy imbalance of course. For me is no problem, i like a target rich environment too :D See u online...

I'm glad you're enjoying it Ace! About 2-ship operations.. I have not explored that aspect in-depth. Hopefully more in the future. The idea of a "two-ship death machine" working flawlessly is very intriguing, i have thought about it many times. It would require the right person to train and fly with... Last thing, i wanna make a comment on corner speed in the f-15. I think it is given too much emphasis, and people often seem to have the idea that flying perfect corner speed will magically win the fight. Granted, corner speed is most energy efficient. But it comes with problems: 1) it is challenging enough to maintain even in a horizontal turn, airspeed can easily go too high. 2) if there is any oblique or vertical maneuvering, it gets much more problematic to maintain well, without going too fast. The f-15 turns quite well even at 250kts. Bleeding out some airspeed is not such a sin as some people make it out to be... it is often a better option than overspeeding and blacking out.

Thx for the explanation! Only that I think gun dueling is the exact thing you need to do if you want to become a death machine in ANY situation involving a merge, missiles or no. It's a fun means to a very powerful end. Gun duel is the single best practice mode for BFM.

If the rules are agreed on, the fight is fair. I have yet to come across a 1 versus 1 request with specific merge parameters. Maybe you wanna do it some time? :D Not after merge point, which I was referring to. Not after merge point. Not doable after merge point - going up without turning as tight as possible can likely result in a very quick death. This is interesting, I'm not sure if I understand. Can you elaborate? Is this doable after merge point? Interesting, but ok I won't ask :) And this is a fair fight then? :D I was mainly referring to a 1 on 1, guns only scenario. Besides, Pete Bonanni says in "Art of the Kill" (I just read it, superb read!!), that if you are in a 1 versus 2 scenario, you should fight as you would your best 1 versus 1! :P

Wow, superb screenshots!! You have a talent right there...

No, you will have to experience ego death. Then it doesn't matter how many times you get shot down. The point is to train, not compete or keep track of stats or anything like that...

nice to know, thanks!

High five, colleague! :D

Yes, like GG was trying to say, the F-15 automatically uses rudder to minimize slips during banking. You can see it for yourself when you look at your rudders and bank! This is more pronounced at lower speeds / higher angles of attack. In general, no manual rudder input is required for a turn. So what are examples of when you do want to use manual rudder input? a) to prevent a spin that is about to begin, or to recover from one. b) to fine-tune your gun shot

Don't worry, we can start with your F-15C against my A-10C and work our way up from there.. I like to teach. So I will just try to do that, trying to find the best way to do so :)

Well said Maverick. I have a couple of training missions of this kind ready. I can even send them if someone wants. Simple parameters like fuel, weapons etc can be changed with 5 minutes of editing... Also I'm usually around at 10 pm UTC every day, if someone wants to do training. The Art of the Kill PDF one of you guys linked.. appreciate it, might grab it for reading at work :D S!

GG, I understand your point perfectly :) If I remember correctly, in Falcon 4 it was a really bad idea to even try dodging AMRAAMs. They hit you reliably from quite a long range, and there was no varied enough terrain to really hide well. DCS is different in that way... This is quite true. The reason I like to take risks in combat is to a) get more action time (vs straight-and-level time) and much more importantly b) get more interesting and possibly unique situations, which may not arise if I choose to bug out too early. Some nice memorable moments have formed this way... One could argue that more action time will hone certain aspects of your combat skills better, no? :) There is no "right way" to approach this sim.. it's about what you want it to be.