AH_Solid_Snake

At least in PVP multiplayer I think a much higher Pk and satisfaction can be had treating the Phoenix as a souped up Sparrow, firing in STT from beyond typical AIM120 ranges on the BuddySpike servers results in far better effect than firing off multiple missiles in TWS against fighters. Even one at a time hoping to get it to go active, against humans you have zero chance, as soon as F-14 nails are persistent on the RHAW gear, launch warning or not, any player that’s not asleep will work in a few check turns to put you on their 3-9 line, even for a few seconds, and completely trash that TWS shot. Just as they / it should. The idea the Phoenix is ineffective against fighters is ludicrous but equally so is expecting to ripple off a load of them and to get a good return on your investment. The big advantage with your big stick is that they might get a lot of warning in STT, but at 20 miles or less I’ve seen it hit the target while the motor was still burning.

If the AI was changed to dump countermeasures every time a player STT's them without a launch they would just run out faster. Its far from optimal but I agree it's the best compromise we have right now.

I think the reality is that this thread has long since been hijiacked for AIM-54 seeker head discussion, AFAIK the AWG-9 issue has already been acknowledged by @Naquaiiso if really worried about it I guess you could make a tracking thread in Bugs?

Well that post aged well. Although my point kinda stands, we've had 2.7 waved under our noses for a while so it'd be nice to see a lengthy changelog for the F-14 along with anything else

It’s actually tminus one week, be sure this time. I guess we all know a big patch is imminent and we’re just curious whether the patch notes will have any interesting presents under the tree for F14 fans.

Go easy on each other guys. I think Gunslinger is just a little frustrated, as probably a lot of people are getting with the majority of CS Go’s posts degenerating into unsubstantiated claims of HB cheats and game breaking “intentional bugs” all of which when pressed for evidence evaporate or “cannot be arsed” providing. As with all allegations there must be a degree of proof.

I assume you’re referring to the guesswork regarding SARH vs ARH and all the various speculation on the Phoenix? Or did you mean the original discussion around the AWG-9 is not a bug/expected behaviour?

Hey it’s a 100% legit training activity amirite?? The fact it would also be immense fun is just gravy.

It’s definitely modelled wrt when the missile will go active and no longer need supported. I’ve used it successfully on fighters with the large setting which goes active about 4-5 seconds sooner on average, about 20 seconds or thereabouts. Normal usually starts flashing at 15-16. Never tried small, at that point its STT all the way.

I think something to bear in mind is that with fighters prior to the F-14 you had to be very aware of your energy state and very calculating of deciding when to take an energy excursion to make sure it paid off for you. The F-14A in comparison to an F-16 will struggle to regain energy if you have pulled to hard for no result - but that’s taken as entirely normal for a jet in 1972, the fact that aerodynamically it could out accelerate planes like the F-4 wasn’t on account of the TF30s raw power. There is a bit of a propensity for DCS dogfights or BFM to just light the cans, put the enemy across the canopy and pull until someone wins, which honestly can be effective in the F-16 or F-14B. Less so with the F-18 if you use all your energy poorly. If you want a challenge then start taking on the AI or other players with a reasonable altitude and speed to start with, but have a no afterburners rule and see how it changes your attitude towards altitude and just heaving the nose around. Edit: Since folk seem to be confused by my point I was trying to articulate that the A model shouldn't really be expected to have the same kind of acceleration in a straight line as we are used to with the B. If you would rather just a profile to get the A to the mach 2 region then from rough memory, climb to 37k feet in mil and allow it to accelerate about 0.8M, then apply afterburners and keep your AOA 0'd to build speed, once the nose really starts to pitch up allow it to go up to say 42-43k feet without allowing the speed to bleed off then use the dive back to 37k to accelerate more. That should get you started at least.

It is slightly odd that you think A when talking Phoenix, considering the C model specifically replaced the A in 1987, so they are fairly well 50/50 for the F-14s lifespan and DCS has a more modern the better kind of bent. A couple of things I would note is all the tests in the late 70s that became (in)famous were the A model and it was designed to intercept cruise missiles as much as bombers. It’s only big disadvantage against fighters is cost, at 1 million per missile that’s a whole lot of dollars when a Sparrow at 1/3 of the cost or less is just as good against older MiGs. A lot of assumptions get made about “old” analog technology being crap but the simple truth is like any machine if it’s well maintained and used within its parameters the AIM54A is lethal, digital tech is far easier to reprogram and the integrated circuit is far more reliable, but the earliest “computers” such as fire control computers for battleships are very very good at what they were designed for without a digital signal in sight. The Phoenix is always going to have a huge payload and a massive rocket motor, giving it a lot of speed to pull Gs, even as we move onto the C/ECCM sealed models there wasn’t much talk around needing improvements to guidance or range etc, it was about ensuring that Iran or more likely Russia having reverse engineered the A model would be unable to jam the new C model, improved reliability and not requiring the liquid cooling loop are also not inconsiderable benefits.

