Tiramisu

Oh, and I forgot to mention that subscriptions would force ED to think in short terms. Instead of producing long term products with better quality, they would have to worry how they could keep their subscribers for the following months. A good software architecture needs to be build on solid foundations, which takes a much longer period of time than the time period of subscriptions.

The Ka-50 is an old module, but it is not abandoned at all. Same goes for the other modules, but ED needs to improve them at a time, because they cannot do everything at once. The current payment model already allows maintaining old modules. It is totally wrong to believe that subscriptions would be the only way to ensure long term support. Regarding EA I think subscriptions would make things worse, because it would cause less income for ED. Less income means less support for that module. I do not think they would risk putting lots of effort into a module while its income is low for a very long time.

Exactly! :thumbup:

Damn!

A subscription model would be unfair for the third party developers, if it gave access to all modules, no matter how good or bad they are. All the income would go in one pot and ED would have to decide how much share each dev would get. In the current pay model the customer decides this. 3rd party devs could loose their motivation to create good products with such a subscription model. On the other hand, if every module required a separate subscription, then it would probably end in a total mess. While you are flying with one module, you might neglect the others resulting in wasted money for the customer. Thus some customers might decide that they only subscribe for very few modules and therefore they would not be able to fly those other modules occasionally for a few hours. It would also result in less income for ED, when people subscribed to just a few modules. Also like others have mentioned here, a subscription model is very bad for the customer. It makes planning ahead your financials harder. Making decisions about when to subscribe or unsubscribe is very annoying. Last but not least ED is planning to create upgrade modules, which is going to allow them to support older modules without such a crazy subscription model. Currently they are only planing to offer an upgrade for the Ka-50, but I am sure other modules will follow. In my opinion this is the best payment model. If ED had two different payment models, then some customers might find it very unfair. E.g. if the subscription price would be too low compared to the one-time payment, then many people would complain.

I have tried to use HE-rockets (M261 or XM158) to destroy WW2 ground units, but it seems impossible for me. Against the SdKfz 251 the rockets do almost no damage and against M2A1 Halftrack they make absolutely no damage at all. I have tried the same type of rockets against Russian BMD-1 and they could destroy them quite easily. Is there some kind of bug that prevents the damages to be calculated correctly if you use post-WW weapons against WW-targets?

Irgendwie sah das alte Cockpit bei mir schöner aus, als es noch dunkler war. Vielleicht muss ich mich noch daran gewöhnen, aber ich glaube die Art und Weise, wie das Außenlicht im Cockpit reflektiert wird, ist nicht ganz richtig.

The SA-6 is always present when you arrive there, no matter how early or how late you are. Actually the presence of SAMs in the area makes it more important to use Phoenixes, because you can launch them and then fly defensive against the SAMs. When I defended myself with sparrows I either broke lock too early or I got splashed by a SAM. In my first few trials I actually ingressed low like the mission briefing told me, but near the SA-10 the terrain becomes more flat. By the time I arrived there, I could only mask my approach behind small hills, which is not totally safe. Also it takes time to crank defensive against the SA-10, which decreases your time advantage and costs valuable fuel. The real problem is not my altitude I believe. It is finding out the optimal timing to ingress, which has become a cumbersome trial and error for me. So instead I will rely on good old Phoenixes. If you use them correctly, you can splash 2-4 bandits in one go.

Meh, I got splashed by the SA-10. The SEAD group made their Magnum-call pretty much 2 minutes before I got splashed, so even though they had a long time available to destroy the SAM, the HARM missiles did not reach the SA-10 radar in time before its missile reached me. I think the timing in this mission must be calculated very exactly in order to accomplish what it is designed for. Simply loitering at waypoint 1 until 16:14 and then flying towards waypoint 2 is no guarantee to survive the SA-10 safely. So we would need a prebriefed and precise time to destination to waypoint 2. Since we don't have it, it is safer for me, when I wait long enough like I used to do. The bandits should be no problem, if I take 4 Phoenixes. That will still allow me to carry 6 bombs in my tomcat.

Thx, it is working. 616 MB :thumbup:

ACM modes are helpful when bandits are roughly on your altitude level, but in that case you do not need to adjust the scan elevation anyway. When I am flying 10k feet above the bandit for the altitude advantage, then I need to adjust my radar to keep him on the radar for my situational awareness, which becomes almost impossible with Jester when he is closer than 10 miles. Also keeping bandits within 10 miles softlocked can be helpful for Phoenix guidances.

