Cik

just the ability to generate .pngs from targeting pods and stuff would be real nice to make briefings etc.

spread out or not doesn't seem to matter that much. i've dropped against targets that are much more dispersed than that and still achieved 100% kill rate. it seems like as long as you are: in the footprint of the bomb [X] are light armor [X] you are dead.

hydras are useless, common across every platform that carries them. it does however seem to me that zunis are VERY accurate, you can reliably bop a tank on the head with them straight up from their max indicated deployment range. use zunis instead. the eastern rockets (S-5/8/13/24 are also really good)

nah. if you are flying fleetCAP it's 100% reasonable that even if you are actually in a war you will be flying plenty of milk runs where nobody is actually going to engage you. how many phoenixes are even on your average mid-80s carrier? after a few weeks of flying how many sorties a day will they'll all be in the water? now, for alert fighters perhaps the story is different. if you are going to keep them on the deck until the backfires are no shit coming right at you. 6 phoenix is realistically all players are going to fly if given the choice, but that's just because it's optimal in terms of killing power, not because it makes sense operationally. it would be better operationally to just put more tomcats up with 2-4 phoenix than a smaller number with 6. if you were in a situation where you thought you weren't going to have enough missiles to protect the fleet, you would just add more carriers or destroyers. i mean take that with a grain of salt because WWIII never happened in 1980, but you know. now there's nothing historically wrong with the hornet's S/O kit, it's just that red has no counter besides REALLY stacking air defenses which means that every non-hornet platform will be made irrelevant and that red has no counterbalance as none of their stuff is modeled. A/A wise, F-14 is likely to be pretty egregious already. red has very little chance even against AMRAAM without significant skill/numbers advantage, F-14 AIM-54 long pole may simply obsolete red fighters entirely, though it depends on how good jester is at actually handling MP environment, and what specific quirks the -54/radar has that can be exploited. i'm sure that after a day/week/month/year of complaining on both sides it'll shake out. but i mean maybe not. just because apocalypse hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it will never happen :D

i don't expect it will be unduly threatening unless launched at (relatively) close range. but maybe i'm drastically underestimating it's chaff resistance. if it's anything like the -ER where it has a theoretically pretty great range but if anyone brushes the chaff button it goes dead immediately. but maybe it will be the terror of the skies, who knows. just depends on how vulnerable to chaff it is, how allowable meme 6 phoenix loadouts are, and if the C gets banned or not. i expect that on most reasonable servers the hornet and tomcat will have to be toned down. in particular, phoenix loadouts will probably be restricted to be operationally realistic (IE, you get 2-4 and not more than that) which limits your ability to deliver mass death from afar while being untouchable and gives the enemy some chance of making it to a zone where you are weak. hornet will probably lose the vast majority of it's ridiculous standoff weapons that could delete entire bases from half the map away- it may even lose HARMs because if they are nearly as capable as they are in falcon they will be SEAD god mode as the AI doesn't really utilize any tactics that can defeat them and will be outranged by them for the most part. otherwise it will be just be blue rolling everything off the table forever with no counterplay possible even if red outnumbers blue significantly.

sure senpai, it's not a cure-all. but generally speaking in coming in low with a nose-high brake is best practice just imo.

^ making vertical landings is a sucker's game. you can actually come in fast in ground effect with a slightly elevated nose at low collective, stop and land at the same time. minimizes time of vulnerability and gets you on the ground faster.

MI-8 is the best helicopter IMO- enough autopilots to make sure it's not physically tiring like the huey, but not so much as the KA-50 where you are not really even flying the airframe anymore. unlike huey, it doesn't have trouble carrying it's own weapons. more than enough power to climb hills and move at high speeds even loaded to the gills with rokkits. better at sling loading as more power definitely helps. generally much more stable in flight with no nose left/right wobble unlike huey. as a gunship it's superior to huey, seems more damage resistant and powerful. fun to fly with it's own quirks but not a real headache cross-country once you get in the groove. i'd probably reconsider my opinion if we had a threat environment that allowed flying the huey in the close support role, but as it is now it basically eats it immediately as it's outsticked by every AA system in game and doesn't have enough flares for prolonged loiter where MANPADS may dwell (unlike MI-8 which can chill out over MANPADland for significant amounts of time due to crazy dispenser qty) get MI8 imo, best of all worlds unless you really, really must fly an american helicopter.

AMRAAM > all in MP. AIM-7M is better than R27R/T. only when you have -7 vs. R27ER/ET do you suffer. i fly blue all the time and blue indisputably has a pretty massive advantage. F-15 F/E pole combined with massively superior missiles and SA means that F-15 should literally never lose beyond WVR, and within WVR you win most of the time as well because of smokeless sidewinder and lethality of close range AIM-120.

the 109 is a better dogfighter. it has a better climb rate, turn rate, and arguably heavier armament. the question "which is the best fighter" is a much more murky comparison.

there was this large air operation called operation linebacker, where they flew buffs directly over the largest SA-2 nest active in the world (well... the soviet one might have been bigger) casualties were relatively minimal, actually. tl;dr chaff and jamming are pretty effective against the SA-2, even if you have the RCS of a skyscraper and are flying in a straight line at very close range.

