cosmicdoubloon

okay so for the F5 the skins on redfor to go are: aggressor 'snake' scheme aggressor 'desert' scheme to be replaced with 1 more 'mig 28' 1 more 'aggressor VFC-13 '21'

The 31 slot limitation is because this server is run off of a pc at home and isn't a dedicated server like you see with some of the other big servers. Therefore it's limited by the power of the PC to cope, and the internet service provider. Obviously Supreme Leader Mirknir (long may he reign :worthy: ) will be able to give you the details but I think adding more might put too much strain on the system and we have seen the connection drop out regularly in the past when too many players maxed out his internet's ability to cope. The livery idea is interesting. Having all the aircraft on a coalition in the same skin is kinda boring, but at the same time is so useful in dogfights for IDing a potential target. maybe for aircraft with lots of slots (FC3) they could be in pairs so you can have a wingman in the same livery. On that note mirk small request. For the redfor F5's can we get rid of the god awful agressor snake/desert camos? I think they look too similar to the bluefor asia camo for one, and they just look... meh. Instead could we have 2 mig-28 and 2 in the grey/blue aggressor camo? I forget the actual name of the livery but it is the current non-mig-28 one at gudata. Very pretty skin :)

So apparently I take DCS a bit too seriously....

1) all the FC3 fighters start without fuel. This is so that they can't just power up and takeoff and rush the conflict zone. The FC3 planes have the massive advantage over the DCS level modules in that they have very simple startups: shift + home and voila 20 seconds later you're ready for taxi. To mitigate that the refuelling element 'simulates' the time a DCS level plane has to take aligning systems, warming up radars/targeting pods, and all the other complexities of getting the plane ready to fly and fight. The SU27/33 have 30% fuel because they have larger tanks than the F15 and Mig-29 and so with 30% the refuel time to max is about the same for all FC3 planes 2) there are cargo ships at one of the sea based objectives. Any fighter with rockets/bombs can kill these. The SU27/33 can carry FAB-500 bombs and S25 rockets, and these can kill the cargo ships. If you're feeling ballsy and have competent teammates, there are also destroyers and corvettes near Tuapse. These can be killed by the super heavy rockets/bombs but with current weather conditions good luck making an accurate drop through the clouds/wind/CIWS :lol:

There's a few of us who are regulars on the server and are UK based (myself, Cravgar, Junglie if you want to get hold of us) and we all have sub 150 pings. Our connections are normally more than adequate to the server so I'm not sure whats going on with your mates. Maybe they can check nothing else is hogging their bandwidth? Anyway all you helo pilots just remember, if you need something killing just pop a request for help in the chat. We 'crazy veterans' are always prowling the conflict zone with rockets/bombs/missiles and are more than willing to help the helos out, especially the medic ones :)

Happy new year open conflict peeps! I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday and I hope to get a chance to catch up with you all and get some flying done in the next few days :D

I think the way to restrict missiles would be to spawn the F15 with 2 aim-120s on the wing pylon, but then remove them from the airport's inventory. Then they can rearm with aim-7s only, but they will still have a pair of amraams. That still lets them use their amraams but would control the spam. Maybe amraams could be stored at the forward airbases (gelenzik/Sochi ) so that they can get more without ejecting and respawning. They can either go and fight and then rearm, or they can collect more en route to the conflict zone. Both options slow down how many amraams are taken into the conflict zone :)

Also just quickly regarding Shabi's TWS attack, I am actually come to Shabi's defence on this one. The standard tactic with the F15 launching an AMRAAM attack is to fire one missile, then fire a second about 3 seconds later. In this case he was firing on 3 hostiles, all at low level and pressing on a teammate. Therefore I would not consider the 6 AMRAAMs fired as 'spamraaming' because he's following standard procedure. The first two kills were textbook and well executed, but that being said the third kill was sloppy and was being 'kill hungry'. Personally a double kill like that would be satisfactory for me and I would have looped around now that the threat to the friendly mirage has resided. It was a great example of good fighting, followed by some poor fighting. No one is perfect and we can backseat fly and analyse that fight all day long but in my opinion that wasn't a case of airquake or similar, but simply a pilot becoming target fixated and bloodlust which is something we have all done, especially when the adrenaline is flowing and if you've already scored a kill or two. Like dust said I'm notorious for this in the F5, I often fire both missiles and will relentlessly chase and dogfight enemy players when I'm already low on fuel and gun ammo, because 'just one more kill then rtb' syndrome, many an F5 has had to be emergency landed on roads because I've run out of fuel on the way back after 30 seconds too long in AB chasing some stupid fighter who was clearly RTB :lol:

