Mars Exulte

It's cool, but as BN said, it's purely visual, only encountered under specific circumstances, and has no impact on gameplay. It's probably not a huge performance hit, but definitely not a priority. As for the dustup effects, #1 they're old and been there a long time #2 they do have a gameplay effect, making helicopters flying low much more visible It's more about prioritising resources, cost vs reward. Coding the grass effects is probably an asspain that doesn't add much beside overhead. When juggling all the stuff they're working on at this moment, in the face of weather engine, graphic engine, lighting, etc, most of which are far more impactful gameplay wise... ''grass swoosh'' is low priority.

As a veteran of many online games, ranging from permadeath/loss games to utterly ''costless'', I can say it makes little to no practical difference. A large portion of people almost always play like chickenshits. The issue is not ''a price'', it's that there's no way to ''code'' for what the real issue is : pride. People play the same, even if K/D is hidden, loss costs nothing, etc, because it wounds their pride to be a ''loser''. X10 if they feel it was somehow done in a way they didn't ''approve of''. All these stupid death/respawn timers accomplish is making the game a nuisance. They have some place im persistent campaigns, affecting the flow of enemy forces to the front, etc etc. But outside these sort of ''highly circumstantial'' influences, as far as general ''player behavior'' goes, it makes little difference. They're perfectly right to play however they want. The issue is usually that people go online, join an airquake server, then complain on the forums that they joined an airquake server. See 90% of helo pilots complaining about getting scalped by fighters when they yolo off by themselves on a server almost entirely populated by killwhores.

That's the internet equivalent of a royal flush. In all caps like that it's practically the ''I win'' button of internet discourse.

I'm sorry, that's not how it works here. If somebody on the internet says, ''Akshually, I'm a bit of an ekshpert'' you're not allowed to question their reasoning or credentials. Nobody would ever say that, and then be wrong. It's against the rules.

I think we're just bored. I thought we were talking about real vs fictional maps. I'm for both, biased toward real whenever feasible.

It just depends on the area and nations involved. For example, Syria is an ACTIVE combat zone right now, involving the US, Russia, Syrian gov, Syrian militias, etc etc. It's not a problem, cause the main actors have no real skin in the game, Assad has more important things to worry about, and nobody is apt to care what he thinks anyway. The issue with ''disputed'' areas can vary, even, Georgia has South Ossetia and Abkhazia, they're even dilneated on the map. I keep using the example of Crimea and Taiwan. These are two areas hotly disputed even on ''Google maps'', to the extent even acknowledging the dispute is itself a political issue. It's not a hard ''rule'', ''oh we can't do real stuff cause sensitive''. It just depends on the circumstances of the area and its capacity for being a problem. Crimea? Major hot topic, the Russian government has actively gone after people/companies for incidently commenting on it. ED resides in Russia, so that's a problem. In other words, like with most things ''political'' in nature, it has to be handled with discretion. 1950s Korean War is not reignited anything. ''It's ok to pretend to kill people in your video games, but only if you're pretending to kill the right people.'' Those people can get a life. The revolution in Ukraine in 2014 had a direct impact on me and my future wife. It is a ''hot button'' topic for both of us. When Combat Mission came out with a Black Sea theater directly inspired by the fighting in Donbass (almost immediately), my first thought was ''Woooow, I'm really surprised they did that.'' My second thought was ''Take my money!'' That's because I'm not a hypocrite. Real war is bad, but video games are video games. That's true, and I'm not opposed to it in general principle. My point was merely there are a great many real world locations that CAN be used. Just because there are a few best avoided for practical reasons is irrelevant.

I seriously doubt that I think the internet being banned is a bigger issue If you featured Taiwan, very probably, but unlikely over Korea As I said it's only an issue with a few certain areas. Mostly for the same reason. Taiwan and Crimea, problems depending on what country you depict them as. Possibly the Pakistan/India border (depending on their level of dickishness), but most places? No. There's also the aspect the problem is CURRENT disputes. Nobody cares about the 70yo Korean War or other old history. By your reasoning we couldn't have real terrain anywhere in any game ever except that is obviously not true. Just because there are A HANDFUL of problematic areas doesn't change the fact that 99.999% of the planet is fair game.

We know =D

Or can't spell or grammar gooder enuff

While politics is an annoying reality, it's not a major concern for 99% of places. If they've got time to make Notrealistan, they can just as easily make Korea, Vietnam, etc etc. If they're going to do it, they may as well invest the time in something more pertinent.

This has been discussed dozens of times. We don't need to go through all this crap again. The armchair expert's saying they think this or that is irrelevant. They've said they can't and won't and that's that. Your agreement is not required.

