Horns

Not talking about a general “News” section, and things can get buried if someone hasn’t looked in some time.

Does the HB system carry over the aircraft state between missions? I thought that was just within the same mission, I could be wrong though.

Sorry dude, any opt-in features that add persistence are features I won't opt-in to and I don't think enough people would opt in to justify the amount of work it would take to implement this. There are strategy games where this idea might find a home, but I don't think MMO-like features would be welcomed by the DCS community.

Potential new or returning customers are going to look at the DCS page to work out if there's anything interesting in enough to draw them in. Many won't want to sign up for the newsletter, seeing it as just another email coming into their already crowded inbox that they will often have little interest in. I just wondered if it might be worth adding a "Coming Soon" section to the DCS page, so that potential customers can easily find the modules likely to become available soon. You could combine this with a "Recent Releases" section, so people who haven't looked in a few months can easily find modules that might have been announced and launched since they last looked (eg: Cold War: Germany map). ED will have the analytic data, so they may have an idea of how many people this might attract. To me creating a "Recent Releases" and/or "Coming Soon" section seems like a modest investment of effort for plenty of potential benefit, but of course that's not my call.

Apologies, I thought I had replied previously. Thank you for such a comprehensive answer. If IFF and its related switchology are the main difference, it seems that the forthcoming module will be a reasonable analog for the MiGs of any country who owned them, be they USSR, WP or non-aligned. Much appreciated.

Curious about the difference between the FF Warsaw Pact variant of the Fulcrum we’re getting and the variant provided to countries outside the Pact (eg India). Is it broadly similar or is the non Pact version significantly downgraded?

My post wasn't meant as a criticism and I wouldn't necessarily read every post either, I just happened to remember those comments being in the thread and was about to post more or less the same thing as WarthogOSL so this seemed to follow forum convention better. Apologies for any offence, was not the intent but perhaps I could have thought longer before posting. Question mark was to show I was treating it your post as a single composite question. You'd asked if "The Pentagon Paradox" was the book Joe1978 was referring to, mentioned finding other books in your search and asked if it was worth reading for a Tomcat fan. I was trying to convey that each quote that followed answered part of your set of questions. I see now how that isn't terribly clear, I wanted to post an answer to your question but had limited time to do it, so this was quicker than double quoting your post and cutting down to the part answered by each question.

? = + I'll leave it to Joe to tell you if it's any good

Personally, I feel quite different. I'd prefer to stick with "aircraft we can recreate to our usual high degree" rather than "best we can do with what we have", and I'd buy accordingly. That's a choice for each individual though, of course.

Maybe we should release a Ukraine map, complete with biolab

Totally agree thrust vectoring 'isn't magic', and it's not going to let an unskilled and/or inexperienced pilot beat a good one, regardless of who's flying what. When I mentioned thrust vectoring I was just trying to use that as one example of why I believe the maneuverability advantage between the two aircraft would have to go to the Raptor - not that that would gift the win to the Raptor pilot regardless. Reading back I may not have made that point clearly, it did look a bit like I was saying "F-22 cos thrust vectoring". I also agree that the advantage that 5th gen capabilities confer is in BVR - once the fighters are at guns range they are well within burn-through so stealth wouldn't be a factor at that point. While one can argue the F-35's RCS (from the right aspect) and DASS give it an advantage over many 4th gen fighters in BVR, it's difficult to say being fifth-gen does anything to help it at gunzo range. Last and perhaps most importantly, I agree that dogfight results have less to do with comparative aircraft advantages than the pilots. Who's fighting who's fight will matter a lot more than a lot of high-end capabilities in-close.

Thanks for posting that. So six wins for the Raptor, one for the Rafale and five draws. To me that says advantage Raptor, but as mentioned, nothing's unbeatable, dogfights only mean so much and, as Dragon 1-1 pointed out we don't know how the pilots compared or any of the other variables. Still, I wasn't aware of that exercise so thanks for expanding my knowledge, much appreciated Edit: Should have added something explicit saying that I agree 100% with what you said in your previous post that the F-22 is not invincible, but my point was that the EF and Rafale are not 'unrivaled' as fighters of today as you'd suggested previously. They are very good aircraft nonetheless.

I'll take your word re these guns kills - I don't doubt you, but is there an article or video you can link? If not no problem and I don't suggest it diminishes your point either way, I'm just curious. As far as maneuverability goes, I'd have to see something very compelling to convince me a Rafale could even approach the F-22's maneuverability, especially given the effect of thrust vectoring. However, even if we take these training sorties as representative, at the absolute most that might demonstrate the Rafale was better if a fight got to guns range, not that it's a better fighter overall, to say nothing of the relative detection ranges given the F-22's all-aspect stealth. Apologies to the EF which hasn't even been considered here. All that said, I'm not adding anything to back up my position here so I'm happy to concede the discussion. We can agree nothing is unbeatable, and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on which of these aircraft come out on top. Perhaps we can agree that it will be fun to get all kinds of kills on Fat Amy in our Eurofighters in a couple years?