As a airquake controlling measure maybe instead of limiting weapons (which I feel defeats the point of OC being a training/for anyone server) there could be a skynet enforced fighter limit? This could be scalable with the number of players. For example: if the server is full at 31 players, this means both teams can have a maximum of 9 modern ASFs. This can be any combination of the F15, Mirage and SU33/27 but once that limit is reached, skynet won't let you spawn in those aircraft even if slots are available. When the limit is reached skynet will inform a player attempting to enter the slot that the team fighter limit is reached and to either wait for a slot, choose a different plane, or check the availability of the other team. This will also help the player balance issue because if a player wants to fly the F15 that badly, they will check redfor slots if blue is full. When the server has fewer players in, this limit would decrease too. If there are only 20 players on this could be 5 fighters per team for example. This could also link in with the currently existing spawn system for the AI CAP. When the team fighter limit is below 5 per team, the AI is spawned as a protection measure for attackers, and also to provide extra targets for the few people playing CAP. The F5, Mig21 and other legacy planes would not be included in this counter because their DCS level nature doesn't suit airquaking and their A-A loadout is not overwhelmingly large, as well as the other various disadvantages of taking a 1970s 2nd/3rd generation fighter up against 1996+ AIM-120Cs :lol: I'm not sure where the MiG-29 would sit in this counter though.. On one hand they are FC3 level and the 'S' version carries the R77 amraamski plus internal ECM, but on the other hand they have very limited fuel/pylons, less capable radar + no datalink, their EO system is far worse than the SU27/33, and the 'A/G' version have inferior BVR missiles (no R77, BVR on inner wing only and limited to R27s). So maybe the mig-29S is in the modern fighter counter and the mig-29A/G are in the 'legacy' era and so don't count. Thoughts?

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Happy Hanukkah to everyone :) Sorry I haven't been able to catch any of you over the festive period, so here's a jolly yet for you all! A hint at something I treated myself to for christmas? Maybe... Maybe not ;)

I've got so close to doing that so many times in my F5, except most of the time the couple extra seconds I spent fart arsing with the missiles trying to get a tone gives me that little bit of extra time to properly ID my target before I commit to the fox :lol:

Yeah that could work, if player A requests a second mayday and skynet detects that the same initial threat is still present, it would alert player C as well as player B. Player C should probably be informed they are the second player responding to this mayday which would allow them to assess the f10 map/chat and decide whether to intervene. If player B then eliminates the threat, player C should receive a message from skynet letting them know the threat has been neutralised and that player A no longer needs assistance.

My only worry is that if a couple of players are flying together then it would end up just reporting your wingman instead, which isn't particularly useful as they likely know you're under threat. Maybe it could be configurable by the player similar to metric/imperial, fighter warning stuff, so maybe: 'Modern ASF' (F-15, mig-29, su-27/33, AI CAP) 'all fighters' (all above + mig-21, F-5, F-86, mig-15) 'Any aircraft' (all above + props, A10, su25, trainers, mistral gazelle) So the player can choose to only get help from the top tier planes but that might mean help is being called from further away. A friendly mig-21 who's 8 miles away is far more useful to a player under attack than an f-15 45 miles away!

Just had another potential future skynet idea: A 'mayday' chat command which will give the player a vector to the nearest friendly fighter, ai or human. This would be mega useful for helos or ground pounders who have been bounced by the enemy without them having to make themselves vulnerable by checking the F10 map. That way the player knows where to head and the fighter player's name so they can ask for help in the chat if desired. If there is an enemy fighter within a certain radius of the plane (10-12 miles would be good, a fighter at that range is likely pressing for an attack) then this could activate 'phase 2' of the mayday feature. If there's no enemy fighter in the immediate area then it would just give the heading to the nearest friendly. 'Phase 2' of this would be that the nearest player then receives a skynet message regarding the call for help. This will give them the heading and distance to the player needing help, as well as the type of plane they are flying to help minimise friendly fire. If the fighter heeds the call and kills whatever is near his teammate, he gets a score boost and a message from skynet congratulating him for assisting a teammate. Could even be a voice message (like the team kill one) saying 'You assisted a teammate!' or something and the killfeed maybe could indicate an assist kill. Example scenario: Bert in an L39 with Cosmicdoubloon in an F-5 Bert spots an enemy fighter pressing towards him at close range Bert: -may Skynet: Bert, nearest friendly fighter is 293 for 14nm/26km. Friendly is Cosmicdoubloon in F-5 Skynet: Cosmicdoubloon, Bert in L39ZA has requested fighter assistance! Heading 113 for 14nm/26km. Game Chat: Cosmicdoubloon in F-5 -> gar-8 -> mr datalink in SU-33 Game Chat: Cosmicdoubloon just saved a teammate! Skynet: Cosmicdoubloon, you just assisted an under-attack teammate! Well done! Thoughts?

