Swordsman422

Just copy one from another skin. Open the full-sized texture files you've edited. Copy them onto the 3in1 IN ORDER THAT THEY APPEAR on the 3in1, resize, and place. Be careful with resizing. Most of the main external textures need to be 12.5% the size of the original, other textures need only be scaled to 25% or 50% the original size. If you copy and resize them in the order that they appear on the 3in1, they should sort-of snap in to place when you move them. Once you have them all placed, double-check placement, then merge down until you have a single layer and save.

Not... really. Yes, by this point all the F-14 squadrons save VF-154 were home based at Oceana NAS, which was CinCAirLant's master jet base, but as indicated by the tail code starting with N, VF-2 deployed with PacFleet airwings and is still considered a PacFleet squadron. Here's a VF-1 jet from 1992, before the transfer of NAS Miramar to the USMC with the probe door gone... VF-21 during ODS. Hard to see, but here's another PacFleet jet with no probe door, tanking from the reason why the door got frequently removed. VF-211 in 1992, same deal... Demonstrably, it was common enough across all squadrons regardless of coast during the F-14's career.

And yet VF-2 was a West Coast squadron... Removing the door was common on long missions when anticipating the possibility of tanking from the KC-135, which had a much more unforgiving basket than any other tanker. The door was flimsy and could be knocked off and sucked down the right intake, which was bad news for the F-14. It was done regardless of fleet or model when the need arose. To be completely fair, I don't really see a need for it unless that type of damage is to be simulated. Otherwise it's just a nice feature.

There are four speed measurements in aircraft; indicated airspeed, true airspeed, calibrated airspeed, and groundspeed. In a real aircraft, it's not often that your indicated airspeed is going to match your groundspeed. IAS is the simplest to measure but the least accurate and there are several factors that affect it, including wind speed and direction, altitude, and air density. IAS into the wind is going to be faster than GS, where IAS with the wind will be slower. True airspeed is the aircraft's speed relative to the air it's flying through. Groundspeed true airspeed corrected for wind. I'd be more concerned of a bug if the IAS and GS matched all the time in DCS.

Meh. I think an Iowa might have been a component of a CVBG on a single occasion. I'd rather see escorts that matched the Forrestal-class. Early Ticos, Belknap, and Virginia-class CGs, Spruance and Farragut-class destroyers, ships that commonly operated with the carrier instead of the tired, old battlewagon that spent between 1958 and 1984 in mothballs and sailed with a carrier group once.

That's correct. To say it simply, when the nozzle closes, the interior chamber should still be a tube instead of transforming into a cone. The plates should remain parallel.

Yes, the F-14D was equipped with JTIDS/Link-16 near the end of its life. I don't think the B(U) ever had it.

I'd like to be able to define the parking spot for every aircraft or static placed on the ship just like you can with airfields.

This is the kind of thing usually said by people who have never done this sort of thing before. I used to work at a CRB, and the project managers had the same expectation that short sentences defining customer demands meant fulfilling the requirement was easy for the fulfillment team when it wasn't. Jester is a pretty complex system, and the core arguments of his code are probably different that Petro's. So no, you can't just "literally" copy-paste and expect it to work without some serious adjusting. And in this case, why waste time on borrowing someone esle's work when you're building your own system and are a lot closer to the end goal here. These are problems I either don't have or don't have with it, so I don't hate it, and I fall under the umbrella of "everyone." I can understand why lock gets lost, especially close in or when the target notches, which is a valid tactic and a challenge to overcome. I also understand that Jester is a work-in-progress, so he isn't perfect yet. Heatblur isn't interested in making a dumbed-down auto-RIO. Their intent is to make the F-14 experience as realistic as possible, which means modelling the complex avionics and systems, and the challenges the RIO would face in operating his half, and limiting the AI RIO to be not better than a human, which was a fear of the competitive community had anyway. "More fun" for MOST (not all, because you are obviously excluded from that group) of us is to face the challenges of an F-14 crew as closely as possible, not have some aimbot in our back seat helping us to win skyquake every day. "Triggered." That's funny considering that you're the one that got pissy when no one came in and said "what a great idea! Why didn't we think of this?" and patted you on the back because "it's literally so simple." What's outrageous about it is that you assume that it's simple, and it very obviously isn't or it wouldn't have taken this amount of time to get Jester where he is now, or even Petro. I'll tell you what I've told everyone else who comes in here and whines about "why haven't they done blank yet. It's so easy;" If you think you can do it better and quicker than the devs, then better hop to it, skippy, and show them what they're doing wrong. But you can't? No experience doing this sort of thing? I mean, there you go. You've already posted a fine enough reason to strike out on your own and prove us all wrong there, Galileo.

