WinterH

Yeah it isn't really ok from either side, but if people want to roleplay a historical mission the best they can with what's available, they'll just have to make do with that. Razbam wants to eventually do modules of Mirage IIIEA and also an earlier Harrier from period (either a GR or a Sea Harrier), but that should be a good while in the future yet.

CE will have neither INS nav, nor aerial refueling, but EE should have them, which will be added later into the module.

Answer is pretty simple: 9.5 out of 10, they just can't be changed to another position in a dogfight. In my post from Wednesday, I had a vague recollection of wings not being sweepable past very low G loads, and them taking a while to change position even then, but wasn't entirely sure so didn't write anything about that. Then posts from Dragon1-1 and Bies fairly specifically added this to the conversation too. Basically you set the wings to 45 position before the fight, and forget about it most of the time, with all the benefits and vices of that position. Unless the fight happens at/devolves into really slow speeds, MiG-23 will remain at 45 degrees, which, as far as I know, is in the ball park of F-4E's turning capability, but then it will lose its main party trick: the insane acceleration. Also, all the way before the latest MLDs with an additional dogtooth at wingroots and leading edge slats, MiG-23s hated pulling AoA with a passion. Add on top the canopy situation, and you lose most of the on paper good looking dogfighting potential. The legend and lore goes that most operators preferred MiG-21 over the 23 when it comes to dogfighting, but I'll admit that's anectodal. Not saying Phantom will be incomparably better or anything, and it will be hard to fly in a dogfight itself anyway, but I feel like it'll come out on top 6-7 out of 10 in WVR.

"Fanboys" of both aircraft claim theirs win by far, but I personally believe F-4, especially E with slats, will considerably more often come out on top in WVR engagements vs MiG-23. Perhaps not MLD, but even that is a question mark, and we are not supposed to get a MLD module anyway. As with of military hardware "lore", MiG-23s being completely unmaneuverable is not entirely the truth. If you look at the numbers, they can, in fact, have pretty damn good ITR and STR by 3rd gen fighter standards. Thing is, they get those in specific wing sweeps, which is a manual effort to choose unlike a Tomcat for example. And each sweep angle is a compromise. Also, especially the earlier ones were notorious for really, reeaaally not liking doing high AoA things, and, apparently, would promptly stop playing! So I personally thing with the MLA we will get, it is supposed to be less about MiG-23 completely being unable to WVR, but more so that it is a really though and demanding job to get the best out of it in that regime. Then, there is the fact that it has a fairly atrocious canopy. That coupled with a full time job of flying it well enough, would make the MiG pilot more likely to lose tally I would think. I'm not under any illusions that Phantom will have anything remotely like carefree handling either, but MiG is just so much more notorious for that, and it has more things to fiddle with to keep it perform in a dogfight. Looking at the weapons for WVR, guess it will depend on what Sidewinders we will get to a degree. AFAIK, 9L and M weren't a thing on regular F-4Es, especially not in 80s. Though, I don't think there is a reason for us not to get 9P5s, which aren't as agile but are still all aspect. Otherwise, R-60Ms can be an advantage for the MiG, if it can get its nose to where it'll achieve a lock. As for the earlier Sidewinders, late Atolls are roughly equivalent anyway. Also, while they take 4 seconds to achieve a lock and launch, later Sparrows can actually be pretty decent in WVR due to their quick acceleration and big control surfaces. Well, potentially anyway, we'll see. And R-24s should be about as good there too probably, also with an all aspect IR option. I really think it will be an interesting dynamic with MiG having a better radar and arguably better (but fewer) missiles for BVR, while the Phantom being better for WVR. Also, Phantom will have countermeasures, but MLA normally shouldn't unless Iraqi field modifications is chosen, which had some. So that will be mission/server dependent. Then there'll be Mirage F1, existing MiG-21Bis and F-5E, upcoming stuff like F-8 and hopefully eventually MiG-17F, Mirage III... going crazy with excitement here!

I know, not helpful, but this is one of the most hillarious threads I've seen in the forum for quite a while, and that's quite something!

They kept seeing updates up to 80s I think. Also film projected moving maps, terrain avoidance radar, INS NAV/ATK systems were actually semi-common in strike aircraft in 80s, even in some 70s aircraft. F-111, A-6, Tornado, Jaguar come to mind. Su-24 too to some degree I think. A-7 was more or less the first bird with what we consider a proper HUD nowadays, and it already had that HUD Vietnam era as far as I recall. AFAIK A-6E was still the somewhat better bird for night attacks, and especially A-6E TRAM from late-ish 70s got under the nose what is essentially a FLIR capable targeting pod with self lasing capability. A-7E's FLIR pod is, as far as I know, mostly for navigation and doesn't do much in attack department. I may be wrong though. Also I believe that the radar set on A-6 is more sophisticated and powerful, and it had some radar only bombing modes even in A-6A days, back when A-7 was day time only attacker for the most part. I'm really looking forward old-school, semi-janky advanced capabilities to come in both A-6 and A-7.