Fear not everyone! I have a solution to the Air Quake problem! :lol:

The combination might be quite interesting, allow the f15s to have a couple of fast spawns but they are equipped with 4 sparrows and four of the weakest sidewinders (aim-9p I think) and only a belly tank, whilst the su27/33 only gets the R27R/T instead of ER/ETs. That way players can still rush the conflict zone but their weapons are mediocre at best, it's surprising how few f15 pilots know how to use aim-7s! On blue flag and OC it's hilarious watching f15s launch aim-7s at planes whilst clearly in tws mode because the aim-7 never tries to track :lol: In all seriousness though a combination would be interesting to test: fc3 pilots can choose between a hot start on the ground, but with inferior weapons and fixed fuel, or a cold start where they dictate their fuel and weapons. I'd prefer hot start over air start because they still have to power down to change their fuel and missiles so no advantage is gained from the hot start, but they still have the option to take straight off. I'm not a fan of the air start because it's far easier for a plane to reach mach 1 from 270knots than from a standstill in a hangar, so they'd still be in the zone too fast unless they spawned a long way back, but without testing it it's hard to tell!

Unfortunately due to the location of the mission there aren't any other airbases that fighters can be moved to. At the moment they're already at the furthest airstrips possible (except mig-29 but their tanks are tiny). External tanks are put onto the plane fully fuelled, but are done as part of the rearm process instead of the refuel one. If waiting 5 minutes is that much of an issue then in the f-15/mig-29 you can reduce the wait by only half filling the tanks and bringing externals, because the externals will SLOWLY drain into your main tanks whilst taxiing and in flight, but you'll have a lot less fuel and therefore less flight time so it's a trade off. Also nothing stopping you only taking 40% fuel and just not using the afterburner :lol: that's the trade off we're taking about, now fc3 pilots have to plan their sortie a little bit just like the DCS module pilots, and encouraging players new and veteran alike to plan their flight and such is a good thing :)

Okay this is gonna be long so get comfy, grab a beer, and enjoy :) TLDR: Repair/Respawn friendly objectives, spawnable Predator JTAC support, dynamic spec ops incursions/AI convoy ambushes, player objective reconnaissance/artillery striking For Bert's predator idea I was thinking: Maybe we can encourage bush piloting/transport by having an objective to deliver supplies to a forward base (in a similar manner to how its done currently) but on completion spawns a predator specific to the nearest objective. For example, if blufor deliver predator supplies to the listening post, a predator is spawned to be JTAC at the nearest obj. The predator can be killed (and teamkilled) still and if that happens, it can be respawned by redoing the supply mission. Predators are squishy and have no countermeasures, so the supplies needed should be pretty small since they will be killed easily. I really like the idea of being able to HEAL friendly objectives. Say the SAM base takes a pounding from an SU25T (or an A10 with a very brave GBU-equipped f5... ;) ) but isn't destroyed, helicopters (or bush pilots!) can deliver supplies to the base which will respawn the killed units. I don't know if it would be possible to scale this too, so if the base has only lost one unit it only needs one/two supplies (depending on unit), but if there's only one unit left it will take a concerted effort to completely replenish the objective. Tied into the above, respawning friendly objectives. If the friendly SAM base is killed early on then for the rest of the session that side is left very vulnerable to aggressive pushes by enemy fighters. I think (again, bush pilots/helicopters!) pilots should be able to do a delivery objective to respawn that friendly objective. It should be a big delivery to justify it, but being able to bring Tuapse/SAM bases back into the fray could be very exciting! How about a reconnaissance feature? If certain planes/helos (maybe Gazelle, trainers, props, sabre/mig-15?) are close enough to an objective they can perform reconnaissance by staying in that vicinity for a set time (30 seconds/1 minute or something), at which point the location of the enemy units in the objective appear on the F10 map? or they could become marked with script smoke or similar. If that could be done, recon could be dynamic, for example for every 20 seconds the pilot can stay in the vicinity a couple more units are exposed. At first its just one or two, but over time eventually an entire objective could be visible. Nerves of steel and a steady hand would be needed for the defended objectives, but the rewarded intel could be massive! Tying into the recon idea, how about scripted artillery? If an objective has been fully reconned, the recon aircraft can call in 'artillery' (read: scripted proximity explosions 'a la' skynetflak for the safe zones) by doing an additional period of time in the recon state. This could be useful for objectives where there are only one or two well hidden units left (those damn spec ops incursions are notorious for one rifleman going on a hike miles from the original objective!). Other ideas... having standard and dynamic spec ops incursions. The standard ones are like what we have now. APC + infantry + maybe the MANPADs. Dynamic ones have kinda been touched on by the others in the troop transport suggestions. Here's my thinking: Certain towns (listed in skynet for player convenience) can have troops delivered to them and set up new incursions. These will be similar to the standard ones (except maybe sans MANPADs, unmarked SAMs and all that... maybe replaced with a ZU23 emplacement? IRL they are easily slung under a helo) but will be on the route of the convoys, to act as ambushes for the convoy! That way we see AI vs AI action (so the CAS lovers will be happy) as well as additional light objectives (so the helo/light ground attacker/NASA with his S-24 Rockets have more to kill :lol: ). If for arguments sake bluefor manage to set up a dynamic spec ops incursion, redfor will get a message warning of a new objective on the route of the convoy. The exact location shouldn't be given, but maybe the grid from the F10 map (not sure of the proper name, the one where a large square is designated like KJ42 or LM17) is given so they know the general area. This is then accessible in skynet as normal (could be like -amb1 for ambush one, which would then give the 4 character grid, current HP etc) Thoughts on all of the above? Apologies for the essay!

