Yoda967

There are a lot of folks up there when the ship is underway: Bridge, Flag Bridge, PriFly (where the Air Boss works), and Vulture's Row (the catwalk a couple decks up from the flight deck where people are permitted to watch flight deck operations) would all be populated.

Great stuff, Juice. The TACP TACSOP is a gold mine.

Real pilots aren't just briefed, they are involved in planning their missions. They have a really good idea of where the threats are and where more threats could be placed before they climb into their cockpits. It's not an unrealistic stretch for SP folks to build their own missions. As others have mentioned, you can season your missions with some uncertainty using the tools available in the ME. It is also not unrealistic to have to go back and hit a target again on D+1, even though you thought you killed it on D-Day. It's also okay for you to loiter over the target area for a few minutes if you're mindful of the threats in the area. Recommended practice for CAS and Armed Reconnaissance missions is for the flight to spend as much time as possible in the target area scanning with all available sensors before dropping any ordnance. The game's JTAC simulation skips the initial briefing and game plan that are part of the JTAC/FAC's process.

The answer to this is extremely involved and complicated, and it's always changing with the mission or situation. There are a lot of factors that affect the number of aircraft on the deck at any particular time, but that's not as important as how many sorties the carrier can generate on a given day. There have been numerous studies done to break it all down. SOME of the stuff to consider: The carrier is operating most efficiently when the flying day is about 18 out of 24 hours. Each flight crew is limited to a fifteen hour flying day, which includes several hours of mission planning and preparation prior to most flights, and about 90 minutes of debrief at the end of each flight. Rearming and refueling each aircraft takes time, so each jet can only fly 4 - 7 sorties per day. To maximize sortie generation, a jet is usually going to be armed with only the ordnance it can safely bring back aboard, eliminating the need to rearm for the jet's next launch. To give flight deck crews time to turn aircraft around, the launch and recovery cycles tend to be at least an hour and fifteen minutes long (known as 1+15) measured from first launch to first launch. Using this scheme, recovery starts five minutes or so after all aircraft in the current cycle have been launched. Another big consideration: An FA-18C can generally only fly a 1+20 flight cycle without AAR. That doesn't mean they can only fly for an hour and twenty minutes -- the amount of time an aircraft is in the air for a given cycle will be longer than the cycle time. Say, for example, that the air wing has the following number of mission capable aircraft: 16 Tomcats 20 Hornets 3 E-2s 7 S-3As (I'm ignoring helicopters and aircraft we don't have in DCS.) The next two cycles are 1+15 (0700 and 0815). There are two Tomcats, four Hornets, and an E-2 already airborne from the previous cycle. The Tomcats and the E-2 are double-cycled, so they won't recover until the end of their second cycle aloft, after all aircraft in the 0815 cycle have launched. Assuming that only mission capable aircraft are on the roof, there are 14 Tomcats, 16 Hornets, 2 E-2s, and 7 S-3As on the flight deck. You're in a Hornet tasked with a CAS mission 175 NM out from Mother. You and your wingman each have 2 AIM-9X, 2 AIM-120C, 2 GBU-38s, and 2 tanks. First launch for the cycle is scheduled for 0700. You're fourth on the launch sequence plan, behind an S-3A tanker and 2 other Hornets, so you launch at 0701. Round trip to the target area is about 50 minutes, and the next cycle begins at 0815, so you need to be in the marshall stack by that time. You'll fly to the target area, report to the JTAC that you have 20 minutes of playtime, then RTB to enter the marshall stack at 0815. You're first in the stack at 2,500 feet and you orbit the carrier, watching the next launch. Meanwhile, the carrier is readying the aircraft launching for the 0815 cycle: 2 Tomcats, 4 Hornets, an E-2, and an S-3A. The launch goes smoothly, taking about 4 minutes to launch 8 aircraft, and you get the "charlie" call, indicating that you should head to the overhead for recovery at 0824. At this point there will be 12 Tomcats, 12 Hornets, 1 E-2, and either 5 or 6 S-3As (depending on whether the one launched ahead of you at 0700 is still airborne, since a "yo-yo" tanker would recover shortly after it launched, at the tail end of the 0700 cycle recoveries). Your total airborne time would be in the neighborhood of 85 minutes, assuming you don't bolter. See what I mean by complicated? It is possible to launch and recover simultaneously, launching from the bow cats while recovering, but it's extremely taxing on the flight deck crew, and not often done for very long.