I doubt it's as easy as CRTL-C, CRTL-V. Just because the sentence is short doesn't mean the process is. HB is teaching Jester how to use LANTIRN in their own way and it'll work as realistically as possible. Just be patient.

Yeah, it's an optical illusion created by the shape of the canopy.

Are you sure the plane wasn't just committing seppuku after being touched by an Air Force guy? What was the ultimate cause of this mishap? Same corrosion as the VF-143 loss?

Fat Creason, that tailhook broke off due to age and corrosion in an area that was not typically inspected by maintenance. VF-211 lost that jet only about a month after VF-143 lost a plane on launch due to the nose gear shearing off for the same reason. Both incidents led to the grounding of F-14s fleet wide for a safety stand down and inspections. I recall in an interview one aviator commented that he'd been told in training that these two parts on the jet that would never fail and here they had both failed in the course of a month. It was a telling sign of how old the Tomcats had become.

I am a modeller too, so I shamelessly scan my decal sheets in photo mode to use. I still have to rebuild the artwork in photoshop to color match, but it's easier for me than building from scratch.

Did LSO grading get more lenient in 2.7? I've flown three OKs in the F/A-18 today, which has doubled my amount of OKs in that aircraft since Supercarrier was released. I'm NOT any better than I was, say, a month ago.

You would have to edit the training mission and change the aircraft skin in the editor.

Wow... never noticed that skin as the carrier name misspelled.

Tried every suggestion on this thread short of nuking from orbit and reinstalling fresh. No luck yet.

We got close to something like this with the Strike Fighters series. The semi-dynamic campaigns could sometimes cover years of combat and the squadrons would cycle through combat duty and upgrade aircraft by date settings. While aircraft, avionics, and weapon performance was as realistic as possible, the avionics functions and operations were not fully simulated. The focus was more about the tactics and less about button pushing. It was pretty neat to play, being part of an alpha strike launching from several carriers on Yankee Station or elsewhere, and it was VERY easy to mod. Still has probably the best representation of how modex numbers function in any flight sim I have yet seen. Unfortunately the developer walked away from it in 2013 and it hasn't been updated or upgraded since.

You had PPE on, right? You should be fine. Yeah, the Tomcat isn't FBW, so there isn't anything to prevent you from yanking so hard you rip her apart except your own discipline.

That's interesting. I wonder if that will then have to be something we set in mission editor then if we're not able to set the fuse altitude for the GPs and CBUs in the aircraft.

