CAPT_Kirkpatrick

I agree the balance of fighters was tipped heavily to the red side, however where were situations where pilots of the 14's such as the Tau would rock up, destroy or cripple 4 or 5 fighters over the island and provide a window of clear skies. The only fault to blue on this mission was some pretty poor coordination; The harriers that should have been attacking the island were doing CAP against the Helo's - Sure its needed but completing the objective might have been a better move, especially if you could then spawn the MC-2000's and -15's from Saipan which could do a much better job. Some of the -18's went to do SEAD against the 2nd or third island which was an odd choice when the first island was still up. The viggens were by far the most annoying for 2 reasons, the fact that they could deal major damage to our shipping if they coordinated correctly, flying as a 2 or three ship rather than 3 singles, forcing us to move fighters to the fleet rather than the island. But also because there were reports some would try to outrun the fighters and then simply DC when they realised they couldn't escape. Overall, Blue managed to complete 95% of the first island inside about 1 and a half hours, its just that no one went to look for that last damaged site to finish it off and thus the objectives never progressed.

Some kills are not counted/attributed due to death after weapons release. First Kill Blue: Tau kills j-11 First Kill Red: Sword kills harrier Total kills A2A blue: 55 (not including AI kills) 1 F-18; 1 F-14 7 KA-50; 2 viggens, 3 Harrier, 1 F-14, 1 f-18 3 Hinds; 2 Harrier, 1 Gazelle 12 MIG-21; 3 Harriers, 9 f-14 8 MIG-29S; 1 Harrier, 7 F-14 11 J-11A; 1 Harrier, 5 F-14, 5 F-18 2 SU-25T; 1 Harrier, 1 F-14 AI Kills: 18 1 KA-50 4 MI-24 6 MIG-21 4 MIG-29S 3 SU-33 Total Kills A2G blue: 1 EWR; Harrier 5 HQ-7; 3 F-18 2 HAWK; 1 Harrier 1 MOSKVA; 1 Viggen 2 SA-13, 1 Harrier 1 SA-15, 1 Harrier 1 SA-6; F-18 1 SA-8; F-18 1 URAL; Harrier 4 Shilka, 1 Harrier Total kills A2A Red: 48 (not including AI kills) 8 Viggen; 4 MIG-29, 1 J-11, 3 SU-33 16 Harriers; 2 MIG-21, 8 MIG-29S, 1 J-11, 5 SU-33 11 F-14; 6 MIG-29S, 2 J-11, 3 SU-33 12 F-18; 1 MIG-21, 3 MIG-29, 5 J-11, 3 SU-33 AI KILLS: 11 7 Viggen; 5 Moskva, 2 SA-13 1 Harrier, SA-13 3 F-14; 2 SA-6, 1 SA-13 Total Kills A2G Red: 36 23 AAV-7; 22 MI-24, 1 MIG-21 3 Avenger; 1 MI-24 4 Vulcan; 2 MI-24, 1 KA-50, 1 MIG-21 1 M818; KA-50 5 HAWK; 2 SU-25T, 3 KA-50 Weapons, 947 weapons used, 182 occurrences of cannon fire vs 765 missiles 18 Vikhrs launched, 9 kills; 50% 13 TOR's fired, 4 hits, 30.7% 9 Mavs fired; 9 hits, one mig-29 included, 100% 29 HARMS fired, 17 hits, 58.6% 57 AIM-54C launched; 17 Hits, 29.8% 51 AIM-7M launched; 11 Hits, 21.6% 38 AIM-9m; 16 Hits, 42.1% 9 AT-6 Fired; 5 Hits, 55.6% 2 FAB 250; No hits, 0% 5 FAB-500; 4 Hits, 80% 91 Stingers; 29 hits, 31.9% 16 HAWKS; No hits, 0% 14 HQ-7; 3 hits, 21.4% 1 HYDRA salvo; 7 hits, 100% 1 Harrier gun run, 2 hits, 100% 4 Mistral, 1 hit, 25% 1 MK-82; 2 hits on friendlies, -100%? 51 R-27R; 13 Hits, 25.4% 57 R-27ER; 10 hits, 17.5% 30 R-27T; 6 Hits, 20% 11 R-60; 3 Hits, 27.3% 45 R-73; 19 Hits, 42.2% 2 RB-74; 2 hits, 100% 16 R-04E; 9 hits, 56.3% 4 S-13; 3 Hits, 25% 10 S-5; 18 Hits, 100% 1 S-8OFP2 Salvo; 1 Hit, 100% 15 SA3M9M; 2 hits, 13.3% 118 SA-5B55; 9 Hits, 7.6% 12 SA9M33; 2 hits, 16.7% 27 SA9M333; 8 hits, 29.6% 3 SM-2; 1 hit, 33.3% 4 S-25MP; 4 Hits, 100% you technically didn't; You dealt 90% damage to the last SA-6 radar, causing it to shut down. However it was not killed and should have been spotted by the AV-8's striking the trucks in the same group

