AH_Solid_Snake

So just to clear this up, what are the expected procedures to tank from Arco? I did the same thing on my first attempt and couldn’t find him at all, just circling with the TACAN saying 0.3nm was the best I could do. In 89 were NVG general issue for F-14s? Should the tanker have some lights on? Should I just use the radar?

Really enjoying the vibes so far, but think Im missing a few tricks on mission 1. Firstly suggesting this will take 30 mins is cheeky! I opted to head off for the tanker and first couldnt figure out how to get the light for my own refuelling probe to come on. Then having got within 0.3 nm of the tanker and thinking its the 80s so I shouldn't be on NVGs or irradiating the tanker crew so its TACAN + look for the lights? The tanker (or any AI flight) are cruising around with no lights on. Eventually I transitioned to NVGs but didn't hook up before running out of gas....cute GAME OVER screen

Are all the briefing and supplemental materials a little nod to Fleet Defender? They look very familiar.

Seconded! This will really level up my displays panel if you wouldn’t mind sharing

In a clean configuration its not surprising the B can supercruise once you get up to 25k, although whether 1.5 is realistic I'm not sure

I think very early on in the thread it was acknowledged and there are top men working on it right now. As of now that answer remains accurate. The F-14 remains in early access, and I would say is one of the extremely good examples of that process working as intended. It was released in a non-final state but without any game breaking bugs and with a large degree of functionality, and is evolving over time. Saying we've waited [insert arbitrary deadline here] isnt how this works either im afraid.

Im afraid you're selectively reading posts that affirm that there is some unacknowledged issue thats torpedoing you during ACM. The point that has been made, repeatedly, is that there are acknowledged issues with the FM as of now, and both thrust and drag are affected. Yes this will affect how closely the jet follows the Ps curves from whatever source you'd care to find. In a straight up BFM fight its a lot more about just reading what the jet is telling you and playing to its strengths, Im sure you're not claiming you just looked at the charts, jumped in the jet and max-performed it. So moving on from there, the FM is entirely usable at the moment and a contender in BFM, but it is due to get even better and you might just gain some more speed / energy out of it. Stick to the positives sometimes.

Lets imagine they are following Soviet doctrine and have GCI support? I think the Phoenix has some obvious limitations with the sharp transition to PN tracking at the end of the flight and I don't claim the DCS AI is perfect. But I think manage expectations for being a 1 ship murder machine?

Yes it does, and it’s kinda the point. Any competent pilot that knows an F14 has them illuminated and also knows the range of the AIM54 will throw in a check turn every so often specifically to trash your TWS shot if it’s in the air. You can always send your wingman after number 2 and go STT then offset and hold your f-pole. Perfectly realistic.

Once that document has been made available with any required redactions is it free to distribute? Can you share with the rest of us?

Everyone loves the F-14 their own way...personally I’m fascinated to hear what LanceCriminal has found, particularly around the PTID. For those of us on the outside looking in there are many aspects to the jet that seem strangely undocumented.

Im not sure if the public roadmap is necessarily all-inclusive but is OBC considered part of feature completing the F-14?

Its some mighty fine work for sure! Would you care to share the printable panels? That seems like a great way to get a nice looking panel with the extra bonus of a template for where to place switches.

Cracking bulid matey. Do you have any advice for apprentice pit builders for how you managed to get the switch caps so close and the gear / brakes / tailhook levers reproduced?

Its almost like we need a Kalman filter inbetween the netcode and radar simulation (no idea if such a thing has been attempted / implemented already) Using the raw netcode as your radar simulation input all someone has to do is lag for 2 or 3 seconds warping across the screen and your track / STT is lost and wont correlate. Even when they catch up and warp back to where, from their perspective, they were all along. Your trackfile is still hosed. Taking some kind of filter on where the target appears to be for a few seconds while they are lagging and just substituting that raw data with extrapolated data (almost another TWS correlation ), possibly with some kind of error correction checking the track into the past - so if eventually they do really break the lock but it occurred during a lag spike you could backdate the TWS being lost and drop the track. None of this would be simple though and edge cases abound.

This runs into the same problems that most discussions of this type do - its not specific. Most of these videos produced by the Navy or Raytheon will say bombastically that the missile / FCR / engine / whatever is massively improved compared to the last. While completely avoiding any metrics for how thats measured, usually with a few talking head aircrew and admirals to underline just how massively improved said system is. To be clear - I don't doubt any of the individuals on their expertise and/or opinion. But there are no published numbers for exactly what was made better. There is not even a published list of components that were upgraded that we could even infer realistic changes from. We could just take all the AIM-54 numbers and double them...why not....? except that it takes us from simulating reality to best guesstimates and thats a slippery slope.

I was wondering if the network changes could have improved the AWG9/TWS, I’ve had a lot fewer dropped locks or tracks since 2.7 than before, and I only really do shooting in multiplayer.

Has Jester been tweaked in terms of how many lines he will say? He seems far less annoying in AAR now.

Interesting video from the author of Punks War breaking down the comms / cockpit interactions for the Gulf of Sidra incident.

Is that a throttletek f-14 there? Did you modify the radio and wing sweep switches?

While its possible that some of this might also be relevant to the AWG-9 you'd need direct source material to prove it. As best as I recall the only things retained for the 71 from the 9 was stuff like the transmitter and power supply, all the clever black boxes are new.

Not to shut down future discussion on the gunsight itself - its fascinating. But it sounds like from Victory205's various responses this could be marked as No-Bug? The underlying simulation might not precisely reflect reality but the results seem to tally with what the SME expects to see? I guess when the pipper is on but your rounds are going behind the target a real pilot just shrugs and pulls a little lead - a sim pilot immediately questions the nature of his artificial reality

It's definitely still relevant if you end up merged with somebody, but as has been noted - that means a lot of things have gone wrong prior to this. In a training scenario for guns only or rear aspect only fox-2s then conceivably you can energy fight by using large pitch excursions to pull yourself out of their HUD / WEZ before they can react, but its less then about gaining altitude to escape and more about positioning. Although theoretically against a much slower opponent if you've forced them to turn and slow down while gaining angles you could just unload and bug out - past about a mile in a tail chase if you're accelerating at max power an old fox 2 wont catch you. In a PVP / realistic modern scenario - nope, you screwed up about 20 miles ago. If you're expecting HOBS weapons or a BVR equipped opponent then you're not likely to be able to extend out of their range before they can turn it around and get a radar lock on you. Thats not to say don't try every manuver to get yourself out of the hole, including your big engines and huge pitch authority. But we have to acknowledge its real last ditch to spoil their immediate solution at that point, and with a 9X it may still not be enough.

Its not something I've spent any time trying but I suspect it would need at least some cross control inputs to get the nose back down....if you take the F-14 into that kind of a nose high attitude then you've probably experienced a degree of pitch lock once the speed has bled off and you almost start coming back down in reverse rather than the nose pulling over. Also at those same AOA's the F-14s rudders act more as a roll input (and should be used as such rather than lateral stick), something worth remembering in warbirds is a big chunk of the reason they fall back towards their nose is that their engine and fuel tanks etc are usually up front and impart a force to pull the nose down as soon as its even partially away from pure vertical. In the F-14 the only thing that far forward is your AWG-9, the fuel tanks and engines etc that make up a fair chunk of your weight are actually behind you.

Quoted for truth, the best way to get results isn’t magic TWS shots from 60nm, it’s working yourself into a position where all the STT warning in the world won’t escape the NEZ of your big stick.