bfr

Yes you'll get some who'll see how it is after launch and just get a 20% cut. You'll also get a fair few currently on the fence who'll be swayed to cash in at 30% when they know with reasonable certainty it'll be in their hands within a week or two.

"Don't miss out, sale ends tonight!" is also a well used marketing ploy. And the person who misses pre-sale price might then be the person who waits until the next sale cycle rather than pay the price immediately post-release, or never gets around to buying it at all. And its not like DCS sales aren't frequent anyway so I expect they are a little stuck in the trap that a decent chunk of people just hang on until the next sale (like I pretty much never buy anything directly on Steam now outside of a sale).

I'll take your word for it. I've never really been into the old warbirds on DCS so i'm mostly speaking from experience of the bigger jet modules going out and I can't think of one where the first anyone knew of release was in the patch notes. There's always a first time of course, but it'd seem out of character.

I'd be surprised if zero warning is given. At a minimum DCS tend to give a week or two's notice if a new module has been added to a given forthcoming beta build. And probably as much to do a 'buy now or miss out on the discount' final push on the pre-order deal (which usually remains until the second the release happens) as it is to forewarn/inform. DCS are usually the final arbiter (rather than the 3rd party dev) of when a product is released though, and I vaguely recall some modules (or certainly major updates to existing ones) being held back a couple of weeks due to last minute issues being spotted.

Its worth noting though that some missions disable being able to see those kinds of views as they can be used as a kind of cheat for locating targets etc.

Yes, i'd put it above the Phantom too on my wish list because its just an absolute bomb truck. I'd also dearly love to see a properly done A-6E (not a plane I ever remember being done much in any level of sim).

Isn't there already a mechanism to limit available weapons according to a given time frame in the mission editor? All this is doing is extending that to avionics.

Only really an issue if you adjust to zero in HSI/DATA mid-mission. Setting a WP altitude to 0 ASL in the mission editor overrides it to the equivalent of 0 AGL automatically if I remember rightly from setting up my own training/quick & dirty missions.

Yes, your account of the Typhoon incident is pretty accurate. Absolutely nil chance of it not being filmed as Cad is about the most accessible and popular spot on the Loop for photographers and sightseers (I assume the video is still out there somewhere). So not just breaking regs by exiting in that manner, but probably also interpreted as someone doing it to show off. And since then (and its a while ago now) the only frontline stuff you tend to see through LFA7 is USAF out of Lakenheath.

The LFA route through the Lake District is quite good fun in MSFS too (and probably more realistic these days with RAF frontline rarely going through the Mach Loop much since that Typhoon power climb incident through Cad a few years ago)

Yes, it's still a very busy base for helos but hasn't been a base for fixed wing aircraft for a great many years.

Yeah, that's fair. I vaguely remember the old Jane's ATF series had a channel region map that was fun for hypothetical Cold War meets BoB 2.0 scenarios, so I can see the appeal to the OP. Although with the DCS map it'd be hard to get immersion even with adding modern bases when the rest of the map is still very much 1940s era.

Both Manston & Biggin Hill were pretty much non-military by 1960. Odiham I don't think has hosted fighters since about then either. Northolt I'm not sure has since the war, bar temporary QRA deployments.

Ah, glad it wasn't just me struggling. First attempt the Igla missed, but I screwed up a strafing run (suspect i'd left the weapons master switch in Safe) once I was weapons free and then got Igla'ed again after the pass. Next attempt I ate an Igla head-on at very close quarters with no chance to evade. Third attempt I made a nav error which meant I was late on the scene and was told to RTB. Might have another go now just to tick the box.

Sometimes I preorder early, sometimes I leave it very late (like the F-14). Generally which depends on personal cashflow and how certain a purchase it is (e.g. the AI back-seater for the Tomcat put me off that until i knew more). Like you say, every module has usually come with at least a couple of days notice of actual rollout. Although that obviously requires you to check forums etc quite regularly to keep on top of things.

The AGM-130 is shown on the jet in the launch trailer (at about 0:50 and 1:16 and 1:24) but very much fleetingly. Like you say though, it doesn't mean it'll be available on day 0.

How does the difference in the legacy v newer UFC play out? Is the older one that shown in the videos that are a bit like the F18 horizontal multi-segment text displays and the new one more like another MFD in your face?

Glad to be corrected but I don't recall any other module release committing to an actual release date when the pre-order went up. Besides, its not all within Razbam's control anyway (if I remember right they have to submit it to ED for QA/QC and then of course it has to be rolled into the DCS update cycle).

Assuming the release date hasn't slipped too (I doubt delaying one necessarily automatically means the other is delayed) then yeah, absolutely no big deal that I don't have to hand the cash over for another few days.

I haven't yet tried in an F-16 but i've landed a Hornet and a Viggen on the longest straight of the Yas Marina F1 track in the PG map. One to have a crack at tonight I guess, although I haven't got high hopes as I could barely stop the Hornet in time (Viggen much easier with the reverser). Like seemingly everyone else i've done the carrier landing in the F-16 since the hook was added. Managed to get off of it again too with a full deck run-up (was on about 20% fuel and only carrying a couple of winders)

Yes I remember that too but the 'Acceleration Pack' F-18 was far from a study simulation of the aircraft (the features you allude to were very much standard MSFS autopilot fare) and its not a feature i've ever seen in any serious reproduction of an F-18 (DCS or the VRS F-18E in MSFS).

The devices are largely fine (had Pro Throttle and Fighterstick, although the stick has now been retired) but I binned off the CH software ages ago for Joy2Key given the amount of times it'd play up.

Which pylons are you trying to add it to? Having just checked then Walleye is available to me on stations 2 & 8 and your menu looks like what I see if I try to add bombs to stations 3 & 7. EDIT: Or as Harker said, check you've not got historical filter applied.

I have found Tacview can fail to record properly if its not the first thing called in export.lua though, so worth checking that if you have other stuff installed that uses export.lua and Tacview is not writing files.

Or at the very least please clarify when it was changed (it clearly has been at some stage) and why.