Don't feel like you need to be forgiven for that. As long as you tried to get them to stop first I think most of us would agree it's completely justified. On red we try to get them on SRS then the chat. If they don't respond and keep on hitting friendlies either damage/destroy them with the friendly air defences or get a friendly aircraft on comms to do the same. The idea is that if we damage them first they'll RTB and possibly read the chat on the runway, else its just taking them out of a position to keep attacking the ground units Most of the time the RTB to the road base is second choice, we only really use it if someone got stuck up in a dog fight and no longer has enough fuel to RTB and we're trying to save the airframe. In that scenario there is a lot of pressure about getting the correct position first time as there may not be enough fuel to get turned around. The point about driving around is fair, I'll see if there is any ability to do this from static units or if there is a way to prevent the vehicle moving.

I.E when there is a road base in an area where the description I can create from the f-10 view could easily be mistaken depending on peoples interpretations. This can lead to people landing on roads only a few 100m away but getting stuck in the mud. Smoke is not ideal, I agree a giant marker on your base is probably not the greatest idea. Ground vehicles have the option to launch an infinite amount of flares that last about 10 seconds and are easily visible to pilots within 10km. The ideal use is to get the pilot close and looking in the right direction then launch a few flares to easily confirm the exact position

Low priority request: Can we get some form of unarmed but controllable vehicles on the road bases? This is purely so as a GCI I can direct pilots towards the road base then fire off some flares/smoke to ensure we're looking at the same area

Knowledge passed on from a friend who is much more knowledgeable than myself: Active countermeasures: Sites keep their radars off and rely upon a central search radar to acquire the target (IADS) They first turn on smaller decoy radars to try to bait a HARM/ARM shot on those rather than the main tracking radar, which comes on shortly after And as said above, just shooting the missile down Passive, Sidelobe reflectors: Some tech that uses Radio waves in the same frequency band to cancel out emissions to the side of the main array or passive structures that just reflect the emitted wave itself, making it harder if not impossible to shoot at the site unless its targeting/looking directly at you. This also harms use of ELINT like a HTS as you cannot triangulate an accurate position easily without being the one they are firing upon/in the bleed through.

well yes, the idea is currently to make it possibly workable for those who might wish to use it in its limited extent, rather than discard it completely for an unknown time frame. I'm not saying it's not broken or that "it works fine for me so you must be wrong", but for anyone who is trying to struggle along with it it gives them something that helps rather than nothing at all.