An educated guess occurs when one is using some known information to extrapolate. All you wrote is conjecture/BS, in your words.. Nothing educated about that, and you not knowing the difference speaks volumes. Maybe you should try looking up what terms mean before using them in sentences. As for MAC, if your point had been that concepts for products can change before release then maybe MAC would have supported your point. Your point was that about 30% of modules don’t get released, and you tried to support that with a reference to a set of modules that released. If you don’t see how that doesn’t work you have bigger problems than I thought.

DCS: Flaming Cliffs 2024 - granted, they changed the name, but it did indeed release

A person I knew who was studying documentaries once said you can safely turn off any given documentary if it says anything like "we don't have any evidence, but if we did it would probably say...". Unless you have hard numbers, which I think you concede in your last sentence you don't, you have no foundation for anything you've said there.

If you're talking about DCS aircraft I might agree, but if we're talking IRL I think perhaps you are forgetting the F-22. I'm impressed with the EF and to some extent the Rafale, but I don't think either of those can compete with a Raptor, even with the EF having the Meteor... but each to their own I guess

Dear ED: Regardless of whether the AIM-54 can or cannot hit low altitude targets, you're doin' it wrong

Yeah, that does seem to be the way of it. When it comes to aircraft I know we won't get absolutely up-to-date, and that's fine. I asked specifically about maps because I don't think they need to have the same sensitivities as airframes, and in any conflict we're likely to see 20+ year old airframe designs and other systems, so I think there could be a way to make it work well and maximize engagement, what you say is valid though of course. Thanks to both of you for replying!

I know ED is not in a position to create any content that might attract Russia's ire, owing to having an ED office in Russia. I've also come across wish list threads requesting a Taiwan map where mods have answered that there are no plans for that and closed the thread, and those things got me wondering this... Should we expect ED to concentrate more on maps that allow past conflicts to be recreated (like Iraq and Afghanistan), or would you expect areas with current or recent tension or conflict to have a place in DCS' future? If it's the latter, would areas of interest to China (anything inside the 9-dash line and the Korean Peninsula) be off the menu now, similar to Russia? For example, if Australia finally reacted with the violence and fury warranted by New Zealand's irresponsible provocations in placing themselves adjacent to the Australian mainland and an ongoing war ensued, would a new map of the Australian East Coast and New Zealand be out of the question? PS: Just kidding about New Zealand, I love all sux of you, and I didn't even say anything about sheep!

Not canceled - that's enough for me

Ok, so the article I read is here (key.aero subscription required I’m afraid): https://www.key.aero/article/was-us-navys-latest-aircraft-carrier-trying-out-cold-war-tactics The reference to this being trained on (j/k) in the Cold War was taken from a book called “Oceans Ventured - Winning the Cold War at Sea” by John Lehman. Quoted from the article: “he details how in Exercise Ocean Safari ’85 a new tactic for carrier operations was tried out. This major training event involved the USS Nassau with US Marine Corps AV-8A Harriers, HMS Illustrious and three US Navy carriers in the form of the USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS Saratoga (CV 60) and USS America (CV 66). The focus of the exercise was the defence of Norway, which included testing the new tactic of an aircraft carrier using the country’s fjords as a protected environment from which to operate its air wing. The ingenious tactic involved using the topography of Vestfjord to hide the carrier from radar. Lehman explains: “The fjord was 70 miles long, very deep, with vertical mountains up to 3,000ft along both shores. The operational concept involved dashing from the North Atlantic at flank speed using full cover and deception until well into the fjord after an attack sub had fully cleared it of any Soviet subs. Captor mines would then seal off the fjord and the carrier would begin strike operations shielded from detection or attack by staying in the radar shadow of the high mountains“

I’d thought the same thing about the fjords being awfully small for a carrier, but apparently it was something they trained - I’ll try to find the article I read to quote the source, and if I find I misunderstood in the course of that I’ll post that too. Thanks for the correction of ‘in’ rather than ’on’ - I was thinking of fjords as closer to rivers than seas Where I live we talk about being ‘on’ the major river, but then there is zero chance of any body of water freezing naturally here so this really is an exercise in imagination for me

Just wondering if anyone has heard of anything suggesting any of our third party campaign creators plan to make a Tomcat campaign on the Frozen Fjords of the Kola map? I don't know anything at all of the geography but having read a (very) little about training being done for those kinds of ops during the cold war, it seems like the premier carrier-borne cold-war fighter is a perfect fit.

As good a reason to go to war as I’ve seen! Where do I sign up?