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YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! You have no idea how many forums have folks that will flame the *DAYLIGHTS* out of a guy that asks such basic questions!! THANK YOU ALL!!! Tweet!!!!

Hello all, I just acquired the F-14 sim, and am unable to use weapons, among other things. Specifically, when I pass my mouse cursor over the control stick, nothing happens. I attempt to left click, right click, etc., all to no avail. Instrument cluster functions seem to be OK, but nothing on the stick will function. I have no problem arming the master arm switch, or setting the gun rate to high, but when I try to press the button on the stick, I get no result. Is there a way to arm my weapons without going to the stick? Another oddity; when I tried the guns training mission, the aircraft hangs motionless in the air. Gear will lower, flaps will lower, etc., but the aircraft is stationary. The same thing happens in sidewinder practice, but the aircraft does move normally in air to ground practice - except that I can't arm the gun for love or money. I would be very grateful for any help, as I feel like I just invested $80 for a combat sim with a unit that can't do combat. I have tried re-installing the game from scratch. System: ASUS P6TV2, 1366 pin Intel i7 965 extreme, R9 FuryX, 6GB DDR3, Samsung Evo 850 512 GB SSD Thank you all for your help. Tweet

Well...... They are, after all, mostly made of high-tensile steel, rather than aluminum, and they are surprisingly big birds...... I dunno.... Dr. Nathan Stahlwirth PhD. ME PHY SAE

FC3 Logic and AI... I've noticed some weird behavior from AI planes in FC3; in an F-15 vs. MiG-21 shootout, I observed repeated instances where neither side shot at the other, despite a clear opportunity to do so. I did everything I could with the advanced actions, such as specifically targeting groups, and units, but that made the results even less predictable. One might argue that this new manner of micro-managing AI behavior is the ultimate in flexibility, but it has to work in order for that statement to be valid. The exact scenario modeled in FC2 with MiG-23s in place of the MiG-21s yielded a perfect result; F-15s engaged at long ranges with AIM-120s, and with AIM-9s at short distances, while the surviving 23s engaged with R-60s, once the range was close enough to do so. I applaud the DCS and ED crew for attempting to improve the simulator, but I guess that even the best laid plans.....blah, blah, blah...... I guess Scotty said it best to Captain Kirk when he quipped; "....th' more complicated ya make th' plumbin', th' easier it is ta block th' drain....". Bravo, Scotty! Dr. Nathan Stahlwirth PhD. ME, PHY, SAE p.s.; Kudos to the ED/DCS crew for bringing us a GORGEOUS MiG-21! It was LONG overdue! Would it be too much to ask to update the MiG-25's graphics and performance (it is WAAAY out of spec!!!!!), and throw in the Su-17? Please? Pretty Please?...... With sugar on top???

That's great to know. It's certainly a bit more convenient than having to edit one into a flight. I have always enjoyed the meteorological effects in this series of games (thanks Industrial Light and Magic!!!!!), and wanted to set the ambient lighting just so, to fully exploit the effort that was put into both the model, and the skin rendering. Nathan

Hello Again, Friends: Back when I was in college, in Ronnie Reagan times, I can hardly remember a speech by President Reagan that didn't include some mention of the dreaded "Backfire Bomber". Even though I was sufficiently politically aware to have some inkling of a smoke screen when I saw one, Reagan's sense of urgency and passion went to soaring heights when he spoke about the "Backfire Bomber". It was surreal; Reagan didn't discuss the airplane in the context of a machine, operated by men, but rather, as an invincible, nearly almighty entity, that could single-handedly bring about the destruction of the American way of life. In fact, if one were to listen to his speeches, it would be all but obvious that the "Backfire Bomber" was a sentient, evil entity, that would, of its own accord, take off in the middle of the night, bomb our cities, kill our men, rape our women, and carry our children off to Soviet brainwashing camps, without a single Soviet airman lifting a finger. It's amazing what propaganda can do, and many of the Tu-22M1-M3's capabilities were grossly exaggerated, for purely political reasons. Fortunately, the Tupolev design bureau gave us something that was not only devoid of such evil, but also, in the eyes of many aviators, a beautiful machine, with flowing lines and graceful curves; the French deemed a Ukrainian unit the winner of a "Concourse D'Elegance" (Beauty Pageant for the non-Francophones amongst us) at Le Bourget, one year (I don't remember which), and, IMHO, for good reason. As far as "reasons" go, the one for my post is rooted in the fact that FC3 includes a gorgeous re-design (not just re-rendering) of the Backfire, and for those of you that haven't seen it, I urge you to have a look. My rig is good for 19 x 12 with everything maxed, and, believe it or not, the aircraft looks even better than it does in these screen shots, due to the JPEG compression used to make these pictures. I could shoot the thing all day long, but I will limit my exposé to the following few pictures. Have a look at it for your missions; aside from being beautifully re-done (nice job, DCS!!!), it will actually out-accelerate any other aircraft I've put against it, that's carrying a combat load (at 10,000 metres). Regards, Dr. Nathan Stahlwirth, PhD., ME, PHY, SAE