5 on 5, 10 on 10, 50 on 50, probably with some sort of objective so that it isn't just a frag contest. air superiority is nice, but it doesn't win wars by itself. at some point you have to theoretically do something on the ground, most of the time.

it's fine to have them, but in a world of finite development resources i'd rather have older stuff, because we have piles of older planes but very little to fill in campaigns for them. i'd rather have gear from korea, vietnam, desert storm than real modern stuff just IMO.

see: linebacker

i don't know if they would do anything more than the SA-10 already does. with DCS bty AI they would probably empty their rails at targets 3/4 of the map away, who would promptly duck, rendering the radar unable to track them through a hill and the missile useless. what are you hoping to achieve by adding them i guess? if all you want is for them to exist in the game because they exist in real life that's fine i guess- i'm not AGAINST there being more assets in the game, but i'd rather they work on older SAMs actually. REDEYE/SA-7/SA-4/5 would be more tactically interesting and allow us to fill in older eras whereas everything in the game is SUPER modern. most of the MANPADS/ATGMs in the game are incredibly lethal and significantly crowd out half the CAS/attack aircraft in the game imo. what we really need are ISIS-tier vehicles- makeshift rocket trucks, technicals, .50 cal tripods, ATGM launchers, more mortars and older shoulder-fired stuff rather than newer stuff that will 1. not be used because it's too lethal or 2. be easily circumvented because the AI won't handle it well.

P-51 was a superior bird in that specific situation though- as an escort fighter 109 is hopeless as range is too short to make it anywhere important and back. one vs one is a useless comparison for the most part as 1v1 duels are very rare. what matters is many vs many fights and the ability to GET to the many vs many fight. what's a better tank, the tiger or the sherman? nose to nose, the tiger may win odds on but the sherman is a better tank because: he wins everywhere the tiger isn't, which is most places he outnumbers tiger 20:1 he's good enough he doesn't have to skulk around rail because he can actually strategically maneuver without breaking down he has combined arms support to bust anything he can't kill himself easy to manufacture, en masse and can fit on a liberty ship T-34 is better tank than tiger as well for these reason(s) tl;dr 109 would have been terrible for anybody else than germany, as it had meager range. only reason it was good was because germany was already in a losing position and forced into a point defense role. it's very maneuverable and the armament is good, but many vs many it's less invincible than it seems while you're trying to outmaneuver it with a fuel tank 10 times the size of your opponent. it's not significantly resistant to .50 cal, you're planform to someone at all times, many times you are dead with no real recourse to your maneuverability or climb rate.

P51 beats 109 in real life because: better pilot training/deeper reserves numbers all fights at 20k+ ft better range/endurance 109s chief objective isn't to shoot down P51, but bombers actual turning fights are not rare but not as common. most of the time 109s dying to swooping attacks rather than concerted duels. in reality you rarely start from a neutral position and do several turns- more often mustang comes from above or to your side and just shoots you to death in one gunburst. P51 is just as vulnerable to this, but there are a bunch more planes and pilots- not so with 109. fights were VERY many vs many. the biggest fight i've seen in WWII DCS was probably 5v5 at most. in small unit engagements you can hope to keep at least a rough track of everyone's positions- you might know that there's somebody behind you before he opens fire and maneuver to prevent it, but in many vs many odds are you are going to be planform to someone, and can die without warning at any time. in such a situation, your superlative maneuverability is less able to frustrate mustang's ability to shoot you.

did trump's attitude lead to this mechanical failure? sources familiar with sources familiar with his thinking say that his psychic gestalt clashed with the gestalt of the maintenance men, leading to despondency which may* have resulted in the crash! but i'm glad everyone lived. unfortunately, VTOLs are just going to crash more and i wasn't surprised it was a -B. harriers IIRC have the same problem and it's not a big surprise.

actually i've dropped 4x MK20 on 8-vehicle groups of trucks, HY-2, BMP-1 and BMP-2 and assuming my "stick" lands correctly on the vehicle group i get reliable 100% kill rate. just give the CBU-87 / 99 the same treatment and they will be good. as MK20 is right now it is much, much more effective than MK82.

if you are notching how are you supposed to prevent them from pressing and then just bagging you with one of the 4-20 sidewinders they will probably have on their rails?

feature request: add a mandatory cutscene to the end of the flight where the maintenance team yells at you

is there any way to smoothly generating recon pictures etc. except by trying to crane my head into the A-10s TGP MFD? a functionality to take pictures of things without having to do this would be real neat.

still in service, forget about it

ah, my thanks. i was looking at triggered actions earlier as a solution but after looking through the triggers menu i didn't see anything that references "triggered actions" so i dropped that avenue. thanks sir.

have visual sightline of the target i don't think you need to give it an order at all, i'm pretty sure it just engages anything it sees by default