Not giving any direct capabilities as I don't accurately know how or where they are implemented; but best guesses based on what I have heard and what seems logical: HTS performs pretty much the same with or without HARMS (?) It is able to generate a set of fairly accurate GPS coords for a guided munition attack on an emitter. this is subject to the emitter being active and "tracked" by the HTS for some time for it to refine the accuracy of its data points and thus target point. I don't have any knowledge of the accuracy of this generation, I'm expecting it to be good enough to be within a TPOD field of view for the coords, but not accurate to dump a JDAM onto it without manual refinement. (DEPENDS ON THE VERSION OF THE POD) With the HARM, I have no knowledge of how it directly interfaces but I'm expecting it to just function like a PB mode, the HTS offloads the target point and emitter type to the HARM which then performs as if it had just been launched in PB mode. Without weapons, the -16 with the HTS can work as an ELINT platform to an extent, gathering different emitters and producing target points you can pass onto other flights or simply share via LINK-16 if we get that capacity. There will be no need to extract the data, the HTS itself will be taking the recorded points to generate a mark. If the pod cant generate the mark, there probably isn't any hope using the recorded data anyways as it probably means the data points are too few in number to make a good prediction.

Works fine here, put up a track if you want them to properly check else it is assumed to be user error as others cant directly replicate it.

Yeah, I've noticed it in the MBT's to an extent, but I always passed that off as being a IRL function of the computer systems

Fair enough that, I only thought you actually got a piper for the radar enabled systems, the rest you just got a visual lock square but no further info. (anti air this is, not sure I've ever locked from ground to ground)

Can you post the Tac view file? Looking at the top down, it looks like you do notch the missile, but in the last few seconds exit while still right inside the seeker cone, causing the missile to correct slightly right for you. I cant say for sure that's what happened, but I'd love to take a peek at the tacView to confirm it.

Here's the update: each hornet is carrying 2x120B, 2x9m, 4x7-m you are up against 4-27's with -27ET and ER Fight starts at about 17000ft Hornets waste literally every 120B; they fire at 27 miles at 18 thousand at mach around 0.9. The shots all go to the lead -27 group, who just turn, defend and drop chaff. These missiles all miss because of bad parameter shots. Either the 27's bleed the speed out of the missile by flanking or going cold, or are lucky enough to evade with chaff + notching. Next the -27's respond with the ET's and ER's, which have slightly better performance than the -7M in the now sub 20 mile range. They score quick kills due to having the now superior missile with the 120's wasted, and many hornets don't detect the ET launches and get smacked. Surviving -18's are firing back the -7M, but these are not fast enough inside the lofting parameters to beat the -77 and -27E's fired from the Russian jets, which are also flying significantly faster most of the time and thus have even better performance. The -29's join around this point and mop up with their -77's I flew this about 4 times and lost each time. I don't think it's unrealistic either, given the Ai performance and missile quirks. I could get 3-4 kills before the remaining reds swarmed me, 2 with the 120B for sure, the other 2 being a toss up between the -7 and -9. A tip for using the -7 at those ranges is to set its mode to NORM, so it flies straight to the target instead of trying to loft which does more harm than good at 10 miles. Simply put, the scenario here favours the Red side due to the Ai quirks. If blue didn't waste their missiles in bad parameter shots, they probably would get a good few kills. If the fight was higher, the Loft of the -7 would do more good, The 120's would have better range and possibly give them a chance.

just a heads up, you can improve the path finding by swapping the formation ever time it gets stuck. That seems to prevent the path from shrinking far ahead of your vehicle when I used it in MP the other day

Can someone explain #6 to me? not entirely sure what is meant #7, seconded, having an proper loiter would be lovely, having a TPOD view so you can actually search and manually laze for other pilots/your own runs would be brilliant

If you can give us a track of your 8v8 it would help a lot to work out what going on; What are you up against? what missiles are the opponents using? are you asking your wingmen to attack? I'll give the 8v8 a go in a bit when I'm free, but getting mopped like you describe sounds pretty nasty.

Just a heads up lads; I've written a bot for the discord server that gives us the current status of the cold war server. It's stable euro evening but on and off in the afternoon as I'm adding functionality, but if you need to check the status quickly its in the status channel of the server: https://discord.gg/tm9x6Q8Spx It's accurate to stats within 5 mins as that's the rate when ED update their server list. If there's any problems with it give us a shout, it should be stable and working for other servers by the end of the week.

