captain_dalan

No, i mean the ability to regain it's spent energy. This can manifest through greater acceleration under g and unloaded, or through climb rates.

Observations: A shallower lofting profile does result in more terminal energy. Compared to the previous patch, from about 30-35 miles at 20000ft, the missile retains about 20-30% more energy then before, which means it won't be subsonic before pitbull but somewhere around mach 1.2-1.3. Which doesn't mean it's going to hit an AI target by any stretch of imagination. To the average user out there, a rough rule of the thumb is to take you expected viable range and reduce it by around a 1/3. In the above mentioned example (Persian Gulf, Beyond Visual Range, mach 1.1-1.2 shooter, mach 0.8 target, hot) don't engage beyond 22 miles. Even with the new loft, your missile will never make the intercept unless the Gods of RNG favor you.....which happened 0 times 16 attempts for me. If a bandit turns cold you will always miss, no matter the parameters, but this was always to be expected. Questions: My statistical sample is very small (only 16 tracks so far) and almost all (but 3-4) are recorder while the missile was fired in PD-STT and only a few in TWS, target size set to large. There were some subtle differences i may have noticed, but will not mention as a few shots are hardly a valid sample size to draw any conclusions from. Hence my questions (from purely selfish reasons of sparing myself from doing about a 50+ more tests) @IronMike: 1. Is there supposed to be a difference in the lofting logic based on the missile being guided in PD-STT or TWS? 2. Is there a difference in the guidance logic (reaction to CCM) and reacquire logic based on the missile being guided in PD-STT or TWS? @bonesvf103 I have never seen a Phoenix going active at 25 miles from the target, is it possible that you have read the TTI number and took it for range? Was the number flashing?

What happened to the hotfix? Is it out? Not in front of my desktop, so i can't check.

Checkout the tacview i posted in the feedback thread and PM me on your impressions.

Seeing how these two statements are made in the same sentence, if by "capabilities" you mean the missile is subsonic 5-10 miles short of reaching a non-maneuvering co-altitude hot target, then yes. I fully agree. I just wouldn't use the term capabilities, no more then i would use them for a plane doping out of the sky at 100 knots as part of its flight envelope

I was just taking a jab at that guy that apparently implied 35 mile shots at medium - CAP altitudes were false expectations due to years of inaccurate modeling That came faster then expected! Apologies (from every likeminded individual) for the sleepless nights guys!

Most tests here were performed in TWS so here is a sample of one fired in PD-STT. The mission is Persian Gulf Instant Action BVR: -The missile is fired from 38 miles away angels 20 at a hot co-altitude bandit. The shooter is mach 1.1, the bandit is mach 0.9; -The missile goes into the loft at reaches its top speed of mach 2.83 while climbing; -The missile continues to climb and bleed energy until it reaches its apex at 32000ft with mach 1.74; -The missile glides towards the target and bleeds energy until it reaches mach 1.53 some 15 miles away from the bandit; -This is the best part, the missile starts a shallow dive at the bandit and loses energy along the way, until it's roughly 8 miles from the bandit. Up to this point the bandit hasn't performed any defensive maneuvers, i.e. it's flying straight and level. At this point the missile as at mach 1.04; -The bandit goes defensive inside 8 miles, and the missile drops all its remaining energy (the little left it had that is) trying to follow. Not that it mattered, as the missile essentially defeated itself long before by its own lofting profile. Even at 15 miles from the bandit, it would hardly be able to intercept a B-17 that performed a routine divert because of bad weather, let alone a MiG-29. This is just one of about a couple of dozen similar examples, all on the same map and same scenario with very similar results. Takeaways: 1. PD-STT won't help you. I also suspect the instant the missile goes active has nothing to do with this, as in PD-STT the missile never goes active to begin with; 2. Only use the Phoenix: a. Sub 10 miles. It's long burn time means it will makes most intercepts; b. In situations that avoid the lofting profile, such as you having substantial altitude advantage, depending on distance 15-20000ft i'd say. In other words, don't lof the missile, loft yourself out. Or just take Sparrows. Tacview-20220130-235123-DCS-F-14A_IA_PG_BVR.zip.acmi

Woe to the all the souls that were briefed to consider their 35 mile launches as kill shots then Ah, roger that. My bad then!

Try with max range or halfway between max and NEZ. When i do that in my test missions, the AI always engages long before the other side engages with AMRAAMs i.e. BTW, are you referring to the wingmen or other F-14 flights?

1. Indeed. And by fixing one edge-case scenario of dubious tactical usefulness unless you are counterstr...... i mean air-quake-ing (in full honesty, i can recall ever tail-chasing someone at sea-level in a tactical scenario only once, and it wasn't because it needed to be done, but because i wanted to see if it can be done), we essentially broke the vast majority of other non-WVR tactical scenarios. Was that worth the effort? Can you remember the last time you shot a Phoenix bellow 15000ft? Or merged with one still on your rails? And if so, what in good God's creation made you do it? So yeah......right now they are great as long as you and the target fly straight and level.........at sea level. Like i said in that other post...... Hooray!......? 2. No quarrel here. And the move to the new API is long overdue. Like more then a year. And as someone who was a lurker here long before engaging in any discussions or even installing the game, i know perfectly well of what you speak off. The status quo has been around for at least a decade back and probably longer. What boggles my mind more then anything else is the cultural inertia of the community, that resists any changes the the "BVR" representation in DCS. It's almost as if they fear a time table that involves anything more then Fire at 10 miles and Split-S out of Dodge. As a result, the changes are slow and to make things worse, for any step forward, often two are made back. Is it so because of community backlash? I can't say. But my hopes for the missile performance being solved anytime soon aren't high. But hey, we'll always have the Dogfighting and aerobatic servers, right?

It wasn't there at the moment of posting, and several hours afterwards. Maybe i should have taken a snapshot? Not that it mattered, i'm sure pretty much everyone that needed it, had already downloaded it, or at the very least had the relevant pages captured Like mentioned in a recent discussion about how certain airplanes perform and how their performance in DCS is portrayed, i have zero interest in comparative performance. The missile needs to perform accordingly to its own benchmarks, not how the other missiles perform. The AMRAAM is mess right now. The other missiles haven't been touched since the last time Wooly Mammoths walked the earth. Are you gonna base your missile on their performance? What happens when/if their performance changes?

Oh all the tests are performed on standard conditions, 15C 29.92Hg

It's fixed, you just need to edit the missions in which you use them and set their missile engagement range to something else then threat assessed. Set them to either max range or halfway between max range and NEZ. It works great and the AI will engage. Now hitting anything is another matter, but that's a different topic.

Ran the mk60, but only one batch as it's already 5AM here. And of those 4 launched, only 3 can be considered somewhat valid shots, even if the initial launch speed was a tad high (but not enough to matter IMO). Here are the results, averaged out: 0s - 1.17 5s - 1.38667 10s - 1.61667 15s - 1.78333 20s - 1.89667 25s - 1.99333 30s - 2.03 35s - 1.3333 37s - 1.13 So for the most part there, slightly faster after burnout. A further cut in performance is in order then. Tacview-20220129-041856-DCS.zip.acmi

