Kang

You may be all very excited about carrier operations as of late, but I'm more worried about this guy who shows up everywhere and looks at me disapprovingly!

I think it did something like that a few versions back as well, usually when taking off after previously flying and landing. Even with flaps set properly, everything reset in between - or at least I always thought so. Never quite figured out what the problem was, but then with another update it ceased. Basically it's going up and won't let itself trim for proper level flight again, always wrestling just to keep it level.

Nice.

Isn't the option generally there for the KC-135? I mean, there is the 'default' one, there is the MPRS one, that has wing drogues, and there was, at least for a while, a boom-drogue conversion one, that I think Razbam made for the Mirage?

In related news: can it be toggled off for the supercarrier at all? I see how it's useful, it's just at times also a bit annoying.

The places the free trial took us all...

You have missed the point of what people have been trying to tell you entirely, I believe. If buying a jet without a radar is not making you happy, it is a bad choice to buy a jet that doesn't feature radar. The real life A-10 doesn't have any, that's why the simulated DCS one doesn't either.

In all fairness, it also is a Xilon_x thread, so... what did you expect?

You can change the wind information in the PVI-800 manually, as the system doesn't know these values by itself. In DCS the ground crew seems to be doing that automatically before the craft spawns in, so no worries. In real life they have to be punched in manually after getting them from the station meteorological office. so the navigation system can account for wind drift automatically later.

Hm, you got me stumped then. I could have sworn there used to be two of those. I stand corrected. And confused.

Well, the traditional way would be to look at a windsock and/or listen to your departure location ATC reading it out. The PVI-800 function is actually rather comfortable.

Without wanting to digress ever further, I'm perfectly fine with the missions themselves not having much 'evolution' in them and working like classic missions. The 'dynamic' part for me ideally would happen in between the missions. Kind of turn-based, so to speak. There definitely is a bit of synergy here. The problem with using the tools of persistent tracking of assets that I see is that the writing of the actual story would have to branch quite a lot to keep up with it.

For me it's a little bit the other way around, really. I don't know why, but Nalchik is an airport I don't use in missions much and don't visit a lot at all either, so every time I end up going there, I realise (yet again... perhaps I have Alzheimer's) that it's quite pretty. Despite the very trees I know you mean. Is Nalchik actually an airbase in real life? I always thought it was mostly a civilian airport. Not sure how much of an issue that steep approach is for your usual Aeroflot Tupolev.

What I personally would like in a dynamic campaign is something in the spirit of what some other simulators of olden days had. Missions that are either set as tasks to begin with, or are being planned by the player, just with the 'world' being set by a 'campaign AI' that moves ground units, air defences, CAPs and whatnot in accordance with its objectives and - I guess this would be a important - its current capabilities in terms of vehicle count, losses, supplies and available routes. In other words: have separate missions, but - say - having destroyed all bridges over a river, the enemy ground forces would have to wait for repairs, advance with amphibious craft only or take a long detour, which would change how the frontlines moves in that area. That kind of thing.

Many missions are meant to be flown with a specific loadout, in part because some ordnance might be needed to complete the mission, and in part because whoever designed the mission obviously wanted it to have a certain balance to it. Oftentimes it is still possible to skirt this by rearming at a friendly airfield using the ground crew menu, if the mission designer hasn't made sure you can't. When rearming from unlimited stores, just like when you are designing your own missions, you can use everything you want. The only restriction that remains in place is that not every plane can carry everything and sometimes might be limited to certain pylons. A common example here is that the A-10C has 'smart' pylons that can be used for GPS-guided bombs, for example, as those require to receive targeting data from the plane (or quite often the targeting pod) and 'regular' pylons that can be used for other bombs and rockets only. The AIM-120C isn't available to the A-10C at all. The plane doesn't have a radar fitted and even if it had, it's hardly a capable fighter.

Nice. It's been a great show all around and I regret that I couldn't see it in its entirety. Some very nice displays.

It definitely didn't work for me when trying. I know there are two options for simplifying comms in DCS. One is 'easy comms' the other is 'simplified radio' or such? I keep getting them mixed up and never know which is which. One of them automatically tunes the radios to whoever you want to talk to, the other removes radio channels entirely and lets you talk to everyone on the planet, no matter what. Are you sure both are off for you? Kind of mysterious otherwise.

Agreed. Getting a plane to drop their illumination bombs is a little tricky and requires a bit of back and forth to make it happen reliably. Illumination rockets from helicopters are close to a lost cause, sadly.

The coloured signal flares are fired using these buttons on the rear end of the right hand console: (edit: the colour-coded ones marked 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the center of the picture) Flip the switch to 'On', then just press the button corresponding to the colour you want. Be aware, though, that you only have one flare of each colour and it's basically just dropped from your helicopter, it doesn't get shot anywhere. So to mark a target with it, you - well - have to fly over your target, which is probably not the best way of doing it. If you mark the target for a fellow Ka-50, consider using the datalink. If you are marking for someone else, like a strike airplane, a better way might be to use a smoke rocket.

You are definitely not wrong. To be fair, there definitely are campaigns that try very well to tell a story and have a few characters in them, but yes there are limits to what can be done in some ways. If I was presented with the choice, though, of having more story-driven campaigns or a natively implemented dynamic campaign to plan my own missions in, I would go for the latter. Both ideas require methods of tracking the state of a lot of units between missions, I guess.

It's over alright. It has been one hell of a nice ride to be going on, just trying a lot of modules. Yes, the aftermath of tidying up is a little bit messy for some, but thankfully there is a solution of using the console, if it bugs you. Personally I just started putting them back to the shelf one at a time a few days ago. I've got something out of the earlier two-day trials and this. Have to say, it's just perfect for all those of us who are interested in a module but definitely not sure about it. Also, I had a few that I thought I might like to get 'one of these' but not both, so the ability to try something out sure helps in moving from 'well, neither then' to a decision. Thanks a lot to ED and to all the other Dev teams for making it possible.

The whole 'hiding behind trees' thing has actually improved vastly over time. It used to be much, much worse than that, basically AI units literally saw through everything but solid ground. It has gotten better and generally buildings and trees do prevent the AI from seeing you now, but there are a few caveats: - If a part of your plane or helicopter sticks out from your concealment, they do see you. This is a thing in DCS as much as it is in almost every other game there is. Getting AI to decide realistically on how much of something they need to be seeing in order to recognise it is just a classic issue. «Saw a tip of a shoe poke out from a shrubbery some 150 yards away. Definitely an enemy soldier there!» - If they see you diving into that cover, they can keep on 'seeing' you for a short while, despite no line of sight. This serves two purposes really. One is to simulate how a crew would try to estimate your position at least somewhat. The other, probably more important one, is to prevent ground units from completely forgetting you are there every time you fly past behind a single tree or street lamp. Both of these things do get a little worse by the fact that the AI in DCS has a 360° field of view. While some aircraft can be snuck up at from their definite blind spots, the rule is that anything that can possibly be seen by the crew, is seen by the crew. There is no chance to zoom past and get lucky because the tank commander happened to look at something else in that instance. Ranges, speed of reaction and - I believe - duration of the 'memory guesstimate' are affected by skill level.

That only works with the easy comms option, in which the radio isn't simulated.

Same way we learn everything else... we read the manual.

And I always thought it's Iceman and his pals...