So you would then agree that, as a single-sortie game, that political forces and thus the political dimension of these weapons is outside the scope of DCS? Weapons of mass destruction cannot really be separated from the political gravity of their usage, so in this single-sortie environment, we cannot be taught the lesson that there are no winners in a nuclear war. Players only learn that the bigger the bang, the higher the score, the more quickly you win the mission. If we cannot then separate the political dimension from the weapon and cannot teach with it, why include it at all? By the way, the original with von Clauswitz is "mit anderen mitteln," "with other means" not "by." And it may seem semantic, but replacing "with" for "by" in the translation has a profound impact on the interpretation. The implication of "with" is that politics, diplomacy, and economic interaction do not cease once the shooting starts, but continues in parallel. The general state of the war doesn't really change drastically with the employment of a conventional weapon, one among hundreds of conventional weapons that have been or will be expended during the conflict. The employment of WMDs drastically changes the board and the considerations. There are more consequences to their use than just more kills with fewer weapons. Without that, whatever lesson we might choose to teach in a single-sortie game is lost. And if all you can really simulate about these weapons is their delivery, then an inert training round works fine. So what, exactly, do you gain from a functional nuke, fully realistic effects and everything, that you wouldn't get from the training round, that matters in a single-sortie sim. What's there for you if the potential consequences don't matter? I was using these examples in a facetious attempt to specifically highlight the spectrum fringes. I might have whiffed on that one, but it doesn't change the message that both ends are squeaky wheels that tend to make the most racket and have the most obnoxious and presumptuous things to say about the other. The final decision ultimately is up to the devs. They've said no. They will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As to the two existing nuclear weapons in the game, they don't really behave like nuclear weapons, which is one of the existing complaints about them. My only feeling about that is "too bad." I think the inclusion of fully functional nuclear weapons are going to draw in those people with the emotional maturity of a stump for whom their employment has no gravity other than a bigger kill count, and that in turn probably will drive away those who are repelled by the gleeful detonation of nukes, who have the same emotional maturity as the neighboring stump, and I'm betting that this side has bigger numbers, not that they are morally superior. Oh, no. I well understood that it was a rhetorical question, but I chose to answer it anyway so that I could specifically show where I stand on simulating combat and I stand by it. Even in the case of a simulated environment, the more realism we're shooting for (no pun intended) then the more realistic the behavior should be. It shouldn't be about high scores and points. It should be about the enemy surrendering the battlespace. How much simulated killing is required to pass that marker. If we're just after more birds with fewer rocks, kill all the dots of the opposite color, then we aren't really simulating combat conditions. We're just playing a game, and we're doing a disservice to whatever we hope to learn about combat. That makes anyone who cries for more realism a hypocrite of sorts, which I can safely count myself among regardless of my own wishes (in 1.5, I taught myself how to hit moving targets with PGMs by flying around and engaging cars on the road). In that way it does matter, but thanks for, y'know, getting down on your knee to look me in the eye and explain this one slowly, like you might a very dull child. I really am precisely that stupid. Within a micrometer. I'm not kidding. No, it's not anything at all to do with my argument for nuclear weapons. That's why there is a "speaking further on..." which works just as well as "by the way." What it is related to is my answer to your oddly answerable rhetorical question. Funny how questions on subjective matters are. So it's a simulation. It's not reality. But it tries to replicate it and our behavior in the simulated environment is one of the vital components of that simulation. I mean, it's a hard line to draw because in the end, this is a game for the purposes of entertainment. In order to judge success or failure in a mission, there has to be a gate to pass. It gets less fun for some people if they don't get to splat the enemy soldiers because they've dropped their weapons and fled, which means that the player is victorious without the maximum body count. They might choose to blow away these simulated soldiers anyway, and then yeah... they actually have a specific number of bodies that they set out to create, and they'll be able to answer your rhetorical question as well. They'll point to all the enemy units and say "this time, that many." In the end, and precisely because it doesn't actually matter, it's still a moral question. They've already won, so all that remains is "I haven't satisfied my virtual bloodlust yet." So here we circle back to wondering what is gained from a fully simulated nuclear weapon other than neato effects and a more efficient weapon? Edit: And here I am now, guiltily holding my hat and recognizing my part in ripping up the rails of this thread. But in my own defense, I think that discussion of the A-6 Intruder should also include what weapon systems we want it to carry and a lively debate on why. Preferably without devolving into name-calling. We've hit a disagreement on this one that is interesting to say the least. It's part of the minutia, and this discussion is fantastic.