Awesome work Mirknir, now we actually stand a chance to get missions done without constant waves of fighters to fend off! One bug to report, certain aircraft (so far tested on F5, Mig-21, Gazelle) cannot talk to the new 'Solex' AWACS on redfor. No problems for the FC3 planes and A10C, but those 3 I mentioned cannot receive from awacs.

:lol: But seriously in Dust's absence I'm more than happy to take you through the F5 startup, a-a, basic a-g and all that good stuff :)

Just a thought, would it be possible to modify this fighter counter, so that legacy and modern fighters are differentiated? For example, I would class the legacy fighters as the sabre, mig15, F5 and mig21 (and maybe mig-29G? it has 2 bad bvr missiles and 4 short range missiles, no ecm or datalink) and the moderns as the f15, mirage, mig29a/s and su27/33. This way it gives a fairer idea of the true air superiority battle. At the moment a team with 2 mig-21, an F5 and a sabre is shown as equal to a team of 4 F15s, clearly not the case in practice but without analysing each player's aircraft in turn in the player menu you wouldn't be able to tell.

Did someone say... MANPADs?

yeah you're correct, the only way to dispense one or the other is to turn one of the countermeasures off using the switch, which isn't ideal in combat. Thats why chaff programming is so useful, click once and let the chaff pump out, whilst conserving flares. Its worth noting that if you have a chaff programme set up and you have to spam flares, the chaff programme won't keep running. Once you click the countermeasure button and the chaff starts, it ignores extra clicks until the programme finishes but will continue to dump flares :)

I program my chaff as following, with an explanation of each bit: Chaff Burst Count (number of chaff packets dropped per button press) - 3 Chaff Salvo Count (number of chaff bursts per button press) - 2 Chaff Burst interval (amount of time between each chaff packet in one burst, in seconds) 0.3 or 0.4 Chaff Salvo interval (amount of time the plane waits after the first burst finishes before starting subsequent ones, in seconds. Not applicable if using Salvo count of 1) 1 or 2 With this set up every time I click the countermeasure button once I get 6 chaff packets dispensing, 3 packets over 2 bursts. Each burst takes about 1-1.2 seconds to complete so in total I am dispensing chaff for a total of 3 seconds (1 second for burst one, 1 second interval, 1 second for burst 2). Because you have 30 chaff by default (you can take 60 at the expense of flares) that gives you 5 total chaff cycles. I find this is perfect for defeating 2 or 3 missiles (except amraams, I hate those :P ) if you combine it with effective manoeuvring such as notching. If you're in a situation where you need more chaff than that you're probably in a fight too hot for the F5E ;) For flares I don't program them. The program only seems effective as a long-term disruption such as when doing rocket/bomb runs and you want continuous flares on your run in/out. I find its easier to leave them in single and fire them when they're needed :)

Oi don't go dragging me into this! I am the perfect example of the model OC player... except when I kill dustoff in my F5 because the damn missile can't tell the difference between an F5 and the afterburning MiG-29 that's chasing him... or when I shoot down a friendly with an R73 because I've EO locked them in a dogfight and didn't IFF check with the radar... or when I don't announce a bomb drop and catch NASA in the bomb blast... you know what I'm gonna shut up now :lol: