Kang

It seems this server hasn't quite come back up from the 2.7 update last week. Not sure if it just needs some 'manual enticement' or the automatic real weather script is a little distressed with the new weather system.

4) A system that allows not only to assign targets to commanded artillery units, but reliably have them cease fire again.

Feels a little pointless to have any sort of integrity check to begin with if everybody gets to pick their exceptions from it.

Wait, are you saying they work even less than they always do?

As StevanJ pointed out the two helicopters differ significantly in their roles. So if you enjoy guided missiles cracking tanks, state of the art systems and getting into the thick of the fight, the Ka-50 is your bet. If you enjoy hauling cargo or passengers and getting into hair-raising fights with comparably easy enemies, the Mi-8 is the ticket. I'd also like to point out that between these two the style of flying them is very, very different indeed. The Mi-8 flies like a helicopter with all the little troubles that come from it. The Ka-50 on the other hand is highly automated and between the trim system and the coax rotors you have to worry less about helicopter dynamics and more about operating these systems correctly. Not in the running but honorary mention: the Huey is - in role - comparable to the Mi-8, but being much smaller and nimbler it is much easier to learn, although the principles of operation are the same.

It's not impossible for sure. Some of the ships certainly do it.

I agree with the notion that these polls tend to be a little odd. On one hand a whole lot of options are not included, on the other hand the options that are seem to be awfully precise. Anyways, yes, in general I could imagine something like that, but it's hard to give it a definite yes. There is just a whole lot of variables for me: - What module are we even talking about? (I know the poll is meant to gauge general interest, but for a lot of modules I own I don't feel need for more versions) - What alternate version would be on the table? Is it that one I love for some reason, or just one for the sake of completeness? - Is it something that gives me an actual new experience? Is it a subtle change? My general answer is yes, good idea. But the pricing question has way too many variables going on.

Personally I think the people who insist on this having some further implications might be getting ahead of themselves anyway. It is not «there is proof of extraterrestrials» at all. All it is saying is «there is footage that we can't explain». Believing that these two mean the exact same leads right to the old wisdom: everything that flies is an UFO if you are just bad enough at identifying things. It's mostly the curious case of photographic evidence of flying saucers, Bigfoot and all his family, the Loch Ness monster and similar things having surprisingly disappeared ever since a lot of people carry around cameras capable of taking a picture that automatically puts things in reasonable focus and not hidden in washed out grain. Seriously confusing footage is thus rather rare, but it might just be rare atmospheric anomalies or technical glitches.

I might be mistaken but I seem to remember .sch to be a format for electrical schematics. Something like Autodesk Eagle should be able to view those.

As far as I can tell the number of trucks makes no real difference. The time it takes to reload (per missile/shell) is depending on the unit being reloaded, not on the supply vehicle and thus having more of them doesn't speed up the process. One truck can reload all units within its supply radius simultaneously and - even more importantly - carries unlimited ammunition, which makes trucks quite important when building your missions. Since this would be much different in real life you might want to place more trucks near a battery to make them look a bit more realistic, or - the only real advantage of having multiple trucks - to make sure the battery remains operational even if a truck gets hit.

Are you sure they are actually all part of the same group? Or rather, that one group has a complete setup? The little '1' labels suggest to me that several formations are around at least.

Frankly, that is something that boggles my mind. The models (and even animations) for the pilots on the ground exist. I don't understand why ED is so reluctant to just adding them as assets. There are plenty of uses for them, from SAR missions for helicopters to just airfield scenery and the effort is not really that big.

1. You don't get any warning from the system because the R-27ET is infrared guided. That means you might not get a radar lock warning at all and also means that the countermeasure of choice should be a flare, not chaff. The best way to know they fired one of those nasty things at you is looking at them, pretty much. The white smoke trail is kinda noticable, but the fact that if you don't see that, you are unlikely to know it's on the way is what makes that missile dangerous. If you would prefer to practice your engagements without these for the time being, I'd suggest editing your enemies' loadouts accordingly. The R-27(E)R is radar guided and thus gives you an RWR lock warning. 2. A bit hard to tell, there could be a few reasons for that. 40 miles is quite a long range, I'd say. Are you sure the contacts are gone and not moved up to the top of the screen (the pit), indicating your radar just can't range them anymore due to jamming? It might also be your target maneuvered in a way that makes you lose them (see notching) and your wingman might just happen to see them still.

Absolutely agree. There is a drop-down menu to select them already. Why can we only have one custom set saved?

While the idea sounds great, I don't think it's really worth the effort. Once in a while, if I happen to eject near a known friendly position or a settlement or a decent landing zone, I decide to walk the pilot there. It's nice and obviously adding a few functions to that would make it nicer, but travelling by foot is annoyingly slow in comparison and even knowing the destination 'is just on the other side of those trees over there' results in a march of half an hour. You look at similar timescales for a helicopter dispatched from a friendly airbase to reach you in a lot of places and I highly doubt that many people would get a lot of enjoyment of the 'sitting in the shrubs and waiting'-simulation. I wholeheartedly agree that for a dynamic campaign it is a topic to be considered rather seriously, but perhaps there would be other ways of conducting it. For example the dynamic campaign might just forward in the background (perhaps even run the CSAR flight without player intervention) from a map view until the player returns to flight status. For a more multiplayer-minded environment it might make sense to give everyone a limited number of pilots to use, so one can actually enjoy the game and have a benefit of making an effort to get the 'lost' pilots back somehow.

The easier method of at least mimicking the functionality would be to run a script that makes a supply truck stop by your air defence positions periodically.

Quite possibly nothing. Off the top of my head I can think of two reasons for this. One is that the radar altimeter in many modules gets a bit inaccurate when in a bank (because it measures slant range, then). The other is - and I'm not perfectly sure about that - the possibility that the trigger doesn't read the ground level for its entire area but just for the point of its center, which would cause such inaccuracies easily in mountainous terrain.

Wouldn't surprise me if the JTAC units were set to be invisible to AI to precisely prevent your plan. Or, for that matter, render them entirely useless because the very tank they spot would just obliterate them most likely. This is a common workaround for these kinds of units, as camouflage is not really a thing the AI does.

Definitely agree it is some kind of new issue that hasn't been there in the previous open beta version. I've suffered similar crashes today, as well as a few in the past days. I got right here since today's was triggered by spawning in a Tomcat twice in a row (until I called it quits with DCS for the evening). The other day it happened on a flight in a Hornet upon being hit by something. So there definitely is a correlation with some events withinin DCS. Sadly no proper log has been produced for my incidents today. DCS just plain ceased to be.

The way I see it the big challenge about many of these ideas is that they would all require a lot of 'core' work to be done.

Having some fond memories of that myself, as well as some of its predecessors. I definitely like the idea, but personally would suggest to take a few smaller steps in between. The idea of a 'SAM simulator' module that goes a bit beyond Combined Arms for the more advanced multi-vehicle SAM sites was floated a while back and perhaps that is a more obvious way to go for now. I mean, both concepts would potentially be a bit more 'slow-moving' yet technically interesting ways to enjoy DCS. And simulating any ship's systems is a huge undertaking, I reckon. So perhaps, get a decent 'from the station' simulation of select air defence systems, then add the naval versions of these systems and then take it from there.

Ah, I thought I had missed something in regards to 2.6.

Admittedly the change in name of the team associated with the F-1 had fooled me yet again for a moment into thinking it was being done by different people.

I think this is a bit due to the fact that the C-101's wheel chocks were put in place long before the 'generic' placing wheel chocks command for ground crews was introduced by ED. Perhaps it would make sense to decouple these functions now?

So far I'd conclude that the answer to the question 'What AI aircraft would you like?' is 'Yes.'