Bluduh

I like StrongHarm's approach mentioned earlier. This is a "Study Sim". You really do have to invest a lot of time and effort to get the most out of this sim. I guess you *could* approach it as a "game", but you're frequently going to come up frustrated if you do. Remember, the core of this sim came from an actual simulator developed for actual pilots by ED. It IS a high fidelity simulation and requires a certain (rather high) level of effort to become proficient just like the real aircraft does.

Make sure whatever rudder device you are using is properly centered and calibrated. This happened to me when my Saitek rudder pedals were properly centered, but I forgot to disable the "twist" rudder on my X-65F flight stick. I was inadvertently "holding" some out-of-trim rudder on the stick, causing some side slip. I realize that being out-of -trim should show up on the slip ball, but I didn't notice it at the time. Disabling the yaw on the flight stick fixed the problem. The field-of-view on the HUD is very narrow (maybe +/- 5 deg), so it doesn't take much side slip to push the pitch ladder/flight path marker way off to the side.

Wikipedia says that the 2S6 Tunguska was designed in the 70's specifically to counter the (then new) A-10. I think they are referring mainly to the 30mm cannon component. Since the A-10 was designed to be "resistant" to the 23mm AAA such as the ZSU-23-4, Chief Designer AG Shipunov (and others) decided on the 30mm auto cannon for the Tunguska because it will tear the hell out of ANYTHING, including the A-10! Similarities in the fire control and sensor system requirements led them to add the SA-19 creating a truly deadly "dual" mobile air defense system. I made a simple mission with a Tunguska protecting a convoy just to watch the interaction. I "F6-ed" on to the the SAM after it launched and was amazed to see that the SA-19 is a 2 stage missile! The booster stage burns away and the second stage lights and carries the warhead and guidance stage to the terminal phase (which unfortunately was me). I asked a friend (ex not-an-A-10 driver) about my scenario with a 2-ship of A-10C's against convoy guarded by a Tunguska (with the absence of a friendly SEAD package). Who would win? Without a second's hesitation he said -- Tunguska. He was right. But I agree with Nate, if you have some knowledge in advance, like which vehicle in the convoy is the 2S6 (pretend you have UAV surveillance), and exactly where he is, and make a very careful approach, you can sometimes take one out with Mavs before he get you. But it's not a sure thing, especially in mountainous terrain where getting a Mav lock may take some time. Takes the Tunguska some time to get a lock too. This is what I love about this sim. Geeks like us who are interested in this off-the-wall stuff can try out different scenarios with a fair amount of realism. Even though these systems are not modeled with classified data, they are pretty close. Now, I want to repeat everything now that the missile performance is more accurately modeled in the release/patch than they were in the Beta (see, not too far off topic). Great job ED. I love this sim?

Snapshot "Reset" points (or "save" points) is an effective way to do this. But it's difficult to analyse a full-blown simulation like this one to determine *which* variables in the simulation code must be in the snapshot. Saving the entire simulation state is usually prohibitively large. But, as a minimum, you have to save every state variable that will be used in the computation of the next simulation frame. This usually consists of global variables (but not all), and some local variables as well. This is usually small enough to take a snapshot every few minutes or so. These reset snapshots along with the recorded interactions (switch hits, control inputs, etc) that ED already records could allow you to reset to another time forward or backward that you have a snapshot for, and then play the interactions from that point forward into the simulation. If you have ever looked at X-Plane, Austin Meyers and his crew have an excellent playback feature that actually has a slider that you can drag backwards or forwards to any previous point in your current flight and continue the simulation from that point. But X-Plane is just simulating your own plane plus maybe a couple of extra flight models. The DCS sims are simulating your ownship plus possibly a full threat environment complete with threat platforms, weapons, radiators, and countermeasures. That's a *lot* of data to analyse. This is a good topic for the wish list. I'm sure ED is currently concentrating all of their resources on completing the efforts for release. But it would sure be nice. It's great fun to play back your missions and see what *really* happened. Right now, you have to fire up a track, and then carefully use cntr-Z to speed things up to get to the action part. But not too fast or things will get out of sync. Reset and playback is a valuable part of the simulation experience both for "training" simulators and "study" sims like ours. Maybe ED will consider this after the simulation is "release" ready.

Yeah, it took me a while to get used to that "hold down and slew" on my X-52. But you only have to slew enough to achieve a "break lock". Then, you can slew normally to the target you want, then hit the "lock" button again to re-acquire the lock on the target you really wanted.

Your co-workers in your US Department of Defense job are starting to get suspicious, because you just "know too damn much about Russian Attack Helicopters".

Thanks ED. You guys are the best simulation company on the planet. And I am not just talking about "study" sims (games).