Hi Cougar!, Sorry about the comms, as mentioned above we did set one aside that was a lot more calm, Mostly on me for forgetting to mention it was an option to the rest of you all. Great job in the 14 on the day, we were very thankful for all you tomcat pilots for keeping the blue fighters defensive during the pushes.

The 15, with bad knowledge of how to use/where steer points were and no GCI to help would be a pain above that layer, you would have no orientation what so ever.

Little data dump of stats for every one: first kill RED; No15 VIPER in 29 vs 15 using 27R first kill BLUE; Conker4 in a 15 vs 21 using -7M Last kill RED; Conker4 in a Mig-21 vs 15 using r-60m (after tacview cut off) Last kill BLUE; A Fever squadron member in F/A-18 vs mig-21 using 120B (after tacview cut off) Blue losses, 44 aircraft. 23 F-15c, 17 to Air to Air, 4 to SHORAD, 2 to SAM sites 6 F/A-18C, 2 to 21's, one to a 29, 2 to shorad, 1 to SAM's 15 F-16C, 11 to air to air, 4 to SHORAD Red Losses, 34 aircraft 9 MIG-29A, 7 to Air to Air, 2 (@Zachrix) to avengers (added +2, kills by aim-9's after death does not count as a player kill and didn't show up as such in the log) 2 F-14A, one to an avenger, one to a patriot 18 Mig-21, 16 to air to air, 2 to avengers 5 F-5E, all air to air 2 KA-50, both Air to Air from an F-15 Blue AIR Kills, 32, 20 by the f-15; 2 MIG-29's, 11 MIG-21, 5 F-5E, 2 KA-50 3 by the F/A-18; 1 MIG-29, 2 MIG-21 3 By the f-16C; 2 MIG-29, 1 mig-21 5 by avengers, 2 MIG-29, 1 F-14, 2 MIG-21 1 by PATRIOT; F-14 Red AIR kills, 46 14 by the MIG-29A; 5 F-15C, 1 F/A-18C, 8 F-16c 5 by the F-14's; 3 F-15C, 2 F-16C 13 By the MIG-21's; 8 F-15C, 1 F-16, 2 F/A-18C, 1 crash, 1 MIG-21 red on red 1 by the F-5E by LazzySeal on an F-15C 5 by Strellas (SA-13); 1 F-15C, 2 F/A-18C, 2 F-16C 4 by the TOR (SA-15); 3 F-15C, 1 F-16C 2 by the SA-6; 1 F-15C, 1 F/A-18C 1 by the SA-10, 1 F-15C 1 by a shilka; 1 F-16C Blue Ground Kills, 9; 4 By F-16, 4 SA-6 STR radars by Dirt Merchant 5 By Merks, 4 T-80U, 1 T-55 Red Ground Kills 36; 12 By KA-50's, 3 Vulcans and 9 Merks 1 By a Mig-21, rammed a parachutist 1 By a T-55, Vulcan 22 By T-80U's, 8 Merks, 1 Ammo truck, 1 search radar, one patriot site (12 units) Overall blue were severely hampered by a lack of GCI and the low cloud, making navigation in the 15's near impossible above the cloud layer but leaving them highly exposed below it. The destruction of the patriot site enabled red fighters to join blue over the lake un-threatened by SAM's, Blue's destruction of the SA-6 sites earlier had enabled them to fly over the lake without SAM threat either. Blue failed to destroy a single SHORAD unit, and suffered as a consequence. Red failed to provide adequate CAP to the KA-50's during the first 3/4's of the mission, leading to the assault being made initially with T-80's only. The path finding bug plagued both sides ground war, preventing blue from easily repositioning into more advantageous positions, and forcing Red to attack by manually controlling 2 tanks at a time. During the short period that blue did have a GCI, they had established air dominance over the lake, forcing blue fighters onto the deck and back to SAM coverage, this ending when the GCI left and thus forcing the F-15's back beneath the cloud's to navigate A few Blue F-16's tried to attack both the FARP and the red king Hussain Airbase, with minimal success, not quite sure what was going on there. Overall this was a really fun mission, As QuiGon points out the comms did get a little bit chaotic, but for the tight AO and low vis scenario, there was only 1 Team kill the entire event, with alternating stages of dominance by both teams. The core red group we have is looking at flying blue next round to see if we can turn the match around. If anyone wants their personal stats, throw me a message and I'll grab them for you. P.S; Disconnects are not counted as kills in these stats

