Lace

Second mission attached. Fairly simple intercept at dawn.j Northern Flank 2.miz

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to try it out. I'll upload an updated version today which should fix the reluctant wingman issue.

I know, bless him, at least he tried! I think it’s something to do with the parking allocation for the landing Herc. I’ve changed the distance it starts at to get it parked up a bit quicker. Might be best to ditch it altogether given the current wingman AI. He’ll be more use in mission 2. How many aircraft made it through? Their skill is set to random and sometimes a couple don’t make it to the rigs. How did you find the transit time? I wanted to keep it long enough to make the descent through the overcast into the relative darkness more dramatic, after being up in the blue. Appreciate not everyone wants to be sat in the cruise for half a mission.

FLASH MSG =============================== Z 1417h45 FEB 87 FM DEFSTNOR TO BASE COMMANDER =============================== WARNING ORDER WARPAC MOBILISATION ON ALL FRONTS. EXPECT OUTBREAK OF HOSTILITIES IMMINENTLY. ENSURE ALL OFFICERS READ AND UNDERSTAND THE DIRECTIVE =============================== END ///// Northern Flank.miz

A couple of points I'd like to make. More is better and CA has been sorely neglected over recent years, so I am all in favour of a 3rd party taking ownership of this aspect of DCS, fleshing out the unit inventory and improving the AI. Regarding survivability. I think those who say you wouldn't last 5 minutes in a ground unit are being a little disingenuous, and basing this assumption on the current state of play with CA and ground unit AI. Firstly, thermal imaging at the moment is too perfect. Vehicles just glow uniformly against their background. I know ED have already proposed a rework of IR signatures which would address this. Secondly, ground units don't just camp out in straight lines in the middle of flat fields. So many missions have them out in the open within a mile of a waypoint which (for a cold war scenario) is incredibly unrealistic. A 1980s ground war would not feature medium altitude CAS wheels, or GPS navigation, or TGPs. It would be in the weeds with a paper map and the Mk1 eyeball. Spot the difference... DCS tanks: Real tanks: These guys in a treeline are not going to be easy to see, especially at low level and 480 kts. Take away the F10 god view and permissive high altitude TGP friendly environment and the tanks survivability increases dramatically. The problem is as much a ground detail fidelity issue. Improve that and so do the chances of survival. Something like Mudrunner, which I appreciate uses much smaller maps would be IMHO the 'ideal' implementation of CA for DCS in terms of ground detail fidelity and wheel/mud physics. It is also conceivable that a ground unit commander could have 1st person control of a platoon of multiple vehicles. This multiplies the survivability and playability. Lose a couple of your tanks to a passing 'Hog/Su-25 and you still have a couple left to fight with. It would also be nice to see a rework of the damage models. Even just a simple upgrade from mobility kills, sensor damage, crew effectiveness, to outright destruction. A nearby MK82 certainly won't kill an MBT but could quite conceivably crack lenses, remove radio antennae or kill an unbuttoned commander, all of which would have an effect on said MBT's combat effectiveness. I think the ground warfare side of DCS if thoughtfully reworked could open up the game to a whole new subset of players, who don't necessarily want to invest the time on the aircraft modules. The MP servers and SP missions may feel very different to our current airpower-centric bias, but they would add a richness to the DCS 'World' which is currently lacking.

It also looks like posters have ignored or misunderstood the 'AI only' aspect of the question. Many of the types listed above would be great modules and a shame to be AI only. F-117? A-6? E-2? Superbug? MiG-17? etc.

There aren't many aircraft types which I would not want as FF flyable modules, so to add something which is non-flyable, but AI featured I would have to go for the bigger multi-engined utility or support types, which would give mission/campaign builders more options to generate interesting narratives. Something like a P3 Orion, Badger is a good shout, C-5/C-141 for cold war Reforger type scenarios, etc. How about an ekranoplan? Imagine being scrambled to defend the carrier against these!

I'm working on a couple of missions/mini campaign for the Viper. There will need to be a little bit of poetic licencing involved. Caucusus in winter rather than Norway. Modern Viper rather than the correct vintage (though I will attempt to limit it's abilities, i.e. no HMCS, TGP, AMRAAMs, DL etc.). If anyone is interested in flying in some horrible weather over inhospitable seas as the RNoAF attempts to hold at bay the Soviets then I can post them up. The first mission is done and the second is nearly there. I have Ideas for 3 and 4. I'm trying to provide a bit of variety in the mission objectives but without straying too far from reality and the context of the back story (and develop my mission building skillset). SP only at the moment, and due to heavy soviet ELINT presence and jamming very little radio chatter

It's a process that takes literally two minutes during the ingress phase of flight. Even Wags' YouTube tutorial video is an epic 3:00 duration! Clearly this is an inconvenience for the type of player who thinks multiple hot-pit rearms 5 minutes from FEBA is a realistic type of operation for this aircraft. Probably the same people who take off from taxiways and fly downwind straight-ins because 'quicker'.