Here are my more logical arguments for "no" on the nuclear question: Historical fidelity. Yes, some of the platforms in this sim had the nuclear capability as well as the other questionable weapons systems. But while those other weapons were used, nuclear weapons have only been used in combat TWICE, and not by any of the platforms yet simulated in the game. White phosphorous, napalm, and cluster bombs have been used in historical conflicts by platforms represented in the sim. Nuclear weapons haven't. If we get a full fidelity B-29, you'll get my agreement. If the platform could use nuclear bombs and crews were trained on them, then an inert training round also wouldn't get any protest from me. I would rather the various devs focus on providing their aircraft with weapons that they actually carried in combat. That's not much fun for the folks who want the full glory of a nuclear detonation, but it can be argued that their desire to use these weapons is just as emotionally driven as those of us who find them distasteful. They want eye candy and kill count. How many birds can they take out with a single stone? How much of a mess can they make? Isn't the flash and bang cool to look at? That's a subjective consideration. Also, if we're going for platform fidelity, nuclear and chemical weapons in a sim also face the problem of their gravity. We're flying these missions in a vacuum with no political considerations of their use and no fallout (of any type). If we get a dynamic campaign system where dropping one nuclear bomb quickly devolves the campaign into a series of nuclear strikes where nobody wins, where flying through previously nuked areas with residual radiation can adversely affect both the functionality of the aircraft and the pilot character's health through the mission and campaign, then sure. I'm on-board. I find it hilarious that everyone is screaming for realism when these weapons contain an entire other dimension to consider with their fidelity that WP, CBUs, and napalm just do not have. The scope of DCS doesn't contain all the geopolitical considerations you'd have to make for using WMDs and so in that way, they're outside the scope of DCS. Developer effort. DCS needs a weapon damage overhaul. The previous examples given of how basic ground unit damage is represented is pretty pitiful. If this overhaul comes, how the damage is calculated is probably going to be far more complex per weapon that what we have with the current lineup of conventional explosives. Realistically simulating the effects of nuclear weapons would be far more demanding on the average computer. I doubt that ED would simplify one weapon effect just to fit it into the game, especially when that simplification is something we all complain about the conventional weapons for. Considering the customer base. Nukes are rightly controversial. While we can have a logical discussion about whether they should be included, plenty of people here obviously cannot. I doubt that this forum represents the entire customer base for DCS. There are plenty of silent voices out there with opinions of their own. One side looks at the other as uptight, bleeding-heart whiners who want to take away fun weapons because "ThEy DoN't LiKe NuKeS!" The other side sees the first as slobbering, kill-happy, embryonic psychos who just want to get a loud bang, a pretty flash, some massive collateral damage, and a ridiculous consequence-free body count. The truth of the matter is probably not that extreme, but I am willing to bet more people might walk away from DCS for including controversial weapons represented with the usual lovingly crafted detail DCS is known for than will be attracted because "YUUUS! FINALLY someone put TEH NUKEZ back in a flight sim." And DCS is, ultimately, a for-profit enterprise. So how many people is it okay to simulate killing? I can answer that for you, considering that I primarily fly top cover and CAS missions a LOT. How many does it take to remove the danger to the unit I'm protecting? How many of my allies' lives can I save? Can I do it by just taking out the handful of dudes in the radar van of a SAM site? Can I do it just by eliminating three or four armored vehicles rolling down the road towards them? Or leveling the building where an insurgent sniper is hiding? Or chasing off or destroying an enemy interceptor who plans to fly in and shoot down my friends? How many simulated deaths are acceptable? Enough to stop the threat. And that's specifically examples like this and not a city full of civilians I want to crater with a nuclear bomb. Or what's the point in nuking an enemy unit protecting the only road through a valley when my own forces then have to move through that valley, into the radioactive aftermath of the weapon that I dropped free of geopolitical considerations, because hey, this is a game. So let me turn the question back around. How many enemies is acceptable for you to simulate killing in one shot? 10? 100? 5000? Those numbers are just too small for you aren't they? It needs to be all of them, all at once, doesn't it? Why isn't a stick of conventional bombs enough? Speaking further on fidelity, one more thing that's missing is the morale considerations of units under attack. The series Wargame tackles this fairly believably by having the performance of attacked units continue to degrade until you lose control of them entirely and they ignore your orders to go hide and cower under cover. That effectively removes them from combat, even temporarily, without destroying them. Units in DCS don't retreat from the field. Without scripts, outflying an enemy aircraft won't ever cause him to turn tail and run, effectively surrendering the battlespace to you to save himself. An engagement will always result in the destruction of you or your enemy, either through weapons or fuel starvation. No one disengages and goes home in the face of better skill. An armored unit won't flee in the face of an attacking aircraft, removing themselves from the battlefield or even repositioning in consideration of defense-in-depth. Enemy infantrymen don't throw down their weapons and surrender, remaining defeated but alive. Victory in DCS ALWAYS means eliminating as many of the opposing dots as is required to fulfill the mission objective. Their continued existence is between the player and his goalpost, and that's pretty much all there is. If the white flag was a thing in DCS, then the number of morally acceptable enemy casualties would drop drastically, because we could cross the goalpost without eliminating every single one of them. Maybe that should be something to consider developing if we're talking about fidelity.