We had a quieter comm's channel on 124 active at the same time as 251, apologies if we forgot to tell you about that. Comm's were: 251, with the core group of red (hence the banter) and the modern fighters, 124; quieter comms for the mig 21's and f-5's that only really got BRAA calls, 253; Ground coord by the tac coms.

Thanks for the explanation; I agree with going on this time without changes, I'm basing my thoughts off my experience on Blue flag and other servers. Granted here maybe the normal player base isn't as skilled with the modern stuff as they've proved to be with the cold war jets. But as you say, Lets wait and see what goes on next round and then I can ask about possible changes again afterwards.

When giving units (t-72's in this case) waypoints, the unit will turn and drive towards the given waypoint. however, after a certain distance or period of time the vehicle stops as if it has reached the waypoint. giving a new waypoint gets the vehicle moving again but it never really seems to get more than halfway to the waypoint before stopping Also, units follow pathing as if they are off road even when the path is set to be via roads and they start on roads.

3 Things: 1. Thanks to Alpen for taking the time to do this incredibly short notice patching to the mission for tomorrow, I know a lot of people who would just delay a week rather than getting on with the fixes, Should be great to fly again RIP warehousing 2. Low hanging items while the mission is being altered: Can we get 2 more Tac commanders on Red? We were planning on fielding at least 3 of us in TAC slots for the mission 3.To those saying the controllable SAM's is unneeded: Two short caps from the tac view of the warm up: https://gyazo.com/c0a37f4dff06116168564c5afccd5f4c As you can see the 16 fired from far outside the range of the SA-6, and unfortunately for them it was configured wrong and didn't track. However, by the time that SA-15 fired on the missile, it was already over the site and, if configured correctly, would have been a knockout for the entire site. https://gyazo.com/29f273209a10ec89a71c6403ea672fe5 In this one he enters the stated RMAX for the SA-6 site. However firing at this range would never have hit the 16 anyways as he turns off immediately. They are able to fire their HARM rather safely at the site and destroy it. Being able to turn on and off the sites in both of these scenarios would have saved the sites, or at least forced the adversary aircraft close enough for the site to have a chance to engage. Even if they are constantly suppressed by hostile airframes with PB HARMS, it forces one or two airframes out of the main fight trying to ensure the sites never go active. The range of the HARM currently against SAM sites isn't the problem, the problem is currently the DCS AI do not do what was realistically done to counter this massive range advantage: by turning off their radars or even moving the entire site (albeit rarely in actual combat, more in the downtime). The worry about moving the sites closer is valid, I wouldn't want to fly against a team who rolled all their long rage sites right into the AO, however there are ways around this. I'd say that having them stationary to test first is a good starting point, then seeing whether PB makes that redundant still and thus some form of movement is realistically needed. I'm not sure what Alpen would want to start with but if left unchanged Red is going to get their ass handed to them where Blue can destroy all the red Air defences, and they are unable to respond against the patriots with aircraft due to lack of SEAD capable airframes and thus are left to play on a heavily asymmetric battle field..

You make a good point, However having the sites off for a long period of time isn't a major issue: The tac view for last round on this showed the closest SA-6 site was fired on once and was disabled, never having fired. While ideally we would want to move the sites, being able to only turn them on when the hostile jets are overhead is better than nothing. plus, holding 2 or so airframes dedicated to SEAD on that site is 2 not doing a2a. Second, disregarding a point simply because it might be superseded by a different one is generally bad practice. If it is going to be negated, why worry about it being added? Better to have the capacity rather than simply disregard it.