Yes. I read a thread once in World of Tanks in which users were talking about being able to put discarding sabot rounds through observation ports to knock out a tank.......!!!! That's what I call realistic! ON a side note, I always got a kick out of ammunition that was named after a shoe.... Get it? Kick.....shoe? Ha....? Never mind, I won't quit my day job! :music_whistling: Obviously, I don't expect ED programmers to go THAT far, but some basic gun/armor tables would be a realistic expectation for CA. SSI had a game called "Fighting Steel", in which they modeled WWII capital ships, and they did a reasonably good job of exactly that. My only disappointment was their omission of the French and Italian ships, which would have completely destroyed the Bismarck and Tirpitz in a 1v1 scenario - the French ships due to their heavier armor and better underwater protection, and the Italian ships due to their insanely powerful main guns (their 15" guns hit HARDER than the Yamato's 18"s did, at long range). Best, Nathan

Hello Flagrum, Your knowledge of DCS munitions modeling is impressive, at the very least, and your explanation seems perfectly reasonable and logical. I suspect that what I'm about to write is old news, but I think that the ED/DCS developers would find a gold mine of data in the experiences of users like yourself, and would do well to take heed, and tune their product accordingly. I believe that modern desktop computers have finally reached the necessary processing power (especially through multiple cores, and ever-shrinking die dimensions - the speed of light and magnetic bubble collapse times limit clock-speed increases somewhat) to permit the publication of an advanced combat simulator, on even modestly efficient code. Throw in the effect of offloading the graphics workload onto a nearly separate computer (the video card(s)), and the envelope has been drastically expanded. Thanks for all the help that you, and others like you have furnished, which has lead to a much better simulator!!! Best, Nathan

Hi Folks, I acquired CA with the hope of finding a good simulator, in the quality range of Lock On, or its derivatives. Obviously, there is no such thing as the perfect simulator, as the computer experience deprives the user of many sensory inputs that a non-virtual pilot can rely on. This aside, I have enjoyed many hours of simulator practice with Lock On over the years, and have found its limitations to be completely reasonable, and viable. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Combined Arms. Yesterday, I initially noticed an unrealistically optimistic result when a Leopard 1A3, armed with the Royal Ordnance 105mm gun, defeated a T-80 at a distance of about 3 km. I thought to myself that perhaps a critical hit had occurred, but to test my hypothesis, I set up another meeting engagement, in which a T-55, armed with its D-10T rifle, and protected by its face-hardened cementite armor, would go toe to toe with an M1-A1, armed with its Rheinmetall-Borsig 120mm smoothbore, and protected by its Chobham composite laminate armor. In real life, the D-10 has nowhere near the energy to defeat the M1's Chobham armor, at any angle, at any range. An M1 can literally BACK UP to a T-55, and the latter's D-10 rifle lacks the energy to defeat even the rear armor on the M1, at point-blank range. The result of the engagement? I drove the M1, just to make sure that the T-55 didn't get wasted before it even got into range, and sure enough, with a FRONTAL shot, at a range of 2.5 km, the T-55 knocked out the M1-A1 on the first hit - with HE ammo!!! To make sure that ANOTHER critical hit didn't occur, I repeated the test - six times - and each time, the result was the same; the T-55 was able to knock out the M1 with a frontal shot, at ranges that a 125mm smoothbore could barely DENT an M1. This begs a question on my part; given the tremendous (heroic is more like it) effort that the DCS programmers have made, in the interests of designing a more accurate simulator, how could they leave such grotesque inaccuracies in a module that is specifically dedicated to land combat? At this point, "T-55" and "M1-A1" are meaningless labels, that in no way describe the unit's abilities. If any tank can knock out any other tank, at any range, and at any angle, what's the use of even differentiating between units? I could understand if a provision existed to allow for destruction after numerous non-penetrating hits occur, but in the case I described, the most powerful tank in the world was knocked out by the weakest in the sim, using ammunition that has absolutely no effect against the defending tank's armor! If this had occurred in Lock On, it still wouldn't be right, but at least one could argue that LO is a flight simulator, not an armor sim. But to have this happen in CA, a sim that was supposedly developed specifically to model land combat, the situation is simply inexcusable. To the designers and coders at Eagle Dynamics; please give us accurate dynamics between the guns and armor of the tanks in your simulator. With all the complex calculations done for the flight simulations, and the massive data tables you've constructed for terrain, and AI, it would seem that the implementation of penetration tables for the guns, and armor profiles for the vehicles, would be child's play for programmers as excellent and creative as you are. As a physicist and engineer, I would be happy to volunteer to assist you. Best regards, Dr. Nathan Stahlwirth, PhD., ME, PHY, SAE.