Ah, the gen warnings? Yeah that doesn't mean much except you shifted blade pitch too fast and rpms dropped. It should stabilise after a few seconds, although ideally you should be a little more gentle. I can see why you'd think that -edit I apparently lost track of the thread. I was directing that to the comment about the generators Btw, Yak-52 does the same thing if engine RPM drops

There's a dedicated Korean War server where you can fly against people. F-86 and MiG-15 both are fantastic aircraft. I haven't messed with the F-16 much, it's not near finished, obviously, but it's fun to mess around with and still has quite a bit of capability. The Av-8 is in very good shape these days overall, despite the tendency for a handful of people to dogpile on it. I primaried it extensively and it's capable of a LOT of interesting stuff. Very good choice if you like being in the weeds, and like flexible weapon loadouts. Very capable aircraft. Don't know much about it, but it has some limited multirole capability and is a potent dogfighter. Very flexible jack of all trades This is probably one of the more complex аnd challenging aircraft. It really depends on what you want. Sabre аnd Mig are old school dogfighters. Harrier and A-10 are dedicated ground pounders. 16 & 18 are fly by wire, hyper modern super fighters/flying computers. F-14 ''it's the 70s again!'' Mirage is inbetween. What do you want to do? Pick the plane that looks most appealing to you. Don't worry too much about bugs and doomsaying. As you say, they all require an investment, so pick the one you're most interested in.

Those insurgent skins look especially good, imo. Good work all around!

Really? I've never really noticed that. Of course, if they don't survive the first hit, they wouldn't be able to pop smoke. Still, I've seen the convoy ''scatter'' sort of, for a few minutes, where they sit still, then after a few minutes resume their drive. I never noticed smoke popping, though. That's cool, but sounds like it's not good for much.

#1 afaik DCS vehicles don't deploy smoke, they also generally don't evade or ''think'' at all. #2 I was mostly thinking about the context of PvP helos, which can't smoke

Very few people use an actual cyclic and collective. If a HOTAS is ''niche'', then an actual helicopter setup is an albino unicorn. A regular stick can function as a cyclic well enough, excepting that a stick centers and a cyclic does not. This is why the helo modules have a trim mode where you ''click, then center the stick'', effectively resetting the center. The cyclic changes the rotor mast orientation, effectively your aircraft's pitch and roll. A throttle for all intents and purposes will work just like the collective, except it moves back and forth instead of up and down. The collective changes blade pitch, increasing or decreasing lift. This has the effect of increasing or lowering your altitude, or increasing speed if pitched forward (or some combination of the two). Rudder pedals work more or less normally, except again, the helos do not center normally, whereas they do on a plane. This is rectified with the same trim control mentioned previously that resets the center. As for the ACTUAL throttle, you only touch this during startup and any manipulation is done automatically when you move the collective, but for practical purposes a helo engine runs more or less full throttle the whole time. You need that power whether you're moving at speed or a hover, so you don't ever really ''throttle down''. Therefore you do not need an axis for this function anymore. It is set, and then not touched again except in emergency.

This is actually something I'm very interested in attempting to exploit. By carrying only these, it greatly reduces weight, making hover sniping a viable tactic. Even if the target sees them coming, they can't be decoyed (although hitting an evasive target will probably be very difficult). It's not limited by laser burnout or a flakey optic tracking system. And for in close gunfighting? I mean, damn, it's got a 3000rpm, high velocity, BRRRT gun. It's not got the fancy tech of an Apache, or the maneuverability of a Ka-50, but it's hardly ''without options''.

Yeah, normally you'd be hard pressed to use them all in one sortie before having to RTB for fuel, but they take care of that with ripple fire ;) Course, the other guy is doing the same... I wonder how many online encounters end with mutual kills? If 4 guys fire 3 missiles apiece at each other, close enough to pitbull....... the odds of anyone surviving is probably near zero. Actually, this makes 10-12 missiles even more odd, since the likelihood of dying before using them all is probably like 80-90%.

As Buzzles said, there's already a procedure for community submissions. Also, it doesn't work like that where ED go around hounding the community for free work. They're a business and have to operate under certain legal and economic constraints.

Cool

Yeah, everytime I see somebody complaining about something being underpowered they invariably fly around like this : actually I can't find the picture now, it's a photoshopped F-18 with TERs and Mk82s on every hardpoint. Most people seem to not understand MTOW literally means ''more than this and it can't fly''. They load to MTOW (or a little beyond) then seem shocked they have trouble @@

That's a problem I have, too It's hard to focus on any one thing. I have spent more time learning the Harrier and Ka-50 than anything else. It's a pretty flexible aircraft, and very capable, I really enjoyed it. It can do a bit of everything. I used to dogfight a lot in WWII sims, do in DCS I'm biased toward A2G which I never really messed with as much. Imo, it's a lot more varied as to what you get to do and have to respond to. I'm thinking about the Jf-17 or F-16, but the F-18 gets to use the Supercarrier =p Ahhh, decisions decisions. I remember back when we only had like 3-4 choices. This is a good problem to have =D

The Bell Invictus competing for the Kiowa's replacement project is pretty much Comanche 2.0 Thus far it looks to have relatively large wings, and more aggressive ''attack helicopter'' vibes, as opposed to the lighter more scouty Comanche, but they clearly are drawing heavily from that experience. I'm not a fan of the pusher configuration the other design is presenting. There's inherent limitations to what a helicopter with rotors can do, and the pushers don't really circumvent them, so imo it's wasted money/weight and adds complexity. You either go conventional, or build a tiltrotor, and that's pretty much it.

Dude, you really gotta up your game Those credits at the end ''blah blah Production'' in other words, it's a guy playing with animations. Which should be a given, since the ships are clearly CGI, but the end credits should cinch it no matter how convincing the animation