I have a big ask, and I'm not sure whether this is even feasible given the current engine limitations, but since this is a wishlist thread, here goes... I would like it if it was possible to test fly missions through the mission editor, and then dynamically edit them. Essentially, pause the sim and enter a 'God mode' which allows access to all the mission editor features from the F10 menu. If anyone has used C:MO/C:MANO you will know exactly what I mean. It allows you to build a scenario, and then tweak it as you test play it. This would save so much time as changes could be made without having to exit the flight, launch the ME again, edit the mission and then re-fly. Rinse and repeat, GOTO 10.

Have you sent them the plans already? I got 2 quotes for Stang's Viper plans, one was about 1k GBP +VAT, the second about 1.5k +VAT. I'm holding off due to an impending house move. If your local company can do better than that would you mind sharing the details? I imagine the job size for the Hornet/Viper are similar?

Are they? That seems wasteful. Surely if you are beaming a SARH/ARH or older radar SAM you wouldn’t want to be pumping out flares. Obviously some countermeasures programs should be mixed In anticipation of a launch during the final phase of a pop-up attack for example, but that’s why there are five, and why they are customised to the mission profile and expected threat. I know there’s always the chance you are taken by surprise which is why there is the panic dispense slap switch, but as they say, you should never put the aircraft somewhere you didn’t put your brain five minutes earlier.

Thanks Falconeer. Though it does seem strange to me that the VMS would not be programmed to differentiate between which types are being dispensed.

When dispensing a CMS program containing only chaff, I still get a "CHAFF FLARE" announcement from the VMS. Is this correct behaviour or should the VMS only announce the type of countermeasure being dispensed? I noticed the same in Wags' HARM tutorial video, and thought it strange he'd be popping flares during an attack at that range.

I have this issue too. I know the A-10 best, just as a function of owning it the longest. I want to embrace the F/A-18 for all it's multi-role carrier borne goodness, but for whatever reason it just doesn't click with me. It is an incredibly capable and effective A/C, but just leaves me a little cold. It's something I can't quite put my finger on, but I felt (and still do) genuine excitement about the Viper, but had to force myself to buy the Hornet. The Harrier is another one I really need to invest the time in, as it makes a good substitute for an RAF GR5/7 and therefore the only (modern) British aircraft represented, but all the talk of bugs puts me off. It is a big time commitment learning to effectively operate these aircraft and it can be frustrating when something doesn't work, and you aren't quite sure whether you screwed up, or the programmers did. The Viper is another excellent multi-role A/C, but obviously still very much an EA work-in-progress module. By ground-pounding do you mean low level interdiction, CAS, SEAD or a high altitude JDAM carrier in a permissive environment? Given your OP, I would say Harrier. The Hornet is a great A2G platform, but the Harrier will get you closer to the action, especially when hot-pitting from FARPS (wish we had a GR3!). So go Harrier. Or Hornet. Maybe Viggen. Or A-10 II.

And these are exactly the sort of operations I am wishing for with the new dynamic campaign engine. Missions with a bit of depth, missions which require planning. Not just turn up, bomb here, RTB.

Just use a conventional setup. They don't reconfigure aircraft for left/right handed pilots. I fly aircraft with left throttle/right stick, right throttle/centre stick and right throttle/centre yoke IRL, and left throttle/right stick in DCS and right throttle/centre stick in X-plane. It's not that hard, you will adapt with a bit of practice.

Exactly. You will have a large cross range and down range ambiguity, which varies by emitter type, atmospheric conditions, etc.

It gives me something to do while waiting for the INS to align... But DTC capability would be nice one day.

A sand box, but within the realms of realistic possibility. It's one thing pretending one theatre of operations is another, but another thing all together to expect that we can do anything. We can't even have APKWS rockets on the Viper because it is not accurate for the year modelled, but we should be able to operate REDFOR A/C on a USN carrier? Let's save that one for the modding community.

By repeatedly saying the incorrect Radio Telephony (RT) phrases to a computer game, I may inadvertently find myself transmitting incorrect phraseology when flying in real life. This has happened to me before and was a bit embarrassing.

I think that would be a great compromise. We still get to simulate nuclear attack profiles, and ED don't have to work out how to implement unit/building damage on such a massive scale.

Welcome! I have a Rift S and use a similar (Xbox) controller when away from home. I have mapped the LMB/RMB/Mouse scroll to the controller. You will find them in the UI Layer section of the controls menu. Here is an example of my Viper map. It is surprising just how much you can map to a simple game controller and still be reasonably combat effective. Edit - You don't say which module(s) you are flying. Ironically I find the high-fidelity modules easier from a mapping point of view since they have full clickable cockpits. The FC3 modules require a large amount of keys to be mapped since in is not possible to interact with the cockpit via mouse clicks. This (for me at least) makes them essentially unusable in VR, at least not without spending ages mapping (and memorising) controls. Clicky pits are so much better for VR.

Personally, no. I don't want to pick up any bad RT habits from talking to a video game. The contextual menus work just fine.

Almost as if the ship doesn't want to be sunk! Why do you think Navies spend $$$$$ on missile defence systems? As BC above says, you will need multiple A/C firing multiple ASMs (simultaneously, not sequentially) to stand a chance. As for inefficient, a harpoon costs about $1.5M, A Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyer costs around $1.3B, to build. That makes it a pretty efficient kill even if it takes dozens of Harpoons IMHO.