I really do want some early Battle of Britain era birds like Spitfire I/II, Hurricane, Bf-109E (I'd prefer E-4/b or E-7, they'd tie in as an early Eastern Front bird to go with I-16 too). Since we are getting a WW II Marianas, Corsair, and Nick Grey says that F6F is something he'd love to eventually see made, I guess it is fair to imagine other Pacific modules too. Avenger can be cool, but I am more partial to SBD for whatever reason. For the Japanese side, since there are flyable examples, a Zero is probably feasible, and is a cool, iconic plane. At least an AI Val would round out a sword-shield combo for IJN together with the zero. For a later bird, while it has never been a favorite of mine, N1K Shiden is a good aircraft, and I think there was a surviving airframe and some docs somewhere. As for the IJAA side, I have an unreasonable love for the Ki-43. Ki-61 and/or Ki-100 can be nice as well. Ki-84 would be amazing, but I think there's nothing surviving that would make it possible as a DCS module. Stuka of either early or late war vintage would be nice to see. Also, ED was considering the idea of doing F and G attack birds too when Fw-190A module was in dev, that would be a nice addition to give axis side a good attacker while doing relatively less work than a module from ground up. B-25, A-26, Bf-110, Ju-88, Pe-2 are all things I'd love flying in DCS as well.

Yep, this could also enable Petro to attack from hover when the conditions allow (light helo, not hot and high environment) and situation calls for. Currently only doable as a human in the gunner seat. AFAIK this is practiced IRL by skilled Hind crews too.

Much prefer current system: use CJTF red/blue for having all skins available, or proper countries to have proper skins only.

I definitely wouldn't say Apache was the most anticipated overall by the community. It is up there, and probably the first place among the helicopters. But F-14, F/A-18, F-16 all had more anticipation around them from what I can recall.

My favorite non aircraft mod packs: - French pack - SAM site assets pack - Massun92's assets - Majestic class carriers First 3 add both great variety of good looking static stuff for base building, as well as additional ground units. The carriers is self explanatory, and makes a good challenging small deck carrier avaialable for another great mod, the A-4E.

Ah, that'd explain it for me then, being an FFB2 user myself.

That's the problem For some reason, we need to invert FFB axes from FFB settings, otherwise it'll get wonky when you trim etc.

Eh, honestly, for release they need the item nr 1, and that alone. My bet is that one is taking time.

Many versions of Mirage F1, two F-4E versions, MiG-23MLA, AJS 37, MiG-21Bis, F-5E, F-8J, A-7E, A-6E, G.91, hopefully MiG-17F and Su-17M3, EE Lightning, Mirage III, A-4E... DCS is becoming quite the fixed wing dream land for me, not to mention already great helo wonderland! Then there's the Corsair and a potential La-7 in addition to existing excellent warbirds. So many aircraft to look forward to!

4-5 kilometers from likes of T-72,T-80,T-90 is also kind of asking for trouble. Hellfire provides a lot more range than that, so it's best to utilize it. Their gun launched ATGMs like Svir/Reflex have 4.5-5ish kms range. While they may not be likely to hit an evasive helo at long range, one hovering perfectly still is exactly the kind of target they want This is also true for many IFVs, but their missiles tend to be somewhat shorter ranged, usually.

They have a 3rd party dev license agreement with ED, and access to DCS SDK. Red Star Simulation doesn't have those yet, and that is the difference. Hopefully they will get it, and we will enjoy MiG-17 and more from them as they prove themselves up to the task

I do vaguely remember ED saying at some point that these will get looked at, and hopefully we'll have a more detectability based system than the legacy "missile can be countered, rocket and bomb not" we have. C-RAM was seen in a few ED trailers last few months. Also, we were to get a Pantsir too last year but then we didn't hear about it again. Really though, I'd much rather we get older air defense from both sides of the fence before 2010+ ones.

It works for me, but the missile needs a target point in these modes, so you need to either have a stored target or a waypoint etc as an acqiuision source before firing the missile.

You don't move TADS with cursor control, but with manual targeting thumb controller found on the right handle of TEDAC. Select TADS as the active sight, unless it is slaved to an acquisition source you should be able to move it around. If it is slaved, pressing the slave button will let you slew it.

I'd love a DCS: Jaguar!

I think a mid-ish 90s W would also give the option of using either TOWs or laser Hellfires, so the Super Cobra would be a fit for both older and somewhat newer scenarios this way :). And if Sidewinders and Sidearms were indeed an actual possible loadout, it would make it a unique capability even in face of Longbow Apache, Hind, Blackshark 2/3. I'd be happy with either such a W, or a relatively same vintage F myself being a weirdo, I'd even eventually buy them both

Yeah, we need neither NATO nor Russian latest gen air defense. What's the point? We neither have, nor will in foreseeable future things they are supposed to defend against as modules. We are less likely to have the numbers to simulate these modern air defense stuff even semi faithfully either. So the best way to get them in DCS imo, is through mods, and high digit sams mod does that for the most part, tho more so with Russian SAMs. If anything, we should get things like Redeye, early block Stinger, Strela-2 and 3 (SA-7) etc older MANPADS and older NATO AAA, so that some of the cold war modules will have more proper threats to play with/against.

Ballistic limit afaik. So the weapon is out of range.

Said it before, I'd really, really prefer we get an 80s-90s Cobra instead. Either an Army F or a Marines W. AH-64D scratches the modern blufor attack helo itch. 80s to early-mid 90s Cobra would be anothher kind of experience, would fit the most fleshed out DCS period really well, and also would be a great counterpart to the Hind. Besides, they would be a better representative of Cobra's broader service over the world.