Juice, There's no difference. The type of flight operations happening on the carrier just doesn't matter at all to the small boys in company. They're not oriented to a relative bearing off the carrier, they're oriented to a true bearing off the carrier most of the time. As Raisuli says, the small boys usually spend their time over the horizon along the threat axis. Think of it this way: Your carrier is in the Gulf of Oman (GOO), in company with a cruiser and two destroyers. The cruiser will be close, generally in the planeguard position off the carrier's stern, and the two destroyers will be off to the North, or Northwest, depending on where the greatest threat to the carrier is. How far they are depends on the threat, but generally at least ten miles. As Raisuli says, they might come close aboard the carrier for underway replenishment (the carrier does carry fuel for the small boys), but only if the replenishment ship isn't available on a day the small boy needs replenishment. Now and then, you might see the replenishment ship alongside the carrier (always on the carrier's starboard side) and a small boy on the replenishment ship's starboard. I've been stationed aboard a carrier, a replenishment ship, and three small boys, and never have I seen fixed-wing flight ops being conducted while the carrier was being replenished. Lots and lots of VERTREP (vertical replenishment, with helos transferring cargo slings), though. Razor, to answer your question, there's a lot of suitable info on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_strike_group

You're welcome. I'm glad someone else cares. Most of the DCS missions I've seen seem to be based on strike group photo op formations. Also, I think it's in CV NATOPS that the planeguard helo should be no closer than 1.5 miles to starboard of the carrier. When I was stationed on a carrier, we called that the "Starboard Delta" because of the D-shaped pattern the helo flew. If memory serves, the planeguard helo flies at 300 feet and below to keep 500 feet of vertical separation from the CASE I pattern. Also, we rarely flew a planeguard helo when there was a ship on the shotgun station astern of the carrier.

I'm not a CV pilot, but I was in the Navy for 23 years. When I was on the cruiser (a VLS Ticonderoga, like what we have in DCS), the CO's Standing Orders included instructions to remain at least clear of the carrier by at least 1,000 yards (1/2 mile) if astern, 2,000 yards (1 mile) if abeam, and 3,000 yards (1.5 nautical miles) if forward. We spent a lot of time as "CV Shotgun", on the planeguard station, 1,500 yards astern and slightly to starboard of the carrier centerline (pretty much along the angle deck glide path at the 3/4 mile point). The rest of the strike group was usually over the horizon, or at minimum, 5 miles out from the carrier if in a relatively tight screen. Most of the major exercises/war games I participated in involved "disaggregated operations" where the small boys (destroyers and frigates) were off doing their own thing, maneuvering entirely independently of the carrier.

Nice work! I'll be checking this out to compare it with in-game info. AFAIK, the checklist page started giving some incorrect weights last summer after an update, but thats been reported as "better".

I had an activation issue on 2.5.6 -- the objective is to launch elements of the full cycle by activating them sequentially as the deck is clear. -LATE ACTIVATION -Moving zone attached to carrier -Trigger ONCE, NO EVENT -UNIT OUTSIDE MOVING ZONE (assign zone to carrier)(assign unit) -GROUP ACTIVATE (assign unit) What SHOULD happen is that the player group spawns with nothing else on the deck. Once the player's wingman launches and is clear of the carrier by 1 NM, the second group activates and launches, triggering a third group, and so on. What happens is that the late activation groups all spawn and activate at start.

BLU-97 bomblets! Are we going to that level of fidelity on the JSOW-A now? And does that mean TLAM-D is coming soon?

They can be shared with others, via any mission you share or put up on a multiplayer server.

Altitude conditions are in meters, rather than feet. If you're trying to have your unit pass a waypoint at 10,000 feet +/- 100 feet, try setting condition 2 to 3017 and condition 3 to 3078.

Heh. I misread that. :music_whistling:

Sonoda Umi, Yes, there is already provision for giving the carrier orders via the F10 menu, including getting it to tell you the Base Recovery Course, launch the 'alert' S-3B tanker, and turn into the wind immediately. Set up properly and left to itself, Wrench's script will have the carrier turn into the wind at a set interval of time, maintain heading into the wind for a time, and then steam downwind to the spot where it started. I've been using it for a while, and it supports 1+15 and 1+30 launch cycles perfectly.

If it's not built in to the module, Wrench created a script you can use to accomplish that. You can find it here and it works beautifully.

Hook, Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I thought I'd offer it up: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3300759/?sphrase_id=21529622

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that weight is not the only factor here. Lift, and specifically the difference in lift between the wings, and also drag. Drag is greater on the right wing in your example, so the aircraft tends to yaw in the direction of the "heavy" wing. This has the effect of decreasing lift on the heavy wing and increasing lift on the light wing, thus inducing roll. The asymmetric drag situation works the same way when you're inverted, with the induced yaw from the drag resulting in increased lift on the "light" wing. The same thing happens in the Cessnas and Pipers I've flown. When you step on the rudder (induce yaw), you have to apply aileron in the opposite direction to keep from rolling in the direction of the "rear-most" wing. DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong. I could always be wrong.