Agreed, all the manuals regarding intercepts assume at least a pair performing the intercept and talk about staying in RWS to maintain awareness before going STT in the timeline for the attack. I suspect radars more modern than the AWG-9 will be more reliable in TWS but not to the degree found in the other DCS teen-series. another aspect to the air-quake is that it’s all about the kill, so maintaining stealth for the missile shot, IRL if you can force the attacking aircraft away from the territory or flight you are defending behind your CAP station then you’ve stopped them from carrying out their mischief while your friendlies have executed theirs unimpeded. In servers more focussed on missions or dynamically taking over territory the mud movers are the guys really taking over the map and the fighters are just facilitating... it’s true in some ways that fighters make movies and bombers make history.

It depends what your goal is - could they generically just slap text on the side of the airplane? Probably. But a quick search of F14 squadrons will show you huge variance in font / positioning of the name plates, some are entirely below the canopy line, some split on the canopy line. Some use stencil style fonts, others freehand fonts. There may even be more variance in nameplates than the modex numbers

You’ll probably be disappointed with most air combat stories from the real world then - even with radars and AWACS and every electronic gizmo imaginable most kills are on guys that never knew what happened to them. It’s only half joking that the best targets are blind and deaf, I mean it’s really a shame they’re awake...

Errr, it was an engineering marvel for its day? It claimed a great many world records for performance in one big clean sweep. the fact that it’s not as good as an F22 only matters if you take everything outside it’s context. Ignoring dates the F22 is better, in 1958 it wasn’t.

Everything I've read suggests that the F-4 was outmatched throughout the envelope, and that since it was the direct replacement that was part of the performance specification. My oldest F-14 reference is Aero Series 25 - Grumman F-14 "Tomcat" by James Perry Stevenson from about 1975, its fairly amazing the amount of detail he was able to put together about such a brand new weapon system. Quoting from there in the F4 comparisons. 40% better turn radius 27% better manueuvering climb 21% better sustained G 21% better acceleration 20% better rate of climb 21% better roll 80% more combat radius in internal fuel 50% more loiter time with 6 phoenix 100% more loiter with sparrow >200% radar range He also states testimony from contemporary F-14 crews claiming 2 F-14s can outfight 8 F-4s. All of this when the B model and F110s were not even a gleam in the milkman's eye.

Ahh great that helps a lot...so from what im seeing it _is_ a rotary, just mounted at 90 degrees to what i'd expected with a gearing system to move the rotation 90 degrees offset.

Can anyone help me identify the types of switches used for the lighting and air conditioning selectors? They seem to be some kind of rotary but I don't know what the name would be to search for them.

I only just noticed your replies, those look amazing - can you give any more details or drawings for how to reproduce them? Do you plan to sell panels yourself?

One thing that complicates this is trying not to make Jester the ultimate crutch for PVP, if he was just a full on AI player moving the radar around because of unrealistic awareness of what he’s looking for coupled to superhuman reaction times that would be a problem of equal measure. Having said that I agree he could use some tweaking, it’s on my checklist to mute Jester before takeoff as I find him calling out every missile within range as a break is very distracting - I’d rather use the RWR and look out the window like everyone else.

Just trying to work out what the expected behaviour here is... with jets with a dedicated pickle button such as the F-15 or F-18 you have to press and hold the pickle button for a couple of seconds to trigger a weapon release, just tapping it doesnt seem to be enough. The F-14 instead uses the trigger for all forward firing weapons and from my playing around, although your missile may take a couple of seconds to actually come off the rail you just need a momentary trigger tap for this to occur? Is this just a difference between older / newer navy planes? Did the F-8 or F-4 use the trigger or a pickle button for missiles?

Would a MSL PREP problem allow the weapon to fire though? In my experience until I've waited for tuning to time out you dont get a hot trigger light?

I wonder if theres some interplay between the datalink and TWS track, it looked like right around 1:18 into your video the datalink track and your TWS track diverged for a second and you got 3 vector lines while the target seemed to be going into a right hand turn. Would you mind repeating your test with the datalink off?

Whether the manuals went in the shredder because they are classified or the bin because nobody cared to keep them the result is the same, no documentation, no module. Not every decision the DoD took regarding the F-14 and the Iran connection could be classed as completely rational and there was definitely some politicking around the Super Hornet, Dick Cheney and Iran. Did they really need to shred all those F-14s when sending all other aircraft to the boneyard has been sufficient? Did they really need Grumman to destroy as much documentation and tooling as possible for a 40 year old aircraft to keep it out of the Iranians hands? Did they need to make sure the Super Hornet vs F-14 story was dead and buried? I suspect answers to all these questions won't be particularly forthcoming.

Well they are both big jets....could it be as simple as non-direct hits will only ever shred parts of the plane and something smaller like an F-16 is just way more likely to be inside the shrapnel zone entirely rather than partially? We know from the technical literature that the teen series of jets were designed with much better redundancy built into the design in terms of battle damage than the century series, multiple hydraulic lines being routed through entirely different channels on opposite sides of the plane for example, so that seems like a fairly simple but obvious enough reason for the difference?