Best use for now (after about 2 hours of experimenting in different tactical scenarios) is to use them as 10nm missiles in head-on scenarios. As such they outperform the Sparrows and seem less prone to CM. BVR shots should be avoided except against extremely compliant bandit (essentially one that is willing to fly right at you, without even as much as 15-20 degree offset). Launches inside 35 nautical miles (angels 25-30 mach 1.1-1.2) are a wash. I've seen the missile drop from mach 3.0 to 0.75 in less then 2 miles (against hot bandits) if the bandit so much as yanks its nose a bit to the side. Launches above 33 nm should avoided as the plague. This is all against AI's and they WILL ALWAYS change direction inside 15 miles or so. BVR Launches from medium altitudes (angels 15-20) should be also avoided. Every shot taken from 20-30 miles away ends up with a subsonic missile falling out of the sky some 5 miles short from the bandit unless the bandit is set to just fly straight and level. Again, shot inside 10 miles work best, with almost a sure hit on the target. My advice, take one, or maybe two (if you are feeling lucky) of them on your wing pilons. Keep them as ambush weapons as they seem to work well with the TCS inside 10 miles. Fill the rest with Sparrows and Sidewinders. Yes, the AIM-7 eat more chaff, but they are much lighter, and if you end up in the visual arena (and YOU WILL) they will penalize you less. All in all, avoid them in tactical scenarios and use them for their dogfighting capabilities. We are back in the WVR era of DCS, time to adapt accordingly. EDIT: this is all about mk60's. The mark 47's are not worth mentioning in any scenario.

Will do.

Well the white paper is no longer white and it seems someone has removed it....

It's true, it isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. But in my last 8 shoot outs, ACM cover up, mach 1.1, 1640ft, they all became subsonic inside 35 seconds from launch instead of 36.2-37 seconds, and never reached mach 2.0. The best i got was mach 1.86. I can only imagine the differences will widen as the altitude and mach numbers increase. But at least down low, the missiles seam to be underperforming a bit right now, and that is in level flight. Add a maneuvering target or a lofting profile and they will underperform even more. Hooray for the "good guys"......i guess. The competitive guys are once more safe in their dinky planes.

For what is worth, here are a couple of tracks as well. Out of the 8 missiles fired, only one stayed roughly level during it's trajectory. Test conditions, standard atmosphere, mach 1.1 launching platform. 500m altitude. AIM-54A mk47 missiles used General impressions, the missiles follow the power curve fairly closely, but they never hit mach 2.0. In fact, the most i got out of them (in that one more or less perfect shot) was mach 1.86. On top of that, after the missile stops burning, i decelerates faster then the charts suggest. All the missiles went bellow mach 1 at the 35s marker, or about second and a half before they should. The averaged out mach at time interval i got were: 0s - 1.1225 5s - 1.3575 10s - 1.545 15s - 1.6775 20s - 1.7643 25s - 1.8129 30s - 1.43 35s - 0.9875 Note, all but but one missile dropped after launch, so the denser atmosphere may have slowed the missiles down. However, one missile didn't drop and stayed mostly level. These are the results from that missile's flight: 0s - 1.13 5s - 1.39 10s - 1.57 15s - 1.70 20s - 1.79 25s - 1.85 30s - 1.47 35s - 1.03 EDIT: I had to try a more valid approach, so i did another 8 launches, this time around they stayed level for the most part and one even managed to hit another one. But never the less, the average didn't change much to my surprise. It looks like there isn't that much more difference in atmosphere density. The averaged out results from the second go: 0s - 1.12875 5s - 1.35875 10s - 1.5475 15s - 1.68875 20s - 1.77875 25s - 1.844286 30s - 1.441429 35s - 0.991429 So definitely a bit of underperforming. And these are the tackviews: Tacview-20220129-000023-DCS-missile tests f14A low alt.zip.acmiTacview-20220129-011346-DCS-missile tests f14A low alt.zip.acmiTacview-20220129-000422-DCS.zip.acmiTacview-20220129-011742-DCS.zip.acmi

Viable alternatives, but not universally applicable. 1. Geometry can do so much. But unless on the GS server, you can't expect a cooperative bandit to willingly fly into your mission. Good for intercepting cruise missiles though 2. This much i agree, 5nm more or less won't matter all that much. 3. Valid if the Sparrows were any good in DCS They eat chaff even in sub 7 mile hot launches (as low as 5, essentially i see the bandit when i fire at 'im) like candy.

Ah, roger that. So we are testing just pure kinetics and not all the shots presented in the paper.

But doesn't that mean an active launch?

Ah, that makes sense!

Short summary, only take mk60's in battle for the time being? ADDENDUM: how does one disable loft to perform test shots?

My pleasure, i literally just sent them to you.