I think the scan elevation already works good if you tell Jester to look for x miles at y feet. The only thing that might possibly be missing is that you cannot tell him to look for distances below 15 miles. I would suggest scratching out the 150 nm option from the menu and instead replace it with something like 7 nm, because for 150 miles you barely need to adjust your radar elevation. Another helfpul feature for the scan elevation would be a soft-lock-command for Jester to automatically track a certain unit or group in TWS. That would be great.

I have Steam Open Beta, but DCS did not download anything. Anyone else got this issue?

Oh, thank you! I will try this out. Maybe I need some scripting for the engage zones to make the AI behavior more dynamic.

I am not sure if I understood you correctly. So when I have set the engage radius for CAP to 40 miles and if the there is a bandit less than 40 miles away from any of the waypoints of the AI's route, then the AI might engage him, even when the bandit is 500 miles away from the AI's current position?

Very well flown! :thumbup: At first both of us have the same timing when leaving WP 1, but this changes after you got spiked by the SA-10. You do not crank like I do and apparently you even catch up with the SEAD-group. Isn't that very dangerous? In my tacview replays I saw that the whole SEAD-group got splashed by the SA-10. Yeah, but this mission is so dangerous that you need an unconventional payload. :D Like you guys said, it is better to make only one or two bomb runs, which only requires 4 bombs for me, because I do not need to use the ripple mode for those large vulnerable targets. So the other stations can be used for Phoenixes. Btw. does it make any difference how many or which kind of targets you bomb?

Hmmm... I will try, but probably I will fail, because the window of opportunity is small even when you are lucky. I am able to drop bombs on two or three grounded aircraft in only one bombrun in order to be as quick as possible, but in the end the bandits catch up after I have dropped 2-8 bombs. In one of my tries I almost made it, but then I had about 6 bandits on my back until one of them killed me after pursuing me for about 40 miles. Honestly, I was thinking about taking 2-4 phoenix missiles instead of the sparrows to deal with the bandits. That seems more suitable for this kind of mixed mission. Yes, of course. Here is the tacview replay: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ienor8k8oa_mfP5W63qEm9AcKXcjndJh/view?usp=sharing There were some framedrops already when I was engaging the first bandit, but the biggest lags started when I was starting to attack the second group at around 00:37:30 in that trackfile. It became a real slideshow without getting any better.

First of all thanks for creating this campaign! Now I would like to say that Mission 3 got very frustrating for me. I have tried it several times from cold and dark. The last time I really tried hard, but before I could attack the airfield two bandits took off from that airfield. Me and my wingman could kill them, but then another group appeared, while we were engaged and I think there was a third group coming for us as well. There was no time to drop a single bomb. In the end I had to quit that mission, because my frames came down to 3-6 FPS and I had really bad stutters even though my CPU, RAM and GPU were not working at their capacities at all. Probably some lua script is causing that lag. Anyway, I just wished there was some escort, because in reality even a Tomcat group on a bomber mission would not operate without some escort in this kind of situation. If you are lucky, then the bandits do not get too close to you before you drop your bombs, but luck is not a good thing to rely on.

The hours I have spent flying the F-14 is by far more than with any other module. I am glad that Heatblur worked on this complex aircraft. Even at full price it is almost a steal to get so much content.

If you are in the RIO-seat yourself, it can be very quick, but I don't think there is a Jester command that makes him do what you are describing. If we could simply ask him for IFF in the crew contract menu, then we would also be able to get a quick respond.

I am not able to open your trackfile, but I think it is because usually a Doppler search on the DDD has a higher range than the TWS search on the TID. So this may be no bug.

I hope the new clouds will be able to merge with the horizon, when they are far away. At the moment the problem is that the curvature of the earth is not simulated and thus there is a gap between clouds and the horizon.

I have observed many times that the aircraft AI changes its goal in the middle of a fight by either going to another waypoint or pursuing a far away bandit while there is still another bandit nearby. Maybe it is because the AI looses sight on that bandit, but it can even happen when the AI has AWACS support. So what is the reason for this behaviour and how can you avoid it? I have tried out different AI settings, but nothing seemed to work with certainity.

Yes, it has happened every time I tried it and in different missions. You can reproduce this bug easily: First lock a target, then Jester will usually use PD-STT. Afterwards you tell him in the command menu to go to P-STT-mode and then you can tell him to go to PD-STT again. Once you have chosen that PD-option yourself, he will not revert back to the P-STT option as long as the radar lock exists, even when you tell him to do so. :thumbup:

+1 I think some of the sticky threads should be merged or put into more general threads. A content-thread with links in it might also be a good idea.