All the same, the use of weapons of mass destruction, even in a sim, feels pretty pointless. The other conventional weapons, while banned now, were legal at one point if problematic, and would not have been that tipping point to a full nuclear exchange and the end of everything. What's the point? A big, impressive bang and mushroom cloud? Using one weapon to wreck a bunch of stuff without the real world consequences? The shock value? Why do you want to be the guy who used a nuke? I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the guy who causes the nuclear bomber to fail his mission, and that's all I care for the presence of nuclear weapons in a flight sim. As to the consequences of not stopping him, getting a mission failed message is enough. I don't need those particular fireworks. I find nuclear weapons in flight sims distasteful because there are no consequences afterwards, especially in DCS. We don't have a dynamic campaign system with political implications of what you do and what weapons you use. You drop the bomb, get your rewarded effect, and that's it. Grand strategy games? Sure, bring them on. After they get used, it's a slippery slope that you're just as likely to lose from, and will probably result in failure than being an instant "I win" button. But being the pilot who drops the bomb? No thanks. I'm a member of the "Threads" and "The Day After" generation. Even as kids, we were pretty well aware of what the release of even a single nuclear weapon would mean. It wasn't going to just end there. You can't just turn the game off and walk away. If one goes, then the end of everything would follow very shortly thereafter. If DCS does that and makes sure you understand that after you've dropped that bomb, your pilot, your unit, your country, and the whole wide world beyond are fucked, then I'd be okay with their inclusion. To answer a question you asked someone else, would I use conventional weapons of questionable morality in DCS if they were added? If they were actually used in the theater I am using them in, on the platform that I'm using them with, for the mission that I am flying, sure. I'll bow to history and swallow my disgust. I mean, I've played U-boat and Luftwaffe sims before and that doesn't make me a Nazi. But I'm not going to drop napalm and switch camera views to watch the enemy troops roast to death and giggle and quote Apocolypse Now while I do it as if I am the most clever person in the world and have been the first person ready with such a quip. And I hope that they don't model the horrific aftereffects of that weapon to amuse those who want to be entertained by the violence. Just like I don't want to watch in intimate simulated detail the blast wave of an atomic bomb flattening a city and rendering it uninhabitable afterwards. I don't fly DCS for a body count, and that's what adding nukes would feel like to me.

On the current models of the F-14A and B that we have in hand, the gunport and active purge vent are supposed to be bare metal anyway. It's not just the HB_F14_EXT_02 you have to edit. It's probably the equivalent roughmet as well that provides the metallic alpha.