Gambit21

Yep - and when flown by one of the remaining experienced / initial cadre of pilots the zero gave as good as it got there as well. Zero vs F6F-3 is actually a pretty even fight even on paper. The F6F-5 has more of numbers advantage, but above caveats still apply.

When it comes out I'll meet you somewhere, you take a Hellcat or a Corsair and we'll see how it goes. You'll only win if you stay absolutely disciplined, don't get over-confident, and don't make any mistakes. My experience is that most online peeps are over-confident, not that disciplined, and they do make mistakes. That's why I did so well in the Zero in years past. The Zero was always dangerous in the hands of a good pilot, right up to the end of the war.

Upon further reflection and testing, likely will go north from Guam to Saipan...flight distances are long enough for the average player I think. We're still going northeast instead of northwest, but it's better than southwest.

Would you appreciate a Black Sheep campaign using Marianas as a South to North, Solomon's stand-in? We start north, work south. If we go south to north as in real life, then the islands get smaller and less dramatic which is a no-go. If we go north to south, then Guam can be "Choiseul" etc. A base in the middle can be "Reketa Bay" Otherwise we're dealing the final battles over Pagan which I just cant' do...or fly out of Rota, north to Siapan as "Bougainville" just weighing options here. North to south would take some suspension of disbelief obviously, but in my view a minor thing over all. However I want to know how you guys feel.

There's been restored Zero's available for reference and/or to visit for a long time...this isn't a new thing. There's a few Oscars flying around as well. You can count on a Zero being on the way.

Well we've seen forward thinking on the part of the Devs WRT to adopting community mods already, so if these mods are up to standard then perhaps we'll see more of this with PTO. Immersion is a "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts" equation, and every little asset helps. We need naval units, but also other AI aircraft types aside from the Zero. I don't want to design missions with only a single type of aircraft to shoot at. I have plans to use the Marianas map as a Solomons' stand-in for mid-war Corsair ops...think "Black Sheep"....but I need more assets to make this a plausible endeavor. Which means I need things like Japanese float planes of different types (or at least 1) troop transports, etc. Watching closely...there's a lot of potential here. I've started a skeleton mission but I'm hesitant to invest too much time until I know what's going to be available. Good times in any case...looking forward to watching this develop.

Twist axis works fine...as always.

Yeah they don't have time to babysit a Discord Server.

My guess is that it will be released in a more polished (not to mean final) state then the south was…which is a good thing IMO.

Looks great doesn’t it? Makes me wish I knew the Hog. What really has blown me away since release (and not enough credit has been given IMO) is the quality of the micro / scenes all over the map. The buildings, the compounds, the wrecked vehicles etc. Very well done .

Hope so.

It's the best PTO map...it's the "if you could only have one PTO map" map. However since ED is doing a Hellcat, then Marianas of course makes perfect sense. I'm just more of an early war PTO guy so Solomons is my thing. While I'm all for mid war, Marine Corsairs out of Vella La Vella etc, (this alone would be amazing) to really make full use of the map we'd need aircraft for early war, Watchtower onward, Battle for Guadalcanal/Cactus..Wildcats, A6M2's, A6M2-N, Mavis, P-400's, Dauntless' early, P-40's, AI Betty's etc etc. So just from an asset point of view I'm not hopeful that's anywhere near plausible at this juncture. Even mid-war/Vella La Vella, we need things to shoot at aside from an AI Zero. Float planes etc etc. One can hope.

I live hear NAS Whidbey, and would love to see this. It would never happen though. We'd need the Cascades as they fly low lever VR's through there etc. More plausible would be an Alaska/Bearing Straights map. That would also give us Red Flag Alaska. That I can actually see happening at some point.

That's going to depend on system, settings, mission. I have a pretty strong system, 64gb RAM, though not anywhere near cutting edge at this point, plenty strong enough to play a complex mission build on Syria with high settings, while I get game-stopper stutters at Kandahar.

I had to drop my settings to medium. High settings that Syria runs flawlessly on (I'm talking full, complex mission builds) are a non-starter with Afghanistan for me currently. I'm sure optimizations will come and this will change. I'm very happy with how it's shaping up...it's beautiful. Just needs to perform better now.

Based on Wag's comments WRT the Whiskey info becoming available, that's the smart money.

I'm a big fan of the Zero...that's what I really want to see ED sink their teeth into. That said I'll happily take the Hellcat with carrier ops and assets shown for now, I'm not going to complain about that. WRT to the Zeke I console myself with this simple fact...when it does come, it's going to be really, really nice! Looking good.

This. It's a lovely module, still one of the best experiences in DCS and deserves some love.

It must happen Matt.

Great points / documentation WRT CFT’s Brems - would be great to see them as an option because…why not?

Yes please.

I remember the painful wait for the Lock-On Eagle, and having to satisfy myself with reading (was in Norman’s) accounts at SimHq regarding ACM’ing with (“that boy can ACM”) Matt. So feels like a “full circle” kind of thing. It taking this long is good - because the standard now will be so much higher.

Looking forward to this! Bring on the Eagle.

You can disable emissions in the editor to help simulate earlier eras, I've done with with the Viper. You still have those pages in the cockpit though, 'shrug' so it's not a perfect solution. I'm a fan of earlier eras as well, earlier block/pre-data link, pre AIM-120 etc etc but DCS seems to favor max digital bush-buttony workflow jets. I'm scared that AH-1Z info will become available before they get the Whisky developed because I'm sure they'd divert.

We need 3D editing ability in the native editor. I designed missions in 3D for years, once you have it, it's a kick in the teeth to go back to 2D only. The DCS editor is superior on most ways, but needs a 3D view.