Yes. Her name is 'Tilly' and she's there for crash & salvage. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aircraft_crash_and_salvage_cranes

If ED follows the pattern of previous models (and I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise), then this will be like all the other modules coming before it: There will be campaigns and missions built specifically for the Supercarrier module that won't be usable unless you have purchased the Supercarrier. ED and the 3rd party developers also generally include tailored missions in the module package, like those that have come with the FA-18C, F-14, A-10C, M2000C, AV-8BNA, F-16C, and others. There seems to be a fairly large subset of DCS players who haven't learned the ME, so I'd expect ED to include a few missions to get you started, if you already own the Hornet and/or Tomcat.

Notso, My apologies for not being entirely clear. I was attempting to use illustrative language to simplify what happens, and OF COURSE the weapon doesn't SUDDENLY "cock into the wind", it will respond to the forces acting upon it. In the absence of a guidance package, the weapon will follow a ballistic flight path as established by the launch parameters, and will be affected by the wind over the time of flight. As you correctly point out, the wind's effects are not constant. The guidance will attempt to compensate for those varying environmental conditions, directing the weapon back upwind as needed, and resulting in a flight path which is curved when viewed from above. The guidance package absolutely will "fight the wind"; that's the entire point. The guidance package exists because of the uncertainty inherent in the exterior ballistics. I'm not entirely sure what means you believe would be available to an aircraft weapons computer to measure the winds at every level between the aircraft and the target. It makes perfect sense to me that the weapons computer would automatically compensate only for the winds affecting the aircraft itself; that's the information that is readily available through onboard sensors. As for surface winds, I would expect the JTAC to advise the pilot if he feels the surface winds will be a factor in delivery. Environmental factors in between are simply unknown without additional measurements not commonly available in a tactical situation, and it's the function of the guidance package to minimize the effect of the environmental factors during the bomb's fall. No amount of assumption or extrapolation can change the fact that without actually measuring the wind data, those winds not in the immediate vicinity of the jet are an unknown.

It's all well and good to joke about digital deck crew getting creamed, but the OP's point in asking was that he hoped ED wouldn't make the deck crew collidable. A flight deck is a damned dangerous place, and it doesn't add to the simulation experience to simulate what happens when things go wrong. In the two years I was stationed on a carrier, we had a guy get sucked into an A7's intake (minor injuries), a guy back into an E-2's turning prop (miraculously minor injuries), a photographer suffer double amputation below the knees (planeguard helo had enough fuel to do an immediate MEDEVAC to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, both legs reattached), and a parted arresting gear wire that killed a guy and injured several others. That's 4 incidents in 2000+ 90-minute launch & recovery cycles, which means we averaged 500+ cycles between injury mishaps. Not great but still, safe operations happen way more often than injuries do. Clearly, RL flight deck personnel do a pretty good job of staying out of the way. I'd like to see THAT simulated...animated crew moving out of the way of taxiing aircraft rather than standing still as an aircraft taxis through their incorporeal digital presence like a bus through a Disney-movie ghost.

vctpil, It's not surprising that you're not hitting the target on a run-in heading of 280 with those winds. You're dropping the weapons with a 41 knot crosswind. I can't speak to wind limitations on the LGB, but I can confirm that LGBs do "weather vane" naturally during their fall. While in flight, winds will blow them downwind off target, and when the laser spot is on (and acquired by the guidance package), they'll compensate by steering back upwind. This results in a curved trajectory when viewed from top down. The stronger the winds, the greater the distance the weapon will be blown off target. Likewise, the longer the time from release to impact, the greater the effect of the wind. For this reason, it's recommended that the lasing aircraft come off the target on the downwind side, thus reducing the chance that the spot will be masked by the target itself as the weapon comes in from the downwind side.

Speaking from experience of US carrier flight decks, it IS stunningly large, and it feels that way until you put aircraft and GSE on it. Walking around on a carrier flight deck underway is often an exercise in ducking under wings and stepping over tie-down chains. It feels crowded, and when I was stationed aboard one as ship's company, we always had airplanes overhanging the deck edge, a clear indication that as big as the deck is, it's still not quite big enough..

Indeed!! Glad you got it sorted.

The short answer is no. The workaround seems to be to put an infantryman on the map object you want the JTAC to target.